When I was 18, I was coerced into reading short stories by Premchand, the author and playwright from the early 20th century and a stalwart of Hindi literature. As a privileged child studying in an English-medium school in post-liberalization urban India, I read these stories with the usual adolescent grumbling. Yet, like thousands of teenagers before me, I ended up enjoying them quite a bit. The portrayal of the dynamics between poverty and selfishness in Kafan, the elitist obliviousness of Shatranj ke Khiladi, the indulgent highs and abyssal lows of Nasha—they introduced me to a range of characters, their inner …
Rohit Chandra is an assistant professor at IIT Delhi’s School of Public Policy and also a visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. Primarily a political scientist and economic historian, his academic work spans the areas of energy policy, state capitalism and infrastructure finance; he has spent the last decade studying the coal and power sectors.
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