Kaur, Ravinder. Brand New Nation: Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2020, 346 pages

You are mistaken if you think that only by reading the title of the book you will get a theoretical foundation on capitalism in India. In the subtitle, the author indicates that capitalist dreams and nationalist designs are aimed at a broader audience: as an articulating category for those subjects, and for those who claim they are living in a “capitalist society.” The reading I provide in this review seeks less for empirical data and more for the elaboration that sustains it. By outlining her empirical/ethnographic approach to the World Economic Forum (WEF), which took place in Davos, Switzerland, in 2012, the author amplifies the debate: the position of developing countries grants them the space where the future, as opportunities, innovation and imagination are operational to attracting investment and consumers. Making countries “brands of the nation” means, in this sense, “nations packaged and advertised as ‘attractive investment destinations’ in global markets” (1). The book unfolds a thematic discussion in the making of a new brand nation that questions the role of the third world in the capitalist economy as presented in the introduction: Would the “third world” finally get out of the “waiting room of history” to enter the pantheon of the most competitive economies in the world? Why were such economies unfolding post‑colonial and post-communist pasts now seen as “lands of opportunities” by entrepreneurs from the “first world”? In Kaur’s words: “the third world was no longer a dark container of deprivation and overpopulation but a rich reservoir of resources and raw talent bolstered by its youthful demographic dividend waiting to be trapped by innovative entrepreneurs” (5). The Brand New Nation, as Ravinder Kaur argues, emerges as a new form of engagement in a capitalist economy throughout the building of a brand-nation in the global economy. In this capitalist geography, we see Asia, Africa, and Latin America become more than a “utopian dream of political liberation.” We are talking about reshaping the capitalist geography dismantling the hierarchies that have been established by its dualities: “north/south, rich/poor, core/periphery, developed/developing, and empire/colony seemed superfluous in the large-scale transformations redrawing the twentieth-century world map” towards economic independence and a fair redistribution of the world’s resources (7). Following this new understanding of the nations, a “New India” was presented as an image of “desire” by Indian investors and the India growth stories unveiling the success and unlimited potential of the nation to investors were all willing to project India’s image through aspirations, promise, potential, talent, and limitless opportunities and growth: “India was called to perform hope and promise for global capital” (8). What are the implications of thinking about third-world nations as an “investment destination”? For the author this model creates a “new imaginary of the national territory as an infrastructure-ready enclosure for capital investment, its cultural identity distilled into a competitive global brand and its inhabitants—designated as a demographic dividend—income-generating human capital that can be plowed back to generate more economic growth” (8). This phenomenon, especially visible in “emerging markets,” seems to produce a fast track to utopic futures where the “good times” are placed for investors in the WEF. The new temporal rhythm of global trade and capitalist modernity reveals the urgent call for economic reforms. As the author puts it, it “is not just the nationalist dream of getting ahead of the first world but also the fear of being stopped, of being permanently left behind by global capital” (9). Capitalism, in this sense, would represent a “magical moment that promises progress and prosperity but also the promise of effacing the shame of colonial subjugation and violence” (10). We …