Hungry Nation

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.

Author: Benjamin Robert Siegel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 04/30/2018
Pages: 290
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.06lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781108441964

About the Author
Siegel, Benjamin Robert: - Benjamin Robert Siegel is Assistant Professor of History at Boston University. In 2014, he won the Sardar Patel Award for 'the best doctoral dissertation on any aspect of modern India'.