Unsettling India: affect, temporality, transnationality

In the last 20 years, India has witnessed visible, and often acrimonious, contests between global and
local, modernity and tradition, markets and the State. The economic domain has seen a shift from a
protected capitalist economy that tried to mix planning with a market-based economy, to a regime
increasingly marked by neoliberalism and declining welfare state. This is a period of high economic
growth, prosperity for some groups, and an increase in inequality levels in the country. We also witness
an ongoing agrarian crisis in rural India, where the majority lives, contributing to more than 200,000
farm suicides in the last two decades. In the political domain, there is a distinct rightward shift with an
unprecedented rise of Hindu majoritarianism that has recently culminated in the elevation of Narendra
Modi to the post of Prime Minister. On the one hand, the new India is trying to be assertive as it tries to
find its place as a global power and is stridently militaristic in its geopolitical interactions. On the other
hand, it is trying to integrate into the global capitalist economy to catch up with the richer nations of the
world as it strives for greater growth. In the socio-cultural sphere, marketization comes mixed with
emphases on Hindu notions of good life and India’s mythical past, as the country witnesses a heady
cocktail of religion and neoliberal capitalism that defines its political economy.