Radhika Desai is Professor of Political Studies at the Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She is the author of Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2004), Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994) and numerous articles in yEconomic and Political Weekly, New Left Review, Third World Quarterly and other journals and edited collections on parties, culture, political economy and nationalism. Most recently she has edited Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms, a special issue of Third World Quarterly (2008, 29(3)). She is currently working on two books – When Was Globalization? Origin and End of a US Strategy and The Making of the Indian Capitalist Class. email: desair@cc.umanitoba.ca