Nikita Sud
Biographic Data
| ID | 202109 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nikita Sud |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nikita |
| FAMILY NAME | Sud |
| SIGNATURE | SUD N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5885-0997 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 258 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Renewable transition building on resettlement society
The climate crisis demands concerted mitigation efforts. In the coal and critical minerals hub of Inner Mongolia, China, green energy projects are rapidly taking over a landscape degraded by intensive resource extraction. In this paper, we propose the analytical concept of a resettlement society. We argue that renewables transition in Inner Mongolia is built on a resettlement society long in the making. Our qualitative research shows resettlement…
A Green Energy Frontier Long in the Making
The Riau Islands in Indonesia, Southeast Asia are an emerging green energy frontier. This paper shows the long‐term making of this frontier. Through qualitative research, I trace colonial machinations for the capture of agrarian and mineral resources, postcolonial Cold War manoeuvres for the procurement of oil, and the contemporary quest for natural gas, sand, and green energy. Processes of resource extraction have systematically sidelined people…
Unjust energy transition
Authority as a Spatial Hook for Renewables Capital
As large, coal-dependent economies, India and Indonesia are committed to a green transition. Their respective border regions, Kachchh and Rempang Island in the larger Riau Islands Province, are emerging as hotspots for the manufacture and generation of renewable energy. A green transition is presented as a promising means towards economic productivity and socio-political stability for these marginal regions while addressing the global climate cri…
The Actual Gujarat Model
Gujarat is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home State and training ground. His Gujarat Model is projected as growth and development oriented. This article shows the actual Gujarat Model as top-down, favouring big business and undergirded by violent Hindu nationalism. The cult of the strongman leader – directly attuned to his people and above the corruption of politics as usual – rounds off Gujarat's authoritarian populist playbook. While th…
Southern Discomfort
Researchers in development studies have expressed discomfort at the hierarchy inherent in the use of 'North' and 'South', and cognate concepts like 'First' and 'Third World', or 'emerging economies'. Instead of setting aside the terminology, this article delves into the layered meaning-making around the notion of the South. Drawing on multi- and inter-disciplinary perspectives, it maps out the South as (1) territory constructed through history, g…
The Unfixed State of Unfixed Land
Land is unfixed. Qualitative research in India shows humans physically reconfiguring, legally redefining, politically relabelling and discursively re-imagining land in growth- and investment-led policies. The state is a key actor in the material and conceptual unfixing of land, and its re-fixing to emerging developmental imaginations. But land is not just a territorial container for the implementation of policy. Rather, it routinely stretches the…
Making the political, and doing politics
India's largest SEZ - an Amoebal Zone - has constantly changed shape, name, and purpose. The material, regulatory, cartographic, and classificatory flexibility of 'unfixed land' underlies these contortions. The multiplicity of land also informs political adversariality towards the Zone. Over 2.5 decades, a heterogeneous group of farmers, fishworkers, pastoralists, and local to global NGOs have contested the takeover of lands along registers of ac…
State, scale and networks in the liberalisation of India’s land
As states concentrate their developmental capacities in space, the sub-national scale has emerged as a focal point of policy-making in India. The rescaled spatiality of the state is being inscribed on land. Land is the primary resource available to sub-national states to attract private investment in post-reform contexts. Yet, the promulgation of innovative policies is only the start of the space-state relationship. This paper follows rescaled st…
Regional Perspective
This chapter looks more closely at the constellation of forces that have produced, and are producing, the present situation in Gujarat. The languages of the periphery – Kathiawadi in Saurashtra, and Kacchi – are close enough to Gujarati to be considered ‘dialects’, but different enough for some to see them as separate, regional languages. Throughout the middle ages, and, effectively, until their incorporation into the modern state of Gujarat in 1…
Governing India’s Land
The men in the middle
Middlemen are largely absent from the literature and policymaking on land deals. Based on qualitative evidence from India, this paper shows a highly organised field of aggregators, brokers, touts, musclemen and others permeating the land economy. Biographical accounts provide glimpses of everyday work, career and aspirations. A high-definition narrative of middlemen as middlemen allows a shift away from instrumental analyses of bridges in global …
The state in the era of India’s sub-national regions
Local Agency and Structural Continuity
Introduction
The most successful experiment in politicized religion has come from the Hindu Right, led by its ideological core, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which together with its family of organizations has been part of Indian public life for much of the twentieth century. The resurgence of religion in Gujarat fits global trends, which are in turn reflected in increased academic attention. The beginnings of the Indian independence movement were ur…
The Indian State in a Liberalizing Landscape
There has been much discussion recently on the 'great Indian land grab', that is, the acquisition of productive land by the government, and the handing over of this land to large-scale industry. What do these ongoing land transfers tell us about the nature of the state? This article builds a picture of the state in a liberalizing landscape based on empirical evidence. It outlines the role of the state in Kutch during a transfer of 30 km2 of fores…
Secularism and the Gujarat State
Secularism has been a defining norm for the modern, liberal Indian state. The constitutionally secular Gujarat state is believed to have undergone a paradigmatic shift in 2002, when it supported a massacre of Muslim citizens. This article investigates the empirical as well as normative state in situations of inter-religious violence. It traces the journey of the secular norm over a 45-year period, in the context of contests over identity, politic…
From Land to the Tiller to Land Liberalisation
Land is a metaphor for power, wealth and status. Independent Gujarat's initial mass-development strategy centered on agriculture but the emphasis was on productivity and efficiency rather than land redistribution or social justice. A state apparatus and socio-political set-up dominated by elite landed upper and middle castes and classes ensured this. Primary fieldwork-based research shows that by the mid-1980s, with a growing acceptance of ideas …
Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and the State
The men in the middle
Middlemen are largely absent from the literature and policymaking on land deals. Based on qualitative evidence from India, this paper shows a highly organised field of aggregators, brokers, touts, musclemen and others permeating the land economy. Biographical accounts provide glimpses of everyday work, career and aspirations. A high-definition narrative of middlemen as middlemen allows a shift away from instrumental analyses of bridges in global …
Governing India’s Land
The Actual Gujarat Model
Gujarat is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home State and training ground. His Gujarat Model is projected as growth and development oriented. This article shows the actual Gujarat Model as top-down, favouring big business and undergirded by violent Hindu nationalism. The cult of the strongman leader – directly attuned to his people and above the corruption of politics as usual – rounds off Gujarat's authoritarian populist playbook. While th…
Southern Discomfort
Researchers in development studies have expressed discomfort at the hierarchy inherent in the use of 'North' and 'South', and cognate concepts like 'First' and 'Third World', or 'emerging economies'. Instead of setting aside the terminology, this article delves into the layered meaning-making around the notion of the South. Drawing on multi- and inter-disciplinary perspectives, it maps out the South as (1) territory constructed through history, g…
The state in the era of India’s sub-national regions
The Indian State in a Liberalizing Landscape
There has been much discussion recently on the 'great Indian land grab', that is, the acquisition of productive land by the government, and the handing over of this land to large-scale industry. What do these ongoing land transfers tell us about the nature of the state? This article builds a picture of the state in a liberalizing landscape based on empirical evidence. It outlines the role of the state in Kutch during a transfer of 30 km2 of fores…
State, scale and networks in the liberalisation of India’s land
As states concentrate their developmental capacities in space, the sub-national scale has emerged as a focal point of policy-making in India. The rescaled spatiality of the state is being inscribed on land. Land is the primary resource available to sub-national states to attract private investment in post-reform contexts. Yet, the promulgation of innovative policies is only the start of the space-state relationship. This paper follows rescaled st…
From Land to the Tiller to Land Liberalisation
Land is a metaphor for power, wealth and status. Independent Gujarat's initial mass-development strategy centered on agriculture but the emphasis was on productivity and efficiency rather than land redistribution or social justice. A state apparatus and socio-political set-up dominated by elite landed upper and middle castes and classes ensured this. Primary fieldwork-based research shows that by the mid-1980s, with a growing acceptance of ideas …
Making the political, and doing politics
India's largest SEZ - an Amoebal Zone - has constantly changed shape, name, and purpose. The material, regulatory, cartographic, and classificatory flexibility of 'unfixed land' underlies these contortions. The multiplicity of land also informs political adversariality towards the Zone. Over 2.5 decades, a heterogeneous group of farmers, fishworkers, pastoralists, and local to global NGOs have contested the takeover of lands along registers of ac…
The Unfixed State of Unfixed Land
Land is unfixed. Qualitative research in India shows humans physically reconfiguring, legally redefining, politically relabelling and discursively re-imagining land in growth- and investment-led policies. The state is a key actor in the material and conceptual unfixing of land, and its re-fixing to emerging developmental imaginations. But land is not just a territorial container for the implementation of policy. Rather, it routinely stretches the…
Unjust energy transition
Secularism and the Gujarat State
Secularism has been a defining norm for the modern, liberal Indian state. The constitutionally secular Gujarat state is believed to have undergone a paradigmatic shift in 2002, when it supported a massacre of Muslim citizens. This article investigates the empirical as well as normative state in situations of inter-religious violence. It traces the journey of the secular norm over a 45-year period, in the context of contests over identity, politic…
Local Agency and Structural Continuity
Introduction
The most successful experiment in politicized religion has come from the Hindu Right, led by its ideological core, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which together with its family of organizations has been part of Indian public life for much of the twentieth century. The resurgence of religion in Gujarat fits global trends, which are in turn reflected in increased academic attention. The beginnings of the Indian independence movement were ur…
A Green Energy Frontier Long in the Making
The Riau Islands in Indonesia, Southeast Asia are an emerging green energy frontier. This paper shows the long‐term making of this frontier. Through qualitative research, I trace colonial machinations for the capture of agrarian and mineral resources, postcolonial Cold War manoeuvres for the procurement of oil, and the contemporary quest for natural gas, sand, and green energy. Processes of resource extraction have systematically sidelined people…
From Land to the Tiller to Land Liberalisation
Land is a metaphor for power, wealth and status. Independent Gujarat's initial mass-development strategy centered on agriculture but the emphasis was on productivity and efficiency rather than land redistribution or social justice. A state apparatus and socio-political set-up dominated by elite landed upper and middle castes and classes ensured this. Primary fieldwork-based research shows that by the mid-1980s, with a growing acceptance of ideas …
Secularism and the Gujarat State
Secularism has been a defining norm for the modern, liberal Indian state. The constitutionally secular Gujarat state is believed to have undergone a paradigmatic shift in 2002, when it supported a massacre of Muslim citizens. This article investigates the empirical as well as normative state in situations of inter-religious violence. It traces the journey of the secular norm over a 45-year period, in the context of contests over identity, politic…
The Indian State in a Liberalizing Landscape
There has been much discussion recently on the 'great Indian land grab', that is, the acquisition of productive land by the government, and the handing over of this land to large-scale industry. What do these ongoing land transfers tell us about the nature of the state? This article builds a picture of the state in a liberalizing landscape based on empirical evidence. It outlines the role of the state in Kutch during a transfer of 30 km2 of fores…
Introduction
The most successful experiment in politicized religion has come from the Hindu Right, led by its ideological core, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which together with its family of organizations has been part of Indian public life for much of the twentieth century. The resurgence of religion in Gujarat fits global trends, which are in turn reflected in increased academic attention. The beginnings of the Indian independence movement were ur…
Local Agency and Structural Continuity
The state in the era of India’s sub-national regions
Governing India’s Land
The men in the middle
Middlemen are largely absent from the literature and policymaking on land deals. Based on qualitative evidence from India, this paper shows a highly organised field of aggregators, brokers, touts, musclemen and others permeating the land economy. Biographical accounts provide glimpses of everyday work, career and aspirations. A high-definition narrative of middlemen as middlemen allows a shift away from instrumental analyses of bridges in global …
Regional Perspective
This chapter looks more closely at the constellation of forces that have produced, and are producing, the present situation in Gujarat. The languages of the periphery – Kathiawadi in Saurashtra, and Kacchi – are close enough to Gujarati to be considered ‘dialects’, but different enough for some to see them as separate, regional languages. Throughout the middle ages, and, effectively, until their incorporation into the modern state of Gujarat in 1…
State, scale and networks in the liberalisation of India’s land
As states concentrate their developmental capacities in space, the sub-national scale has emerged as a focal point of policy-making in India. The rescaled spatiality of the state is being inscribed on land. Land is the primary resource available to sub-national states to attract private investment in post-reform contexts. Yet, the promulgation of innovative policies is only the start of the space-state relationship. This paper follows rescaled st…
The Unfixed State of Unfixed Land
Land is unfixed. Qualitative research in India shows humans physically reconfiguring, legally redefining, politically relabelling and discursively re-imagining land in growth- and investment-led policies. The state is a key actor in the material and conceptual unfixing of land, and its re-fixing to emerging developmental imaginations. But land is not just a territorial container for the implementation of policy. Rather, it routinely stretches the…
Making the political, and doing politics
India's largest SEZ - an Amoebal Zone - has constantly changed shape, name, and purpose. The material, regulatory, cartographic, and classificatory flexibility of 'unfixed land' underlies these contortions. The multiplicity of land also informs political adversariality towards the Zone. Over 2.5 decades, a heterogeneous group of farmers, fishworkers, pastoralists, and local to global NGOs have contested the takeover of lands along registers of ac…
The Actual Gujarat Model
Gujarat is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home State and training ground. His Gujarat Model is projected as growth and development oriented. This article shows the actual Gujarat Model as top-down, favouring big business and undergirded by violent Hindu nationalism. The cult of the strongman leader – directly attuned to his people and above the corruption of politics as usual – rounds off Gujarat's authoritarian populist playbook. While th…
Southern Discomfort
Researchers in development studies have expressed discomfort at the hierarchy inherent in the use of 'North' and 'South', and cognate concepts like 'First' and 'Third World', or 'emerging economies'. Instead of setting aside the terminology, this article delves into the layered meaning-making around the notion of the South. Drawing on multi- and inter-disciplinary perspectives, it maps out the South as (1) territory constructed through history, g…
Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and the State
A Green Energy Frontier Long in the Making
The Riau Islands in Indonesia, Southeast Asia are an emerging green energy frontier. This paper shows the long‐term making of this frontier. Through qualitative research, I trace colonial machinations for the capture of agrarian and mineral resources, postcolonial Cold War manoeuvres for the procurement of oil, and the contemporary quest for natural gas, sand, and green energy. Processes of resource extraction have systematically sidelined people…
Unjust energy transition
Authority as a Spatial Hook for Renewables Capital
As large, coal-dependent economies, India and Indonesia are committed to a green transition. Their respective border regions, Kachchh and Rempang Island in the larger Riau Islands Province, are emerging as hotspots for the manufacture and generation of renewable energy. A green transition is presented as a promising means towards economic productivity and socio-political stability for these marginal regions while addressing the global climate cri…
Renewable transition building on resettlement society
The climate crisis demands concerted mitigation efforts. In the coal and critical minerals hub of Inner Mongolia, China, green energy projects are rapidly taking over a landscape degraded by intensive resource extraction. In this paper, we propose the analytical concept of a resettlement society. We argue that renewables transition in Inner Mongolia is built on a resettlement society long in the making. Our qualitative research shows resettlement…
Political science (15 works) · Economics (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Geography (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Political economy (10 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (7 works) · Economy (6 works) · Law (6 works)