Abstract
As questions of “knowledge economy” have come to the center of studies of the global political economy, the World Bank and other international organizations have begun promoting “knowledge for development” (K4D) in many postcolonial contexts over the last several years. These strategies toward broad goals of social and economic development presume a neoliberal orientation of the individual towards state and society. Using the example of contemporary urban India, this study examines the unexpected outcomes of imposing and legitimating the neoliberal political rationality that underpins K4D practices at individual and societal levels. Rather than having successfully produced a “new middle class,” as touted in media representations of India’s success, emphasis on K4D and a knowledge economy in India has had the effect of producing an elite with formidable economic strength, as well as the cultural dominance to re-imagine and negotiate meanings of Indianness. Here, I approach the knowledge economy as a “global assemblage” concretized and specified through the everyday practices of individuals, and aim to critique the assumptions of the knowledge economy by drawing on the articulations of contemporary Indian knowledge professionals.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See http://www.developmentgateway.org under the heading “country evaluations” to get a sense of the number of countries discussing the knowledge economy at the level of policy.
For more details on India’s Knowledge Commission, see http://www.knowledgecommission.org.
The “four pillars” of the knowledge economy, both in World Bank and smaller NGO writings are agreed to include broadly: education and training, informational infrastructure, economic incentive and institutional regime, and innovation systems. Reference to the “four pillars” is common in online knowledge economy literature.
See the details of the World Bank’s Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM) at: http://info.worldbank.org/etools/kam2005/.
Low voter turnout among the middle and upper classes in India is a well-documented phenomenon (see Deshpande, 2003).
All the names used in this article are pseudonyms to protect the confidentiality of the interviews I conducted.
See http://web.worldbank.org/ (link to “learning” and “WBI learning programs” to find “knowledge for development”).
Contemporary Indian knowledge workers are not necessarily the first in India to identify with these values. Graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in an earlier generation adopted these values, but had to leave India to seek out opportunities that would support that orientation. These graduates, however, were far more elite, scarce, and relatively less visible, in comparison to Indian knowledge workers today.
References
Agrawal, A. (1996). Poststructuralist approaches to development: Some critical reflections. Peace and Change, 24/4, 464–477.
Baker, S., & Kriplani, M. (2004). India rising: Programming jobs are heads overseas by the thousands. Is there a way for the US to stay on top? Business Week, 84–92, March 1, 2004.
Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society. In M. Castells (Ed.), The information age: Economy, society, & culture, 2nd Edition 3 vols. vol. 1. Oxford: Blackwell.
Chatterjee, P. (1990). The nationalist resolution of the women’s question. In K. Sangari & S. Vaid (Eds.), Recasting women: Essays in Indian colonial history. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Collier, S. (2006). Global assemblages. Theory, Culture and Society, 23/2–3, 399–401.
de Jonquières, G. (2005). India’s knowledge economy. Financial Times.
Deshpande, S. (2003). Contemporary India: A sociological view. New Delhi: Viking.
Drucker, P. (1993). Post-capitalist society. New York: Harper Business.
Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ferguson, J. (1994). The anti-politics machine: Development, depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Fernandes, L. (2000a). Restructuring the New Middle class in liberalizing India. Comparative studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, 20/1–2, 88–105.
Fernandes, L. (2000b). Rethinking globalization: Gender, nation and the middle class in liberalizing India. In M. deKoven (Ed.), Feminist locations: Theory/practice/local/global. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Friedman, T. (2004). Software of democracy. New York Times, 11, March 21, 2004.
Friedman, T. (2005). The world is flat: A brief history of the 21st century. (1st ed.) New York, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Giddens, A. (1994). Living in a post-traditional society. In A. G. Ulrich Beck & S. Lash (Eds.), Reflexive modernization: Politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Gouldner, A. (1979). The future of intellectuals and the rise of the new class. New York: Seabury.
Khadria, B. (2001). Shifting paradigms of globalization: the twenty-first century transition toward generics in skilled migration from India. International Migration, 39/5, 45–72.
Lal, V. (2003). North American Hindus, the sense of history, and the politics of internet diasporism. In R. C. Lee & S.-l. C. Wong (Eds.), Asian America.Net: Ethnicity, nationalism, and cyberspace. London: Routledge.
Mehta, P. B. (2006). To pity the plumage and forget the dying bird [http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060523/asp/opinion/story_6255404.asp]. The Telegraph, (Calcutta), 2006 [cited May 23 2006].
Mukhi, S. S. (1998). “Underneath my blouse beats my Indian heart”: Sexuality, nationalism, and Indian womanhood in the United States. In S. D. Dasgupta (Ed.), A patchwork shawl: Chronicles of South Asian women in America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Nair, R. B. (1997). Technobrat: Culture in a cybernetic classroom. New Delhi: Harper Collins.
NASSCOM (2005). Indian IT Industry-Fact Sheet: NASSCOM- McKinsey Report.
Nygren, A. (1999). Local knowledge in the environment-development discourse. Critique of Anthropology, 19/3, 267–288.
Ong, A., & Collier, S. (2005). Global assemblages, anthropological problems. In S. J. Collier & A. Ong (Eds.), Global assemblages: Technology, politics, and ethics as anthropoligical problems. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Pink, D. (2004). The new face of the Silicon age: How India became the capital of the computing revolution. Wired, 96–103, February.
Rajagopal, A. (2001). Politics after television: Religious nationalism and the reshaping of the Indian public. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ray, R., & Katzenstein, M. (2005). In the beginning, there was the Nehruvian State. In R. Ray & M. F. Katzenstein (Eds.), Social movements in India: Poverty, power, and politics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rose, N. (1996). Governing “advanced” liberal democracies. In A. Barry, T. Osbourne, & N. Rose (Eds.), Foucault and political reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rose, N. (1999). Powers of freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saxenian, A. (2000) Back to India: Indian software engineers are returning with enthusiasm and entrepreneurial know-how. Wall Street Journal: Technology Journal Asia. Available from http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB948660121193873632.djm, January 24, 2000.
Sen, G. (2002). Feminine fables: Imaging the Indian woman in painting, photography, and cinema. Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing.
van der Veer, P. (2004). Transnational religion; Hindu and Muslim movements. Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 7, 4–18.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Aihwa Ong for providing the intellectual tools and space to conceptualize this article, to Raka Ray for her encouragement and careful readings, and to the Editors of Theory and Society, whose insights allowed me to polish this work into its final shape.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Radhakrishnan, S. Rethinking knowledge for development: Transnational knowledge professionals and the “new” India. Theor Soc 36, 141–159 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9024-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9024-2