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Abstract
This paper examines the emergence of Hyderabad as a hub of the global information technology economy, and in particular, the role of higher education in Hyderabad's transformation as the labor market for the new economy. The extensive network of professional education institutions that service the global economy illustrates the ways in which neoliberal globalization is produced through educational restructuring and new modes of urban development. Neoliberal globalization, however, is a variegated process wherein local social hierarchies articulate with state policies and global capital. This study shows how caste and class relations in the education sector in Andhra Pradesh are instrumental to forming Hyderabad's connection to the global economy. The contradictions of these regional realignments of education, geography and economy are manifest in the uneven development of the region and the rise of new socio-political struggles for the right to the city.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the SSRC InterAsia Connections Conference in Singapore, December 2010. The author also thanks the anonymous reviewers and editors of the special issue for their helpful comments.
Notes
1. ‘March 24th, 2000 will forever remain a red letter day in the 400 years history of Hyderabad as it is for the first time that an American President is on a visit to South India and Hyderabad has got the rare honor to have been considered in the itinerary of the American President’ (http://www.reachouthyderabad.com/clinton4.htm). In 2002, Bill Gates’ decision to visit Hyderabad and bypass Bangalore city, the other hub of the software industry, was also noted as Hyderabad's ascendant position in the global economy.
2. As a commentator on a technology web blog phrased it, ‘The decision of Microsoft Corp to set up a software development centre, the first out of the USA has put the industry in euphoria’ (see http://www.microsoft.com/india/msidc/life/hyderabad.aspx).
3. In this paper I limit my focus to developments in the higher education sector that have been most vital to the region's capture of the IT sector, though state and elite discourse on schools have also been significant to constituting neoliberal globalization as the new policy regime in Andhra Pradesh.
4. The structural adjustment program (SAP) of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposed neoliberal policies on borrower nations as conditionalities in exchange for loans. Countries in Africa and Latin America were subject to structural adjustment in the 1980s, much earlier than India. Highly indebted countries had much less negotiating power than for instance India and the deleterious effects of neoliberal policies or SAP were apparent much earlier in these countries.
5. Kamma, Reddy and Raju are the three main middle caste (non-Brahmin) peasant groups dominant in coastal Andhra.
6. Rayalseema that lies to the south of the state is also disadvantaged and impoverished similar to Telangana and lags behind coastal Andhra in economic and educational infrastructure. For purposes of this paper, I shall focus on the conflict between coastal Andhra and Telangana that are more relevant to this research.
7. One of the earliest critiques of the Green Revolution and the harm it has done to the environment and to small farmers and cultivators can be found in Shiva (1989).
8. There are several studies of intermediate peasant caste groups in other parts of India that illustrate the articulation of caste and class. Well-known cases of class mobility using caste as a specific resource are the Patidars of Gujarat and the Jats of Punjab (see Breman, 1994; Jeffrey, Jeffery, & Jeffery, 2008). What distinguishes the coastal Andhra intermediate caste group is their purposeful shift into an urban professional and bureaucratic class rather than a business and trading class or investing in more land to become powerful feudal landlords. Instead securing professional education for their children and their community, largely a preserve of the Brahmins (upper caste), was an early strategy of the coastal Andhra peasant caste groups.
9. State policy allowed for three types of educational institutions at all levels: wholly public institutions that were state owned, aided institutions that received subsidies from the state and were established as non-profits, and wholly self-financed privately owned institutions that were also required to be non-profit. In the past three decades, the private sector has grown exponentially in comparison to aided institutions while the number of state institutions has been stagnant; 10% of professional colleges in AP are government or government-aided colleges. In the last two years, the national government has been trying to rapidly expand the public sector to be globally competitive.
10. Upadhyay (1988a) notes that well-off rural families from coastal Andhra would invariably invest in at least one family member's professional education in a nearby town or in the capital city. As a result, coastal Andhra families typically had more exposure to urban culture and the modern economy that also gave them cultural and political capital in the villages. Their social networks were also much more diverse and influential as a result of the rural–urban connection. See Upadhyay (1988a) for a sociological history of coastal Andhra groups using Bourdieu's framework.
11. Accreditation also allowed these institutions to charge higher fees.
12. Dalit is a term for downtrodden, in the Hindu caste hierarchy the group that is designated as the lowest order of the caste hierarchy and therefore were regarded as ‘untouchable’. Untouchability is illegal under the Indian constitution but atrocities and discrimination against dalits even within modern urban sectors of India remains a serious issue. An analogous comparison would be the persistence of institutional and other forms of racism against African Americans in the USA.
13. The neoliberal thesis that educational investment follows the job market and that Hyderabad is merely a case in point is untrue if one examines the education sector in coastal Andhra. Although primarily a rural economy with traditional industries of fishing, manufacturing and trade, coastal Andhra has very favorable indices on educational infrastructure, quality and achievement, on a par with and in certain instances even better than the capital region of Hyderabad. The state aid budget for education is significantly higher for coastal Andhra than for Telangana and government schools are far more desirable compared to those in the capital region of Hyderabad (Government of India, 2010; Save the Children, 2007).
14. From 2004 to 2005, there were 663 suicides by farmers and weavers in Telangana, 231 in Rayalseema and 174 in coastal Andhra (Government of India, 2010, p. 366). From 1997 to 2007, the period of neoliberal economic reform, farmer suicides reached epidemic proportions in several states in India, the highest numbers have been in Maharashtra followed by AP, Karnataka, Punjab and Kerala (Patel, 2007; Sainath, 2010).
15. Hyderabad metropolitan region is 7,100 km2. For a sense of the size and scope of the expansion of the city, the new metropolitan region of Greater Hyderabad is now the size of Goa, a state famous for its beaches that attracts foreign tourists. Greater Hyderabad now is larger than Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai put together (Government of India, 2010).
16. There were recent protests by faculty and students against the Vice Chancellor of Hyderabad Central University on the proposed lease of university land to multinationals (‘Staff, Students Protest’, 2010).
17. In the postcolonial context, the explicit mission of state universities was to equalize educational opportunities, contribute to national development and strengthen participatory citizenship, all of which were considered fundamental elements for a robust democracy.
18. Estimates of total number of suicides for a separate Telangana are 313, of which 60 were between the ages of 18 and 25. See the Sri Krishna Report (Government of India, 2010, p. 387).
19. Author's interview with Professor Kodandram Rao, President of the Telangana Political Joint Action Committee, Hyderabad, 27 December 2010. Also author interview with two members of the Student Joint Action Committee, Osmania University, Hyderabad, 5 January 2011. The decentralized nature of the movement in its current phase where different groups are self-organizing as Joint Action Committees that are non-party political action groups across diverse ideological lines and that are autonomous from the political party for an independent Telangana suggests that there may be diverse tendencies in the movement. It is too soon therefore to say whether a unified challenge to neoliberalism will emerge as a focal point of the movement, though the possibility cannot be dismissed.
20. In response to the growing political movement for a separate Telangana, the national government instituted a special committee chaired by retired Justice Sri Krishna to examine the claims of uneven development, discrimination and distinct culture, and provide its recommendations. The special committee released a detailed and exhaustive report on 5 January 2011 but did not propose any definite resolution to the demand for state autonomy. While the movement continues, the government of Andhra Pradesh has yet to yield a considered response to the report or the issues raised by the movement.