Authoritarian Populism and Bovine Political Economy in Modi's India

"Drawing on a diverse range of secondary sources and ethnographic fieldwork across India, Jakobsen and Nielsen (2024), in this concise book, use the lens of 'beef and the bovine body' (p. 4) to unpack and analyse the political economy in Modi's India, and the simultaneous cultivation of an environment of authoritarian populism in the country. A timely and valuable addition to emergent literature on bovine politics in contemporary India, this book attempts to delineate the big picture of 'state contradictions' under Modi's regime at the intersection of critical agrarian studies and authoritarian populism via the bovine paradox [...] Jakobsen and Nielsen comprehensively encapsulate the state contradictions of Modi's authoritative populism, using the Hindu far-right's most-favoured and contentious symbol-the bovine. Their 'big picture' analysis provides a broad and useful framework for researchers interested across concerns-of bovines, political economy, Modi's India, authoritarian populism, ultranationalism, neoliberalism and development."

-- Shruti Ragavan, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, India. Journal of South Asian Development 1-5. 2024

"[This] is a valuable addition to the established and growing literature on cow politics in India. The authors present a clear and compelling paradox: that the current Hindu nationalist regime in India prosecutes a politics of virile and violent cow protection, while also fostering the conditions for a flourishing cow-slaughter economy, through which India has become a leading exporter of cow meat. This paradox offers, the authors argue, an exemplary entry point into some of the core contradictions of the Modi regime. [...] Perhaps the book's most striking contribution is its resolute commitment to a materialist political economy approach to the study of the Modi regime."

-- Felix Pal, University of Western Australia. Asian Studies Review, 26 Mar 2025.