'The People' and 'New India' are terms that are being invoked freely to both understand and govern India as she enters her 75th year of post-colonial nationhood. Yet, there is little clarity on who these people of India really are, what they do, their desires, histories and attachments to India. Similarly, the phrase 'New India' is used far too loosely to explain away a dangerously confounding politics. In this book, some of the most respected scholars of South Asia come together to write about a person or a concept that holds particular sway in the politics of contemporary India. In doing so, they collectively open up an original understanding of what the politics at the heart of New India are-and how best we might come to analyse them. This brilliant collection put together by Ravinder Kaur and Nayanika Mathur includes original and accessible essays by leading social science and humanities scholars of South Asia. About the Author Ravinder Kaur is Associate Professor of Modern South Asian Studies and Director of the Centre of Global South Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her core research focuses on the processes of capitalist transformations in 21st century India. This is the subject of her most recent book, Brand New Nation . This work was selected as the 'Financial Times Best Book of the Year' in 2020 and longlisted for the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay NIF Book Prize in 2021. She is also the author of Since 1947: Partition Narratives among the Punjabi Migrants of Delhi. Nayanika Mathur is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the South Asian Studies Programme at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Paper Tiger: Law, Bureaucracy, and the Developmental State in Himalayan India (2016) and Crooked Cats: Beastly Encounters in the Anthropocene (2021). Educated at the Universities of Delhi and Cambridge, Nayanika is currently interested in questions of method opened up by the climate crisis and her long-standing research in the Indian Himalayas.