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Abstract
This volume critically examines the notion of a ‘new’ India by acknowledging that India is changing remarkably and by indicating that in the overzealous enthusiasm about the new India, there is collective amnesia about the other, older India. The book argues that the increasing consolidation of capitalist markets of commodity production and consumption has unleashed not only economic growth and social change, but has also introduced new contradictions associated with market dynamics in the material and social as well as intellectual spheres.
'Highly readable, thoroughly rigorous and anchored in serious historical scholarship... A brilliantly nuanced narrative of the two Indias, their interactions and consequences.' —Ajit Singh, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Cambridge
Anthony P. D’Costa is a Professor in Indian Studies and Research Director at the Asia Research Centre, Copenhagen Business School. He has written extensively on the global steel, Indian automobile, and IT industries, globalization, development, innovations, and industrial restructuring. He is currently working on globalization and the international mobility of IT workers, and editing volumes on Asian economic nationalism and the development experiences of India and China.
This book challenges the notion of a ‘new’ India, not by dismissing it as an imagined India, but by engaging in the debate as to what constitutes the new. It acknowledges that India is changing remarkably, while also acknowledging that in the overzealous enthusiasm about the new India there is collective amnesia about the other, older India. The essays argue that the increasing consolidation of capitalist markets of commodity production and consumption has unleashed not only economic growth and social change, but also introduced new contradictions associated with market dynamics in the economic and social spheres such as agrarian crisis, slow growth of employment, and the persistence of low-caste exploitation.
The volume also investigates the emergent tensions in art, architecture, and citizenship. In transforming India into an IT valley with corporate campuses, appealing to a westernized audience of technology entrepreneurs, including non-resident Indians abroad, architecture arguably is not addressing India’s economic and social plight. Art too has taken a commercial turn by catering to the new middle classes spawned by the global and Indian technology revolution. The extraordinary economic values they command seem to jar with the grim economic and social polarization underway. The book unravels contemporary India in its complexities and uncovers some of the hidden tensions plaguing the country, and points to the significance of a widely shared development outcome as an alternative for social transformation.
'D’Costa has created a fine multidisciplinary team not only from history but also from anthropology, art and architecture, development studies, economics and business to explore the need for a New India and the contradictions it generates.' —Professor Barbara Harriss-White, Director, Contemporary South Asia Studies Programme, Oxford University
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Front Matter\r | i | ||
| Half Title\r | i | ||
| Editor Page\r | ii | ||
| Title\r | iii | ||
| Copyright\r | iv | ||
| Contents\r | v | ||
| List of Tables and Figures\r | vii | ||
| Foreword\r | xi | ||
| Preface and Acknowledgements\r | xvii | ||
| Chapter 1 \rWHAT IS THIS ‘NEW’ INDIA? AN INTRODUCTION | 1 | ||
| Introduction\r | 1 | ||
| Engaging with the New India\r | 4 | ||
| The Other New India\r | 8 | ||
| Other Shifts\r | 13 | ||
| Chapter Outlines\r | 14 | ||
| Conclusion\r | 18 | ||
| Notes\r | 18 | ||
| References\r | 19 | ||
| Chapter 2 \rNEW INTERPRETATIONS OF INDIA’S ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY | 23 | ||
| Introduction\r | 23 | ||
| India’s Economic Growth in the Twentieth Century\r | 24 | ||
| What Caused Growth to Accelerate?\r | 29 | ||
| Unpacking the Growth Story\r | 29 | ||
| Private Investment in Machines as the Cause of Growth\r | 32 | ||
| What Ultimately Caused Growth to Accelerate?\r | 33 | ||
| Two Debates on the Causes of India’s Growth Acceleration\r | 36 | ||
| The State Versus the Market\r | 36 | ||
| Informal and Formal Institutional Change\r | 36 | ||
| Conclusions\r | 38 | ||
| Notes\r | 39 | ||
| References\r | 41 | ||
| Chapter 3 \rCONTINUITY AND CHANGE: NOTES ON AGRICULTURE IN ‘NEW INDIA’ | 43 | ||
| Quantification of Agricultural Growth Patterns\r | 44 | ||
| The Persistent Drag of ‘Old’ India\r | 45 | ||
| The Neo-liberal Turn towards Economic Growth\r | 48 | ||
| Agricultural Policy after 1991: An Appraisal\r | 50 | ||
| Reversal of Land Reform Laws\r | 50 | ||
| Diminishing Food Security Status\r | 52 | ||
| Fall in Profitability in Agriculture\r | 53 | ||
| So Didn’t India Get the Prices Right?\r | 54 | ||
| Whatever Happened to the Promise of Free Trade?\r | 55 | ||
| The Reduction of Input Subsidies\r | 57 | ||
| The Squeeze on Public Investment in Agriculture\r | 59 | ||
| Gross Capital Formation in Agriculture\r | 60 | ||
| Public Investment in Research and Extension\r | 61 | ||
| The Decline of Rural Banking and the Return of the Moneylenders\r | 63 | ||
| Concluding Comments\r | 65 | ||
| Notes\r | 66 | ||
| References\r | 67 | ||
| Chapter 4 \rAN UNEASY COEXISTENCE: THE NEW AND THE OLD IN INDIAN INDUSTRY AND SERVICES | 71 | ||
| Introduction\r | 71 | ||
| When Did a New India Emerge from the Old?\r | 72 | ||
| Economic Growth During the Colonial Period\r | 73 | ||
| State-led Industrial Development in Independent India\r | 73 | ||
| Industrial Stagnation Since the mid-1960s\r | 73 | ||
| Renewal of Economic Nationalism?\r | 74 | ||
| The Period of Economic Reforms\r | 74 | ||
| What is New in Indian Industry and Services?\r | 75 | ||
| IT and BPO Industries\r | 75 | ||
| Pharmaceuticals Industry\r | 77 | ||
| Automobiles and Auto Components and Manufacturing Services\r | 78 | ||
| New India in Industry and Services: An Assessment\r | 79 | ||
| How New and How Old? An Assessment of IndianIndustry and Services\r | 80 | ||
| Limited Structural Transformation of the Indian Economy\r | 80 | ||
| Polarizing Growth Within the Manufacturing Sector\r | 82 | ||
| Services-led Economic Growth Since the 1990s\r | 85 | ||
| Labour in New India: Questions of Flexibility and Inequality\r | 86 | ||
| Have Job Security Regulations Slowed Down India’sIndustrial Growth?\r | 86 | ||
| Widening Inequalities in India’s Labour Market\r | 88 | ||
| Agricultural Land for Industrialization?\r | 89 | ||
| Infrastructure, Technology and Finance: Major Challenges for New India\r | 90 | ||
| Power and Infrastructure\r | 90 | ||
| Technology\r | 91 | ||
| Industrial Growth and the Instability of Finance in India\r | 92 | ||
| Conclusions\r | 93 | ||
| Notes\r | 94 | ||
| References\r | 95 | ||
| Chapter 5 \rIS THE NEW INDIA BYPASSING WOMEN? GENDERED IMPLICATIONS OF INDIA’S GROWTH | 99 | ||
| Introduction\r | 99 | ||
| Methodological Issues\r | 102 | ||
| Access to Opportunities: A Look at Women’s Employment\r | 105 | ||
| Feminization of Agricultural Labour: Flexibility and Wage Gaps\r | 107 | ||
| Manual Scavengers\r | 109 | ||
| Information and Communication Technologies (ICT): Reinforcing Gender Stereotypes?\r | 111 | ||
| The Domain of Human Capabilities\r | 112 | ||
| Vulnerability to Violence\r | 115 | ||
| Conclusion\r | 118 | ||
| Notes\r | 121 | ||
| References\r | 123 | ||
| Chapter 6 \rTHE ‘NEW’ NON-RESIDENTS OF INDIA: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE NRI | 127 | ||
| The NRI between Neo-liberalism and Diaspora\r | 127 | ||
| The Nabobs and Tax Law\r | 132 | ||
| The Changing Status of the Indian Diaspora\r | 139 | ||
| Towards a Conclusion: Empire and Neo-liberalism\r | 144 | ||
| Notes\r | 148 | ||
| References\r | 149 | ||
| Chapter 7 \rREVIVALISM, MODERNISM AND INTERNATIONALISM: FINDING THE OLD IN THE NEW INDIA | 151 | ||
| Fifties and Sixties: Revivalism or Modernism?\r | 153 | ||
| Introduction: the Debate\r | 153 | ||
| Revivalism\r | 154 | ||
| Modernism\r | 157 | ||
| Seventies and Eighties: Nostalgia and the Built Form\r | 161 | ||
| Introduction\r | 161 | ||
| Factories and Housing\r | 161 | ||
| Festivals and Nostalgia\r | 166 | ||
| Nineties and the Noughts: Internationalism, the Global, and New Collaborations\r | 168 | ||
| Introduction\r | 168 | ||
| The New Internationalism and the IT Campus\r | 169 | ||
| Magical Realism and High Architecture\r | 172 | ||
| Conclusion\r | 175 | ||
| Notes\r | 176 | ||
| References\r | 176 | ||
| Chapter 8 \rCREATIVE TENSIONS: CONTEMPORARY FINE ART IN THE ‘NEW’ INDIA | 179 | ||
| Introduction\r | 179 | ||
| What is New about Contemporary Fine Art in India?\r | 181 | ||
| Art Works: Rediscovery of Traditional Techniques in the New India\r | 184 | ||
| Art Institutions: Universities as the Centresof Art Communities\r | 186 | ||
| Art Markets: Providing Structure and Assessing Quality\r | 187 | ||
| Primary Art Markets\r | 188 | ||
| The Secondary Art Market\r | 190 | ||
| After the Financial Bubble\r | 190 | ||
| Conclusion: Creative Tensions and Contemporary Art in India\r | 191 | ||
| Notes\r | 193 | ||
| References\r | 193 | ||
| End Matter\r | 195 | ||
| LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS\r | 195 | ||
| INDEX\r | 199 |