ABSTRACT
The notion of citizenship is one of a set of ideas emanating from the enlightenment, which were introduced to India in order to legitimise colonial domination. The journey of the ideas and practice of economic citizenship follows that of citizenship pure and simple. Economic citizenship is of this universalist type, requiring rights to work, invest, be entrepreneurial, be taxed and have the means to consume-that is to participate fully in the market economy. The mode of organisation, production and distribution of surplus is capitalist. A capitalist market economy rests on a relation with natural resources which are not free goods but await their being given value through technology and human labour. The concept of economic citizenship, framed in terms of markets, ignores the implications for citizenship of these markets being capitalist. The state's practical obligations to the entitlements of registered capital contrast with its idiosyncratic relations of citizenship for the vast mass of informal wage workers and petty commodity producers.
