Globalising Everyday Consumption In India

This book brings together historical and ethnographic perspectives on Indian consumer identities. Through an in-depth analysis of local, regional, and national histories of marketing, regulatory bodies, public and domestic practices, this interdisciplinary volume charts the emergence of Indian consumer society and discusses commodity consumption as a main feature of Indian modernity. Nationalist discourse was shaped by moral struggles over consumption patterns that became a hallmark of middle-class identity. But a number of chapters demonstrate how a wide range of social strata were targeted as markets for everyday commodities associated with global lifestyles early on. A section of the book illustrates how a new group of professionals engaged in advertising trying to create a market shaped tastes and discourses and how campaigns provided a range of consumers with guidance on ‘modern lifestyles’. Chapters discussing advertisements for consumables like coffee and cooking oil, show these to be part of new public cultures. The ethnographic chapters focus on contemporary practices and consumption as a main marker of class, caste and community. Throughout the book consumption is shown to determine communal identities, but some chapters also highlight how it reshapes intimate relationships. The chapters explore the middle-class family, microcredit schemes, and metropolitan youth cultures as sites in which consumer citizenship is realised. The book will be of interest to readers from a range of disciplines, including anthropology, history, geography, sociology, South Asian studies, and visual cultures.

This book presents the changing contours of India s position in the global economy. The first section deals with India s defensive posture in the nineties vis-à-vis the Multinational Companies. The resistance to speedy opening up of the economy has enabled Indian businesses to become globally competitive. The second section deals with the challenges before Indian in the begging of the 21st millennium as she is increasingly recognized as a world power. The earlier defensive posture has to be change into an offensive posture now with India aiming to break the economies of the rich countries. This can be done, for example, withdrawing forex reserves from US T-Bills. The third section deals with the challenges before India in establishing a just world order. The question in how to break the inherent injustice in the world economy where 20 percent of the people of rich countries are consuming 80 percent of the resources. India should not tie its wagon to the engine of rich countries and try to gain form injustice of the present world order. Instead, India must take the lead in confronting the injustice perpetrated by the rich countries, organize the developing countries and establish a world economy based on justice.

This book analyses India’s middle class by recognising the diversity within the class, the people, their practices, and the production of spaces. It explores the economic and social lives of the new middle class, expanding the areas of inquiry beyond consumption in post-liberalisation India and its intersectionalities with gender, caste, religion, migration, and other socioeconomic markers in various cities across the country. The book interrogates the meanings and perceptions of social mobility, growth, consumerism, technology, social identity, and development and examines how they can be emancipatory or subjugating in different contexts. It engages with the new entrants in the middle class, particularly from the marginalised sections, their struggles, insecurities, anxieties, agency, and experiences. The personal, emotive, and psychic dimensions of social mobility have been dealt with in the larger context of socioeconomic settings. The book crosses disciplinary and spatial boundaries and uses a variety of methodologies to provide perspectives on several unexplored or underexplored areas of India’s new middle class. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of sociology, economics, development studies, public policy, social work, and South Asian studies.

In this comprehensive appraisal of Indian economic reforms, the author recounts how reforms were initiated and how they unfolded in stages since 1991. He analyzes all the components of the structural adjustment programme including in the agrarian, industrial, banking, public sector, fiscal reforms, trade, environmental and labour sectors. In keeping with his ideological and political convictions, the author questions the benefits of the reforms and argues that an uncritical acceptance of IMF/World Bank/WTO/ conditions has not served to benefit the majority of Indian society.

Since the last decade of twentieth century, India has strived for an experienced and unprecedented economic turn-around. The country has witnessed a structural shift in GDP growth, propelled largely by new investments and the growth of the value enhancing services sector. Globally, these efforts are not only source of appreciation but also of assumption for many that India increasingly being seen as part of new axis of influence in the world. Long established three-headed social problem—poverty–illiteracy–unemployment—remains the biggest stumbling block for a post-colonial country like India. New sets of problems have taken shape in the last quarter of twentieth century when policy makers and market participants have prioritized economic activities for short-term gains. In context of the above, Center of Associates for Sociological Studies and Action undertook to bring out to the fore oft-neglected inter-disciplinary discussions and analysis in fifteen articles to examine the process of globalization in India taking insights from economics, political science and international relations, sociology, cultural anthropology, social ecology, management and cultural studies. It discusses the impact of the process of globalization on social institutions like marriage, family, economy, politics, education and religion. The book is intended for postgraduate students and research scholars. It provides readers with a clear perspective about creating economics, environmental and social capital that can produce multiplier effect for making national progress more inclusive and sustainable.

"Globalization in India: Contents and Discontents" reviews the importance of the term globalization through an examination of the social, political, economic and cultural contexts in which globalization exists and influences our everyday lives. With the economics of globalization at the core, the essays chart the contents and discontents of globalization in India."

"This book discusses and analyses both the economic and cultural sides to globalisation in India, providing much-needed data in relation to several dimensions including the changing costs of living; household expenditure, debt and consumerism; employment and workplace restructuring gender relations and girls' education; global media and satellite television; and the significance of English in a globalising India." --Book Jacket.

Globalization in India: Contents and Discontents reviews the importance of the term 'globalization' through an examination of the social, political, economic and cultural contexts in which globalization exists and influences our everyday lives. With the economics of globalization at the core, the essays chart the contents and discontents of globalization in India.

This volume brings together multidisciplinary, situated and nuanced analyses of contingent issues framing a rapidly changing India in the 21st century. It moves beyond the ready dichotomies that are often extended to understand India as a series of contrasts and offers new insights into the complex realities of India today, thereby enabling us to anticipate the decades to come. The editors focus on three major themes, each discussed in a section: The first section, Framing the Macro-Economic Environment, defines the framework for interrogating globalisation and socio-economic changes in India over the last few decades of the 20th century spiraling into India in the 21st century. The next section, Food Security and Natural Resources, highlights critical considerations involved in feeding a burgeoning population. The discussions pose important questions in relation to the resilience of both people and planet confronting increasingly unpredictable climate-induced scenarios. The final section, Development, Activism and Changing Technologies, discusses some of the social challenges of contemporary India through the lens of inequalities and emergent activisms. The section concludes with an elaboration of the potential and promise of changing technologies and new social media to build an informed and active citizenry across existing social divides.