Per Ståhlberg, Södertörn University

The aim

The aim of this project has been to study how visions about a future India are constructed, interpreted and challenged: transnationally as well as locally in India. Research questions concern how the image of a rising Indian superpower is created on a macro level, in the interface between various actors within the government, the industry and the media. But the aim has also been to explore forms and expressions that future visions take in everyday practice in an Indian urban setting. Furthermore, it has been within the aim of the project to understand how local notions about the Indian future are related to transnational visions.

The project was planned in two parts. The first one consisted of mapping themes and variations of the new image of India from printed and visual documents and media material. The second part of the project was planned as an extended field study in one particular city, Hyderabad, with the aim of collecting material on a range of phenomenon with a clear link to transnational visions of a bright Indian future.

The aim of the project has not changed. However, the design of the study has been somewhat modified, primarily with regard to the second, field work phase, which has been thematically more focused, at the same time as the ethnographic cases from one single has not been as dominant.

Three important results

Theses three results are related, but of different kinds. The first result relates to my interpretation of symbols of the new India; the second is empirical and refer to social practices that future visions promote in India; the third result is a theoretical contribution to the anthropological/sociological discussion concerning the role of the nation in a neoliberal world.

1.
Media and communication technologies have for decades been symbols of change in India and during the period of this study the mobile telephone has appeared as key symbol of transition. In one of the project texts (paper 1), I discuss the symbolic qualities of the mobile phone and relates it to other common symbols of Indian prosperity. I argue that the mobile works convincingly in this context because it is a metonymical symbol and thus itself part of the larger whole that it symbolises (in contrast to a metaphorical symbols of rising India, such as the elephant). A metonymical symbol is usually also less elaborative, and opens up less for critical reflection, than a metaphorical symbol. Thus the mobile is convenient as a visual positive symbol of transition, and it also offers a quantitative image of how fast changes are introduced in India (through figures of new subscriptions). During a number of years, the mobile could hardly be questioned as a symbol of desirable developments, but ironically it seems to have played out its role at the same rate as subscriptions have grown substantially. The reason is that it simply appears as a rather strange development when citizens in a society have better access to mobile devices than to basic facilities such as clean water and toilets. Thus, the mobile has transformed into a reflexive symbol of change.

2.
Visions of Indian futures do often rely on high growth in the information technology industry. These expectations have opened up a number of commercial possibilities. One of them is found in the arena of private education. For a young man or women who wants take part of the new India, the most promising options seems to be through a good technical education. Every year hundreds of thousands of young people compete in admission tests for a very limited number of seats in attractive colleges. This has created a rapidly growing business of private "coaching institutes", which train prospective students for the goal of passing an admission test. These institutes are found in urban areas all over the country, but a few places have gained reputation as centres of this coaching industry. I have conducted fieldwork at institutes in Hyderabad that attracts students from South Indian states, but also in Kota, the most well known North Indian centre for this type of business. One of the project texts (paper 2), analyses the commercial practices and the cultural logics of this business. I claim that the private education industry relates to an important ideological turn in contemporary India: the huge and largely poor population is commonly interpreted as a resource and not, as formerly, a burden for the country. Visions of a prosperous future are not tied to the wealthy "middle class"; instead it is the "poor masses", striving for a better life, that constitute a potential - as workers and consumers, but increasingly also as an intellectual resource. My study shows that this idea is also at work in commercial practices. The "coaching institutes" attract fee-paying students by reporting convincing results (a good number of their students must succeed in prestigious tests). Therefore, they are constantly scouting for intellectual talents and selected them, out of a huge population, with carefully designed techniques. I argue that it is the selection process, rather that pedagogical principles, that are the main instrument in this business.

Another of the project texts (paper 3) deals with education in a related context. I have collected material about student migration, primarily focusing on "study abroad agencies" acting in Hyderabad as brokers between Indian students and foreign universities. The text explores the function and particular competences of local agencies in a transnational system of student mobility. The result shows for example that Indian students hardly consult agencies because they are hesitant or irresolute; on the contrary they know rather well for what they need assistance (usually visa procedures and scholarship). The main profit for local agencies comes from the foreign universities that to a high degree are dependent on the brokerage of local agencies in order to secure their recruitment of Indian students.

3.
Two of the texts from the project are aiming to contribute to a theoretical discussion concerning the image of a new India. One article is co-authored with Professor Göran Bolin, media scholar at Södertörn University College (Bolin and Ståhlberg 2010 - my contribution is based on paper 4). In the article we analyses how two very different states (India and Estonia) have made considerable efforts to change their international image with the help of "nation branding" campaigns. We argue, on the basis of these cases, that an established view in social sciences of how we may understand "the nation" is largely obsolete. Nations of today are constructed on completely different grounds and with completely different aims, than during the nationalist era of the 20th century. We argue that the phenomenon of nation branding illustrates how "the nation" has moved from a political to a commercial arena, from a domestic to an international audience, and from a historical orientation towards a future orientation in time.

In a second text (paper 5 - to be published as Ståhlberg 2011) I explore the domestic image of India as it appears in popular culture. I examine closer a number of examples from television, advertisement, film and literature, selected at a point in time when India celebrated its 60th anniversary as an independent nation (that is, 2007). In this paper I discuss how neoliberal ideas are intertwined with more established Indian discourses while being disseminated through the mass media to a public audience. The material I refer to, shows how new ideas of entrepreneurship and individual self-actualization are blended with rhetoric and values from the earlier era of Nehruvian-Gandhian nationalism, thereby gaining a legitimacy of familiarity. The paper ends up with a discussion about the popular image of India as a hybrid of nationalistic and neoliberal worldviews.

New Research Question

A new research question that is close at hand is the interpretation of contemporary Indian events that could be regarded as a "backlash" for the vision of a rising India. Several incidents that challenge the success story have been prominently exposed in Indian mass media recently. A main type of stories reports about popular protests against corruption in the government and is often interpreted as if middle class expectations now have turned into discontent and cynicism. An interesting task would be to study how the latest Indian scenario relate to popular protests against corrupt regimes in other parts of the world (for example, the Arabian spring)

Two important publications

Currently I am completing a book with the working title "Indian Futures: Visions and Practices". The book consists of five chapters - plus introduction and conclusion: I) Tropes of Transition (which analyses various symbols of a new India); II) Another tryst with Destiny (about images of a new India in popular culture); III) Branding India (about nation building efforts from government and industry); IV) Mobile Student (about education and career); V) Knowledge and Numbers (about the cultural logic of Indian neoliberalism). My intention is to publish this book during 2012 and I have since before established contacts with the Indian Publishing house Rawat Publishers in Jaipur.

The second publication which I regard as theoretically significant is a chapter with the title "Between Community and Commodity: Nationalism and Nation Brandi", co-authored with Göran Bolin. It appears in the volume Communicating the Nation, edited by Anna Rosvall and Inka Moring and published by Nordicom, Göteborg (2010).

Other types of mediation

Versions of paper from the project have been presented at the following occasion (for paper titles see the publication list):
Annual Contemporary India Seminar, Oslo Universitet, 22 November 2010 and 29 September 2009;
Opening the Black Box of Migration: Brokers and the Organization of Transnational Mobility, Singapore (National University) 19-20 August 2010;
Globalizing South Asia, Helsinki 27-29 May, 2010;
Annual Meeting of The Association of American Anthropologist, Philadelphia 2-6 December 2009;
Cultural Technology/Cultures of Technology, Nobel Museum and Södertörns Högskola, Stockholm19-20 October 2009;
Sveriges och Norges Antropologförbunds gemensamma årskonferens, Bergen, 13-14 May 2009;
International Communication Association's Annual Conference, Chicago 21-25 May 2009; International Conference of Asian Scholars (ICAS), Kuala Lumpur, 2-5 August 2007.

Lectures for students about the project have been given at:
Södertörns Högskola: Media studies and English
Stockholm University: Social Anthropology, Film Studies and Journalism
Jammia Millia University, New Delhi: Media studies
University of Hyderabad: Media Studies
Vienna University: Social Anthropology,.

Publications

Bolin, Göran och Per Ståhlberg. 2010. Between Community and Commodity: Nationalism and Nation Branding. I Anna Rosvall och Inka Moring (eds), Communicating the Nation, Göteborg: Nordicom

Ståhlberg, Per. [Accepterad för publicering, 2011]. Popular Culture and the Indian Future. Economic and Political Weekly

Ståhlberg, Per (Under bearbetning). Indian Futures: Visions and Practices. Jaipur: Rawat Publications.

Konferenspaper (i urval):

Paper 1: “My Time is Now”: Media Technology as a Trope of Transition in Contemporary India. Presenterat vid Transitions: 3rd Annual Contemporary India Seminar, Oslo 2010.

Paper 2: “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing”: Indian coaching schools as focus of contemporary debates on business ethics. Presenterat vid Annual Meeting of The Association of American Anthropologist, Philadelphia 2009.
 
Paper 3: “Mobile Indian Student and the Global Industry of Higher Education”. Presenterat vid Opening the Black Box of Migration: Brokers and the Organization of Transnational Mobility, Singapore 2010.

Paper 4: Visions of the Future: India as a Global Superpower. Presenterat vid International Conference of Asian Scholars, Kuala Lumpur 2007

Paper 5: Another Tryst with Destiny: Popular Culture and the Indian Future. Presenterat vid Cultural Technology/Cultures of Technology, Stockholm 2009.