Ritanjan Das - Neoliberalism and the Transforming Left in India: A contradictory manifesto

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The Routledge/Edinburgh South Asian Studies Series is published in association with the Centre for South Asian Studies, Edinburgh University one of the leading centres for South Asian Studies in the UK with a strong interdisciplinary focus. This series presents research monographs and high-quality edited volumes as well as textbooks on topics concerning the Indian subcontinent from the modern period to contemporary times. It aims to advance understanding of the key issues in the study of South Asia, and contributions include works by experts in the social sciences and the humanities. In accordance with the academic traditions of Edinburgh, we particularly welcome submissions which emphasise the social in South Asian history, politics, sociology and anthropology, based upon thick description of empirical reality, generalised to provide original and broadly applicable conclusions.

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Prashant Sharma

Activism and Agency in India

Nurturing Resistance in the Tea Plantations

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Everyday State and Politics in India

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Neoliberalism and the Transforming Left in India

A Contradictory Manifesto

Ritanjan Das

First published 2018

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2018 Ritanjan Das

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For Baba
Who was the first to ask me to write

The Calcutta of the 1980s and 1990s, a city that I grew up in, had an atmosphere of historic inevitability about its political overtures. Leftism, one could sense, transcended far beyond a political ideology, becoming a way of life and a moral identity in itself. And yet, Calcutta remained a city seething with contradictions, saddled with its own cultural heritage, a ruptured colonial past, an incubator of revolutionary politics, an overbearing intellectual elitism and a stagnant economy. From the roadside squatters to the railway colonies, from the posh South-Calcutta drawing rooms to the dim-lit alleys of the north, from the tea-shops to the coffee house, from the political graffiti to the arthouses, Calcutta was a furious landscape of sights and sounds, but only to reproduce itself at every turn, embroiled in the divine agnosticism of to paraphrase a popular CPIM leader Brahmin communists. It was Calcutta that first inspired me to write, and it is to this city that I owe the deepest gratitude to.

The core of this book emerged out of my PhD research at the London School of Economics (LSE) between 2006 and 2013. The book could not have been written without the guidance of Professor Stuart Corbridge, my PhD supervisor, who in many ways taught me the importance of pushing the boundaries, but not without demonstrable evidence. His understanding of Indian politics and its complexities gave this work the context that it required, and I owe a great deal to his thoughts and ideas, shared over the course of our numerous conversations.

I have received guidance and support from a wide range of individuals, and am deeply grateful to Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya (JNU), Kunal Sen (University of Manchester), Sumantra Bose (LSE), Abhirup Sarkar (Indian Statistical Institute), Sugata Marjit (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences), Shubhashis Gangopadhyay (India Development Foundation), Suparna Pathak and Jayanta Ghoshal ( Ananda Bazar Patrika ), and Nirbed Roy (Asiatic Society). I also owe a special debt to some of my close friends at the LSE and SOAS a core group of Indo-philes Kumar Nilotpal, Praveen Priyadarshi, Jayraj Sunderesan, Neha Khanna, Deepak Nair, Anokhi Parikh, Zaad Mahmood and Prashant Sharma. There is also a larger group of friends and well-wishers whose support has been invaluable over the years: Asok Sen, Rushati Sen, Amarnath Banerjee, Malabi Banerjee, Samudra Sarkar, Abhijit Sengupta, Ipsita Dutta, Vrinda Aggarwal, Bimbabati Sen, Shipra Basu and Rosemary Gosling. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Crispin Bates (University of Edinburgh), Dorothea Schaefter and Lily Brown (Routledge) for their support in the preparation of this book. A special note of thanks also goes to Bappa , who willingly gave up his Durga Puja celebrations to escort me around Singur the first time I went there.