Dream Zones: Anticipating Capitalism and Development in India 9780745333731, 9780745333724, 9781783710386, 9781783710409, 9781783710393

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Dream Zones

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Anthropology, Culture and Society Series Editors: Professor Vered Amit, Concordia University and Professor Christina Garsten, Stockholm University Recent titles: Claiming Individuality: The Cultural Politics of Distinction Edited by Vered Amit and Noel Dyck Community, Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Human Commonality Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport Home Spaces, Street Styles: Contesting Power and Identity in a South African City Leslie J. Bank In Foreign Fields: The Politics and Experiences of Transnational Sport Migration Thomas F. Carter A World of Insecurity: Anthropological Perspectives on Human Security Edited by Thomas Eriksen, Ellen Bal and Oscar Salemink

What Is Anthropology? Thomas Hylland Eriksen Discordant Development: Global Capitalism and the Struggle for Connection in Bangladesh Katy Gardner Organisational Anthropology: Doing Ethnography in and Among Complex Organisations Edited by Christina Garsten and Anette Nyqvist Border Watch: Cultures of Immigration, Detention and Control Alexandra Hall Corruption: Anthropological Perspectives Edited by Dieter Haller and Cris Shore Anthropology’s World: Life in a Twenty-First Century Discipline Ulf Hannerz

A History of Anthropology Second Edition Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Finn Sivert Nielsen

Humans and Other Animals Cross-cultural Perspectives on Human–Animal Interactions Samantha Hurn

Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives Third Edition Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Cultures of Fear: A Critical Reader Edited by Uli Linke and Danielle Taana Smith

Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology Third Edition Thomas Hylland Eriksen

The Will of the Many: How the Alterglobalisation Movement is Changing the Face of Democracy Marianne Maeckelbergh

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Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice David Mosse The Gloss of Harmony: The Politics of Policy Making in Multilateral Organisations Edited by Birgit Müller Contesting Publics Feminism, Activism, Ethnography Lynne Phillips and Sally Cole Food For Change The Politics and Values of Social Movements Jeff Pratt and Peter Luetchford Race and Ethnicity in Latin America Second Edition Peter Wade Race and Sex in Latin America Peter Wade The Capability of Places: Methods for Modelling Community Response to Intrusion and Change Sandra Wallman Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War: The Influence of Foundations, McCarthyism and the CIA Edited by Dustin M. Wax

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Dream Zones Anticipating Capitalism and Development in India Jamie Cross

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First published 2014 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Copyright © Jamie Cross 2014 The right of Jamie Cross to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

978 0 7453 3373 1 978 0 7453 3372 4 978 1 7837 1038 6 978 1 7837 1040 9 978 1 7837 1039 3

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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

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Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Text design by Melanie Patrick Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America

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Contents List of Maps and Figuresvi Series Prefacevii Acknowledgementsviii Glossary and Abbreviationsx Note on Languagexii 1 The Economy of Anticipation

1

2 The Vision of Growth

24

3 The Land of Speculation

53

4 The Factory of the Future

92

5 The Labour of Aspiration

127

6 The Struggles for Tomorrow

160

7 Anticipation, Capitalism, Anthropology

187

Notes193 Bibliography202 Index217

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Maps and Figures Maps   1 The seven economic zones created by the government of India between 1965 and 1991   2 Total special economic zones granted planning approval (mid 2013)

xiii xiv

Figures   1 Industrial Visakhapatnam, with the city’s steel plant on the horizon25   2 Gateway to the Visakha steel plant 26  3 Gateway to the Visakhapatnam special economic zone 27   4 Old fields, new road: inside the Andhra Pradesh special economic zone 56   5 Resettlement colony: Main Street 79   6 The future is here 88   7 ‘Do not bite the hand that feeds you’ 99   8 Kondal Rao with single spindle machine (2005) 128   9 Diamond boys at the end of another a shift (2005) 134 10 Suresh with phone and friend 151 11 Panel hearing a deposition, People’s Audit of SEZs (2009) 181

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Series Preface Anthropology is a discipline based upon in-depth ethnographic works that deal with wider theoretical issues in the context of particular, local conditions – to paraphrase an important volume from the series: large issues explored in small places. This series has a particular mission: to publish work that moves away from an old-style descriptive ethnography that is strongly area-studies oriented, and offers genuine theoretical arguments that are of interest to a much wider readership, but which are nevertheless located and grounded in solid ethnographic research. If anthropology is to argue itself a place in the contemporary intellectual world, then it must surely be through such research. We start from the question: ‘What can this ethnographic material tell us about the bigger theoretical issues that concern the social sciences?’ rather than ‘What can these theoretical ideas tell us about the ethnographic context?’ Put this way round, such work becomes about large issues, set in a (relatively) small place, rather than detailed description of a small place for its own sake. As Clifford Geertz once said, ‘Anthropologists don’t study villages; they study in villages.’ By place, we mean not only geographical locale, but also other types of ‘place’ – within political, economic, religious or other social systems. We therefore publish work based on ethnography within political and religious movements, occupational or class groups, among youth, development agencies, and nationalist movements; but also work that is more thematically based – on kinship, landscape, the state, violence, corruption, the self. The series publishes four kinds of volume: ethnographic monographs; comparative texts; edited collections; and shorter, polemical essays. We publish work from all traditions of anthropology, and all parts of the world, which combines theoretical debate with empirical evidence to demonstrate anthropology’s unique position in contemporary scholarship and the contemporary world. Professor Vered Amit Professor Christina Garsten

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Acknowledgements This book has been driven by a commitment to what I understand as public anthropology, a commitment fostered by a number of people and institutions but anchored in my experience as a postgraduate student at the University of Sussex. In finishing this book I feel a considerable debt of gratitude to those who once taught me and have supported me since, in particular to James Fairhead, Jon Mitchell, Geert de Neve, Filippo Osella, Jeffrey Pratt and Jock Stirrat. Of course the material in this book carries the legacy of conversations with many people, including those who have read and commented on the material here in its various early forms. I would particularly like to thank Jonathan Parry, whose methodological commitment to empirical research, to questions of work, labour and industry in India, and to ethnographic writing as a genre has been particularly influential. In addition I would like to thank Sharad Chari, Laura Bear, Mukalika Banerjee, Akhil Gupta, Asseem Srivastava, Amita Bhaviskar, A.R. Vasavi, Alpa Shah, M. Vijayabaskar, S. Seethalakshmi, Madhumita Dutta, Patrick Osscarson, Michael Levien, Anant Maringanti, M. Vijayabaskar, Rebecca Prentice and Dinah Rajak, Lotte Hoek, Ward Berenschot and Malini Sur. This book would not have been possible without the long-term support of many people in Visakhapatnam. I would like to thank, in particular, G. Jai Kisan, K.E. Raj Pramukh and P.D.S. Pal Kumar in the Department of Anthropology, and M. Nalini and Meena Rao in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, Andhra University. My very special thanks to Indira Gummiluri, my guide to Telugu language and literature, and Ram Babu for their hospitality over several years. Thanks to Suneetha and Mani – my long lost comrades – and to Chakri for his research assistance. Thanks also to J.V. Ratnam, E.A.S. Sharma, V.S. Krishna and Radha Krishna, whose activism animates the city in diverse ways. Most of all I would like to thank those people who I first met on the floor of the Worldwide Diamonds factory in 2005 and whose various commitments to the future shaped the perspective from which this book is written. The book is dedicated to you: Chandrakala (Chinni), Geetha, Rama Lakhsmi, Lakshmi, Prakash, Patnaik, Laxman Rao, Kondal Rao, Appala Raju, Suresh, Srinivas, Bhaskar Rao and Nageswar Rao. I would

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Acknowledgements  ix also like to thank those civil servants and government officials whose support facilitated my research in north coastal Andhra Pradesh but who have chosen to remain anonymous. In writing this book I have had the good fortune to be hosted at several institutions. At the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore I would like to thank Carol Upadhya; at the University of Amsterdam I would like to thank Mario Rutten and Jan Breman; at the National University of Ireland, Jamie Saris, Chandana Mathur, Steve Coleman and Thomas Strong; at the Australian National University, Alan Rumsey and Francesca Merlan, Philip Taylor, Assa Doron and Nicholas Peterson. At the School of International Labor Relations, Cornell University, special thanks to Sarosh Kuruvilla, Rebbeca Given and George Boyer. At Pluto Press my thanks to David Castle for his enthusiasm for my project and his considerable patience, to Jonathan Maunder, and Sophie Richmond for her copy-editing. Thanks also to Ciaran Cross whose reading primed the final text. The research on which this book is based has been financially supported by doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council (2003–7 and 2009–10) and a Leach Postdoctoral Fellowship from the UK’s Royal Anthropological Institute (2008–9). It has also been wittingly or unwittingly subsidized at various moments by Paul and Jo Cross, Ismene Stalpers and Oliver Maxwell. Finally, I thank my fellow traveller Alice Street, without whom there would be no book and no point, and Robinson, from whom these acknowledgements are keeping me.

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Glossary and Abbreviations ADB aakshalu Andhra Jyoti ayupettu benami

Asia Development Bank aspirations Shining Andhra, Telugu newspaper strengths third party or false name in transactions bhavodvegaalu passions and sentiments CPI Congress Party of India CPI (M) Communist Party of India (Marxist) D. Form patta title document for land redistributed to the poor Dasara annual harvest festival dastaks Mughal-era duty-free pass dharnas relay-hunger strikes, Eenadu Today, Telugu newspaper firmans Mughal-era imperial decree gram panchayats village-level governing body grama sabhas village-level assembly GTZ German Development Agency hawa air, wind kalalu dreams karikalu aspirations katnam groom price Mandal village-level administrative area Nagula Chauvithi South Indian festival associated with the worship of snake goddesses NAPM National Alliance of People’s Movements nirgiva prantham dead zones Nirvaasitulu Shanksema Sangham Welfare Association for the Displaced patta private land title puroni advance payment agreement pulli tiger putu a unit of measurement

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Glossary and Abbreviations  xi saravedi chetlu SEZ Tahsildars tapana taragarilu TDP tikaadu uppu valmeekam varnas Zamindars

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silver trees special economic zone village secretaries colloquial Telugu expression of obligation in exchange relations brokers Telugu Dessam Party middlemen air snake pits Hinduism’s four-fold division of society hereditary landlords

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Note on Language Throughout this text I follow the Rice Transliteration Standard in dispensing with the use of diacritics and representing modern Telugu using the Roman alphabet.

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JAMMU & KASHMIR

HIMACHAL PRADESH ARUNCHAL PRADESH

PUNJAB UTTARAKHAND

HARYANA

SIKKIM

Delhi

ASSAM

UTTAR PRADESH

RAJASTHAN

BIHAR MEGHALAYA JHARKHAND

Kandla GUJARAT

MADHYA PRADESH

WEST BENGAL

ARH MAHARASHTRA

MANIPUR

MIZORAM TRIPURA

Calcutta

ISG ATT CHH

DADRA & NAGAR HAVELI

NAGALAND

ORISSA

Mumbai Visakhapatnam

ANDHRA PRADESH GOA

KARNATAKA

Kochi

Chennai

TAMIL NADU

KERALA

Map 1 The seven economic zones created by the government of India between 1965 and 1991; with the state of Andhra Pradesh highlighted

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JAMMU & KASHMIR

HIMACHAL PRADESH ARUNCHAL PRADESH

PUNJAB UTTARAKHAND

HARYANA

SIKKIM

Delhi

ASSAM

UTTAR PRADESH

RAJASTHAN

BIHAR MEGHALAYA JHARKHAND

Kandla GUJARAT

MADHYA PRADESH

WEST BENGAL

ARH MAHARASHTRA

MANIPUR

MIZORAM TRIPURA

Calcutta

ISG ATT CHH

DADRA & NAGAR HAVELI

NAGALAND

ORISSA

Mumbai ANDHRA PRADESH

GOA