1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910793005203321

Autore

Majumder Sarasij

Titolo

People's car : industrial India and the riddles of populism / / Sarasij Majumder

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, NY : , : Fordham University Press, , [2018]

©2019

ISBN

0-8232-8484-0

0-8232-8244-9

0-8232-8243-0

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (217 pages)

Collana

Fordham scholarship online

Disciplina

330.954

Soggetti

Automobile industry and trade - India

Industrialization - India - History - 21st century

Industrialization - India

Populism - India

Tata Motors

History

India

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

This edition previously issued in print: 2018.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- A Timeline of the Events in Singur -- Introduction. Life Beyond Land: Aspirations, Ambivalence, and the Double Life of Development -- chapter 1. “We Are Chasi, Not Chasa”: Emergence of Land-Based Subjectivities -- chapter 2. Land Is Like Gold: (In)commensurability and the Politics of Land -- chapter 3. Land Is Like a Mother: The Contradictions of Village- Level Protests -- chapter 4. “Peasants” Against Industrialization: Images of the Peasantry and Urban Activists’ Representations of the Rural -- Conclusion. Value Versus Values? -- Postscript. From a Defunct Factory to a “Crematorium” -- Acknowledgments -- Glossary -- references -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

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 clichés 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.