Who wins? Who loses? And who even knows? Responses to economic liberalisation and cultural globalisation in India

South Asia

Volumn 24, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 141-158

  Ganguly Scrase, Ruchira ^a   Scrase, Timothy J ^a  

^a CHARLES STURT UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0041435298     PISSN: 00856401     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00856400108723427     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. This research was funded by an Australian Research Council grant throughout 1998 to April 1999. We wish to acknowledge the support of Charles Sturt University and the Faculty of Arts. Several colleagues provided invaluable support and hospitality whilst conducting this study. They include: Prof. Ranajit Bhadra and Dr Mita Bhadra, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of North Bengal; Dr Anjan Ghosh, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta; and Assoc Prof (Dr) Amrit Srinivasan, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT-Delhi. We are grateful to our informants for their generous participation in this project. This paper is based on a conference presentation held in Aug. 1999 at the South Asia Research Unit (SARU), Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia, on the topic of Regional Responses to Global Economic Change: West Bengal and Bangladesh’. We wish to thank the members of SARU for their hospitality, in particular John McGuire and Bill Damachis.
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10. See, for instance, S. Lakha, ’Bharatiya Janata Party and the Globalisation of the Indian Economy’, South Asia, N.S., Vol. XVII, no. 22 (1994), pp. 213-29; A. K. Singh, ’The Social Consequences of New Economic Policies’, Economic and Political Weekly [hereafter EPW], Vol. XXVIII, no. 7 (1993), pp. 279-85; D. Bhattacharya, ’Political Economy of Reforms’, EPW, Vol. XXXIV, no. 23 (1999), pp. 1408-10.
11. See, for instance, S. Lakha, ’Bharatiya Janata Party and the Globalisation of the Indian Economy’, South Asia, N.S., Vol. XVII, no. 22 (1994), pp. 213-29; A. K. Singh, ’The Social Consequences of New Economic Policies’, Economic and Political Weekly [hereafter EPW], Vol. XXVIII, no. 7 (1993), pp. 279-85; D. Bhattacharya, ’Political Economy of Reforms’, EPW, Vol. XXXIV, no. 23 (1999), pp. 1408-10.
12. S. Lakha, ’The State, Globalization, and Indian Middle-Class Identity’, in M. Pinches (ed.) Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia (London, Routledge, 1999); P. McCarthy, Postmodern Desire: Learning From India (New Delhi, Promilla and Co., 1994).
13. S. Lakha, ’The State, Globalization, and Indian Middle-Class Identity’, in M. Pinches (ed.) Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia (London, Routledge, 1999); P. McCarthy, Postmodern Desire: Learning From India (New Delhi, Promilla and Co., 1994).
14. S. Dutt, India and the Third World: Altruism or Hegemony? (London, Zed Press, 1984), pp. 9-36.
15. ’Uncle Sam the Bully’, editorial, India Today (31 May 1992), p. 11.
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18. S. K. Acharya, ’Spatial Implications of the New Economic Policy - Reflections on Some Issues for North East India with Special Reference to Women’, Man and Development, Vol. 17, no. 1 (1995), pp. 56-64; A. Vanaik, ’Imperialism, Soviet Collapse and Implications for the Post Colonial World’, EPW, Vol. XXVIII, no. 5; Review of Political Economy (PE) (1993), pp. 37-46.
19. S. K. Acharya, ’Spatial Implications of the New Economic Policy - Reflections on Some Issues for North East India with Special Reference to Women’, Man and Development, Vol. 17, no. 1 (1995), pp. 56-64; A. Vanaik, ’Imperialism, Soviet Collapse and Implications for the Post Colonial World’, EPW, Vol. XXVIII, no. 5; Review of Political Economy (PE) (1993), pp. 37-46.
20. G. Sen, ’Gender, Markets and States: A Selective Review and Research Agenda’, World Development, Vol. 24, no. 5 (1996), pp. 821-9; R. Ghosh, ’Economic Liberalisation and Its Impact on Women and Women’s Education’, Alberta Journal of Education, Vol. 42, no. 2 (1996), pp. 115-20.
21. G. Sen, ’Gender, Markets and States: A Selective Review and Research Agenda’, World Development, Vol. 24, no. 5 (1996), pp. 821-9; R. Ghosh, ’Economic Liberalisation and Its Impact on Women and Women’s Education’, Alberta Journal of Education, Vol. 42, no. 2 (1996), pp. 115-20.
22. D. Booth, ’Economic Liberalization, Real Markets, and the (Un)reality of Structural Adjustment in Rural Tanzania’, Sociologica Ruralis, Vol. 34, no. 1 (1994), pp. 45-62.
23. M. Panini, ’The Social Logic Of Economic Liberalisation’, Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 44, no. 1 (1995), p. 54.
24. See I. Natarajan, India Market Demographics Report (National Council Of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi, 1999).
25. Loc. cit., and also see V. G. Kulkarni, ’The Middle Class Bulge’, Far East. Econ. Rev., Vol. 156, no. 2 (1993), pp. 44-6; and S. Chakravarti, ’The Middle Class: Hurt But Hopeful’, India Today, (15 April 1995), pp. 88-94.
26. Loc. cit., and also see V. G. Kulkarni, ’The Middle Class Bulge’, Far East. Econ. Rev., Vol. 156, no. 2 (1993), pp. 44-6; and S. Chakravarti, ’The Middle Class: Hurt But Hopeful’, India Today, (15 April 1995), pp. 88-94.
27. Loc. cit., and also see V. G. Kulkarni, ’The Middle Class Bulge’, Far East. Econ. Rev., Vol. 156, no. 2 (1993), pp. 44-6; and S. Chakravarti, ’The Middle Class: Hurt But Hopeful’, India Today, (15 April 1995), pp. 88-94.
28. G. Omvedt, ’Farmers Movement: Fighting for Liberalisation’, EPW, Vol. XXVIII, no. 50 (1993), pp. 2708-10.
29. M. Panini, op. cit., p. 55.
30. R. Ganguly-Scrase, ’We Want a Piece of the Action!: Structural Adjustment and Indian Leather Workers’. Paper presented at the Asia Pacific Regional Conference of Sociology (Social Transformation in Asia), 18-21 Sept. 1997, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
31. S. Feldman, ’Crisis, Islam, and Gender in Bangladesh: The Social Construction of a Female of Labor Force’, in L. Beneria and S. Feldman (eds) Unequal Burden: Economic Crises, Persistent Poverty, and Women’s Work (Boulder, Col, Westview Press, 1992), pp. 116-27.
32. B. Agarwal, ’Gender Relations and Food Security: Coping with Seasonality, Drought, and Famine in South Asia’, in L. Beneria and S. Feldman (eds), ibid, pp. 161-218.
33. R. Ghosh, op. cit., pp. 115-20.
34. G. Mathew, ’New Economic Policy, Social Development and Sociology’, Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 44, no. 1 (1995), pp. 67-8.
35. See A. D. Murphy, M. Winter and E. W. Morris, ’Household Adaptions in a Regional Urban System: The Central Valleys of Oaxaca, Mexico’, in R. E. Blanton, et al (eds) Economic Analysis Beyond the Local System (Lanham, University Press of America, 1997), pp. 235-54.
36. See R. A. Hinnebusch, ’Syria: the politics of economic liberalisation’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 18, no. 2 (1997), pp. 249-65.
37. M. Ould-Mey, ’Global Adjustment: implications for peripheral states’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 15, no. 2 (1994), pp. 319-36; G. Clark, ’Local-Global Interactions in Ghana’s Structural Adjustment’; R. E. Blanton, et al (eds), op. cit., pp. 209-34.
38. M. Ould-Mey, ’Global Adjustment: implications for peripheral states’, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 15, no. 2 (1994), pp. 319-36; G. Clark, ’Local-Global Interactions in Ghana’s Structural Adjustment’; R. E. Blanton, et al (eds), op. cit., pp. 209-34.
39. S. Sharma, ’The Cultural Costs of a Globalized Economy for India’, Dialectical Anthropology, no. 21 (1996), pp. 310-11.
40. The town of Siliguri in North Bengal presents an interesting contrast to the metropolis of Calcutta, particularly in terms of the uneven impact of globalisation. It is a vibrant frontier town where there has been a considerable influx of migrant Bengali populations both in the pre and post partition periods. As migrant communities, Bengalis in North Bengal have had to grapple with questions of identity and this has made them more attuned to issues of Bengali-ness, particularly in this era of heightened cultural globalisation. In addition, historically Siliguri has been a major centre of both official and blackmarket trade in various foreign consumer goods from Thailand via Bangladesh and from Nepal. Finally, in comparison to Calcutta, Siliguri has had little in the way of industrial production (with the exception of the tea industry located around Siliguri) or infrastructural development. Thus we were interested in exploring responses to questions related to, for example, foreign investment in facilitating development.
41. For a critique of the expansion of the middle class and the conceptual problems associated with defining this category, see S. Lakha, op.cit. (1999), pp. 263-5.
42. J. Goldthorpe and K. Hope, The Social Grading of Occupations (Oxford, Clarendon, 1974).
43. E. O. Wright, Classes (London, Verso, 1985).
44. It has been argued that in West Bengal ’class stratification is imbedded to a great extent within the hierarchy of castes’, see S. Sinha, and R. Bhattacharya, ’Bhadralok and Chotolok in A Rural Area of West Bengal’, Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 18, (1969), p. 56. More significantly, the formation of social classes in West Bengal are shaped by a complex interlinkage of economic position, status and caste relations and the dynamics of political power. For accounts of class formation based on detailed household statistical data, participant observation and case studies, see T. Chatterjee, ’Social Stratification and Dynamics of Political Power in the Village of Kurumba’, Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society, Vol. 14, no. 1 (1979), pp. 1-31 and P. Bardhan, ’Agrarian Class Formation in India’, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 10, no. 1 (1982), pp. 73-94.
45. It has been argued that in West Bengal ’class stratification is imbedded to a great extent within the hierarchy of castes’, see S. Sinha, and R. Bhattacharya, ’Bhadralok and Chotolok in A Rural Area of West Bengal’, Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 18, (1969), p. 56. More significantly, the formation of social classes in West Bengal are shaped by a complex interlinkage of economic position, status and caste relations and the dynamics of political power. For accounts of class formation based on detailed household statistical data, participant observation and case studies, see T. Chatterjee, ’Social Stratification and Dynamics of Political Power in the Village of Kurumba’, Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society, Vol. 14, no. 1 (1979), pp. 1-31 and P. Bardhan, ’Agrarian Class Formation in India’, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 10, no. 1 (1982), pp. 73-94.
46. It has been argued that in West Bengal ’class stratification is imbedded to a great extent within the hierarchy of castes’, see S. Sinha, and R. Bhattacharya, ’Bhadralok and Chotolok in A Rural Area of West Bengal’, Sociological Bulletin, Vol. 18, (1969), p. 56. More significantly, the formation of social classes in West Bengal are shaped by a complex interlinkage of economic position, status and caste relations and the dynamics of political power. For accounts of class formation based on detailed household statistical data, participant observation and case studies, see T. Chatterjee, ’Social Stratification and Dynamics of Political Power in the Village of Kurumba’, Journal of the Indian Anthropological Society, Vol. 14, no. 1 (1979), pp. 1-31 and P. Bardhan, ’Agrarian Class Formation in India’, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 10, no. 1 (1982), pp. 73-94.
47. See, for instance, J. McGuire, The Making of a Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study of the Bhadralok in Calcutta, 1857-1885 (Canberra, ANU Monographs on South Asia, no. 10, 1983); S. N. Mukherjee, ’Bhadralok in Bengali Language and Literature: An Essay on the Language of Class and Status’, Bengal Past and Present, Vol. 95, no. 2 (1975), pp. 225-37.
48. See, for instance, J. McGuire, The Making of a Colonial Mind: A Quantitative Study of the Bhadralok in Calcutta, 1857-1885 (Canberra, ANU Monographs on South Asia, no. 10, 1983); S. N. Mukherjee, ’Bhadralok in Bengali Language and Literature: An Essay on the Language of Class and Status’, Bengal Past and Present, Vol. 95, no. 2 (1975), pp. 225-37.
49. I. Buruma, ’A Tale of Two Bengals’, Far East. Eco. Rev., 3 April (1986), p. 70.
50. T. J. Scrase, Image, Ideology and Inequality: Cultural Domination, Hegemony and Schooling in India (New Delhi, London, Newbury Park, Sage, 1993), pp. 36-38.
51. T. Adorno, The Culture Industry and Other Essays (London, Routledge, 1991).
52. We borrow this term from Sklair who outlines the way in which global capitalism is reproduced through a variety of transnational practices. Sklair, op.cit., pp. 48-9; 87-90.