Genetically Modified Democracy

2022 Ludwig Fleck Prize Winner, sponsored by the International Society for the Social Studies of Science

“Aniket Aga’s Genetically Modified Democracy explores transgenic crops in all their historical and contextual contingency, revealing what they can tell us about state practice, bureaucracy, justice claims, and the agrarian economy.”—Sarah Besky, author of Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea

“Anyone interested in the intersections of science, policy and democracy in the Global South will find Genetically Modified Democracy a fascinating case study, and anyone interested in the future of the world’s most populous democracy and the crisis of its agrarian sector will find many important insights.”—Ian Scoones, codirector, STEPS Centre, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex

“With sensitivity and analytical insight, Aniket Aga lays bare the invisible links between governmental ambitions, science-technology claims, and civil society assertions that are now cultivating new cultures in India’s agriculture.”—A. R. Vasavi, author of Shadow Space: Suicides and the Predicament of Rural India

“With crystal clarity, Aniket Aga delivers a deeply textured analysis of India’s scientific enterprises, regulatory agencies, and home-grown businesses in the GM revolution. The result deftly complicates global accounts of the GM controversy.”—Julie Guthman, author of Wilted: Pathogens, Chemicals, and the Fragile Future of the Strawberry Industry

“Technologies don’t float freely. In this superlatively detailed ethnography, Aniket Aga shows the pesticide industry sparred with its opponents from the fields to the Supreme Court in India, demonstrating how technology and state come to constitute, and reconstitute, one another.”—Raj Patel, research professor, University of Texas at Austin