People's Car

Industrial India and the Riddles of Populism

Sarasij Majumder

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English

Fordham University Press
20 November 2018

Asian history; Globalization; Social & cultural anthropology; Road vehicle manufacturing industry

India is witnessing a unique moment in populism, with sentiments divided between economic reforms that promise fast industrialization and protests that thwart such industrialization. This book offers an ethnographic study of divergent local responses to the proposed construction of a Tata Motors factory in eastern India that would have produced the Nano, the so-called people's car. Initial excitement was followed by long protests among the villagers whose agricultural land was being acquired for the project. After these protests secured the relocation of the factory, further demonstrations followed, sometimes involving the same participants, seeking to bring the factory back.

People's Car explores this ambivalence concerning industrialization, asking why long drawn resistances against corporate industrialization coexist with political rhetoric and slogans promoting fast-paced industrialization. Majumder argues that such contradictory rhetoric and promises target divided sentiments in rural India where land is incommensurable with money and a site specially marked by desire for middle caste small landowners aspiring to futures beyond agriculture.

Previous studies of industrialization have generally focused on either demands for development or populist critiques. Moving beyond romantic cliches about urban/rural divisions, People's Car offers a single analytical and ethnographic framework demonstrating how pro- and anti-industrialization forces feed off each other.

By: Sarasij Majumder
Imprint: Fordham University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780823282418
ISBN 10: 0823282414
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 20 November 2018
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

List of Abbreviations ix A Timeline of the Events in Singur xi Introduction. Life Beyond Land: Aspirations, Ambivalence, and the Double Life of Development 1 1. “We Are Chasis, Not Chasas”: Emergence of Land-Based Subjectivities 33 2. Land Is Like Gold: (In)commensurability and the Politics of Land 62 3. Land Is Like a Mother: The Contradictions of Village-Level Protests 100 4. “Peasants” Against Industrialization: Images of the Peasantry and Urban Activists’ Representations of the Rural 131 Conclusion: Value Versus Values? 153 Postscript: From a Defunct Factory to a “Crematorium” 167 Acknowledgments 171 Glossary 175 References 177 Index 193 Photographs follow page 14

Sarasij Majumder is Associate Professor and Director of India Studies at the University of Houston.

Reviews for People's Car: Industrial India and the Riddles of Populism

People's Car offers an extraordinarily valuable take on a major movement against the acquisition of land for development, in the case of a Tata Motors car factory. The factory becomes the alibi for nuanced interrogations, both material and theoretical, of resistance, anthropology, economics, political economies, rural-scapes and the very nature and idea of land. -- Geeta Patel, University of Virginia Amid a glut of work on the urban global South, it is refreshing to read a book that strives to think the contemporary dynamics of development and agrarian change ethnographically. The book convincingly argues that the romanticized portrayals of either the communitarian peasant (commonplace in activist portrayals) or the irrational peasant (commonplace in policy circles and certain quarters of disciplinary economics) miss the point. Land, Majumder argues, is a vessel of personhood and unrequited desires. Attentive to the conflicted sentiments and desires of its peasant informants, the book refreshingly refuses to toe a clear ideological line. This well-crafted, clearly written book poses important questions of broad relevance to contemporary India and beyond. -- Vinay Gidwani, University of Minnesota