...John Harriss Abstract In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian government, led by Narendra Modi, imposed a stringent lockdown with only four hours notice. It paid no attention to the millions of migrants who work on a temporary basis in Indian cities. Most lost their livelihoods as a result...

... some of the policies that were initiated by the Narendra Modi government after May 2014, as the atlas was published in 2016. There is room for improvement in this atlas. Some sections are sketchy, such as the chapter on literacy in South Asia. The author could have gone into more depth about Modi's...

...: Hindutva. The first chapter of this volume recounts this early history. Jaffrelot argues that Hindutva's efficacy was limited until 2014, when the BJP, led by Narendra Modi, won sufficient seats to govern without the need for a coalition. The second chapter recounts the personal and political rise of Modi...

... ever, this party was not the Indian National Congress. Instead, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by the controversial hardliner Narendra Modi, secured a stunning victory. The BJP's singular breakthrough only served to remind observers of the central role coalition governments...

... minister, Narendra Modi, considerable political power as his party controlled a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha. Modi—with his alleged implication in anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat and his fervent advocacy of Hindu nationalism—sparked social anxiety regarding the possibility of Indian democracy being...

... are still the least favorably inclined towards the BJP, in spite of the Sangh Parivar social work and the “Modi wave.” Besides, Dalits have been much less seduced by Narendra Modi than any other caste group, nearly whatever their social class. These minor caveats do not diminish the merits of Thachil's...

... independence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi dismantled the Planning Commission, an institution that had existed since 1950. It was replaced with a new organization, the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog). However, unlike its predecessor, which had wielded vast powers to direct...

... Minister Narendra Modi. Examples of India's “cultural wars” include religious zealots’ efforts at the “saffronization” of history textbooks to glorify Hindu civilization's past and to “marginali[ze] Islamic and other foreign influences” on the country (p. 28). Another endeavor of the Hindutva zealots...

...” will hardly disappear as scholars confront new comparisons of China and India in the era of Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi associated with the world's latest, emerging populist “temporality.” ...

... of colonialism (with its divisions between direct and indirect rule and complex layers of sovereignty based on the right to extract land revenue) and the partition of August 1947. It took an Indian government that was bulletproof on the charge of Muslim appeasement—that of Narendra Modi's Hindu...

... takedown of the so-called Gujarat economic miracle produced under the leadership of Narendra Modi—who served as the state's chief minister for a decade before becoming prime minister in 2014—lands some punches. But this part of the book lacks the focus and direct field knowledge that gives the rest...

... the target of state intervention. As Narendra Modi launches the Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission, a public sanitation campaign to deliver public toilets and to clean up streets, dirt and filth continue to characterize the conditions of work and living for many of the less well-off. Taking...

... in various Indian states (pp. 95–96) and discussions of women in politics (not just Indira), especially Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, and Naxalite women, are particularly fascinating. Shifting between levels of analysis, Bose personalizes events with these profiles and others, including Narendra Modi, Sheik...

... for Narendra Modi's economic success has been tempered by his criticism of the Gujarat government's anticorruption efforts. But Hazare's unrelenting ire for the ruling Congress party, and the fact that many rank-and-file supporters of the movement have campaigned for BJP candidates in state and municipal...

... in the state seem at a distance from the emplaced eco-social world of Kedarnath, even though Whitmore acknowledges the popularity that Narendra Modi enjoyed among paharis at the time of his research. While I am sympathetic to his assertion, drawing on the work of the scholar Daniela Berti, that the “mutual...

... of Sarvesh Kumar, an auto rickshaw driver whose faith in Narendra Modi's demonetization scheme is unshaken, even though it has destroyed his livelihood. Agrawal ends his book with this story, which is symbolic of the millions who will be “left behind” by India's great smartphone-enabled “digital leap forward...

... as many Hindu nationalists anticipated nor for its subsequent demise. Whether or not the party's latest champion, Narendra Modi, wins the prime minister's office clearly relies upon his ability to publicly put behind him—at least in the eyes of some constituencies, perhaps the opposite for others—his part...

... an avowedly Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, assumed office. In 2019, the BJP returned to power with a sweeping majority in parliament, winning 303 out of a possible 546 seats. Since then, using its parliamentary majority, the BJP...

... remain latent and at least superficially peaceful. His analysis of the power of Chief Minister Narendra Modi's rhetoric of “terrorism” in opening the way to the 2002 pogrom is masterful; we need to know more about the rhetoric—his and others'—of the return to peace. For Valiani, we need more evidence...

... exogenous shocks that induced these major domestic policy changes. 3 Despite alterations in governments, with differing ideological colorations, no structural policy changes have taken place in either of the two issue areas. Even the current government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while adopting...