• Profitability vs. social welfare (secured employment generation) • The changing industrial and social relations in the factory as well as in Bhilai due to rising ethnic tensions • The simultaneous presence of two models of economic development in the PSU – The Nehruvian Socialist Model and the Post- Liberalization Model From Manufacturing to Knowledge Economy in Contemporary India: Emergence of a ‘new middle’ class? State Funded Technological Education Today • State funded higher education as facilitating private capital led growth especially in the knowledge economy sector • The turn to the IT/Knowledge Economy from the 1990s in post-liberalization India • The prominence of private capital led IT industries absorbing state funded engineering/management graduates The Rise of the Knowledge Economy in India (especially IT) • Clean Economy • Less demands on land and other resources • Private Capital led growth • A work-force that is relatively more educated than in manufacturing or services industries like retail The Dominance of the ‘new’ urban middle class • IT work-force visibly more successful with higher salaries • Often based in urban settings • Consumerist Class with new tastes and life- styles • Image of a mobile, consumerist class, with new aspirations in a rapidly privatizing and globalizing world What is ‘New’ about the ‘New Middle Class’ in India • Post-liberalization generation with high levels of education • Socially composed from an earlier middle class with roots in PSUs and state sector jobs • However, new aspirations and the biggest champion of privatized growth in India rather than state led development The New Middle Class and its Cultural Capital • Cultural Capital – social qualities of an individual person such as education, tastes, communicational skills, interactive skills, felicity over languages (such as English in India) that help in social mobility • Not just education but the entirety of cultural capital as crucial to finding a job and succeeding in the Knowledge Sector such as in IT • Continuous grooming and enhancing of cultural capital through soft-skill training • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36- ZY Soft-Skill and Social Dispositions • Entrepreneurship and faith in privatization for growth rather than direct intervention by the developmentalist state (like in Nehruvian India) • Ability to be flexible and adopt to cross-cultural demands in various kinds of global work-sites • Assertiveness and self-confidence in the work- space • Time-management and ability to achieve work- life balance Narrative of a New Global India • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHfavihw 5pY The Middle Class and the Founding Myths of Indian IT
• Austere, not driven by monetary gains only, self-
sacrificing, simple life-styles, humble origins – the narrative of N. R. Narayana Murthy (Infosys Technologies) • The upper caste dimensions of this narrative of success – Brahmins as inherently intellectual and ability to think • Not coming from wealthy, traditional trading castes but succeeding through entrepreneurship, education, integrity and self-sacrifice The Moral Qualities of Indian IT • Supposed to have integrity, professionalization, efficiency. • Contrasted with the the corruption, greed and inefficiency of older forms of corporations whether state-owned (PSUs) or traditional family run businesses. Contradictions in the Cultural Capital of the New Middle Class • Simultaneously belonging to two different eras – state led Nehruvian socialism and post- liberalization • Both austere and enterprising, both consumerist and self-sacrificing, both traditional and modern • Some degree of inclusion to socio-economically marginalized castes, gender and class identities but within an overarching upper caste, urban, male domination Image of the ‘global Indian’ foregrounded by the IT industry • Is easily able to assimilate often contradictory cultural characteristics – ‘traditional and modern’/ ‘western and Indian’ • Both western and Indian values are reduced to a few simple attitudes and life-styles – punctual, disciplined, time-management skills – western/ austere, not driven by monetary gains, self- sacrificing – Indian values • Re-imagining ‘new middle class’ values by blending in qualities of western and Indian values Meritocracy or Inherited (Cultural) Capital?
• The success of the IT professionals and the
New Middle Class as driven by merit only? • The role of inherited cultural capital such as language skills or educational exposure • The New Middle Class as ‘New’ or is it a case of older and dominant class and caste groups now going global? The end of Globalization? • Implications for Indian industries attuned to globalization like IT? • The rise of nationalism and protectionist markets? • The constraints for labor and capital migration • Challenges before the ‘global Indian’ industries