India: From Indolence to Innovation

Abstract

The weight of thought on India is so immense that even Atlas would sag. A deafening chorus on austerity in India deafens the ears as nineteenth-century British colonial officers standing shoulder-to-shoulder with twentieth-century scholars, mendicant spiritualists and twenty-first-century CEOs all jostle for their voices to be heard and acknowledged as definitive. My task in this book has not been to add to this motley ensemble, but instead to give earnest thought to those who now appear the loudest — namely, actors with stakes in India on the world stage. The aim of this book has been to explore the discourses and counter-discourses about India that have waxed and waned from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Two discourses on Indian austerity, and specifically an Indian work ethic, have most obviously made their way into the contemporary global social imaginary — namely, indolence and innovation. I have tried to show that behind these shifts in discourse are the mobilities of globals underpinning India’s knowledge economy now in the limelight as an indicator of India’s future renaissance.