ABSTRACT

Many commentators have lamented the cultural impact of corporate globalisation: the inundation of the tele-visual media with US programming, the increasing centrality of consumption to one’s sense of self and identity, and the consequent refashioning of the taste and aspirations of middle and upper class urban youth and professionals. Equally invidious, however, is the growing evidence and circulation, within segments of our society, of some of the values implicit in the cultural logic of globalisation, US style. The dignity of the poor in India has had as its corollary the sense among the middle and upper classes, of the right of the poor to exist, even if many are unwilling to extend them the civic amenities that are their due. The centrality of a spiritually based cultural ethos means that in the best of cases, one witnesses a certain humility in understanding the place of individual effort in the unfolding of life.