National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS)
Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bengaluru – 560012. INDIA
invites you to a panel discussion on Chandan Gowda’s recently published book
Longing for an Elsewhere: Mysore and the Making of India’s Developmental State
(Oxford University Press 2026)
Speakers:
Chandan Gowda
Author and Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Vidyashilp University, Bangalore
A.R. Vasavi
Social Anthropologist, Bangalore
Nitin Rai
Political Ecologist, Bangalore
Prem Chandavarkar
Architect and Managing Partner, CnT Architects, Bangalore
Chairperson : Supriya RoyChowdhury
Visiting Professor, NIAS
Date: Friday, 30th October 2026 | Venue: Lecture Hall, NIAS
Tea/Coffee: 3:00 PM | Session Time: 3.30 – 5.00 pm
Abstract: Longing for an Elsewhere: Mysore and the Making of India’s Developmental State is about the colonial ancestry of India's contemporary embrace of economic development. Unlike existing scholarship that traces the emergence of the developmental state to the mid-twentieth century process of decolonization, the book argues that these origins are anchored in the preoccupation of colonized Indian elites with emulating the industrial modernity of Europe and the United States and seeking civilizational recognition for attaining progress. Beyond re-periodizing the birth of development discourse, the book argues that culture actively shapes a putatively economic process such as development. Specifically, it examines the chief cultural factors that guided the ideas and endeavours of the princely state of Mysore for achieving development during its period of British indirect rule (1881-1947).
Drawing on underexplored archival evidence, the book shows that the elite adopted a creative amalgam of diverse strands of European thought within a colonized milieu to forge practices of state development in colonial India. Analysing the institutional dynamics of three elite-led state projects in Mysore, Gowda argues that the state's support for these projects can be explained by a belief in the inevitability of industrial modernity and a claim for recognition of Mysore's capacity for progress. A focus on the operation of this cultural logic allows the author to arrive at a cultural theory of the developmental state. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book draws from debates in sociology, history, and anthropology.
Speakers:
Chandan Gowda is a writer, translator and academic based in Bangalore. Among his many books, are Another India: Events, Memories, People (2023); The Way I See It: A Gauri Lankesh Reader (2018); A Life in the World (2019), based on autobiographical interviews with UR Ananthamurthy. At present, Chandan is Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Vidyashilp University, Bangalore.
A.R. Vasavi is a Social Anthropologist with interests in agrarian sociology, Sociology of India, and education studies. She was a Professor at NIAS in the Sociology and Social Anthropology Unit during 1997 to 2011 and is currently with Punarchith. She received the prestigious Infosys Science Foundation’s 2013 award in the Social Sciences category.
Nitin Rai studies the social and ecological impact of wild life conservation practice in India, combining political ecology research with advocacy for local governance of protected areas. Nitin is an independent scholar based in Bangalore.
Prem Chandravarkar is an architect, who writes on architecture, cities, environment and culture. He is currently managing partner of CnT architects and former Executive Director of Srishti Manipal Institute of Art Design and Technology.