'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.

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. 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).