Fifteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

From the onset of liberalization policies in India in 1991, Indian leaders throughout the following years could not have predicted that neoliberalism’s encroachment would penetrate so deep to the extent of turning Indian societies into a large number of hollow, morally regressive, and, programmed political units based on market-led policy mechanisms. However, this overarching progress has been struck abruptly by the recent COVID-19 pandemic that suddenly left open to the domestic population and the world at large the hidden and steady encroachment of the state on the market-led policy system that was being performed delicately with the help of gradual centralization, the rise of inflation, media control, hates speech promotion, encouraging communal disharmony among others in order to restore state control. This paper attempts to interrogate the reasons for a gradual shift from a market-led policy preference to the state-led mechanization of a market-based system which, in fact, remained ineffective, divisive, and discriminatory in the Indian socio-political context. Drawing from the examples of Latin American, North American, and European political developments post the failures of neoliberal policies, the paper identifies how India also has been and is going through the post-neoliberal phase.