The Road from Serfdom: Economic Storytelling and Narratives of India in the Rise of Neoliberalism (2015)
Studies of neoliberalism’s rise in the second half of the twentieth century have focused on influential US and European thinkers and global economic institutions. They rarely mention India. This article argues that, in the 1950s and early 1960s, Nehru’s India served as both a central laboratory and a discursive field for international economists debating the proper role of the state in economic development. US economists like John Kenneth Galbraith held up India planning as a proxy for the ‘American way’ of capitalism in Asia; neoliberal economists like Milton Friedman and B.R. Shenoy excoriated Nehru’s ‘road to socialism.’ As India’s economy stumbled in the late 1960s, neoliberal economists used Indian foundations to build an empirical and rhetorical case against scientific planning. Their cautionary tales about India’s ‘Permit-License-Raj’ helped to construct and sustain the project of delegitimizing state action and celebrating markets.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Fleury, Jean-Baptiste;
(2012)
Wandering through the Borderlands of the Social Sciences: Gary Becker's Economics of Discrimination
(/isis/citation/CBB001451792/)
Article
Philip Mirowski;
(March 2018)
The future(s) of open science
(/isis/citation/CBB468245942/)
Article
Joanna Goven;
Vincenzo Pavone;
(May 2015)
The Bioeconomy as Political Project: A Polanyian Analysis
(/isis/citation/CBB364077671/)
Article
Kelly Joslin Holloway;
(September 2015)
Normalizing Complaint: Scientists and the Challenge of Commercialization
(/isis/citation/CBB582502078/)
Book
Japhy Wilson;
(2021)
Reality of Dreams: Post-Neoliberal Utopias in the Ecuadorian Amazon
(/isis/citation/CBB646674451/)
Book
Quinn Slobodian;
(2018)
Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism
(/isis/citation/CBB598639946/)
Book
Neda Atanasoski;
Kalindi Vora;
(2019)
Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots, and the Politics of Technological Futures
(/isis/citation/CBB025120161/)
Book
Tomas Matza;
(2018)
Shock Therapy: Psychology, Precarity, and Well-Being in Postsocialist Russia
(/isis/citation/CBB052329453/)
Book
Simanti Dasgupta;
(2015)
BITS of Belonging: Information Technology, Water, and Neoliberal Governance in India
(/isis/citation/CBB815743248/)
Article
Kihara, Hidetoshi;
(2013)
The Neoliberal Transformation of STS in Japan
(/isis/citation/CBB001201360/)
Article
Kavita Sivaramakrishnan;
(2020)
Endemic risks: influenza pandemics, public health, and making self-reliant Indian citizens
(/isis/citation/CBB396192326/)
Article
Reuel Schiller;
(Winter 2019)
The Curious Origins of Airline Deregulation: Economic Deregulation and the American Left
(/isis/citation/CBB299348488/)
Article
Matthew Shutzer;
(2021)
Subterranean Properties: India's Political Ecology of Coal, 1870–1975
(/isis/citation/CBB718879526/)
Article
Kenneth M. George;
Kirin Narayan;
(2022)
Technophany and Its Publics: Artisans, Technicians, and the Rise of Vishwakarma Worship in India
(/isis/citation/CBB205826789/)
Article
Mircea Raianu;
(Autumn 2020)
Trade, Finance, and Industry in the Development of Indian Capitalism: The Case of Tata
(/isis/citation/CBB633976079/)
Article
William J. Novak;
(Winter 2019)
Institutional Economics and the Progressive Movement for the Social Control of American Business
(/isis/citation/CBB921649138/)
Article
Kean Birch;
(May 2017)
Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy: Finance, Assetization, and the Management of Value
(/isis/citation/CBB133617956/)
Thesis
James Dalgoff Skee;
(2016)
By the Numbers: Confidence, Consultants, and the Construction of Mass Leisure, 1953-1975
(/isis/citation/CBB837641195/)
Article
Mischa Suter;
(2017)
Debt and Its Attachments: Collateral as an Object of Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Liberalism
(/isis/citation/CBB850632526/)
Book
Delle, James A.;
Mrozowski, Stephen A.;
Paynter, Robert;
(2000)
Lines that Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender
(/isis/citation/CBB000101650/)
Be the first to comment!