ESMT Open Lectures
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The Paradox of India’s New Prosperity
April 15, 2010, 12:30-2:00 p.m.
Speaker: Sunil Khilnani
Starr Foundation Professor and Director, South Asia Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University
Moderator: Henrik Müller, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, manager magazin
 Photo courtesty of Glave |
The fact is that India’s new prosperity, in a society that is unequal but also vigorously democratic, is generating paradoxical effects: effects that threaten a shared conception of what India is. These fundamental strains will not be resolved by what has become the regnant economistic approach‐‐a lightheaded nationalism based on material goods. Rather, they will require a new order of political imagination and skill, the restoration of what seems to some an outdated idea: the idea of politics as the buckle and clasp of the Indian nation, the linchpin holding India’s diversity—even its economic diversity—together. It will be held together by a profound allegiance to politics—to that process of engagement, dialogue, persuasion which I would argue is at the very core of the idea of India—or it will not hold together at all.
About Sunil Khilnani
Sunil Khilnani is Starr Foundation Professor and Director of South Asia Studies at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. Born in New Delhi and educated at Trinity Hall and King’s College, Cambridge, he was formerly Professor of Politics at Birkbeck College in London. He has been a fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge and has also held fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson Center Washington DC, and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. A leading expert on the historical roots of Indian society and politics, his research centers on the history of political intellectuals and the development of democracy outside the West. His publications include: Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France (Yale: 1993; German translation, 1995); Civil Society: History and Possibilities (with Sudipta Kaviraj, Cambridge: 2001); and The Idea of India (Penguin: 3rd ed, 2003), translated into several languages, most recently Arabic.
About the ESMT Open Lecture series
Since September 2009, ESMT European School of Management and Technology, Berlin has presented a series of lectures focusing on questions of current intellectual concern.
It showcases speakers, who through their achievements and expertise are recognized leaders in their fields and have pushed the frontiers of public discussion. The lectures cover a wide spectrum of fields ranging from business, economics, politics, and philosophy to the arts. While speakers are authorities in their particular area, their insights have broad relevance and wide-ranging applications. The ESMT Open Lectures provide a forum in which their ideas can be communicated to a wider audience.
- 6-7 bi-monthly lectures per academic year
- 20-30 minute lecture followed by 10 minutes of "hard talk" style Q&A session with the moderator and open discussion with the audience
