history of modern South and Southeast Asia; history of economic thought; material histories of consumption and culture; energy and environmental history; international history

Aditya Balasubramanian is a Senior Lecturer in History. His research focuses on various aspects of the history of modern South Asia. His first book, Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023), is a history of economic ideas and politics (UK/US link; South Asia link). It was shortlisted for the 2023 Elder Prize in the Social Sciences of the American Institute of Indian Studies. 

Aditya completed his PhD at Trinity College, Cambridge as a British Marshall Scholar and a Cambridge Trust Scholar. His dissertation won the Ellen McArthur Prize in Economic History and was shortlisted for the Prince Consort and Thirlwall Prize for best dissertation in the Faculty of History.

At ANU, Aditya teaches "From Moral Philosophy to (Political Economy) to Economics: A History," and "Approaches to History." He has been a Board Member of the South Asia Research Institute, an affiliate of the Center for Economic History, and a member of the Geoeconomics Working Group. Aditya also coordinates the Harvard-Cambridge Joint Center for History and Economics' "Archives of Economic Life in South and Southeast Asia" website. 

He has received grants and fellowships from the Joint Center for History and Economics at Harvard and Paris (2022), the Australian Studies Institute at ANU (2023), and the College of Arts and Social Sciences at ANU (2023).

To the print media, he has contributed in Scroll.in, Hindustan Times, and India Forum.

Forthcoming Work:

"Anticorruption, Development, and the Indian State: A History of Decolonization," Journal of Asian Studies (February 2024). 

Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India

Neoliberalism is routinely explained as an anti-democratic, expert-driven project aimed at insulating markets from politics—devised in the North Atlantic and projected on the rest of the world. Turning this dominant understanding on its head, Toward a Free Economy shows how economic conservatism became the platform of a political party in the world’s largest democracy that sought to provide an alternative to the dominant Indian National Congress. This Swatantra (“Freedom”) Party opposed the Congress’ heavy-industrial developmental state and the accompanying rhetoric of socialism. It promised “free economy” through a project of opposition politics.

The keyword “free economy” drew a range of advocates and took on meanings that varied by region and language, caste and class, as it circulated in various genres. Its constituent visions emanated chiefly from caste communities in Southern and Western India embracing new forms of enterpreneurial activity. More often than not, "free economy" connoted anticommunism, unfettered private economic activity, decentralized development, and defense of private property. And although in certain cases its development involved conversation and engagement with self-identifying neoliberals in the Atlantic world, "free economy's" history is distinctive. 

Swatantra's leadership pursued the project of opposition politics in three ways. First, they imagined a conservative alternative to a progressive dominant party in a two-party system. Next, they communicated ideas of and mobilized people around issues like inflation, excess taxation, and the right to property. Finally, they used the institutions and procedures of India’s political institutions to bring checks and balances to the political system.

Democracy’s persistence in India since the end of colonial rule is uncommon among postcolonial societies. Toward a Free Economy contributes a perspective on how Indians made and understood their own democracy and economy, and in the process casts light more broadly on neoliberalism, democracy, and the postcolonial world.

For more on the book, see the recording of a lecture delivered at King’s India Institute, the Lekh South Asia Podcast, The Coffee House Experience video interview, and the Grand Tamasha Podcast.

Press reviews have appeared in Australian Outlook, Business Standard, Hindu BusinessLine, and The Hindu. 

Roads to Progress?  Infrastructure and Transport in Modern India

India has the world's second largest road network, measuring over 6 million km. Most of these roads are village or district roads. Over 90% have been constructed in the postcolonial period (1947-). Today, the Government of India is pursuing $110bn program of highway construction (Bharatmala) and scheme to provide all villages with roads by 2027 (Gram Sadak Yojana).

Combining mutli-sited archival research, elementary statistical analysis, and fieldwork along India's roads, this project considers the environmental and economic history of roadbuilding and transport in modern India, focused on the 1940s-1970s. It interrogates how the political economy of interest groups, federalism, and resource usage have evolved over time. The study focuses on four sites: The Grand Trunk Road, the East West Road, the Mahewa Village in Etawah District, and the Anna Flyover in Chennai. In studies the nexus between development and mobility in historical context, at a time when the challenges of climate change require that this relationship be rethought. 

For an initial glimpse, see this blog post.

Family Business: Commerce between South and Southeast Asia

Labor migration and the histories of specific merchant communities in the Indian Ocean region have attracted major attention in recent times. But the economic lives of professionals and small businesses suffer from comparative neglect. And although overseas Chinese commerce in Southeast Asia has attracted major historiographical interest, their Indian counterparts of the Chettiar, Parsi, Marakkayar, and Sindhi communities remain mainly unexplored.

This project is an inter-racial, inter-imperial history of family businesses across South and Southeast Asia, from the mid-19^th century to the 1950s. Each chapter is about a different family. Building upon the burgeoning history of the Indian Ocean world, this project asks how minor colonial officials, company clerks, and small businesspeople, experienced and navigated economic change during this period. It tries to understand the experience of globalization and capitalism from a connected but comparative viewpoint in the Southern Hemisphere. Apart from conventional archives of the colonial state, this project will also make use of bank records, court cases, permit applications, and family collections.

Aditya welcomes inquiries from students. 

Mark Clayton (CQU): "Problems of Plenty: Airforce Reconversion in the United States and Australia, 1944-49" (Advisory Panel)

Fleur Goldthorpe (ANU): "British Women of the 'Portocracy': Port Wine Dinastias, Family and Transcultural Lives, 1678-1855" (Advisory Panel)

Jacob Wray (ANU): "From the Colony to the Republic: Controlling Population Movement in Revolutionary Indonesia, 1945-1949" (Advisory Panel)