On living in the kal(i)yug: Notes from Nagda, Madhya Pradesh

Abstract

Nagda in Madhya Pradesh is the site of a large viscose rayon factory employing significant numbers of workers from surrounding villages. Pollution and health and safety issues in and around the factory have been key concerns for several decades and this, combined with the continuous shift system and division of labour, embodies industry as the apparently (negative) antithesis of the rural. This is certainly the perspective of local high-caste village employers who articulate a very negative view of the factory, seeking to project it as part of the degenerate kaliyug which is associated with machinery, the goddess Kali, and a dangerous and unstable modernity. Local village-resident factory workers, however, value the comparatively high industrial wages, shorter working hours, and their liberation from the oppressive expectations of rural 'patronage'. The complex everyday predicaments of living in the kaliyug are explored through a variety of different voices which suggest the inadequacy of trans-local narratives of industrialisation.

The fate of our corruption

“…These discourses sometimes approach the apocalyptic, for instance, at one point during my research at a particularly perilous moment in Bangladesh's politics and economy (its last elections), led some to speak of the signs of Qiyamot or the end of the world (Khan n.d.). But more often than not, these discourses of the decline of the times have a feel of the slow decline or the infinitude of the dark era, such as in contemporary discourses of the kalyug (the age of downfall) in India today (Betlem 2015;Pinney 1999).…”

“…Sumathi Ramaswamy (2004: 1-18) and Marilyn Ivy (1995) both show the extent to which the bemoaning of a past and collective sense of loss is as much a part of modernity as the upspring of optimism for human progress. Christopher Pinney (1999) shows how discourses of the kalyug in Madhya Pradesh, India, which is saturated with a sense of loss of an idyllic village past, is more often than not enunciated by those in positions of traditional authority who are in effect bemoaning the loss of a vast reserve of labour to industrial capitalism. Within corruption studies more specifically, scholars have pointed to the fact that neoliberal anti-corruption initiatives, which more often take on state cronyism or individual politicians than focus attention on the larger structural forces at work beyond the local and the national, all too quickly find support amidst what is called 'morality based popular concerns' within a polity (Bedirhanoglu 2007).…”

Role of Women in Sericulture and Community Development

“…The sociological debate on the issues of pollution and purity has engaged the attention of the academia for quite a long time (Arun, 2007; Ciotti, 2007; Cort, 2004; Galanter, 1967; George, 2002; Heredia, 2000; Hollup, 1993; Hospital, 1980; Ishwaran, 1966; Iversen & Raghavendra, 2006; Karanth, 2004; Keshodkar, 2010; Khandelwal, 1997; Krishna, 1978; Lamb, 1999; Mencher, 1966; Pandian, 2009; Parry, 1991; Pinney, 1999; Saavala, 2001; Sahay, 2004; Shah, 2006; Sharma, 2010; Srinivas, 1984; Thaiss, 1978; Thapan, 2004; Tharamangalam, 1989). These debates are not restricted to India alone.…”

Questioning success: Dispossession and the criminal entrepreneur in urban India

“…That criminality and violence are said to be inherent to forms of political and economic success lends corruption discourses a certain ethical weight. However, these commentaries are primarily systemic as opposed to moral, and should be regarded as distinct from the broader modelling of epochal social decline which characterises Hindu cosmology (Pinney, 1999).…”