Course Title:

Indian Social Structure

Course Instructors:
Prof. Manish Thakur
Prof. Saikat Maitra
 Course Announcements
• Grading Policy: Final examination will count for 100% of your grades
for the course. Final examination will be a combination of both
essay type and short answer questions based on the reading
materials and in-class lectures.

• Class Participation: It is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED by both Prof.

Thakur and Prof. Maitra that students come to the class having
thoroughly read the course materials.

 Students are expected to actively participate in the class discussions

in a courteous and respectful manner.

 Both the quality and quantity of class participation will help the
students in establishing a good impression on the instructors.
 In-class Policies
• Use of lap-tops and cellphones during the class is
STRICTLY prohibited and violation of this policy
might incur penalty points.
• Kindly come to the class on time and any student
who is late by 10 mins for the class will be
marked absent unless there is clear documented
reason for the delay.
• Absence from class without sufficient
documented reason will be dealt with as per
relevant PGP policies.
• Academic malpractices will be strictly dealt with
in accordance with relevant PGP rules.
 Class Exercise - I
Why study a course like Indian Social Structure
(based on a sociological study of Indian society)
in a management institution?

What are some of your key learning objectives

and expectations from this course?

(Please take 2 mins and write down 2/3 points

each, which will be discussed in class)
 Learning Objectives
• The task of the Manager: to manage people and
resources
• Understanding the social bases and contexts from
which the people and resources emerge
• The changes in Indian society especially from the time
of independence to the contemporary moment
• The specific hopes, aspirations and anxieties of the
people in contemporary India whom you are expected
to manage
• The vast diversity in Indian society and its dynamic,
changing nature that poses difficult challenges in
effective management and administration
 Focus of the Course
• The sociological changes in India from the time of
economic liberalization in 1991 (post-
liberalization India) to the present
• Wide-ranging transformations in Indian society
during this time
In-depth focus on two aspects of these
transformations affecting:
1. Management practices and technologies of
labor
2. Development of new social identities in India
related to gender, caste, class and regional
identities.
 What was so special about the
economic liberalization of 1991?

• Or “yeh hi hai right choice baby”?

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBZ63pH
_GjI
 The Importance of Choice in Post-
liberalization India

• Choice related to market

• The flood of new consumer goods in India
• Coke/ Pepsi/McDonalds not merely
commodities or brands but signifying life-style
choices
• The birth of the discerning Indian consumer
 Consumerism as Identity
• The vast availability of consumer products in
the Indian market
• “We are what we consume” – personal
identities linked to our consumer patterns and
preferences
• New ideas about life-styles – the emphasis on
global living standards
• Birth of a new consumerist middle-class
 Market Forces and Political Changes

• Re-thinking the role of the Indian state after

1991
• Market or State or what is the role of the state
after liberalization?
• Affirmative Action – the Mandal commission
report and the subsequent protests against
the affirmative action of the state
 What does liberalization mean for
India?
• The dependence on market forces including
private investments for growth and
development
• But growth for whom and who gets left out of
the market led development?
• Development and growth for all or for a select
few?
• Re-imagining the state after liberalization
 The Developmentalist State and
Nehruvian Socialism
• From 1947 – 1980s the state as the key motor
for growth and development in India
• Nehru’s Temples – The Hydroelectric dams
and Steel factories
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuKpclO5
ZjE
 Planned economy and the rise of
state led industrialization
• The adoption of industrialization and modernization as
a key aspect of development in India under the 2nd Five
Year Plan between 1956 – 1961
• The Mahalonobis Plan – intensive capital investments
by the Indian state in public sector enterprises to
bolster industrialization like the steel cities of Bhilai or
Durgapur
• The emphasis on planned growth through 5 year plans
like in the former USSR. Mixed economy with strong
socialist overtones
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsw-zjuUsqA
 The Second Five Year Plan as a form
of Social Engineering
• The emphasis on industrialization in the Second Five Year
Plan also linked to broader goals of modernization – not
just through the infrastructural projects of large dams and
steel mills but also creating a new modern Indian subject
free of ‘pre-modern’ irrationalities.
• Thus industrial skill under the IITs for instance was
calculated to provide a scientific bent of mind to India’s
working classes, especially the youth along with making
them employable in large public sector undertakings with
advanced production technologies.
• Skill training was also seen as critical for emancipating
industrial labor from its supposedly deep-rooted
attachment to the rural, agricultural economy – the
systemic social engineering for transforming rural peasants
to urban industrial proletarians.
 The Growth of Large Public Sector
Undertakings (PSUs)
• Import substitution and lessening dependence on
foreign aids were seen as crucial to post-colonial
growth in India after 1947.
• The non-aligned movement where India was
going to be neither fully socialist like USSR/China
nor fully capitalist like the USA.
• Poverty alleviation and employment generation
as fundamental objectives for PSUs – state’s role
in creating an equitable and equal society
through austerity, anti-consumerism and labor.
 The Problem of Planned Economic
Growth
• Stagnation and lack of development from the
1970s
• PSUs becoming unprofitable with large labor
unrest and strikes
• Inflation and social unrest especially in the early
1970s with Maoist movements in many Indian
cities like Kolkata
• Unemployment and lack of opportunities for the
youth from the 1970s leading to immense
pressures on the state to find a solution
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX32vpLxbT
8
 Privatization as solution?
• The opening up of the Indian economy and
growth through private corporate investments
• From austerity and anti-consumerist socialism
to market driven conspicuous consumption
and the emphasis on private capital in
development
• Profitability, flexibility, curtailment of labour
right such as unionization in certain sectors
like IT/ITES
 Liberalization: Pro-business or pro-
market in India?
• State gradually shifting away from social
investments without creating the infrastructures
necessary for a strong market economy
• Great inter-regional and inter-state disparities in
capitalist growth with capital scarce regions
continuing to underperform
• The real beneficiaries of liberalization are a small
group of business, political and economic elites
• Except in the case of electoral politics, very little
real democratic participation of India’s masses in
creating pro-market policies
 Changing Structures of Work
Relations and organizations
• The huge rise of temporary contractual labor force, even in
PSUs (Jonathan Parry) which is often not protected by
existing union structures
• New types of globally distributed Indian labor force
especially in the IT sector and the specific challenges that
such workers face due to constant need for flexibility and
innovation (Carol Upadhaya)
• The large presence of women in the managerial work force
in new forms of work such as in IT and financial services.
The new types of gender roles that are expected of such
women workers and managers (Reena Patel)
• The impact of the internet and New Social Media on
contemporary Indian society (Sahana Udupa)
Social identities in transformation
• The changing patterns of caste identities in a post
Mandal commission India (D.L. Sheth) and how
academic institutions like the IITs are shaped by the
emergent caste politics now (Ajanta Subramanian)
• The role of dispossession and development in creating
new socially precarious subjects (Michael Levien)
• The transformations in the rural-urban connections in
India due to the expansion of cities in India and the
crisis in the rural agricultural sectors (Dipankar Gupta)
• The cultural and social position of diasporic Indians
(Patricia Uberoi)
 You Tube Links

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBZ63pH
_GjI
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuKpclO5
ZjE
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsw-
zjuUsqA
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX32vpLx
bT8