📄 Abstract
Loneliness is increasingly recognised as a major social concern but is largely treated as an individual psychological condition. This paper argues that post-1991 liberalisation in India institutionalised liberal autonomy as a governing rationality, restructuring the relationship between the state, market, and individual. In liberal political thought, autonomy occupies a central moral position, privileging individual choice, self-authorship, and freedom from external interference. When embedded through LPG reforms, this logic reorganised family life, urban space, labour, migration, and digital interaction, transforming the social conditions through which companionship, recognition, and belonging were sustained. Using a qualitative structural-analytical approach and a heuristic reading of the UCLA Loneliness Scale, the paper conceptualises loneliness as a structurally produced outcome of post-liberalisation autonomy rather than a purely personal experience.
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📚 How to Cite:
Prof. Preeti Awasthi, Satyansh Verma , LIBERAL AUTONOMY AND THE STRUCTURAL PRODUCTION OF LONELINESS IN POST-LIBERALISATION INDIA , Volume 12 , Issue 3, March 2026, EPRA International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (IJMR) , DOI: https://doi.org/10.36713/epra26515