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Copyright by Saikat Maitra 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Saikat Maitra Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Laboring to Create Magic: The New Worker in the Emerging Retail Industries of Kolkata Committee: Kaushik Ghosh, Supervisor Kathleen Stewart Kamran Ali Hannah Wojciehowski Sofian Merabet Laboring to Create Magic: The New Worker in the Emerging Retail Industries of Kolkata by Saikat Maitra, M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2014 Dedication To Alyssa and Didi Acknowledgements The process of writing the dissertation has often been a solitary activity, but this solitude never assumed the oppressive qualities of loneliness due to the many voices, lives, experiences, events and people who intimately touched and transformed me over these last few years of my Ph.D. First and foremost were the legions of colleagues, friends and co-workers at the various shopping malls I worked in during my period of ethnographic research along with my friends in Rajarhat. Shamik, Ruma, Sk. Sovan, Monirul, Hasan, Kamal, Madhav, Paromita, Debjani, Shompa, Pinky, Rajeev, Amirul, Gulshan, Abu Taleb, Deepak, Sandip, Soma – you have been truly my greatest friends, mentors and teachers in learning something about life and this thing that we call ‘development’ with all its incitements and insidiousness. I hope I have been able to portray atleast some of the excitement, precariousness, drudgery and breathlessness of your lives that I came to know closely. There were many others whose ability to teach me vital lessons in life and writing have been a constant source of inspiration for me. Inspiring too have been my teachers and immediate committee members. Perhaps very few graduate students during these difficult times have been as fortunate as me to have this amazing group of scholars available to talk to, learn from and spend time with. My immediate supervisor Dr. Kaushik Ghosh remains an inspiration to try and emulate in terms of the ability to love, think and engage seriously with the discipline of Anthropology and especially fieldwork. He remains critical in teaching me how to remain v attuned to the ‘small voices’ during fieldwork. It was a revelation to have met Prof. Kathleen Stewart and to have learnt writing as a pleasurable experience. It would not be an exaggeration that atleast my academic life changed critically after I had the good fortune to be her student. Prof. Hannah Wojciehowski has been one of the most generous persons I have ever met in life – generous with her time, her brilliant insights about my work, her unstinting support and encouragement and her love for Foucauldian scholarship that I have come to share. It was absolute generosity on Dr. Sofian Merabet’s part that he agreed to be on my committee at the very last minute and offered the most wonderful comments about my work. He remains an invaluable friend, mentor and interlocutor. Finally, Dr. Kamran Ali. I hope someday, I too would be able to give back to my students the love, care, affection and generosity I have received from him. That would be the truest acknowledgement. That and the true ethical concern for ‘problem bodies’. Staff members in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, especially, like Adriana Dingman, Heather Nathanson-Flowers and Rolee Rios have time and again saved me from many many bureaucratic pitfalls. My friends and colleagues have been inspiring in their support and ability to teach me much about life, studies and how to enjoy a good drink. Cheers to Nandini, Dharitri, Raja, Naminata, Mathangi, Ken, Luciane, Nedra, Alysia, Jenny, Scott, Mohan, Abdulhaq, Maryam, Pearl, Simone, Anthony, Gwen, Nicky, David, Alex, Emily, Sophia, Joey, Ani, Chelsea, Gwen, Jaime, Luciane, Sandra, Elvia, Lorena, Hafeez, Nishtha, Jogi, Indu and Kiran. A very special vi thanks to Beth and Noman. Azfar has been critical for exchanging ideas and learning about worlds that remain dazzling in their difference. Before UT, my intellectual interests were so profoundly influenced by a host of brilliant teachers at Jadavpur University and CSSSC. Prof. Ipshita Chanda, Prof. Kavita Punjabi, Dr. Aveek Majumdar, Prof. Moinak Biswas, Dr. Anirban Das, Prof. Lakshmi Subramanian, Prof. Diana Brydon at UWO, Prof. Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta – have been fundamental to who I am and how I think today. Equally inspiring have been my friends from Kolkata like Samrat, Dheeman, Parjanna, Seemantinidi, Sayantanda, Souravda, Indrani, Diptesh, Asoke, Runa, Ranu, Neelambari and Prasanna. Finally, Prof. Suchorita Chattopadhyay took me under her care and mentorship while I was still in my undergraduate days and I remain profoundly enriched by her continuing mentorship. And then there is the genius Prof. Sibaji Bandyopadhyay. He was truly an ‘event’ in my life as in the lives of so many others. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. My research and dissertation writing was greatly facilitated by a doctoral research grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and two University of Texas at Austin writing fellowships. Finally, no words can adequately express my gratitude to Subhabratada, Ma and Baba. One is truly blessed to call on such people as family. Their unstinting love and support bring constant hope even when everything goes wrong around me. As for Didi and vii Alyssa, I can only say that I dedicate this dissertation to both of you. Without you nothing could have been. Especially in those last ‘dark days’. These are countless debts of love, care, kindness and then some more love. viii Laboring to Create Magic: The New Worker in the Emerging Retail Industries of Kolkata Saikat Maitra, Ph.D The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Kaushik Ghosh My dissertation focuses on the means through which a new worker-identity is getting crafted in the city of Kolkata in India under the impact of neoliberal economic policies of the state on one hand and the changing modes of capital formation on the other. Kolkata’s position as the pre-eminent city of British India in the nineteenth century had led to a huge influx of industrial capital. However, the post-independence era saw a gradual flight of capital due to a long history of political and social turbulence. With the liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1990s, both national and trans-national capital have started flowing back into Kolkata, especially in sectors such as real-estate, retail and service industries. This has led to a huge proliferation of expensive shopping malls and cafes in the city employing a large urban youth population, usually from under-privileged backgrounds. With the state giving up its former faith in socialist principles and instead strongly committing itself to neoliberal economic reforms, the future of development for Kolkata is getting tied to its capacity to attract corporate capital, particularly in organized retail and service sectors. As such, urban labor is coming under a tremendous scrutiny to ix delineate an identity according to principles of flexibility, self-discipline and responsiveness to the needs of contemporary private capitalist interests. In spaces like shopping malls and exclusive cafes, workers are repeatedly trained and indoctrinated to show an affective capacity to serve, be cheerful in their work and to display through bodily comportments the signs of a global cosmopolitanism that can sustain consumption. However, with most of the workers themselves coming from low-income backgrounds with little or no knowledge of the roles they are asked to play as part of their work, uncertainties and anxieties exacerbate the already precarious position of these young workers. This study therefore looks at how workers negotiate everyday work environments and how such work environments in turn alter and condition their identity through multiple strategies of discipline and control emanating from both the neoliberal state as well as corporate institutions. x Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………….1 Uneasy Rhythms…………………………………………………………..5 Laboring Subjects…………………………………………………………6 The Disonance of History………………………………………………....20 Reconfiguring the Role of the State………………………………………25 Affective Labor and Refashioning of Worker Subjectivity………………37 Methodology……………………………………………………………..44 Chapter 1: Labor of Self-making: Youth Service Workers and Post-socialist Urban Development in Kolkata ......................................48 Urban Make-over ..........................................................................................48 Naxalbari and Rise of Post-Industrialization ................................................52 The Public of Development………………………………………………...68 From the Dreary Factory to a House of Air and Light……………………..70 From Work to Non-Work?.............................................................................74 Disparate Rhythms of Life and Work………………………………………78 Work/Play…………………………………………………………………...82 Weeping in the Corner……………………………………………………..90 Leisure/Labor and the Impress of the Body………………………………93 Chapter 2 Miming the Global: Workplace Training and the Predicament of the Mall Culture ........................................................................98 A Perfect Plate of Nachos? ...........................................................................98 Mimetic Atmospheres .................................................................................102