ABSTRACT
Reading Alka Saraogi’s Kali-katha: Via Bypass and Usha K. R.’s Monkey-Man, the chapter explores how women writers in the post-1991 era negotiate the category of nation and its concomitant identity politics when it is impinged on by the looming spectre of liberalisation and globalisation. Both Saraogi and Usha categorically condemn the patriarchal alliances that are complementary to the obscurantist structures of state - the Hindu Right on the one hand and neo-colonialism, capitalism, and globalisation on the other, constituting interlocking networks of power, oppression, and exploitation that mutually reinforce and assist each other. Moreover, these authors interrogate the skewed model of national development, which marginalises the interests of the most vulnerable sections of society like women, poor, labourers, working classes, lower castes, and tribal people. Also, what is the impact of globalisation on women’s workforce participation in the urban organised service sector? We know how women’s labour is appropriated by financial institutions like the World Bank and other multinational companies to feed the contemporary neo-colonial structures unleashed by globalisation. The situation becomes grimmer because the majority of women labourers in India work in the unorganised labour sector. These women writers bring out all of these concerns, highlighting the systemic exploitation of women, including the contractualisation of labour and how it affects women workers.
