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Cover -- Contents -- Frequently Used Terms and Acronyms -- Notes on Names and Spellings -- Maps of India -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: "You, Too Can Be an Economist" -- Part I. Situating Free Economy -- 1. Making a New India: Dreams, Accomplishments, Disappointments, circa 1940-70 -- 2. Indian Libertarians and the Birth of Free Economy -- Part II. People, Ideas, Practices -- 3. Conservative Opposition to the "Permit-and-License Raj" -- 4. Beyond Ghosts: Visions and Scales of Free Economies -- Part III. Party Politics -- 5. Communicating and Mobilizing: Free Economy as Opposition -- 6. Against the Tide: Swatantra in Office and Memory -- Appendix: Electoral Results -- Note on Sources -- Selected Bibliography and Abbreviations -- Index.

The unknown history of economic conservatism in India after independenceNeoliberalism is routinely characterized as an antidemocratic, expert-driven project aimed at insulating markets from politics, devised in the North Atlantic and projected on the rest of the world. Revising this understanding, Toward a Free Economy shows how economic conservatism emerged and was disseminated in a postcolonial society consistent with the logic of democracy.Twelve years after the British left India, a Swatantra ("Freedom") Party came to life. It encouraged Indians to break with the Indian National Congress Party, which spearheaded the anticolonial nationalist movement and now dominated Indian democracy. Rejecting Congress's heavy-industrial developmental state and the accompanying rhetoric of socialism, Swatantra promised "free economy" through its project of opposition politics.As it circulated across various genres, "free economy" took on meanings that varied by region and language, caste and class, and won diverse advocates. These articulations, informed by but distinct from neoliberalism, came chiefly from communities in southern and western India as they embraced new forms of entrepreneurial activity. At their core, they connoted anticommunism, unfettered private economic activity, decentralized development, and the defense of private property.Opposition politics encompassed ideas and practice. Swatantra's leaders imagined a conservative alternative to a progressive dominant party in a two-party system. They communicated ideas and mobilized people around such issues as inflation, taxation, and property. And they made creative use of India's institutions to bring checks and balances to the political system.Democracy's persistence in India is uncommon among postcolonial societies. By excavating a perspective of how Indians made and understood their own democracy and economy, Aditya Balasubramanian broadens our picture of neoliberalism, democracy, and the postcolonial world

AbstractMass disease and starvation in the princely state of Travancore during the Second World War claimed some 90,000 lives. However, this episode has never received much prominence, especially when compared to the simultaneous crisis in Bengal. It is, in many ways, forgotten. Instead, Travancore's wartime food management apparatus appears in some accounts as a success story. How did this happen? Integration into the world economy, the reordering of a rigid social structure, and popular political pressures on an autocratic princely regime created a unique set of conditions that left Travancore vulnerable to food scarcity and conflict during the Second World War. A particularly draconian princely regime that suppressed civil liberties prevented the gravity of the situation from being understood. This culminated in vastly unequal suffering and disease-related deaths. But the story is not merely one of despair. The Indian communists took advantage of war conditions to bring together agricultural and factory labourers and contribute to improving the food situation in this 'People's War', while mainstream nationalists sought to obstruct the war effort and have the British 'quit' India. Wartime activities would shape the unique post-colonial politics of what became the state of Kerala in 1956. Intervening at the intersection of the historiographies of food and the princely states, this article adds a regional perspective to the nation-centric social history of the Second World War in South Asia. Hunger was a constitutive experience of this period across various parts of India, but the post-colonial political legacies of war could be regionally distinct.

Cover -- Contents -- Introduction: Beyond the Neoliberal Heartlands -- Part One: Greater Cultures -- I. Japan and Neoliberal Culturalism -- II. (Is) India in the History of Neoliberalism? -- III. Constructing Turkey's "Magic Political Formula": The Association for Liberal Thinking's Neoliberal Intellectual Project -- Part Two: Other Paths -- IV. The Road from Snake Hill: The Genesis of Russian Neoliberalism -- V. Shooting for an Economic "Miracle": German Post-War Neoliberal Thought in China's Market Reform Debate -- VI. Disciplining Freedom: Apartheid, Counterinsurgency, and the Political Histories of Neoliberalism -- VII. Freedom to Burn: Mining Propaganda, Fossil Capital, and the Australian Neoliberals -- Part Three: Radical Outposts -- VIII. Neoliberalism Out of Place: The Rise of Brazilian Ultraliberalism -- IX. Latin America's Neoliberal Seminary: Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala -- X. The Mediterranean Tiger: How Montenegro Became a Neoliberal Role Model -- XI. A Hayekian Public Intellectual in Iceland -- Conclusion: Looking Back to the Future of Neoliberalism Studies -- Index.