In the 26th episode, I speak to Bharat Venkat, Assistant Professor at Institute for Society and Genetics in the Department of History, UCLA, on his new book At the Limits of Cure (Duke University Press, 2021). The book’s an anthropological history of tuberculosis treatment in India that asks fundamental questions about what it means to be cured of a disease and what happens when cures don’t pan out. The conversation begins by asking Venkat what he means by cures and how we, as a society, determine when a cure is a cure or what conditions and factors influence and inform that determination. Next, I cover the puzzle that’s at the heart of the book: why individuals die of TB from other conditions like HIV after being treated. The book’s focus on India brings up the issue of why Indian cities became vulnerable to TB, sifting and weighing how different conditions, political, historical and structural, influenced TB patterns in the country. The conversation moves to understand how geography or ‘place’ interacts with these contextual factors to shape cures. Venkat also unpacks whether and how political economy considerations, that increasingly center around the discourse of chronic diseases which require sustained care and treatment, shape current notions of cure and being cured. Before ending, the conversation covers how Venkat sees or places the book from a disciplinary perspective, the impact of COVID-19 on our understanding of cures, the hardest parts of writing the book, and what he’s working on now. Links At the Limits of Cure - Duke University Press 

In the 25th episode, I speak to Rajesh Veeraraghavan, Assistant Professor in the Science, Technology and International Affairs program at Georgetown University on his new book Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India (OUP, 2022). The book shows how Indian bureaucrats used ‘patches’ to resolve pesky last miles problems in the implementation of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee program (NREGA) in Andhra Pradesh. Borrowing the 'patching' concept, Veeraraghavan demonstrates how digital technologies allowed senior bureaucrats overcome conflicts that center around politics, caste, class and gender, which invariably stymie and thwart development programs. The conversation begins by by mapping Veeraraghavan’s non-linear career trajectory leading to the book. Next, I ask Veeraraghavan to lay out these thorny last mile problems and how they affect policy implementation before moving to address how ‘patching’ helps address these problems. Veeraraghavan then describes how he sees technologies or 'patches' as fundamentally politics, connected to how power is exercised by officials to control and manage programs. The latter half of the conversation delves into social audits and how they serve as another institutional 'patch' in this process, trials of fieldwork in Andhra Pradesh, and what’s next from Veeraraghavan.

In the 24th episode, I speak to Dwai Banerjee, Associate Professor, MIT, on his recent book Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi published by Duke University Press in 2020. The book is an ethnography of cancer in urban India. It focuses on the efforts of individuals in Delhi who negotiate and manage the disease, battling inept health systems and fragile kinship and community ties. The conversation begins by asking why the book focuses on cancer and whether it began as a study on cancer or public health in post colonial India. Then, we cover why cancer is ‘endured’ in India and not survived or persisted before moving to the importance of how the broader social worlds of individuals contribute to the enduring of cancer. A key part of how individuals navigate a cancer diagnosis in such fraught conditions is concealment, by not revealing their condition from family and others in their community. Banerjee explains why concealment appears to be a compelling strategy for cancer patients in deeply fragile public health systems. Then, Banerjee reveals how cancer intersects with conjugality or how households and spouses are affected by cancer. Finally, Banerjee explains why he chose to analyse Indian cancer memoirs and films, how they complement the ethnographic chapters and what they add to his book. The conversation ends by asking whether ‘endurance’ could help us understand and deal with a crisis like COVID-19 that has laid bare challenges endemic within India’s public health system. Links Enduring Cancer: Duke University Press

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.  Notes Brand New Nation - Stanford University Press

In the 22nd episode, I speak to Debjani Bhattacharyya, Associate Professor of History and Urban Studies, Drexel University and soon to be Professor and Chair of the History of the Anthropocene at the University of Zurich on her recent book Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. The conversation begins by asking Bhattacharyya about how she arrived at this topic and issue before moving to understand how historians and histories covered Calcutta’s origins. Next, we unpack how British officials used legal and technological instruments to transform Calcutta's marshes and bogs to landed spaces that could be used for economic purposes including financial speculation. Bhattacharyya also elaborates on one particular event involving Benjamin Lacam who brought a case against the East India Company in 1777 alleging that the company cheated him of profits by canceling his land grant which laid bare the challenges in the nature of colonial knowledge about Calcutta's fluid landscape. Bhattacharyya explains why she engaged with and incorporated vernacular representations of riverine spaces and how locals in Calcutta imagined and inhabited these spaces. The book's importance to contemporary debates stems from the ongoing impact of climate change to cities like Calcutta and the inability of officials to grasp the history of Calcutta's founding. The conversation ends by asking Bhattacharyya how she see's her work alongside recent books on South Asian rivers and waters, her ambitious next work covering the Indian Ocean and what she hopes to accomplish through her new chair in Zurich.

In the 21st episode, I speak to Sandeep Mertia, PhD Candidate, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University on his new edited volume Lives of Data: Essays on Computational Cultures from India published by the Institute of Network Cultures (2021). The edited volume brings together chapters from fifteen interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners who provide cutting analyses on India’s current computational culture encapsulated by big data and its historical and emergent dynamics on India’s politics and society. The volume emerged out of discussions and workshops at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) Sarai Programme. The volume offers us critical ways of considering and analyzing India’s big data moment and how it manifests relationally through different political and cultural nodes in India’s socio-political context. The conversation begins by asking Mertia about the origins of the volume before unpacking how data became so powerful in India. Next, we cover how data derives value from its relational nature or the lineages, affinities, networks and layers that add to data’s value in the Indian context. Mertia then historicizes data in India going back to the 1950s to trace how distinct domestic computing histories led to the current one. The conversation then moves to understand the role data practitioners play and whether it makes sense to view technological progress through their stand alone perch or collaboratively. We end with some thoughts on specific chapters including the last few that use ethnographic accounts to map the everyday aspects of data in India today and what Mertia thinks could be India’s data future.

In the 20th episode, I speak to Swetha S Ballakrishnen, Assistant Professor of Law, UC Irvine on their recent book Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility among India's Professional Elite published by Princeton University Press in January 2021. The book explores the unintentional production of seemingly feminist outcomes in India, focusing on elite law firms that offer an oasis for women in a largely hostile, predominantly male industry. Using interviews, Accidental Feminism unpacks how several structural conditions - gender socialization and essentialism, family structures and care networks and firm and regulatory histories have interacted to provide certain incidental benefits to women lawyers at elite law firms in India. The conversation begins by probing how Ballakrishnen found this subject and issue to cover as a sociologist. Next, we zero in on the core argument and why it was important to uncover these structural conditions to make sense of the driving puzzle before moving to cover each condition - effects of India's liberalization on the changing legal landscape, rise of elite institutions that train India's lawyers, impact of gendered frameworks, various organizational pressures that compel law firms to prioritize merit and family/social care networks that support women as they focus on their professional lives. The conversation ends by tackling some larger questions including whether feminism can be ever 'accidental' and if these elite women lawyers could withstand and overcome India's majoritarian turn. Notes Accidental Feminism - Princeton University Press

In the nineteenth episode, I speak to Pratinav Anil, PhD Candidate, University of Oxford about his recently co-authored book (with Christophe Jaffrelot) India’s First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975–1977 published by Hurst in December 2020. The book examines Indira and Sanjay Gandhi's authoritarianism, Jayaprakash Narayan's muddled politics, how the RSS gained respectability, how the Indian state, business and labour adapted to the changes Indira Gandhi wrought, and the causes and end of the Emergency. The conversation begins by asking what Anil’s initial ideas were about the emergency before beginning the book and how that evolved through research and writing. Next, we cover different parts of the book including the political economy of the emergency, why they refer to the government as a 'constitutional dictatorship', Sanjay Gandhi’s catastrophic impact, the parallel power structure he created to wreak havoc and why he was not reined in earlier, the causes and spatial effects of the emergency or why the effects were sequestered to the Hindi heartbelt and why they think the Emergency was not a critical event but a continuation of oppressive policies imposed on the Indian public. Notes India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-1977 Pratinav Anil

In the eighteenth episode, I speak to Pradip Ninan Thomas, Associate Professor, University of Queensland, about his recent book The Politics of Digital India: Between Local Compulsions and Transnational Pressures published by Oxford University Press in 2019. The book situates and locates Digital India in a global and local context by identifying the pressures, local and transnational, affecting India’s digital trajectory. The conversation begins by tracing Pradip’s journey with this book covering his previous works on media and telecommunications in India. Next, we historicise India’s current digital moment by covering the ’technological' continuities from the British Raj to the newly independent Indian government. The conversation then moves to understand what Thomas means by ‘digital’, how it manifests in India and how the 'digital' is negotiated, shaped and contested by political and geopolitical considerations including the Indian state and the United States. The conversation ends by wading into the importance of data to India’s digital economy, the potential and implications of the Indian state’s digital infrastructure projects and how digital governance aids surveillance.

In the seventeenth episode, I speak to Kate Imy, a historian at the University of North Texas, about her recent book Faithful Fighters: Identity and Power in the British Indian Army, published by Stanford University Press in 2019. The book explores how the military culture, created by the British, spawned new dialogues and dynamics between soldiers and civilian communities, including Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims. Colonial authorities had to respect and incorporate certain social and religious traditions into the Army to keep these groups loyal while ensuring these concessions did not fuel anti-colonial sentiments. The conversation begins by setting the context around the martial races, or the discourse through which the colonial state recruited soldiers before moving to understand how colonial authorities engaged with three major ethno-religious communities (Sikhs, Muslims, and Nepal Gurkhas). Imy then explains this dynamic through the Sikh Kirpan, a symbol of Sikh's martial prowess but could also be used to spur anti-colonial resistance. Next, we talk about the relationship between body and faith and the body's importance to the faith colonial officials had on Indian soldiers. The conversation moves to consider the effects of 'Indianization,' bringing more Indians into the Army through military academies, and the implications of recent efforts to further 'Indianize' the Indian Army effacing colonial traditions. The conversation ends by asking how we can deal with the fraught legacy left by the British Indian army in the subcontinent today. Links Faithful Fighters