Sunila S. Kale

Structures of Power: Electrification in Colonial India

Mirroring the cross-national variation in how electricity became enmeshed in polities and societies around the world in the twentieth century, within British India, too, the emerging electric systems differed by fuel source, ownership, and usage. This heterogeneity was a product of decentralized authority over electricity to provincial governments and the ambiguous freedoms of indirect colonial rule. Rather than being governed according to any discrete logic of colonial governance, electric systems became terrains in which a variety of views about the proper role of the state in industrial transformation as well as the suitable means to promote economic development were elaborated. In turn the emergent electrical systems shaped both politics and governance in the late colonial period and left a strong imprint on politics after independence. If railroads and canals—the quintessential infrastructural technologies of the colonial state—revealed a uniform sense of the state as a particular kind of engine of “development,” the far more messy political economy of electrification displayed a mixed understanding of both governance and the state’s role in the economy.

Democracy and the State in Globalizing India: A Case Study of Odisha

How are the contours and practices of the state changing under the regime of economicliberalization in India? To address these questions in the context of India, in this essay I turn to the relatively understudied state of Odisha. The most common sites of research about the political economy of globalization in India are the technology clusters around Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, and the dynamic spaces of the burgeoning service sector. By analyzing politics in globalizing Odisha, however, we get a different sense of the messy, complicated, and sometimes contradictory politics of globalization in India, as well as how the state is adapting to these changes. The relative success of Odisha in attracting investments in mining and mining-related sectors is due both to the opening of the Indian market generally as well as efforts by the state government to promote industrial investment in these sectors.