In this extended episode, Local Bites interviews scholar/activist, Ashish Kothari about his book, Churning the Earth: The Making of Global India, co-authored by Aseem Shrivastava. During the first half of the interview, Kothari provides a truly sobering account of the social and environmental impacts of globalized development in India, arguing persuasively that the costs far outweigh the benefits, and calling into questions a number of taken-for-granted assumptions about “economic growth”, “progress”, and the so-called inevitability of urbanization.