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Authoritarian Populism and Bovine Political Economy in Modi's India analyses how the twin forces of Hindu nationalism and neoliberalism unfold in India's bovine economy, revealing their often-devastating material and economic impact on the country's poor.
This book is a rare, in-depth study of India's bovine economy under Narendra Modi's authoritarian populism. This is an economy that throws up a central paradox: On the one hand, an entrenched and aggressive Hindu nationalist politics is engaged in violently protecting the cow, disciplining those who do not sufficiently respect and revere it; on the other hand, India houses and continuously promotes one of the world's largest corporate-controlled beef export economies that depends on the slaughter of millions of bovines every year. The book offers an original analysis of this scenario to show how Modi's authoritarian populist regime has worked to reconcile the two by simultaneously promoting a virulent Hindu nationalism that seeks to turn India into a Hindu state, while also pushing neoliberal economic policies favouring corporate capital and elite class interests within and beyond the bovine economy.
The book brings out the adverse impacts of these political-economic processes on the lives and livelihoods of millions of poor Indians in countryside and city. In addition, it identifies emerging weaknesses in Modi's authoritarian populism, highlighting the potential for progressive counter-mobilisation. It will be of interest to scholars in the fields of development studies, South Asia studies, critical agrarian studies, as well as scholars with a general interest in political economy, contemporary authoritarian populism, and social movements.
Sommario
1. Authoritarian Populism, Bovines, and State Contradictions in Modi's India; 2. Hindu Nationalism and Bovine Political Economy; 3. The "Double Victimisation" of Classes of Labour in Countryside and City; 4. Towards Corporate Concentration: Covid-19 and Beyond; 5. Concluding Reflections on State Contradictions and Counter-Hegemonic Projects under Modi's Authoritarian Populism; Index
Info autore
Jostein Jakobsen is a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway. His research interests are broadly within political ecology and critical agrarian studies. He is the coauthor of The Violent Technologies of Extraction: Political Ecology, Critical Agrarian Studies and the Capitalist Worldeater (2020).
Kenneth Bo Nielsen is associate professor of social anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway. He works on land politics, agrarian issues, and the political economy of development in India. His books include Land Dispossession and Everyday Politics in Rural Eastern India (2018) and The Great Goa Land Grab (2022, co-authored).
Riassunto
This book analyses Hindu nationalism and neoliberalism in India’s bovine economy and will interest scholars of SA studies, critical agrarian studies, political economy, contemporary authoritarian populism.
Relazione
"Drawing on a diverse range of secondary sources and ethnographic fieldwork across India, Jakobsen and Nielsen (2024), in this concise book, use the lens of 'beef and the bovine body' (p. 4) to unpack and analyse the political economy in Modi's India, and the simultaneous cultivation of an environment of authoritarian populism in the country. A timely and valuable addition to emergent literature on bovine politics in contemporary India, this book attempts to delineate the big picture of 'state contradictions' under Modi's regime at the intersection of critical agrarian studies and authoritarian populism via the bovine paradox [...] Jakobsen and Nielsen comprehensively encapsulate the state contradictions of Modi's authoritative populism, using the Hindu far-right's most-favoured and contentious symbol-the bovine. Their 'big picture' analysis provides a broad and useful framework for researchers interested across concerns-of bovines, political economy, Modi's India, authoritarian populism, ultranationalism, neoliberalism and development."
-- Shruti Ragavan, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, India. Journal of South Asian Development 1-5. 2024
"[This] is a valuable addition to the established and growing literature on cow politics in India. The authors present a clear and compelling paradox: that the current Hindu nationalist regime in India prosecutes a politics of virile and violent cow protection, while also fostering the conditions for a flourishing cow-slaughter economy, through which India has become a leading exporter of cow meat. This paradox offers, the authors argue, an exemplary entry point into some of the core contradictions of the Modi regime. [...] Perhaps the book's most striking contribution is its resolute commitment to a materialist political economy approach to the study of the Modi regime."
-- Felix Pal, University of Western Australia. Asian Studies Review, 26 Mar 2025.
