The Indian planning project was one of the postcolonial world's most ambitious experiments. Planning Democracy explores how India fused Soviet-inspired economic management and Western-style liberal democracy at a time when they were widely considered fundamentally contradictory. After nearly two centuries of colonial rule, planning was meant to be independent India's route to prosperity. In this engaging and innovative account, Nikhil Menon traces how planning built India's knowledge infrastructure and data capacities, while also shaping the nature of its democracy. He analyses the challenges inherent in harmonizing technocratic methods with democratic mandates and shows how planning was the language through which the government's aspirations for democratic state-building were expressed. Situating India within international debates about economic policy and Cold War ideology, Menon reveals how India walked a tightrope between capitalism and communism which heightened the drama of its development on the global stage.

By exploring themes of fragility, mobility and turmoil, anxieties and agency, and pedagogy, this book shows how colonialism shaped postcolonial projects in South and Southeast Asia including India, Pakistan, Burma, and Indonesia. Its chapters unearth the contingency and contention that accompanied the establishment of nation-states and their claim to be decolonized heirs. The book places key postcolonial moments - a struggle for citizenship, anxious constitution making, mass education and land reform - against the aftermath of the Second World War and within a global framework, relating them to the global transformation in political geography from empire to nation. The chapters analyse how futures and ideals envisioned by anticolonial activists were made reality, whilst others were discarded. Drawing on the expertise of eminent contributors, The Postcolonial Moment in South and Southeast Asia represents the most ground-breaking research on the region.

The Indian planning project was one of the postcolonial world's most ambitious experiments. Planning Democracy explores how India fused Soviet-inspired economic management and Western-style liberal democracy at a time when they were widely considered fundamentally contradictory. After nearly two centuries of colonial rule, planning was meant to be independent India's route to prosperity. In this engaging and innovative account, Nikhil Menon traces how planning built India's knowledge infrastructure and data capacities, while also shaping the nature of its democracy. He analyses the challenges inherent in harmonizing technocratic methods with democratic mandates and shows how planning was the language through which the government's aspirations for democratic state-building were expressed. Situating India within international debates about economic policy and Cold War ideology, Menon reveals how India walked a tightrope between capitalism and communism which heightened the drama of its development on the global stage.

By exploring themes of fragility, mobility and turmoil, anxieties and agency, and pedagogy, this book shows how colonialism shaped postcolonial projects in South and Southeast Asia including India, Pakistan, Burma, and Indonesia. Its chapters unearth the contingency and contention that accompanied the establishment of nation-states and their claim to be decolonized heirs. The book places key postcolonial moments - a struggle for citizenship, anxious constitution making, mass education and land reform - against the aftermath of the Second World War and within a global framework, relating them to the global transformation in political geography from empire to nation. The chapters analyse how futures and ideals envisioned by anticolonial activists were made reality, whilst others were discarded. Drawing on the expertise of eminent contributors, The Postcolonial Moment in South and Southeast Asia represents the most ground-breaking research on the region.