Talk:Atul Sood

By Rutvi Dattani

Atul Sood is Professor in the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University, as of November 2022. According to his bio, his research interests include regional development, economic geography, and urban studies.

In 2021, he along with Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban, co-signed a letter supporting "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference, as an academic and scholar and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

Publications related to India

1. Sood, A.; Nath, P. "Labour law changes: Innocuous mistakes, sleight of hand, or taking sides." Media, Migrants and the Pandemic in India: A Reader, 2022, pp. 185-196. DOI:10.4324/9781003291527-36.
2. Sood, A.; Nath, P. "Labour law changes: Innocuous mistakes or sleight of hand?" Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 55, 2020, pp. 33-37.
3. Walton-Roberts, M.; et al. "Causes, consequences, and policy responses to the migration of health workers: Key findings from India." Human Resources for Health, vol. 15, 2017. DOI:10.1186/s12960-017-0199-y.
4. Sood, A.; Baruah, A. "The new moral economy demonetisation, digitalisation and India's core economic problems." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 52, 2017, pp. 31-36.
5. Sood, A. "Majoritarian rationale and common goals rhetoric and truth." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 51, 2016, pp. 36-41.

   Sood argues that majoritarian political strategies (Hindutva politics) are being used to build consensus for economic policies favoring the ruling class and global investors.

   The author makes the following unsubstantiated statements:

   • In recent decades in India, nationalism has been used by the rulers to coverup or find alibis for their defaults, to conceal the social reality of our much divided and exploitative society, to divert people away from their real concerns and mobilise them behind ruling class politics.
   • The Indian National Congress has done this (We have often been mobilised in the past in the name of defending Indian pride or safeguarding some regional asmita ; and the poor have been asked to tighten their belts, even when they barely have a waist) as part of its secular politics, and by defining it as cultural nationalism. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has and is doing it as part of its Hindutva politics.
   • Very often, the idea of an inclusive India in this sense, where the governing outcomes are evaluated on the principle of including and benefiting the last person on the street, is counterpoised with the idea of "unity" of the nation, where no dissent is allowed, and scholastic critique is stopped at the gate of India's national unity. This idea of a non-inclusive India is shared, in different hues, by a vast majority of Indian intellectuals within India or settled abroad, and now also officially by the World Bank chief.
   • In this statement, “In the current context, the foreign direct investment (fdi) -dependent economic agenda requires the approval of Western capital. So an openly communal and fascist agenda, like Hindu-Muslim riots, ghar wapsi, etc, may not work. But some softer version of cultural nationalism, cow protection, Bharat Mata, sedition and anti-reservation may”, the author even goes so far as to say that softer versions of cultural nationalism are used by BJP to create a shift in the political narrative for Western approval.

6. Sood, A. "Politics of growth script and postscript." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 51, 2016, pp. 56-60.
7. Sood, A. "Business and norm-building for sustainability: What will work for Indian corporations?" International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, vol. 10, 2015, pp. 324-340. DOI:10.1504/IJBGE.2015.074351.
8. Sood, A.; Nath, P.; Ghosh, S. "Deregulating capital, regulating labour: The dynamics in the manufacturing sector in India." Economic and Political Weekly, 2014, pp. 58-68.
9. Sood, A. "Shadow-boxing in Punjab on government finances." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 45, 2010, pp. 22-25.