In the 23rd episode, I speak to Ravinder Kaur, Associate Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen on her recent book Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India published by Stanford University Press in 2020. The book examines how various publicity campaigns enabled the Indian state to transform India into an attractive global investment destination. The conversation begins by asking how Kaur became interested in this topic after her first book which examined partition narratives. Next, it covers how Kaur conceives of the state and the functions of the state under intense capitalist pressures and how capitalism, in effect, services the needs of the state and nation, India in this case. Kaur argues that particularly important here to understand India’s economic transformation is the deployment of social and cultural markers to drive India’s investment patterns. The conversation moves to grasp how specific publicity images associated with national campaigns like 'India Story', 'New India' and 'Incredible India’, themselves embodying historical symbols, facilitated the creation of a distinct Indian brand that could elicit investments. The conversation ends by covering the larger implications of this politics which also fuelled the rise of then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi who deftly leveraged aspects of the Indian nation and the state to become India's Prime Minister and the Modi ‘brands’ ostensible unassailability despite crises like COVID-19, recent farmer protests and prolonged economic malaise. We end with what Kaur's reflections on the hardest parts of writing the book.
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