Much scholarship extrapolates global narratives of the Anthropocene from the “fossil capitalism” of European imperial powers. This analysis deploys the alternative lens of grid electricity—the great macro-technology of the twentieth century—to reevaluate the dynamics of the Anthropocene outside the Anglozone. Histories of Asian electrification refute the notion of any simple relationship between colonialism and fossil capitalism. Instead, they point towards a postcolonial trend of fossil developmentalism. Especially in the context of late development, energy expansion became a state-led moral project. Cutting against fossil capitalism's logic of commodification, electricity provision was increasingly conceptualized as a national good and an entitlement, even if one honored in the breach. This trend transcended the distinction between market and planned economies, and extended beyond formal democracies. The (partial) democratization of consumption brought by fossil developmentalism is the hallmark of the “Great Acceleration” in human impacts on the environment since 1950.

No abstract

Regimes around the world are experimenting with combinations of economic liberalization and revived state‐activist strategies, producing ‘new developmentalist’ hybrids. This article suggests that a distinctive variant of new developmentalism is emerging in India. Its paradigmatic example crystallized in Gujarat, before and during Narendra Modi's tenure as Chief Minister (2001–14), and was taken national during Modi's first term as India's Prime Minister (2014–19). While scholars have highlighted the aggressively pro‐business industrial policy of the ‘Gujarat model’, closer examination reveals that this state intervention was more direct and extensive than previously acknowledged. The state took on a diversity of functions, particularly focused on infrastructure. These included not only classic developmental activities such as midwifing new industries or supporting select private enterprises, but also corrective functions: disciplining consumers, compensating reform losers, and repairing the bureaucratic apparatus. Today, in the face of predictions of radical deregulation or corporate rule, this reinvented statism is visible at the all‐India level. However, its history also illustrates the brittleness of India's new developmentalism, including its tendencies towards incumbency bias, resource misallocation, and debt. Political responses have often weakened accountability rather than tackling underlying problems. Both in India and elsewhere, the sustainability of new developmentalism appears uncertain.

Despite three decades of liberalization, the public sector's contribution to the Indian economy remains crucial but underappreciated. Particularly striking is the resilience of central public sector enterprises. The best of these have been reinvented: retrofitted for the market era, exposed to competition and endowed with at least the trappings of corporate governance. Elsewhere in the world, such state-market hybrids have been seen as characteristic of a powerful new model: 'state capitalism 2.0'. How, then, do these reinvented central enterprises fit within India's contemporary liberalization process?From the vantage point of the energy sector, in which India's largest stateowned enterprises predominantly lie, this article seeks to shed light on key continuities and changes in India's underlying regime of state capitalism. It argues that state-owned enterprises continue to play a key role in contemporary Indian political economy-but not as part of a coherent or stable system. Central public sector enterprises are treated with an admixture of neglect and short-term exploitation, milked for resources to fund a wide system of subsidies. This second-generation state capitalism is distinguished from its older incarnation less by the declining role of the state than by this lack of vision, and the increasingly pro-business nature of these subsidies.

The foundation of history's recent ‘emotional turn’ is thatemotions matterin shaping individual and social motivations. Their importance is not just instrumental: against the explanatory grain of much scholarship since the nineteenth century, the history of emotions recognises that humans are not purely rational “economic subjects in trousers and skirts”— or, as it may be,dhotis andsaris.