Amrita Kurian is a Visiting Faculty in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University, Sonipat, and a Non-Resident Visiting Scholar with the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), University of Pennsylvania. Her research, which spans expertise, agricultural markets, and monocultural ecologies, offers a humanistic critique of expert interventions in India’s agri-commodity markets.
Hindu nationalism is on the rise in India; its discipline matched by the swagger that comes with impunity. Its victories have been regional and national, reverberating through the citizenry. The Citizenship Amendment Act and the building of a temple where a mosque once stood in Ayodhya were new thresholds. But since then, and in between, numerous other symptoms betray the spread of this political ideology across the country.
India, long-established as the world’s most populous democracy, has been quite instrumental over the years in assisting various countries dealing with democratic struggles. This support has included a blend of bilateral and multilateral initiatives, and especially economic development projects. Yet, India’s recent attitude toward the Russian attack on Ukraine and its concomitant behavior in the United Nations Security Council (as a non-permanent member) seems to contradict its support of democracy.
It has been more than six months since the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM)—the umbrella organization representing protesting Indian farmers—ended its 15-month-long agitation at Delhi’s borders against the three farm laws. Some of their demands were met, while their demand for a Minimum Support Prices (MSP) guarantee remains unfulfilled. These developments do little to address the longstanding economic problems of agriculture in India. The farm sector needs reform to raise productivity, enhance farmers’ income, build market infrastructure, and address declining soil fertility.
The commencement of the first metro line in 2008 has left Bangalore in a state of flux, with a process that never seems to end. With every line added, places and landmarks disappear leaving rubble, remains of dismembered trees, and fractured spaces in its wake. The protests never cease but neither does the metro. It slides across the city blind to the textures, colors, and the living city it passes. From inside its glassy tube, one can only see out and beyond.
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This year marks the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between India and Japan. Over the years, this bilateral partnership has steadily progressed, with New Delhi and Tokyo becoming “Special Strategic and Global” partners in 2015. However, with the growing rivalry between the U.S. and China, the region risks being consumed by these fast-changing balance-of-power dynamics.
Early in his second term, Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked on an ambitious vision for defense reforms.
In 2018, after the India-Nepal announcement of new connectivity through Inland Waterways, I visited Bihar and Nepal with a Manthan Adhyayan Kendra field team to understand how prioritized waterways on the rivers are developed, specifically National Waterways Kosi and Gandak, as well as the Ganga in Bihar.
In Uttarakhand, land is a political flashpoint. A controversial 2018 law introduced by state legislature now allows outsiders to buy land in the Himalayan state. In 2018, as these laws were coming into force, I asked Bhim, an elderly lower caste man, what he thought about it all.
