ABSTRACT
In spring 2008, a friend and colleague, an Indian citizen who had moved to the USA to take up an academic position at a university there, visited me at Heidelberg. She had lived in India off and on and had just returned from research in Delhi when we met again. We discussed the topic of Indian media when she argued that somehow she felt very nostalgic about the Nehruvian era, wanting India to return to those days when people were more down-to-earth and modest and less shrill. She referred to a common friend of ours, who had just delivered a keynote lecture at a conference, where he coined the term the ‘ugly Indian’. What culminated in this vignette on what India has become since economic liberalisation was a certain view of ‘India Shining’ as something that had moved out of control, characterised with a shrill, pompous, uncultivated and overconfident rhetoric. This discussion accompanies me until today, and makes me think about my idea of India, of East Delhi's ‘India Shining’ and the India of Old Delhi's galis. Without wanting to conclude this book in a sea of moralistic prophecies about ‘India's path’ between Nehru and Infosys, economic liberalisation and global meltdown, I take this anecdote to underline the emerging criticism, not of the return of the ‘old rich’ but of those observing the bandwagon as it spins, higher and faster. A book revolving around the lifestyles and aspirations of the new middle classes in neoliberal India cannot but generalise, to some extent, the heterogeneous fabric of this growing segment of Indian society. The case-studies may not necessarily represent mainstream (Hindu) middle-class attitudes and aspirations. But they mark ventures and trends, mostly in the context of urbanisation and transnational networks, that underline the shaping and changing of status and taste among these groups, and give a body to the concept of the ‘world-class’. To be sure, the price to be paid by the aspirants to ‘belong to class’ is high and class has become a trap that cannot be escaped from. Commenting on Nepal's new middle class, Liechty has argued that no one can ‘afford not to participate in the new consumer economy’ (2003: 250), and this also holds true ‘in spite of the ambivalence, moral hesitation, and even anger that many people express toward the unstable and constantly expanding realm of goods and images’ (Liechty 2003: 250). Many of my informants have come to experience this with respect to the ambiguity of ‘India Shining’, not so stark in terms of ‘light’ and ‘darkness’, ‘climbing up’ and ‘falling behind’ but through varying shades, speed and temperatures. Let me return to Neetu K., mentioned in the Introduction to this book. Neetu criticised the conspicuous waste of money on occasions like Diwali, New Year and Valentine's Day, when people shell out thousands of rupees for a Chanel scarf, Swarovski items, or a flat-screen television as gifts:
Tell me, why do people need Louis Vuitton bags for INR 200,000 as presents for Diwali? That's perverse! At the same time, cultural values are flushed down the toilet. We have really become uncivilized. Where is India Shining? There is no India Shining (personal conversation, October 2006)!
