Entrepreneurial Justice: The New Spirit of Capitalism in Emergent India

Abstract

In their survey of management literature, Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) argue that the 1990s signal a new phase in the spirit of capitalism. We consider how these counter-cultural transformations that shaped new management thinking in Europe and North America traveled to places such as India, where neo-liberal economic reforms led to economic growth alongside unprecedented suffering. Looking across the expansive Indian media landscape, we see the growing prominence of India's own “cool capitalists” in the figures of Rajat Gupta and Aamir Khan. Khan's hit talk show Satyamev Jayate helps to popularize this new management culture establishing a new set of moral claims over the future of economic development in the global South. Our article addresses the theme of geo-politics by considering the increasingly influential role of corporate actors in shaping popular debates about the economy, economic distress, and redress.

Acknowledgments

We thank the editors for their constructive feedback, and especially Miyase Christensen and Florencia Enghel for their patience and support with this article.

Notes

¹These included witnesses such as Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia and former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, who emphasized Rajat Gupta's philanthropic and development work in India, while the “titans of the Indian business community” like Reliance Corporation's Mukesh Ambani pledged their support on the www.friendsofrajat.com website http://www.indiawest.com/news/4924-friends-reiterate-rajat-gupta-s-philanthropic-work.html

²We thank the editors of the journal for the formulation of the phrase “media-bound manifestations.”

³Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (2005) understand three distinct “spirits of capitalism.” At the end of the 19th century, the focus was on the bourgeois entrepreneur and the patriarchal relationship with employees. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, they trace a shift to a cadre of salaried managers. Starting in 1990s, they find the central trope of the “network” harmoniously combining “market” and “hierarchy.”

⁴The authors seem to imply that Deleuze and Guattari's writings were in some sense as influential for management gurus as for antiestablishment activists.

⁵World Bank estimates put the percentage of India's 1.15 billion citizens living below the poverty line at 42%, while a range of critical studies have found that the real figure falls somewhere between 50% and 77% of the overall population. For more, see Pranab Bardhan (2010).

⁶By the late 1990s, CSR was embraced by the World Bank, as well as prominent national development agencies such as the Canadian International Development Agency and the UK's Development for International Development.

⁷It is beyond the scope of this article to elaborate on these wide-ranging claims for political and economic inclusion. We are referencing armed insurgency by Maoist rebels across some of India's economically most marginalized regions with historically large adivasi (tribal) populations. For more, see Nandini Sundar (January 11, 2010), The horror state of Chattisgargh, http://www.countercurrents.org/sundar110110.htm In terms of legislative redress, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government headed by the Congress Party which came to power in 2004 implemented a series of reforms meant to extend social equity and welfare under the Common Minimum Program, while retaining an overall commitment to liberalization. Specifically, since 2004, the centrist UPA has passed historic legislation in the form of what is recognized as the world's largest public works through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).

⁸There is a vast literature in this area that tends to be regionally specific in Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and so forth. See, for example, the Routledge Book Series: The New Rich in Asia.

⁹This is evident in the Anna Hazare anticorruption movement that was initially embraced by the 24-hour news media as a driving force in national politics in 2011. For a thoughtful typology of middle class political formations around the anti-corruption movement, see Sitapati (2011).

¹⁰We found that the authors of popular blogs and message boards were English-speaking, urban, middle-class publics, despite the fact that the producers of Satyamev Jayate claimed to target “diverse audiences.”

¹¹See, for example, Time magazine's cover story featuring Preet Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his “war” against Wall Street crime: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2105971,00.html

¹²See, for example, the video Wall street protestors cheer Rajat Gupta's arrest at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynfftwHdGOo

¹³This problematic formulation begs the question about the analytics of race and ethnicity in relation to the “elasticity of the rules” of financial deregulation, which led to the 2007 crisis and its disproportionate impact on communities of color, including rule-abiding immigrants. For more, see Karen Ho (2009) and Chakravartty and Ferreira da Silva (2012).

¹⁴See Open Letter to Sonia Gandhi from young India (Times of India, February 13, 2011): http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-02-13/special-report/28547374_1_corruption-electric-power-political-party

¹⁵Ghosh's (2012) essay examines the first episode of the program featuring female foeticide, where the feminist issue of a woman's right to choose is conspicuously absent from the discussion.

¹⁶See http://killercoke.org/crimes_india.php

¹⁷ http://reliancefoundation.org/video/video2.html

¹⁸See Ansar's comment on the Star Plus website: http://starplus.startv.in/satyamevjayate/aamir-khan-shares-the-impact-of-intolerance-to-love-on-asar_3660.aspx

¹⁹Activists hailed this Act to be regressive in its mandating consensual sex under the age of 18 to be a punishable crime.

²⁰For more specifics on the institutional history of the “post-Washington Consensus” and its specific impact on media and information policy, see Chakravartty and Sarikakis (2006).