Living Under the Shadow of Neoliberal 'Reforms': Notes from India
Sailen Routray
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| Blueberries from Argentina Photo Credit - commons.wikimedia.org/Petar Milošević |
It has been more than three decades since the ‘official’ beginning of neoliberal economic ‘reforms’ in India in 1991. A voluminous amount of literature (primarily from the disciplinary perspective of economics), both popular and scholarly, has been produced on the impact of these reforms. This is in keeping with the overall dominance of economics of the social scientific space in India.
Perhaps, the socio-cultural impacts of
neoliberal reforms in India have not been as adequately studied as they should
have been. In this context, all the four volumes under discussion are welcome
additions to the scholarly literature as they widen the scope and substance of
discussions surrounding neoliberal reforms and their impacts in India.
One
can argue that, generally speaking, the critiques of neoliberal reforms in
India have not been very nuanced or sophisticated. Perhaps the critiques of the
project of neoliberalism in India have been mounted in a general and generic manner.
The volumes under discussion are a response to such a state of affairs. These studies
ground their discussions surrounding neoliberalism in India in specific sites,
concerns and issues, and devote their attention, albeit varyingly and to
differing effects, to the ways in which the projects and practices of
neoliberal reforms are realized on the ground.
Arguably, apart from The New India (henceforth TNI), the book
by Kanishka Chowdhury, the other three fall into an overall, emerging pattern
of describing the social and the political in India. This pattern seems to
emerge from an imperative to provide descriptions that are neither celebratory
of the ‘benefits’ of the neoliberal turn in public policy nor do they seem to
fall into the standard-issue, ‘traditional’, political economic critiques of
neoliberalism. The aim seems to be part of a broader anthropological project to
trace the emergent, complex history of the neoliberal present in India.
Although, in
itself a commendable piece of work, perhaps the least satisfying of these four
volumes is TNI by Kanishka Chowdhury. The
New India takes on the onus of providing a genealogy of what he terms as
‘the new Indian subject’ (p. 6). He tries to do so by analysing texts such as
the Vision Document produced on the
eve of the 2004 general elections for the lower house of the Indian parliament by
the Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), a special issue on the
Indian youth by the news weekly India
Today, advertisements, films by filmmakers of Indian origin, billboards,
novels and other eclectic material.
A large part of this reviewer’s
dissatisfaction with the book stem from the fact that the book sets out to
answer very large questions (such as a critique of what the book terms as ‘the
new Indian subject’) which it then inadequately answers. Although it is made
very clear from the beginning that this book follows a Gramscian framework, how
the diverse set of materials (texts?) and interpretations that the author uses
congeal for a productive interrogation of the neoliberal project for producing
a ‘new India’ is underspecified. Also, the logic of selection of the material
is not made very explicit. Despite these minor quibbles,
TNI manages to point
at the ways in which a diverse set of texts and contexts can be invoked for
braiding together a critique. From a methodological and theoretical angle the
book is ambitious and can be used as an example of how a diverse set of
materials can be made to speak to each other. This is perhaps shown the most
productively in chapter four of the book that provides a critique of the works
of important women film makers of Indian origin who by deploying the language
of sexual rights and freedom for women (both Indian women and women of Indian
origin) in the framing of their films lead to the occlusion of women’s issues
surrounding labour, class and community.
Gender emerges as
a key frame for the discussions, either explicitly or implicitly, in the two
other books under review as well; in Working
the night shift (henceforth WTNS), and in Globalisation and the middle classes in India (henceforth GATMCII).
In WTNS gender is at the center of the book’s concerns and engagements.
As
discussed earlier in this essay, the books under review try to position
themselves and their arguments as a middle path between celebrating
neoliberalism and offering ‘old school’ Marxist/leftwing critiques of
neoliberalism. No single sector of the Indian economy has been as iconic of the
emergence of the neoliberal new India as the outsourcing industry, especially
the call sector industry.
For the champions of neoliberalism, the call center
industry is perhaps the best example of the supposedly win-win impact of
neoliberal reforms where everyone gains; customers and organisations in the
Global North who have access to cheap services, and job-seekers in the Global
South who have now access to the kind of well-paying jobs that they did not
have earlier. For the critiques of neoliberalism, call center work is the
classic example of deracination that converts citizens into cyber coolies.
Into this debate
Patel introduces a much welcome nuance by expertly using gender as both a
prismatic as well as a focusing device in turns. She argues that despite
popular notions, women call center workers’ perceptions and experiences of
their work is simultaneously constraining and liberating. For many women it has
meant only an increased burden of work, with very little social mobility.
Concerns
surrounding safety and morality of women working in call centers who do night
shift work is often a method of reinforcing recodified regimes of patriarchal
surveillance. But for some women it has also meant the sort of temporal, social
and economic mobility to which they could not have otherwise aspired for or
obtained.
Concerns surrounding
gender are also central to the discussions and arguments in GATMCII. In this
volume Ganguly-Scrase and Scrase argue that the often celebrated impact of
neoliberal reforms in India in consolidating the middle classes by increasing
their power and numbers needs to be interrogated.
Through long-term and
intensive fieldwork with middle class people in Kolkata and Siliguri in the East
Indian province of West Bengal, they show that although the perceptions of the
members of this class might be complex, the story of the ideological hegemony
of neoliberal reforms on the middle class in India is not borne out. A large
number of middle class people feel being personally worse off than before due
to the impact of neoliberal policies.
Central to such
perceptions and experiences are issues surrounding women and gender. Whereas
many women do not see themselves as having benefitted from the ‘reforms’, they
do not necessarily see the changes brought about by neoliberal reforms as
having impacted women negatively. In fact, globalised media is perceived by the
researched in this study in West Bengal, especially by women, as contributing
to spreading the ideology of equity surrounding gender related issues,
especially at home.
These perceptions and experiences also seem to vary across
the axis of age; there seems to be a generational gap in women respondents. The
older women seem to see the oversexualised representations of women in the mass
media, especially in television, as degrading, whereas the younger women do not
share this perception.
The access by women to education, work spaces,
and other social spaces seems to be central to the project of Bengali
modernity. By aligning with this project, neoliberal reforms seem to gain a few
adherents amongst the younger generation, especially women. But amongst the
general public this hold is, most likely, tenuous. The overall arguments being
made by the book are convincing.
We cannot but agree with Ganguly-Scrase and
Scrase that one should be wary about overgeneralising about the middle class in
India. Discussions about the size, and the strengths, influences, and
perceptions about this class needs to be calibrated with extensive field-based
studies. In the face of the ideological encroachment of neoliberalism, the
older Bengali ideas about the good life (that of the bhadralok or the ‘gentle folk’ of the Bengali middle classes), as
exemplified by the virtues of frugality, restrain, refinement and politeness –
seem to linger on.
TNI, WTNS, and
GATMCII keep their focus more or less exclusively on urban India, whereas it
can perhaps be argued that it is in rural and semi-urban areas that the impacts
of neoliberal reforms have been most intensively felt. This focus is
symptomatic of human scientific work on India that has increasingly become
urban-centric.
In this context, The
anti-politics machine in India (henceforth called TAPMII), by Vasudha
Chhotray, through its discussion on decentralised watershed development in
rural India interrogates the formulations surrounding the ‘anti-politics’
effects of decentralised programme delivery in the age of apparent ‘resurgent
neoliberalism’.
As is evident by the review of literature offered by Chhotray,
discussing prescriptions of new institutionalism (such as decentralisation) that
have emerged as a corrective to the perceived failures of neoliberal policies
might be more pertinent in the present conjuncture than discussing
neoliberalism per se.
By using
ethnographic data obtained through rigorous fieldwork in the states of Madhya
Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, Chhotray shows how the institutional framework and
culture of politics at the level of the regional state, and the micro-level
imbrications at the village level shape the outcomes of the imperatives of
decentralised resource management.
The book also shows that despite the policy
prescriptions that aim at depoliticisation (for example, through monolithic
understandings of ‘village community’, occlusion of power relations, and
dominant bureaucratic imaginaries of ‘participation’ and ‘consent’) progressive
outcomes produced through contingencies are also possible.
Like the other
books under discussion in this essay, TAPMII also argues for a more nuanced
understanding of state, politics and society in India. It shows the resolute
regional character of the Indian state as being important in the ways in which
the discursive resources of national-level policies are locally utilised, and
the ways in which ‘the state’ is perceived and experienced by people in
villages in India.
The book argues through ethnographic data that particular
meanings, understandings and characterisations of politics should be unpacked
before any arguments about the generalisable effects of anti-political policy
prescriptions can be generated. Although Chhotray is aware of the issues
surrounding voice and agency in development politics, the book itself sometimes
leaves one wanting to hear the voices of the people that the author so capably
uses to tell a broader story about the impacts of decentralisation in the
countryside of India.
I wish to raise a
few issues that are not so much a critique of these four books as they are of
the overall frameworks in which social scientific interrogations of
neoliberalism in India seem to operate. As already mentioned, the volumes under
discussion are welcome additions to the literature, but they tend to lean
towards the ‘social’ side of the ‘socio-cultural’.
We do not, for example, have
robust accounts of how cultures of consumption and conviviality have changed
due to supposedly radical changes that have taken place under neoliberalism
over the last two decades or so. We also do not have theoretical (as opposed to
the merely theoretically informed) accounts of the supposedly radical
transformations taking place across India.
But it is unfair to judge books on
bases that do not form a part of the mandate of explanation that they take on.
All the four books under review add to our knowledge of contemporary India, and
can inform debates surrounding the socio-cultural imbrications of neoliberal
reforms across the globe.
Note: A slightly different version of this piece was first published in 2014 in the journal Contemporary South Asia 22(2).
Bibliographic Details
Vasudha Chhotray. 2011. The anti-politics machine in India: state, decentralization and participatory watershed development. London and New York: Anthem Press. xlii + 238 pp., ISBN 9780857287670
Kanishka Chowdhury. 2011. The New India: citizenship, subjectivity, and economic liberalization. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. xii + 246 pp., ISBN 9780230109513
Reena Patel. 2010. Working the night shift: women in India’s call center industry. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. xii + 191 pp., ISBN 9788125042655
Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase. 2009. Globalisation and the middle classes in India: the social and cultural impact of neoliberal reforms. New York: Routledge. xii + 194 pp., ISBN 9780415596145
Although, in itself a commendable piece of work, perhaps the least satisfying of these four volumes is TNI by Kanishka Chowdhury. The New India takes on the onus of providing a genealogy of what he terms as ‘the new Indian subject’ (p. 6). He tries to do so by analysing texts such as the Vision Document produced on the eve of the 2004 general elections for the lower house of the Indian parliament by the Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), a special issue on the Indian youth by the news weekly India Today, advertisements, films by filmmakers of Indian origin, billboards, novels and other eclectic material.
Gender emerges as a key frame for the discussions, either explicitly or implicitly, in the two other books under review as well; in Working the night shift (henceforth WTNS), and in Globalisation and the middle classes in India (henceforth GATMCII). In WTNS gender is at the center of the book’s concerns and engagements.
The access by women to education, work spaces, and other social spaces seems to be central to the project of Bengali modernity. By aligning with this project, neoliberal reforms seem to gain a few adherents amongst the younger generation, especially women. But amongst the general public this hold is, most likely, tenuous. The overall arguments being made by the book are convincing.
By using ethnographic data obtained through rigorous fieldwork in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, Chhotray shows how the institutional framework and culture of politics at the level of the regional state, and the micro-level imbrications at the village level shape the outcomes of the imperatives of decentralised resource management.
Like the other books under discussion in this essay, TAPMII also argues for a more nuanced understanding of state, politics and society in India. It shows the resolute regional character of the Indian state as being important in the ways in which the discursive resources of national-level policies are locally utilised, and the ways in which ‘the state’ is perceived and experienced by people in villages in India.
Note: A slightly different version of this piece was first published in 2014 in the journal Contemporary South Asia 22(2).
Vasudha Chhotray. 2011. The anti-politics machine in India: state, decentralization and participatory watershed development. London and New York: Anthem Press. xlii + 238 pp., ISBN 9780857287670
Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase. 2009. Globalisation and the middle classes in India: the social and cultural impact of neoliberal reforms. New York: Routledge. xii + 194 pp., ISBN 9780415596145
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