Desire Named Development: Aditya Nigam PDF

~ PENGUIN BOOKS DESIRE NAMED DEVELOPMENT Aditya Nigam is a fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. He works in the...

~ PENGUIN BOOKS DESIRE NAMED DEVELOPMENT Aditya Nigam is a fellow of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. He works in the broad field of social and political theory and is the joint director of the programme in social and political theory at the CSDS. He is interested in issues related to the formations of modernity and the emergence of political subjcctivities. He has published regularly on questions of nationalism, identity and radical politics in both English and Hindi. His work looks at the contemporary experience of capitalism and globalization in the postcolonial world. Nigam is the author of The Insurrection ojLittle Selves: Crisis oJSecular­ nationalism in India; Power and Contestation: India Since 1989 (with Nivedita Menon); and After Utopia: Modernity and Socialism in the Postcolony. ,. Mt1ts) itel' eft ' PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, For Nivedita, for another world... Ontario, M4P 2Y3, Canada (. division of Pearson' Penguin Canada 1nc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, C.mberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Group (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England First published by Penguin Books India 2011 Copyright © Aditya Nigam 2011 All rights reserved 10987654321 The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author's own and the facts are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publIShers are not in any way liable for the same ISBN 9780143067139 Typeset in Times New Roman by Infosofi: Systems, Noida Printed at Yash Printographics, Noida This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated withom the publisher's prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and withom a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and witham limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced inro a retrieval system, or transmLtted in any form or by any means (e1ectrOnLc, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above­ mentioned publisher of this book. '="~""': 1'1 Tilism-e-Hoshruba: Dreamworld of the 'Consumer' Once upon a time, human beings produced in order to survive. Then they started producing, with ever-greater refinement, for comfort, enjoyment, and spiritual and aesthetic pleasure. Today, consumption is the activity that detennines us; it defines who we are. 'Economies' no longer simply produce objects or commodities for consumption; they also relentlessly produce the 'consumer' on a daily, hourly basis. The 'consumer' is neither simply a person who consumes in order to survive, nor is she the rasik who partakes of aesthetic enjoyment for the sheer pleasure of it. She is also not simply one who just wants to make life a little more comfortable and easy by spending and buying things of utility, comfort or even luxury. The consumer no longer buys a car that will survive a lifetime, but must be possessed by the thought of buying one and keep track of every new model that comes along. The consumer has to want to change cars like one changes clothes. The consumer is someone who lives to buy; who buys " ! I ~ , , , '''~.,.,..., ip"-· ! : Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development first and then thinks about where the payment will this step was sending out a message that could come from. The 'consumer' is a special creature, a potentially discourage consumption. We could ask: product ofrecent times, one who consumes and must If some people want to live in luxury, it is indeed consume in order that the 'economy' may live and their prerogative, but why all this anxiety about prosper. If the consumer ceases to be a consumer, others who want to live in simplicity? The answer, economies can find themselves in crisis. Strange of course, is that were this to happen and more and though this may sound, it is not the economy that more people were to start enjoying a simple, non­ exists for the sake of the consumer; rather it is the consumerist life, the 'economy' would be in crisis. latter that exists for the well-being of the former. Economies now no longer produce for 'needs', A case in point is the recent debate (September however broadly defined. They produce for strange 2009) sparked off by the austerity measures entities like the 'Sensex' or the 'GDP' (Gross introduced by the United Progressive Alliance Domestic Product), which have little to do with what (UPA) government in the wake of the recession ordinary people produce or consume. The 'Sensex' in the global economy. These measures, quite must be kept flying high like the national flag, lest mild in themselves, entailed some curtailment of people who should be buying suddenly start selling, expenditure by officials and elected representatives. for that is a sure sign of crisis. The GDP, an entity Sections of the corporate media that have been that is just about seventy years old, has to keep going actively campaigning for probity in public life and up and it can continuously go up even when people's have often exposed the unnecessary squandering conditions worsen-for instance, in a war! ofpublic money by government officials, however, Becoming a consumer is not a simple and natural went into a tizzy this time. As one English daily put it affair. We are not all naturally consumers. We in an agitated editorial comment, 'the concern is that become consumers. We are made consumers. In late now a nominally reformist party and government modern societies, there is a whole elaborate network are trapped into a spiral of moral "correctness" ofsystems, processes, apparatuses and relations that that is rapidly taking on anti-aspiration, anti-"rich" keep working in order to produce the individual as overtones. ' The fear, as the editorial correctly noted, consumer. The individual is thrown into a world of was not about certain party leaders wanting to live fantasy, whose lifeline is 'credit'-another ofthose simply; it was that, in some indirect way, 'austerity' magical things that entice you into the Dreamworld and 'simplicity' were being exalted. In other words, and lure you into becoming a consumer. Economies 2 3 I I 1111  Aditya Nigam Desire Named Developmenr in the early twenty-first century would not survive by powerful sorceresses and diabolic monsters'. for a day if people were to simply buy what they 'Hoshruba', in our late modern times, is this can afford-in other words, if they were to cease to Dreamworld ofConsumption inhabited by seductive be consumers. Credit agencies and sellers who seek commodities and images, the glittering lights of you out to offer 'cheap credit', credit-card agents the shopping mall, neon signs of global brands and who offer attractive terms, advertising billboards advertisement billboards-all ofwhich have a life of that beckon you to holiday in style, builders and their own. People enter this land and consume. And developers who introduce you to a future utopia that they go back convinced by these magical beings that can be yours, the neon lights and the phantasmic they-the consumers-are the real sovereigns. night world of the city that carry you into nowhere, This fantasy ends the moment you fail to pay the agitated editorial writer, your favourite the 'EMI'-your life turns into a veritable hell, film stars or cricketers who invite you on behalf of the likes of which you might not have imagined the company that has bought them and whose brand in your wildest dreams. But that is another matter. ambassadors they are-all of these form part of a Every society must have the strictest punishment loose but rapidly spreading network of 'relationships' for defaulters and there is nothing wrong with it. that make you a consumer. A car company that After all, you have willingly entered into this deal, invites you to 'drive home a relationship' is not with open eyes. necessarily lying. It is actually trying to enrol What we know as 'Development' today, in twenty­ you in a relationship as a loyal 'brand consumer'. first century India, is a story ofthe production ofthe The idea of 'consumer sovereignty' is the 'consumer' so that something called 'the economy' biggest myth invented by neo-liberalism. The can flourish-which, incidentally, has very little to consumer is precisely a consumer to the extent that do with people being fed and clothed. And at the s/he has surrendered to the magical beings of this very heart of this story is the 'automobile'. Dreamworld of Consumption. In the compendium of tales, the Dastan-e-Amir The Automobile of Desire Hamza, there occurs a mention of the Magical Land of Hoshruba (literally, that which enchants We do not drive the automobile; the automobile the senses). Hoshruba has been described as 'a land drives us. The automobile is the Desire that drives of dazzling illusions and occult realms, inhabited us, fer it embodies all our other desires: for control, I 4 5 I[!  III I Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development for speed, comfort, for privacy on the street, for the Working-class migrants, ofcourse, had no option 'good life'. But it was not always so. Once upon a but to wait endlessly and put their lives in danger time, humans did drive cars; just as we were not as they clung to overcrowded buses to reach their always consumers. But that was long, long ago. So workplaces. But what does Development have to long ago that we barely remember it. do with the working class or the poor? At least it no Anybody living in Indian cities knows from longer does. Quite some time ago--when it meant the sheer experience of living and going about roti, kapda aur makan (bread, clothing and housing) the daily business of work that life in the city has or bijli, pani, sadak (electricity, water, roads)--it changed drastically in the last two decades. The was different. It has been a long time since we left initial entry of the 'automobile'-especially the all that nonsense behind us. As any economist or private vehicle-was experienced by many, by editorial commentator will tell you, that was an those who could afford it, as a kind of liberation. obsession of Nehruvian 'socialism' and it is all for This was especially so in a city like Delhi that the better that we left it behind. had only known a highly temperamental state-run So, we were talking about the middle class, bus service and an equally capricious network of its travails, its expectations, its desires and its autorickshaws. In those days, it was a normal part frustrations in Indian cities ofthe 1960s and 1970s. of one's everyday routine to wait for hours before Things began to change with the entry ofthe private one could get the bus one wanted-and even when automobile-especially the car, but also the two­ it came, one had to prepare oneself to see it whiz wheeler. It gave many working women a new-found past one without stopping. Old-timers, of course, sense ofliberation, a sense of space and control over tell us of the earlier Delhi when trams plied in the their own lives. The coming of the private vehicle old, walled city ofShahjehanabad and a network of was a liberation from the continuous threat they had cycle-rickshaws and horse-driven tongas connected often felt when walking the streets ofthe city-the commuters to their destinations within relatively threat ofsexual molestation, harassment and worse. smaller distances in specific parts ofthe city. But for It would surely have come as a great relief to many the new generation ofmiddle-class migrants into the men too, making their lives so much easier. And city who came here in search ofbetter opportunities, how can we forget families. A 'family outing' was travelling within the city was no easy job in the late an unaffordable business-whether you wanted to 1960s and 1970s, even a large part of the 1980s. go out to a cinema, theatre or music performance, 6 7 i 1,::1 tl  Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development a picnic or just meeting relatives-if you did not but also the symbol ofthe collective desire oflndia's have a private vehicle. Some cities like Kolkata or much-vaunted 'arrival into the twenty-first century'. Mumbai, with alternative means of transportation Denizens of the city of Delhi might recall the " like tramways and suburban train networks, were passion for driving fast nurtured by Prime Minister !Ii somewhat better off in this respect. All this changed Rajiv Gandhi, also the author ofthe slogan: 'Going quite fundamentally with the coming ofthe private to the twenty-first century'. Rajiv Gandhi never automobile. lived to see that 'arrival' but he did set us on the In a different way though, its advent also provided road to it. others with a new kind of space--a mobile, but In the two last decades we have seen the lives of I private space-and another sense ofcontrol. Before Indian cities restructured around the automobile. the 1990s we rarely heard of something like rape in Over the years, the car certainly became a symbol a moving vehicle or speeding cars mowing down of status and power. But soon, with the availability sleeping pavement dwellers. In the period since the of easy credit, it also became a commodity that 1990s the car has become a virtual space for the anybody could purchase and possess. That was playing out of desire--exhilarating and liberating on also the point when the car became critical in the the one hand and a space of darkness and crime on production ofthe mass consumer. Gradually, status the other. The car became an extension of the male and power were determined not merely by the self-a vehicle for the display of sexual prowess ownership of the car, but also by the number and and, probably, displaced sexual gratification size of cars that one possessed. through speed. And then, at one point, the car ceased to be We have not even begun to study the massive something external to its possessor. Sitting behind cultural transformation that the entry of the private the steering wheel brought out a part of the self automobile wrought in the life of the Indian city. that we did not quite know ourselves. The car did Apart from the kinds of transformation of interior not merely become the symbol of status and power lives and notions of privacy referred to above, the at home, in the areas of residence; it became an private automobile also transformed the external instrument of domination on the roads. Domination landscape of the city in fundamental ways. Very ofthe street through sheer size and speed produced a soon, it became the vehicle of a new kind of desire: new sense ofpalpable power among many wayward not the private desire ofthe middle-class individual sons of the bourgeoisie. Fast-moving automobiles 8 9 ,, ill Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development soon crowded out slower traffic--especially cyclists facility' becomes the 'unique selling point' of the and pedestrians. In other words, another grammar of business concerned. It is estimated that one car power appeared on the streets and public spaces. occupies the static space of one jhuggi or hut ofthe In this new grammar ofpower, it was not merely poor. Add to this the fact that the car does not occupy the street that was transformed. The new entrant in mere static space, but actually a mobile space and our lives now demanded space and more space. Like can, in the course ofthe day, occupy five or six times the fabled tale ofthe Arab and the camel, its demands the space of a jhuggi. for space turned out to be insatiable. It gobbled up The private automobile transformed the grammar every bit of available land in and around residential of power so much that soon all of 'Development' and market areas. Places where people would go for began to revolve around its needs: its speed, its walks, where people would get together for a cup of unrestricted flow and its 'rest'. From multilevel, tea by the wayside--everything was colonized by air-conditioned car parks in the midst of acute the automobile, in motion or parked. When every electricity shortage to endless flyovers, freeways, open and relatively unoccupied area was taken up by privately maintained expressways and roads that it, it went for the green spaces in the cities. Finally, had to endlessly expand sideways for more and its greedy eye rested on the poorer settlements of more lanes-everything was now subject to the the cities. demands of this new creature that had entered our There isn't a single Indian city where settlements lives. Irrespective ofwhether we personally can ever of the poor have not been ruthlessly torn down to possess it, the car has changed the grammar of our make way for this new creature. Its advent has being in the city. decisively spurred the colonization of urban space So much has this logic begun to seem 'natural' in favour of the rich. Increasingly, owners of cars, that government planning for transport is now who have paid only for their vehicles, now have always with the private car at its centre. Thus, for access to and control over the land where they example, rather than try to make key shopping and park their vehicles in different parts of the city. As city centres (say Chandni Chowk or Connaught a result, areas of the city which were earlier used Place) car-free, the first 'ban' is on the movement either as green or living spaces ofthe poor are now ofslower-moving, less-polluting and less-hazardous completely taken over to build car parks or shopping modes like rickshaws and cycles, followed by bans malls and other consumption sites where 'parking on two-wheelers like scooters and motorcycles. 10 11  III Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development The result of this is that governments see it as together) on the roads in the same period. It goes their business to go on endlessly catering to the without saying that the maximum number of requirements of the automobile. For instance, a people killed in road accidents are either cyclists recent news report in the Times of India (3 July or pedestrians or scooter and motor-cycle riders. 2009) points out, on the basis of the Economic In Delhi as high as 50 per cent traffic fatalities are Survey of Delhi, that the Ring Road that circles pedestrians, 10 per cent cyclists and 21 per cent Delhi has already far exceeded its designed motorcyclists. Add to this a whole range of new capacity of 1,10,000 vehicles per day and plans are crimes (like kidnapping, loot, carjacking and rape) being considered to widen it to an eight-lane road. enabled by the peculiar space of the moving vehicle However, given the fact that there are nearly 1000 that has emerged over the past two decades, and you new vehicles being added to Delhi's roads every have a picture of the increasingly dangerous places day, these eight lanes will have to be expanded that Indian cities have become. to twenty-four lanes a mere two years from now. But life is not endangered simply because ofthese Where this road space will come from is, of course, very obvious factors. One of the most significant anybody's guess. Equally important is the way this of the less visible, silent killers is air pollution, skews the financial allocation made by various for which, too, vehicular pollution is the prime governments for the transport sector. Thus, while offender. Allergic respiratory disorders-asthma the allocation doubled for this sector between 2002­ in particular-have been rising dramatically. While 03 and 2006-07, as much as 80 per cent of it was some of this has something to do with genetic earmarked for road-widening work that is clearly predisposition, a study by doctors in Bangalore in weighted in favour of car users. 2002 found a strong and direct correlation between Today, well into the twenty-first century, we are the incidence of asthma and urbanization and air seeing the ways our cities have become dangerous pollution. Their hospital-based study on 20,000 places, where life is fragile-and the private children below the age of eighteen, covering the automobile is at the very centre of this change. years 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994 and 1999, showed Compared with 1971, the number oftraffic fatalities an increase of 9 per cent, 10.5 per cent, 18.5 per had increased five times by 2001. This is clearly cent, 24.5 per cent and 29.5 per cent respectively related to the twenty-fold increase in the number in respiratory disorders for these years. They also of vehicles (cars, taxis, buses and motorcycles conducted a school survey in twelve schools on 12 13 I l , , ~~. ,I, I 111 1 11 I I Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development 6550 children in the six to fifteen age group and substantially reduced by monitoring and rigorously found that the prevalence of such disorders among enforcing pollution standards. children from schools in heavy-traffic areas was But arguments about the larger common good 19.34 per cent, among children from heavy-traffic apart, private automobiles are turning out to be self­ areas and low socioeconomic population was 31.14 defeating even for their owners. After all, it does not per cent, and among children from low-traffic area take much effort to see that with lakhs and lakhs of schools was 11.15 per cent. new vehicles crowding into our cities, the speed This is consistent with global developments­ and mobility that cars were supposed to provide are and as recent figures indicate, about 20 million increasingly becoming a thing of the past. In cities Americans suffer from some kind of asthmatic like Delhi and Kolkata it is often faster to travel by attack or the other and 5000 die annually due to it. Metro than by cars in areas where Metro coverage As experts put it, it is not that plants are suddenly exists. How self-defeating this whole logic is can pollinating more; it is the diesel fumes hanging in be seen from the fact that the average roadway the air that are to be blamed. According to them, speeds for motor vehicles in Mumbai fell from air pollution caused by exhaust fumes from cars, thirty-eight kilometres per hour in 1962 to fifteen factories and power plants is singularly responsible to twenty kilometres per hour in 1993-and that for these asthma attacks. was long before the full and proper manifestation Two of every five residents of Delhi are said to of the automobile revolution. In Delhi the average suffer from a respiratory disease, and hospitalization road speed, about twenty to twenty-seven kilometres rates for pollution-induced conditions like asthma, per hour in 1997, was reduced to a mere fifteen lung disease, chronic bronchitis and heart damage kilometres per hour in 2002. In Chennai the average are continuously rising. It is estimated that 70 per speed is around thirteen kilometres per hour and in cent of Delhi's air pollution comes from vehicles. Kolkata, about ten kilometres per hour. In Delhi This is hardly surprising since the number of the peak hours now last for over five hours and are registered vehicles in Delhi rose from 1.5 million constantly increasing. And, lest we forget, this is to 4.5 million between 1997 and 2006. Since about despite the endless building of flyovers, freeways 1000 new private vehicles are being added to the and bypasses, and expanding road widths. city's roads every day, pollution levels can only So does making more flyovers and bypasses be kept in check temporarily-they cannot be really ease the situation? Take the recent Bandra­ 15 14 I ~".. f" "" 1 ;11 Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development Worli Sea Link inaugurated in Mumbai in June The first thing to note is that motorization has not 2009. The very first day's report was that traffic happened to the same extent everywhere. The United was literally crawling at less than one-fourth the States ofAmerica leads the world in this respect. It permitted speed on the road. Subsequent reports has something like 834 registered vehicles per 1000 have confirmed that despite shortening the distance, people-50 per cent more than western Europe. By the time taken remains almost the same and traffic 1929, as much as 55 per cent ofAmerican families movement is extremely slow. owned a car and about 10 per cent owned two or And thus it happens that air pollution, noise more. This fact is not unrelated to another: that by pollution, the always-present threat of deaths and 1929, automobile production was the main industry injuries on roads, the endless demands on rapidly of the US and its automobile factories produced 85 depleting energy resources, fast-disappearing urban per cent ofthe world's cars. spaces and a whole range ofnew diseases-all these In the early decades of the twentieth century, the trace their lineage back to a single desire, the desire initial spurt of demand for cars and small trucks for the automobile. in the US was from the rural areas-especially In the next section we will take a quick detour to farmers, since it helped them commute vast trace the history ofthe emergence ofthe automobile. distances for which no other mode of transport The colonization of roads by the motor car began was easily available. But this was also the time of with the United States of America and we must rapid urbanization, and by 1930 more than 56 per understand that history in order to understand the cent Americans were living in the cities. Scholars, transformation of Indian cities and roads. transport historians in particular, have shown that this was considered by the automobile companies The Automobile, Oil and Energy Crisis to be an obstacle to the further development of their market. Believe it or not, the urban rich preferred not It is not as if the emergence of the automobile is a to buy cars and used public mass transit systems. natural stage of the development of the economy. In the 1920s, most American cities had a system It is certainly not the case that as economies of light railways (known as the electric streetcars, developed, people became rich, and as people somewhat like the tramways in Kolkata). The became rich, they bought cars. Matters are indeed 'motorization of America', which was high on the far more complex. agenda of the automobile companies, required that 16 17 Iii ! I  " II, Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development this system be dismantled. Initially, this was replaced private car that now ensconced itself in the life of by petrol-based buses, and later by diesel-run ones. all middle-class Americans. This was also bound to The actual story of the 'motorization of America' have a long-term impact on the US economy itselfas is a long and fascinating one in which, through sources ofoil started rapidly depleting. The average a combination of some pretty devious methods, American consumes three times more oil and diesel companies like the General Motors and Chevron than the average Japanese and two and a halftimes gradually took over the streetcar companies and more than the average citizen of Germany, France rapidly moved over to replace their services with or the UK. petrol- and diesel-run buses. Even today, at the height of the world's most One of the ways in which the electric streetcar serious energy crisis, the US refuses to compromise and the trolley bus were destroyed was by the on its high-energy-consumption-based lifestyles. In automobile giants first taking over those companies 1992, at the 'Earth Summit' held in Rio de Janeiro, and then deliberately cancelling orders for them the world was witness to the spectacle of the then and/or hiking their fares so much that they became US president, George Bush Sr, declaring that the unaffordable. All these were, ofcourse, beginning to 'American Way of Life is not negotiable', While spur people towards buying private cars, but despite the Earth Summit squarely placed the issue of all these methods people were not really doing so to global warming and climate change on the agenda the extent the corporations expected them to. The of governments ofdifferent states ofthe world, it is layout and structure of the cities was considered to precisely due to continuous sabotage by the US that be an obstacle in this regard. In 1939 Paul Hoffman, the matter ofreduction ofgreenhouse gases has not president of the Studebaker Corporation, said: made any significant progress. 'Cities must be remade. The greatest automobile This high-oil-consumption-based lifestyle of its market today, the greatest untapped field ofpotential citizens has determined much ofAmerican foreign customers, is the large number ofcity people who policy over the decades-from engineering coup refuse to own cars [emphasis added].' d'etats to fighting outright wars. But there is another People in America then, even in the beginning solution being sought: a shift to biofuels. Let us look of the 1940s, were not consumers. AmeIican life at the following scenario. had to be transformed in keeping with the demands The year 2008 saw an unprecedented rise in the of the automobile industry and the demands of the prices of foodgrains worldwide. According to the 18 19 I ,.it.' , L.~ ' ' j ,. : &IX;.J&. Pi.p 1111 1 : Aditya Nigam Desire Named Developmenr I 1 I United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization have the right to consume and live the lifestyles (FAO), by the end of 2007 record world prices for that most middle-class Americans do? Given the most staple foods had led to 18 per cent food-price needs of the US and the world economy, that can inflation in China, 13 per cent in Indonesia and hardly be the problem. How could these two huge Pakistan, and 10 per cent or more in Latin America, markets, which were being eyed favourably by all Russia and India. corporations till the other day, suddenly become The report went on to observe that in just about a villains simply by virtue of being markets-that year wheat had doubled in price, maize was nearly is to say, by consuming? The truth lies elsewhere. 50 per cent costlier and rice prices had increased by Bush was actually hiding a much more devastating 20 per cent. Within a few months of this report, by fact by making this statement-a fact linking the April 2008, the world price of rice had risen by 68 car-driven life directly to the question of food per cent (between January and April 2008). News security for millions of people across the world. reports confirmed that the crisis was no longer Here is a clue to what has· been going on for confined to the poverty-stricken states of Africa or some time now: an 11 May 2007 press release from Latin America; that food was disappearing from the National Farmers' Union of Canada (NFUC) American food stores like Wal-Mart as well. linked this sudden 'intensification in food shortage' When this situation started affecting the to 'an increasing push to divert food supplies into availability offood in the US, a whole new discourse hiofuels'. emerged. The reason for the food shortage, it was According to a report in The Guardian, alleged, especially by the then US President George Lester Brown, founder of the Washington-based W. Bush and his entourage, was the changing Worldwatch Institute, confirmed this in the consumption and demand pattern in India and following words: 'The competition for grain China. It was argued that their newly affluent between the world's 800 million motorists, who middle classes were raising the demand of food, want to maintain their mobility, and its two billion leading to high food prices. Even if there is some poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is truth to this assertion-though it is not something emerging as an epic issue.' Brown further said that that could have happened overnight in as dramatic a in 2006, 'US farmers distorted the world market way as this-precisely what was Bush's objection? for cereals by growing 14m tonnes, or 20% of the That the Chinese and Indian middle classes do not whole maize crop, for ethanol for vehicles. This took 20 21 I..: 11.1'1 ~~.... Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development millions of hectares ofland out offood production fifty employees of oil companies. MEND was and nearly doubled the price of maize.' demanding 'restitution ofthe environmental damage The Indian government, and many other Third inflicted by the oil companies', greater control over World governments, had to ban the export of oil revenues for local government and development foodgrains so that precious food did not get diverted aid to improve the living conditions that had been into running US motor cars. destroyed by the companies themselves. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Crude oil production in Nigeria is dominated we might be looking at the emergence of a new by multinational giants like Shell, ExxonMobil, kind of armed struggle: violent struggles of the Chevron Texaco, Agip and Total. The history of dispossessed to regain control over their oil, land their devastation in the Niger Delta is an old story. and environment. So far in India, as elsewhere, This is the area where the legendary Ken Saro-Wiwa environmental/ecological struggles have been seen lived and was active. Saro-Wiwa was a fiction writer as primarily non-violent struggles associated with and journalist who later became an activist in the Gandhians, vegetarians, faddists of various sorts struggle for environmental and social justice. His and non-governmental organizations. But such an primary focus was on his homeland, the Ogoni, impression might soon become a thing of the past. where he launched his non-violent movement For instance, Nigeria has been seeing a violent for social and environmental justice, joining movement ofunprecedented ferocity in recent years. the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People It began in early 2006 and was directed against the (MOSOP). Saro-Wiwa inevitably came into conflict large foreign oil companies that have been active in with the big oil corporations whom he accused of the oil-rich Niger Delta. The violence started with a 'waging an ecological war against the Ogoni people' group known as the Movement for the Emancipation and of 'precipitating a genocide' of the Ogoni ofthe Niger Delta (MEND) kidnapping four foreign people. Eventually Saro-Wiwa and eight others officials of Shell-the oil giant that has allegedly been directly involved in engineering coups were arrested and tried on trumped-up charges of elsewhere. Militants associated with MEND carried killing four Ogoni leaders ofMOSOP. The trial was on their armed offensive against the oil multinational conducted by a specially convened tribunal of the corporations through the year, blew up oil pipelines, military government and was so blatantly rigged killed Nigerian soldiers and kidnapped more than that nearly all the defendants' lawyers resigned in protest. Key witnesses later acknowledged that they 22 23 L"..  Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development had been offered huge bribes to depose against Saro­ oil soar to unprecedented levels. Profit-seeking Wiwa. Saro-Wiwa was executed on 10 November corporations obviously smell blood here. 1995. Any surprise, then, that eleven years later MEND Enter the Nano I steps in with exactly the same demands-but this II time with arms and the capacity to kill Nigerian It is in this context that we must consider the highly Ii army and oil industry officials? contentious flagship project of the Left Front In India the story of how private corporations government of West Bengal for developing the have looted the country's resources over the last two small 'people's car'-the Nano. In May 2006, the decades-without so much as a whimper of protest state's chief minister announced that land would from any ofthe established political parties from the be acquired for the project in Singur, about sixty Left to the Right-is only a shade different from that kilometres from Kolkata, for Tata Motors' Nano of any African state. Precisely for that reason, it is enterprise. The West Bengal government's argument difficult for anybody honestly willing to track the was that the state urgently needed industrialization rise of armed insurgencies in India, including the and development, as that alone would generate most recent Maoist ones, to ignore the fact that most employment. For that reason the state must attract of these are now crucially about controlling local investment. The unique selling point ofTata Motors resources and exercising local control over them. was that the Nano would cost just Rs 1 lakh, making More recently, the Sunday Times, London it affordable to millions of consumers who cannot (August 2009), reported how 'hundreds of Borneo afford a car currently. They were making what W~ tribesmen armed with blowpipes are blockading might call a 'democracy argument'-of making roads in protest against companies they accuse of the car available to ever larger numbers. Market destroying their rainforests to grow oil palms for analysts predicted that the Nano could expand the "green" biofuels, cooking oil, soap and margarine'. Indian car market by as much as 65 per cent. In the Malaysian forests, members of the Penan However, in Singur the news of the impending tribe who have lived there for centuries suddenly land acquisition was received with indignation find their forests being destroyed by big companies, from the very beginning. The discontent that had which are making a beeline for the forests as 'world' started brewing in May burst forth in December demand for biofuels has seen the prices of palm as the peasants rose in revolt. Television channels 24 25 li~ _  11': Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development beamed images of police violence as an area of It is not surprising that no substantial country ever 997 acres of fertile agricultural land belonging has crossed the barrier of poverty without very to the peasants was forcibly fenced off. With the substantial industrialization... Those who want peasant discontent on one side and the argument to prevent industrialization of Bengal... may intend well, but they are not serving the interest of employment generation through industry on the of Bengal's working class or peasantry... for the other, a heated debate on the desirability, indeed prosperity of the peasantry... always depends on 'historical necessity', of industrialization and the number of peasants going down. That is the development ensued. It continues unabated. standard experience in the world. In the debate, those who argued for the project made their case in terms of a larger historical And through this 'standard experience of the process, arguing that the move from agriculture to world' we must also learn-and adapt to-the logic industry is inevitable and necessary and this is how ofa 'market economy'. Marshalling his disciplinary it has happened everywhere else in the world. The resources to rebut the arguments of the critics, Sen chief minister of West Bengal famously claimed classified them into two groups: those who do not that ifthis transformation did not happen it would want private capitalists on ideological grounds and mean 'the end ofhistory'. Even though his statement those who 'would not want to take land away from has been subject to a lot of ridicule, he was not the agricultural use'. The 'ideological opponents of only one making this claim. Leading economists capitalism' (i.e., communists other than those in and analysts-neoliberal and Marxist in equal government) are, of course, easily dismissed. Sen, measure---dug out stories of industrialization from therefore, dealt with the arguments of the latter England and other European countries in order group, about whom he says: to show that this is indeed how it had been and There are some genuine "physiocrats" among this therefore must be. That this was how it happened group, with agriculture-fetishism and a strong belief in England does not mean that this is how it must in the unparalleled-almost mystical-merits necessarily happen everywhere else, but we will not of agriculture. Their arguments were adequately go into that question here. rebutted about 200 years ago [emphasis added], At this stage, the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and if life has ceased to be quite as "nasty, (2007b) too entered the public debate. He said: brutish and short" as Thomas Hobbes found it, 26 27 , I, lle. , "'"-"-.  11'111 Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development the contribution of industrial development to that However, we must thank Sen and the economists change would be hard to overlook. in general who placed the real issue at stake in clear-cut terms. For neither to Sen nor to the other The physiocrats, we may recall, were a group economists did the issue present itself as one of of economists in France in the second half of justice, of the ethics of taking away the land of the eighteenth century who believed that all the peasants for the conspicuous consumption of national and social wealth was derived solely from the rich. Rather, the question was presented as productive work and from land and agricultural squarely one ofDevelopment. Agriculture should be surplus. For the physiocrats, the economy was to decimated; only then can we say that we have really be in tune with the natural order and the best course become modem. Industry then, is The Gateway to was for governments to let people be and do what the Modem World. they wished-laissezfaire-and the rest would take Let us remember Sen's words that the critics care of itself. were against 'taking away land away from Strange though it may sound, this assumption agricultural use' [emphasis added]. The peasants that the debate was settled once and for all '200 or the tribals who own that land do not even figure years ago' comes from a scholar of eminence who on his radar; merely a question of transferring should know that, unlike 200 years ago, the planet land from agricultural use to industrial use, as if today is suffering not from a deficit but an excess it were simply lying around for the economist and of industrial development. At the very least, Sen policymaker to take into his custody. The people should know that the debate over 'industrialization' who owned the land can be dispensed with in the and 'development' today is not a mere reiteration larger interests of 'removing poverty'. But the belief of a 200-year-old position, but a burning question that industrialization can end poverty is by no means of our present. But in any case, Sen had erected an unquestionable truth. A serious argument exists a straw man in order to knock it down, since the that 'poverty' and 'unemployment' themselves battle that the peasants were fighting had very little are products of 'industrialization'-the latter, in to do with the larger questions of development and fact, might be part of the problem rather than its everything to do with protecting their own property solution. and livelihoods. Indeed, very few ofthe supporters of the struggle were making an argument against industry per se. 28 29 I l,.~.  II'I!I' Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development The Blasphemy of Being 'Opposed to industrialization, for they could not care a damn Industrialization' about it either way. They were merely defending their land. It is another matter, of course, that our In early January 2006, police firing on the tribals of anchor found it inconceivable that anybody could be Kalinganagar in Orissa led to the immediate death 'opposed to industrialization'---except maybe in the of sixteen people, while four others reportedly died stories ofthe 'machine-breakers' in England that she in hospital subsequently. The background to this might have, like many of us, read in high school. story is classic. Unlike the Luddite machine-breakers who knew On the morning of 2 January 2006, district exactly what they were doing and had a larger administration officials (led by the collector and agenda, the tribal people of Kalinganagar were the superintendent of police) accompanied a team simply resisting their land being stolen away from of Tata Steel officials to the area in order to fence them to be handed over to a private corporation; they off the land for a new Tata Steel plant. They were were simply attempting to protect their lives and escorted by twelve platoons of armed policemen livelihoods and, indeed, a whole way of being. and bulldozers. For the preceding few months the We may note that to most indigenous people land tribals had been hearing rumours that their land was is not simply a 'resource' to be bought and sold; it going to be acquired for setting up a steel plant. is a whole sacred space of culture where ancestors Their worst fears had now come true and for them lie and gods and goddesses live. Thus, as Bolivian this was a do-or-die battle. When they attempted to President Evo Morales recently put it, indigenous resist the fencing offoftheir land, the police opened peoples speak ofland as 'Mother Earth' because 'the fire, killing sixteen tribals. earth gives us life, and neither the Mother Earth nor In a surreal sequel to this tragic drama, a leading life can be a commodity'. national television channel aired a programme in The incredulity of the television anchor is worth which the incredulous anchor agitatedly quizzed pondering upon. For this incredulity, in that winter the people of Kalinganagar, who were on the verge of 2006, was shared by most urban middle classes. of being reduced to destitution: 'But why are you For over a decade and a half they had become against industrialization?' It was like they had used to thinking of the world as made exclusively committed blasphemy. Clearly, our anchor was for their consumption. Ever since the onset of the skipping several steps. No, they were not opposing 'economic reforms' in the early 1990s-which 31 30 l,,"-­  Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development incidentally came at the precise moment of consumption and saving for the larger good. For, as the collapse of the Soviet Union and other east any development economist of those times would European 'socialist' states-the new urban middle have told us, poor countries can only provide for classes found themselves rushing towards what capital formation by curtailing current consumption we might call a 'global hypermodernity'-a future and saving for investment. that presumably actually existed 'elsewhere', most The new dispensation rejected all that: we do not probably in the US. This 'hypermodernity' was need any such nonsense like 'capital formation'; we visualized as a kind of new urban utopia of plenty; can simply invite capital from other, capital-surplus as a land of skyscrapers and glittering neon lights, countries. They will bring in capital, investment shopping malls and casinos, expressways and fast­ and the goodies-and we can simply consume. The moving vehicles. It was the Tilism-e-Hoshruba of more we consume, the more it will spur demand and consumption-where you could simply overcome therefore industry, and thus invite more investment. your old Nehruvian or 'socialist' guilt about We will be in a land of plenty. All we would need conspicuous consumption and abandon yourselves to do in order to arrive at this utopia is provide to the enchanted beings of this land. Indeed, in incoming capital with cheap labour and 'natural this Promised Land they would come of their own resources', land and forests. These are unavailable to accord and take you away to far-off places among capital in the West because ofhigh wages and strict the stars. You simply had to keep buying. Even environmental laws. All we had to do was make it though in the early 1990s India was still far away easy in India for foreign and domestic corporations from this utopia, its globalized urban middle classes to acquire land and other environmental resources. were clear that they had already embarked on a Though the dream that drove the last two decades journey towards it. It was party time. Any talk of belonged to the rich, it was also sold to those who poverty, hunger, destitution and exploitation was were not yet rich but aspired to that status. Whoever seen as a 'relic' of the past-now associated with wanted to could step in and join the party, such the bygone Nehruvian state and the just-disappeared aspirants were told. It did not matter if you were 'socialist' ones. not rich to begin with; by dint of 'hard work', The new mantra of 'get rich and consume' anybody could make it. There was a little catch was the direct opposite of the austerity of the in this otherwise persuasive-sounding argument. Nehruvian days that had called for curtailing current Inviting capital was no substitute for our own 32 33 '. '~  ~ Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development capital fonnation-this was a simple logic that the grabs. A whole new discourse ofconsumption came Nehruvian elite had grasped. For when you invite to propel this fast-track journey to hypennodernity. capital from elsewhere, it comes with its conditions Indian cities began to look towards Paris, London and it is bad 'market economics' to say that we and, more recently, Shanghai as models to emulate. will not comply with such conditions. As Amartya Settlements of the poor would be removed to Sen put it in his defence of West Bengal's land make way for huge shopping malls, theme parks, acquisition for the Tatas' Nano project in Singur: multilevel car parks, multiplexes, flyovers and 'Ifwe want to attract business based on the market', freeways. the government cannot possibly tell these businesses Unfortunately, there was something that came in that 'I want you to go to Siliguri and that is where as a party-spoiler quite early in the day. Just as we you are going to be... That is not the way the market were beginning our journey to this Promised Land, economy works.' Indeed. Hence the incredulity of in the early 1990s, in 1992 to be precise, the heads our television anchor-the tribals of Kalinganagar of states from different parts ofthe world met in Rio did not understand this elementary point about the de Janeiro in what came to be known as the Earth way a market economy works: the Tatas want their Summit. For the first time the serious challenge land where they want it, and they must have it! posed to the fragile ecology of the world by India took the first steps towards entering this mindless 'Development' came to be acknowledged new world in the early 1990s, but really only as a serious issue. No longer was it a cause espoused arrived here around the end of that decade. But the only by a fringe of 'eco-loonies'. Environmental detennination was there. Already, by the beginning issues became an urgent political agenda as the of the 1990s, certain words and ideas had become realization seriously dawned that our planet was 'blasphemous'. And in the years that followed, living on borrowed time. Global wanning and the we had the exhilarating experience of liberation emission of greenhouse gases as a consequence of and emancipation from all social responsibility­ mindless industrialization were now put squarely indeed any responsibility towards the planet. What on the table. The US, we have already mentioned, followed was two decades of cannibalizing of all was unrepentant and unwilling to compromise the resources ofthe country. Its land, forests, mines, on its 'American way of life'-which effectively water, air as well as the public-sector capital of some meant that the US would continue with its high­ ofthe bestperfonning units---everything was up for energy-consumption lifestyle. But that apart, despite 34 35 7 W t,' t ':"'I',.,.-'f!"~~.:"~n-  Aditya Nigam Desire Named Developmenr efforts by the US and other assorted proponents of commanding view ofthe golfcourse within whose capitalist consumption and 'the market economy' precincts the skyscrapers will be located. in other parts of the world, public opinion since And just in case you are suffering from the Rio has increasingly become more and more aware consequences ofyour hypermodern lives, the dream of the grave threat that mindless industrialization merchants promise 'stress-busting massage parlours and development pose to the earth. The idea of a (offering a large variety of oriental massages)', high-consumption-based growth could only appear alongside in-house gym facilities and health clubs. jarring in this context. This is the new Consumption Utopia. And However, capitalism is capitalism precisely the argument for consumption, we have seen, is because it can turn everything, including the desire immaculately crafted. The more money you make for 'ecological sustainability', into a commodity for and the more you spend, the closer you are to the consumption. So, while capitalist industrialization new utopia. And just in case the hectic pace of and development wreak havoc on the planet, a new modern life-the relentless drive to make money­ ecological dimension is simultaneously added now threatens to kill you, this utopia provides you with to this imagined land. Political analyst and writer everything from recreation and entertainment to Aseem Shrivastava (2007) draws a sketch of this oriental massages. It even protects you from the future based on the dreams sold by 'developers'­ urban-industrial dystopia by simply taking you away the new dream merchants of twenty-first-century to the ecologically friendly climes where everything India. Shrivastava paraphrases, if somewhat you could ever want is within walking and cycling poetically, the builder-developers' utopia thus: distance. And thus, one day when the rich are richer, There will be world-class apartments in impressive when corporations make super profits, when we high-rises touching the sky. Prospective residents achieve 10 per cent decennial growth, we will find will have choices ranging from compact studios to that wealth will trickle down and that day the people six-bedroom duplex flats designed for traditional at the bottom of the pile will also start getting the Indian joint families. The apartments will benefits of growth. The unemployed will find jobs be equipped with handsome, marble-topped and the hungry will have food. bathrooms, studded with Jacuzzis and golden bidets But for that to happen, in the meantime, we need imported from Europe. Every room will afford a to take away their land and their livelihoods. 36 37  Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development Let me state at this point that the old dispensation, since they are the engines of growth and will based primarily on the state's (and the public provide employment to the unemployed, involves, sector's) overriding role in the economy, was no as we have seen, a sleight of hand. For no private paradise. Indeed, it was seriously problematic. corporation ever invests for any public purpose Its effects in terms of shackling the spirit of such as providing employment. That is indeed not entrepreneurship among ordinary people and a consideration at all in any investment decision. A fostering a mentality of dependence on 'sarkari corporation invests purely for profit-and therefore naukri' on the one hand, and fattening a corrupt it invests only in areas and sectors where it can state bureaucracy on the other, had actually started make profit. having a very negative impact on the economy and society at large. Stringent controls, what came Land Acquisition and the 'Passive Revolution' to be known as the licence-permit raj, had turned into shackles and had encouraged the growth of a Kalinganagar's was a tragic story, but it was by no parasitical 'social bureaucracy'. Apart from the state means the only one. It was followed soon after by elite, this social bureaucracy included a whole class Singur and then by what became a metaphor for ofpublic-sector employees who lived offthe state's anti-land-acquisition struggles: Nandigram. This and the taxpayers' money. f1ashpoint came barely two months after the violence However, the dismantling of state controls in a in Singur, which blew up into a major rebellion in number of arenas, necessary and important though 2007. Here the state government had planned to they were, does not entail an attitude of complete set up a chemical hub by acquiring something like abandon of the kind that we have witnessed in the 14,000 acres of fertile agricultural land. last two decades. To argue that the only alternative Between these two events called Singur and to the Nehruvian state bureaucratic capitalism is Nandigram, something unprecedented happened: predatory neo-liberal capitalism is, to say the least, they shook the foundations of mainstream political an instance ofa certain rampant intellectual laziness discourse and for the first time in decades, struggles that frames our political and economic discourse. against land acquisition became an issue that The argument that what is good for the corporations attracted the wider attention of the intelligentsia is good for the 'nation'-a famous General Motors and the media. The governments at the state and the slogan was: 'What is good for GM is good for Centre had to pause and think. USA'-and that they are serving a public purpose 38 39 l~. st;; '!"'~1""".."'" ihf'tm *.... ~  Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development There had been many violent cases of land 'we' (as individuals) and the 'nation'---even if most 'i~ acquisition for the sake of 'Industry' and middle- and upper-class people never really had to :'Tlf~\J,~·t!f';'1;,;:t~;''i, -.J~~.; C~::iffrlt~: ' "..~~." I~ 'Development' in different parts ofthe country for sacrifice anything for its sake. decades. However, till very recently land used to On both these counts, things have changed be acquired by the state, in exercise of its powers fundamentally. In the first place, almost all the of 'eminent domain', for purposes of building land acquisition of more recent times, invoking the development projects that the state itself undertook. colonial Land Acquisition Act 1894, was carried out It is estimated that over 21 million people have by the state not for any 'national' or 'public' purpose been displaced from their traditional habitats and but for handing over to private corporations. The livelihoods through such land acquisition over state is now seen to be using its power of 'eminent the decades. Scholars and activists who have been domain' to acquire land cheaply to hand it over tracking these developments recall lawaharlal to private corporations who are in the business of Nehru's speech exhorting the farmers of Bhakra making profit. From about the mid-2000s, the Indian Nangal to 'suffer for the nation', even as their government embarked upon a plan of developing land was taken over and they were left destitute. what are called Special Economic Zones (SEZs) For Nehru, these big dams constituted the new that are supposed to be special areas operated by big 'temples of modern India' and he had no difficulty corporations. Inside these SEZs, corporations are in exhorting peasants to 'make sacrifices for immune from a number of laws that govern the rest the nation'. That these earlier instances of land of the country. For purposes of international trade, acquisition did not spark off any major debate had SEZs are to be treated as 'foreign territory' exempt to do with two circumstances. First, development from regulations that govern duties, tariffs and taxes projects for setting up power or steel plants that were on the one hand and labour laws on the other. undertaken by the state itself had a much greater In the second place, where the Nehruvian state legitimacy in the popular mind and seemed to be demanded some curbs on current consumption justifiable acts. Second, the overall power of the and placed great emphasis on savings for the sake idea of nationhood and the concomitant idea that of capital formation, the new dispensation simply we must all suffer or sacrifice so that 'we' become calls upon people to become rich, to make money a modern, powerful nation was quite overwhelming. and consume. The earlier strategy was mindful of There was a strong sense of 'identification' of the the sharp inequalities that divided our population 40 41 I I I.~ ~#''''''~~.,..,.~ii'~.,,,::~~~·~·1/i''f~~'''(' _...'~.~,--_. -, ,  Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development and therefore proceeded with care, attempting to than to invest his earnings back into expanding work out a different path of industrialization and production. development. Just as it is necessary for capital to produce the This path was largely one that has been called consumer, so it has had to produce' labour'. People the path of the 'passive revolution' that sought have always worked to earn their livelihoods and to transform agriculture gradually into capitalist while some may work and earn more than others, enterprise through incremental improvements rather they always prefer to work with a certain degree IIII than through its violent decimation. The idea of of autonomy. The work-discipline of the capitalist I the passive revolution, as elaborated by political factory had to actually be inculcated over centuries theorists like Sudipta Kaviraj and Partha Chatterjee, through a range of disciplinary mechanisms and ,I taking their cue from Antonio Gramsci, basically legal provisions. The conversion of erstwhile emphasized the fact that unlike in most countries peasants into factory workers was an extremely ofthe 'advanced capitalist world' where capitalism violent process-and this violence was as much destroyed feudalism and pre-capitalist forms of spectacular and public as it was mundane and property, in India and many other postcolonial invisible. This has continued throughout the history countries the capitalist class was not strong enough of capitalism. to carry out thoroughgoing land reforms and destroy For capitalism to come into its own, therefore, 'feudal' property relations. For those familiar with the peasant had to be dispossessed for two reasons: Marxist debates, this would be easy to understand: to seize the land and to convert him into what Marx. I the underlying logic here is that capitalism cannot called a proletarian-a person who owns nothing but co-exist, at least in the long run, with 'pre-capitalist' his or her labour power. This has certainly been the and 'feudal' forms of property, as both land and logic of modem industrial capitalist development labour need to be freed for capitalist development. in the West, even though its classical form, as As long as land and labour remain tied to the old we will see below, was evident only in England. forms of feudal or even small peasant property, And wherever there were counter tendencies that people depending upon them for livelihood have prevented a full play to such violence, economists no incentive to move beyond subsistence levels and ideologues of capital only saw 'retardation' of production. Even the feudal lord produces only and deviation from the pristine form of industrial to engage in conspicuous consumption rather development. 42 43  Aditya Nigam Desire Named Development What Kaviraj and Chatterjee designated as the In such a situation, the passive revolution meant that passive revolution was related to the inability of a the Nehruvian and post-Nehru state formulated an weak postcolonial capitalism to carry out a robust altogether different strategy for expanding capitalist anti-feudal programme. Rather than destroying relations in the countryside. This strategy consisted feudalism, it entered into a compromise with feudal in developing capitalist agriculture with new forces, seeking to transform them gradually and, techniques, tractors, fertilizers and new institutional thereby, integrate them into the capitalist economy. mechanisms to make it profit-oriented on the one One ofthe classic instances of this can be seen, for hand, alongside an emphasis on rural and village example, in the way land reforms were carried out industries on the other. in post-Independence India. In no state, with the This strategy of the passive revolution was possible exception of Kashmir, did land reform undoubtedly a slow one that was able to maintain take the form of radical land redistribution to the its own pace by partially 'delinking' from the landless. Rather, it took the form oftenancy reforms, 'world economy'. We must remember that in the in which former tenants became owners ofthe land immediate aftermath of Independence the new they tilled. state elite under lawaharlal Nehru's leadership It can, however, be argued that in the Indian had to struggle to order its priorities in a way that context, this was all that was possible, given the size was more conducive to our domestic requirements. ofholdings and the actual structure of ,precapitalist' This meant that the Indian state had to ignore much property relations where 'feudal landlordism' and conventional economic wisdom which suggested 'serfdom' ofthe kind in evidence in western Emope that international trade and the world market are hardly existed. The Kaviraj-Chatterjee thesis of the centre of the world economy and any country the passive revolution thus makes its argument by could best develop itself by producing and selling assuming the existence of something called 'feudal' that for which it was best suited (in which it had the property. Now, not all 'precapitalist' property can be most comparative advantage). In our case, at the equated with 'feudal' property, and what we see in time ofIndependence textiles were supposed to be India, especially in the post-land-reforms scenario, our strength and it was assumed that we would be is the preponderance of small and middle pe