37 Department of Geology and Geography, Mount Holyoke College. Waquar Ahmed FROM MIXED ECONOMY TO NEO-LIBERALISM: CLASS AND CASTE IN INDIA’S ECONOMIC TRANSITION* Abstract Neoliberal transformation is not simply a top-down process. Neoliberal hegemony at the global level has an ally in the Indian elite in producing class-biased economic growth at the national scale. his paper examines the social contestations around India’s economic policy regime, its reproduction and transformation. It shows how the coercive power of global governance institu- tions has worked in tandem with the interest of the local elite to produce neoliberal changes in India. But class elites are not a homogeneous group. Fractures in class power afect the nature of political-economic change. Post-independence, the rural bourgeoisie, i.e., the quasi- feudal landlords and the medium-size landowners, at diferent stages of political-economic history, were the main social forces inluencing economic policy, and the Tatas and Birlas, India’s big business houses, were their urban counterparts. 1980s were witness to the rise of a “new breed of entrepreneurs” in India with foreign business collaborations, who have now emerged as the dominant class-relevant force, constantly nudging India in the neoliberal direction. Additionally, neoliberalism has the support of the Indian upper caste since the new economic regime has created avenues for re-assertion of upper-caste power. hus, the Indian economic space continues to be contested through endogenous politico- democratic contestations, fractured and continually reorganizing class power, caste assertions, global policy discourses and coercive power of global governance institutions. Key words: Class, caste, state-society, power, mixed economy, neoliberalism, India. De la Economía Mixta al Neoliberalismo: Clases y Castas en la Transición Económica de la India Resumen La transformación neoliberal no es simplemente un proceso de arriba hacia abajo ( top-down). La hegem- onía neoliberal a nivel global tiene un aliado en la elite india a través del crecimiento económico favorable a una determinada clase social en el contexto nacional. Este artículo analiza las protestas sociales en torno al régimen de políticas económicas de la India, su repro- ducción y su transformación. Se demuestra aquí que el poder coercitivo de las instituciones de gobierno global ha funcionado en línea con los intereses de la elite local para producir los cambios neoliberales en la India. Pero las elites de clase no son un grupo homogéneo. Las fracturas del poder de clase afectan a la naturaleza del * Acknowledgements: I thank Dick Peet for his intellectual guidance and editorial support and rigor. I am also grateful to Jody Emel, Nancy Ettlinger, Ipsita Chatterjee and my former professors at the Center for the Study of Regional Development at Jawaharlal Nehru University for their earlier engagement with my ideas that culminated in this paper. he usual disclaimers apply.