Waquar Ahmed

Visiting Assistant Professor of Geography

Specialization:
Economic geography; development-underdevelopment; energy; power; state-society, citizenship and governance; social-environmental movements; critical resource geography

Waquar Ahmed’s research examines the evolution of India’s economic policy regime in general, and electric-energy policy in particular, by embedding them in the social, political, and economic transformation and contestations in the country. He analyzes the transient nature of the state-society coalitions to understand the transition of India’s electricity sector from one that was largely state controlled and financed and had some socialist objectives to one that has adopted neoliberal policies and become dependent upon foreign investment.

Ahmed also is interested in theorizing economic crisis in the context of globalization. He is particularly interested in the global circulation of resources, realization of fixed capital and the difficulties that arise from differential turnover times. Ahmed grounds his theory of economic crisis by examining the contingent conditions related to particular cases – particularly the case of economic crisis in India.

In the area of corporate power, Ahmed’s research examines foreign direct investments (FDI) made by Enron, Bechtel and General Electric in India’s electricity sector. Other research examines techniques of governmentality in the production of energy and economic policy regime in India, and in turn subjection or the willed effect of the social subjects. He also is analyzing the environmental impact of the Enron, Bechtel and GE funded Dabhol Power Project, and opposition to the project based on environmental concerns. Ahmed is especially interested in the potential of such local environmental movements to upscale and present a viable challenge to global energy corporations and the neoliberalizing Indian state.

Ahmed’s articles have appeared in Human Geography, Industrial Geographer, Studies in Indian Economy, Development, and Think India. In 2007, he received the Association of American Geographers’ Earl Cook Award in recognition of the best paper addressing energy and environment. That same year he received a travel award to present a paper titled “Spaces of Power: Foreign Direct Investment in India” at the Second Global Conference on Economic Geography in Beijing, China.

At Mount Holyoke, he teaches: Geographies of Globalization; Development; Resource and Conflict; Global Economic Geography; Geography of South Asia; Cities of the 21st Century; Global Societies; Human Geography.