Anthem Press A New India?: Critical Reflections in the Long Twentieth Century (India and Asia in the Global Economy)

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. Review '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 '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 Book Description Critically examines the notion of a ‘new’ India by exposing the many economic, social, and political contradictions that are integral to contemporary India. About the Author 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. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. A New India? Critical Reflections in the Long Twentieth Century By Anthony P. D'Costa Wimbledon Publishing Company Copyright © 2010 Anthony P. D'Costa editorial matter and selection All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-85728-664-2 Contents List of Tables and Figures, vii, Foreword by Deepak Nayyar, xi, Preface and Acknowledgements, xvii, Chapter 1. What is this 'New' India? An Introduction Anthony P. D'Costa, 1, Chapter 2. New Interpretations of India's Economic Growth in the Twentieth Century Kunal Sen, 23, Chapter 3. Continuity and Change: Notes on Agriculture in 'New India' R. Ramakumar, 43, Chapter 4. An Uneasy Coexistence: The New and the Old in Indian Industry and Services, 71, Chapter 5. Is the New India Bypassing Women? Gendered Implications of India's Growth Nitya Rao, 99, Chapter 6. The 'New' Non-Residents of India: A Short History of the NRI Sareeta Amrute, 127, Chapter 7. Revivalism, Modernism and Internationalism: Finding the Old in the New India Rebecca M. Brown, 151, Chapter 8. Creative Tensions: Contemporary Fine Art in the 'New' India Nina Poulsen, 179, List of Contributors, 195, Index, 199, CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS THIS 'NEW' INDIA? AN INTRODUCTION Anthony P. D'Costa Nayi Indian, Nayi Deluxe Bike ('New Indian, New Bike', a fading advertisement on a brick wall in Bansberia, West Bengal, December 2009) Introduction The labels 'new India' and 'new Indian' are now commonplace. Businesses hawking products or journalists and social commentators reporting on contemporary India use the label lavishly. There is a new India, which is different from what it was before, an unstated 'old India'. Presumably there is also a new Indian, who is assumed to enjoy the fruits of a modern, industrial, dynamic India, neither bound by the past nor by provincial thinking. India and Indians are now modern and global. A street advertisement in the up-and-coming Salt Lake residential area outside Kolkata shows high–rise apartment buildings and makes no bones about exhorting passers-by to 'live like the world does', an obliq