The Hunger of the Republic: Our Present in Retrospect is the first of a series of volumes that turn back to India’s recent history to produce a retrospective account of how our present got shaped. A return to the last three decades, and to the mutations caused by globalization to concepts such as democracy, welfare, and justice, indeed the very idea of the people as citizen-subjects, produce a new staging ground for the apparently unprecedented nature of the contemporary moment. Key essays on politics, economics, cultural studies, and aesthetics appear alongside works of art, documentary film, photography, maps, letters, and legal documents.