3

Click here to load reader

Neoliberal Patrimony in Modi’s India · Neoliberal Patrimony in Modi’s India . Navtej Purewal . Source: ... Modi has come to symbolize embody and patriarchy and patrimony as head

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Neoliberal Patrimony in Modi’s India · Neoliberal Patrimony in Modi’s India . Navtej Purewal . Source: ... Modi has come to symbolize embody and patriarchy and patrimony as head

Presentation at SSAI Panel Discussion: ‘Assessing Modi’s Track Record Eighteen Months On’ Navtej Purewal

1

Neoliberal Patrimony in Modi’s India

Navtej Purewal

Source: http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Modi-Raksha.jpg

The Modi government represents a strikingly distinctive form of the Indian state shaped by neoliberalism which strategically evokes populist, traditional modes of cultural ‘norms’ as a means of deepening market processes. These are not contradictory processes but converging ones, making the supposed expanding ‘opportunities’ of ‘financial inclusion’ for women in India a matter of increasing women’s dependence on men through patrimony -inheritance passed over generations through men- which circumscribes women’s autonomy within restrictive cultural codes. In light of the Modi government’s ambitious growth-oriented economic programmes shining light on India as an emerging global economic power, gender relations are being very firmly packaged with rather problematic and regressive understandings of women’s social and economic position. In the process, Modi has come to symbolize and embody patriarchy and patrimony as head of state and head of India’s current economic programmes.

Since coming to power in 2014, women’s ‘security’ and ‘safety’ have featured prominently within Modi’s social agenda in meshing his conservative social agenda with his neoliberal economic agenda. While his economic policies exhibited in ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ were widely celebrated especially during his November 2015 visit to the UK in relation to foreign investment, growth-orientation, and doing away with previous ‘license raj’ restrictions, this was met with a forceful opposition at the time of his visit which was a reminder of how Modi’s neoliberal economic ‘openness’ is accompanied by a track record of a closing and narrowing Hindutva social agenda built on a legacy in the state of Gujarat. Pet programmes have thus been essential for Modi to continue to push through and sell his economic agenda which have become an integral part of Modi’s neoliberal and Hindutva governmentality.

One of these pet programmes, the Jan Dhan Yojana scheme [http://jandhanyojana.net/], affirmed this ‘norm’ through a social security scheme marketed through codes highlighting the charitable goodwill of men to “gift” to women through patrimony. In the ninth edition of his national broadcast Man Ki Baat in June 2015, Modi announced insurance schemes to “gift” to “sisters” (including women and girls working as domestic help or labourers) ahead of Raksha Badhan in August:

Page 2: Neoliberal Patrimony in Modi’s India · Neoliberal Patrimony in Modi’s India . Navtej Purewal . Source: ... Modi has come to symbolize embody and patriarchy and patrimony as head

Presentation at SSAI Panel Discussion: ‘Assessing Modi’s Track Record Eighteen Months On’ Navtej Purewal

2

On Raksha Bandhan (transl. day marking brothers’ bond of protection to sisters) can we present these schemes worth Rs 12 or Rs 330 to our sisters?

In July 2015, the Modi government further announced a fixed deposit scheme to ‘deepen financial inclusion’ by announcing that brothers could open fixed deposits in their sisters’ names for Rs. 5000 which the government would top up with life and accident insurance. Thus, the ‘bond of protection’ associated with the ritualistic tying of raakhi by a sister on a brother’s wrist, was, through collaboration with the banking and financial sector, brought into the discourse and cultural code of ‘security’ of women and girls as sisters through patrimony rather than economic justice or autonomy. Alongside this pet programme has been a rolling out of a mass private social security scheme including accidental, life, and pensions cover. Symbolically, this marked a distinct departure from notions of welfare social security demonstrated under the quasi-welfare approach of the Congress. Indeed, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana scheme was merely an extension of the previous Congress government’s scheme of financial inclusion in which hitherto only literate people were entitled to a bank account.

In a context where a decade after the Hindu Succession Amendment Act (2005) which gave women the right to inherit, only one in 10 women whose parents own agricultural land actually inherit any land at all (U.N. Women and the land rights advocacy group Landesa) [http://www.landesa.org/wp-content/uploads/hsaa-study-report.pdf]. This study, conducted eight years after women were given equal inheritance rights in law, highlighted how dowry continues to be viewed as women’s inheritance while men inherit the main assets of the household, enforcing patrimony as the ‘norm’. Modi’s pet programmes have continued to assert this through a reliance on the domestic mode of production in which economic, social and cultural dynamics of the household are highlighted, built into pet programmes, and even commodified through a further entrenchment of gender ‘norms’ through patrimony and gifts, rather than addressing unequal gender social relations.

Bias against the ‘girl child’, sexual violence, and other indicators of gender inequality cannot be corrected by pet programmes such as ‘Selfie with Daughter’ or Raksha Bandhan/‘bond of protection’ savings schemes which reassert women as dependents and as receivers of patrimony in a male-centred model in which women by and large do not inherit, are tied to wealth through men, and are increasingly feeling the pressures of the neoliberal forces in Modi’s India to be ‘productive’ and not burdens. This emerging picture of neoliberal patrimony raises questions around the mixed signals that such pet programmes are sending:

o If Modi’s economic agenda is projecting India as a global magnet of human capital and production, then how does his conservative social agenda match up with his ambitious economic agenda?

o How are attitudes and social relations being shaped by this emerging form of neoliberal patrimony? How can the patrimonial perceptions of women as sisters and daughters be reconciled with the idea of women as colleagues and workers? Further, are men protectors or aggressors?

These mixed signals are proving to open up other uncanny possibilities for Modi’s industry and corporate-friendly India. The negative global attention on sexual violence and women’s ‘safety’ has created what might be called a privatization of public moral panic, with many companies getting in on the sexual violence ‘market’. In line with the ‘Digital India’

Page 3: Neoliberal Patrimony in Modi’s India · Neoliberal Patrimony in Modi’s India . Navtej Purewal . Source: ... Modi has come to symbolize embody and patriarchy and patrimony as head

Presentation at SSAI Panel Discussion: ‘Assessing Modi’s Track Record Eighteen Months On’ Navtej Purewal

3

programme, Modi asked mobile phone makers in August 2015 selling in India to create a panic button on new phones as a sort of ‘rape alarm’ or single touch emergency system. There is, of course, an existing market of apps such as GoSuraksheit, SafeTrac, Sentinel, iFollow, PanicGuard and Nirbhaya that can be downloaded onto mobiles and other devices. Similarly, there are apps for reporting sexual violence which advertise their services in the context of a market of choice. As the advertisement of products by Safecity purport:

There are different things that work for each of us. Some of us feel safer with a pepper spray and some of us being trained in self-defense. Find what works for you here from a range for products/services and apps in the market. (http://safecity.in/products-services/)

Indeed, as the conviction for rape of an Uber driver in October 2015 [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-34578477] so clearly highlighted, technology, contrary to the Digital India campaign, is not a panacea for all of India’s social problems. Patrimony provides a reliable set of moral codes for neoliberal economics while distracting attention away from broader forms of exploitation. For instance, why not highlight the lack of attention to rights of women to inherit since the 2005 amendments to the Hindu Succession Act rather than “gifting” women at the time of raksha bandhan in such the financial inclusion scheme Jan Dhan Yojana? There is no doubt that the neoliberal economic agenda of Modi’s government will continue to extend and deepen programmes of ‘financial inclusion’ through further pet progammes designed to highlight ‘culture’ while inscribing patrimony as a ‘bond of protection’ which fail to address structural dimensions of poverty, inequality, and exploitation. This approach has brought out tensions between the pulling of women into the market as workers and consumers and a pushing back through moral policing, patrimony and gender ‘norms’ as non-inheriting, economically dependent, territorialized bodies. So which way will it be? The model of neoliberal patrimony highlighted in several pet programmes so far shows a commitment in the foreseeable future to the concoction of neoliberal patrimony which suits the Modi government’s requirements for a model of growth with a populist social agenda.