Neoliberalism, Urbanization and Aspirations in Contemporary India

This volume brings together scholarship from different disciplines on the theme of neoliberalism. Contemporary neoliberal economic policy, it argues has increased inequalities and exclusions while providing opportunities to the upper sections of the society. In turn it has also creating new risks and challenges to everyday lives of the lower and middle classes of the country. While the focus of the volume is on the way urbanization and lower-class aspirations have been harnessed for the neoliberal project, there are also essays on the way social media has impacted democracy and as well on the impact of gendered demographic dividend on the economy. The volume also includes a set of papers that analyses the implications of neoliberalism on the State of Uttar Pradesh. The authors in this volume argue that the changes inaugurated by neoliberalism challenge them to re-think old perspectives on development popular among social scientists with most asserting a need to construct new interdisciplinary perspectives to narrate analytically these contemporary changes.

SUJATA PATEL is Distinguished Professor Savitribai Phule Pune University, and Kirsten Hesselgren Visiting Professor, University of Umea, 2021.