The Making of Neoliberal India: Nationalism, Gender, and the Paradoxes of Globalization

The Making of NeoLiberal India uses the discourses of identity and belonging in 1990s India to explain how the cultures of neoliberalism become dominant. Oza examines three sites of public national debate that occurred in the 90s: the privatization of television, which allowed western networks to penetrate the Indian market for the first time; the 1996 Miss World Pageant-a publicity event meant to sell an image of a new, more liberal and secular India; and the nuclear weapons tests of the late 1990s, which nationalists correlated with masculine virility. Oza argues that globalization has reconstituted the nation spatially, culturally, and economically and explores which gendered and sexual identities are privileged over others (and, as a consequence, who belongs in the nation and who is caste aside).