Hungry nation : food, famine, and the making of modern India /

This ambitious and engaging new account of independent India's struggle to overcome famine and malnutrition in the twentieth century traces Indian nation-building through the voices of politicians, planners, and citizens. Siegel explains the historical origins of contemporary India's hunge...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Siegel, Benjamin Robert (Author)
Published: Cambridge University Press,
Publisher Address: Cambridge, United Kingdom :
Publication Dates: 2018.
Literature type: Book
Language: English
Subjects:
Summary: This ambitious and engaging new account of independent India's struggle to overcome famine and malnutrition in the twentieth century traces Indian nation-building through the voices of politicians, planners, and citizens. Siegel explains the historical origins of contemporary India's hunger and malnutrition epidemic, showing how food and sustenance moved to the center of nationalist thought in the final years of colonial rule. Independent India's politicians made promises of sustenance and then qualified them by asking citizens to share the burden of feeding a new and hungry state. Foregrounding debates over land, markets, and new technologies, Hungry Nation interrogates how citizens and politicians contested the meanings of nation-building and citizenship through food, and how these contestations receded in the wake of the Green Revolution. Drawing upon meticulous archival research, this is the story of how Indians challenged meanings of welfare and citizenship across class, caste, region, and gender in a new nation-state. --
Carrier Form: xi, 280 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references (pages 234-266) and index.
ISBN: 9781108425964
1108425968
9781108441964
1108441963
Index Number: HD2073
CLC: F335.19
Call Number: F335.19/S571
Contents: The Bengal Famine and the Nationalist Case for Food --
Independent India of Plenty --
Self-Help Which Ennobles a Nation --
The Common Hunger of the Country: Merchants and Markets in Plenty and Want --
All the Disabilities Which Peasant and Land Can Suffer --
The Ideological Origins of the Green Revolution --
Conclusion : landscapes of hunger in contemporary India.