The balancing act of the Indian State in the
manufacturing sector (PSUs)
• 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
