Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege, and Inequality

309 Pages·02.065 MB·English

by  Surinder S. Jodhka and Jules Naudet

Exploring India’s Elite
Series Editors
surinder s. jodhka and jules naudet
The last decade of the twentieth century was an important turning point in
the contemporary human history. The end of Cold War, new revolutions in
telecommunication technologies, and the ensuing processes of globalization
signifi cantly altered the ways in which the human life has been imagined and
organized. The global capitalist economies saw an unprecedented process
of resurgence, which also generated a huge amount of new wealth, at least
in some regions and countries of the world. Neoliberal economic phi-
losophy and the accompanying policy regimes, the ‘new’ norm of organizing
economic life that came to be accepted across nation-states in the post–
Cold War world, celebrated individual entrepreneurship and de-legitimized
‘older’ ideas of parity and fair distribution.
An obvious offshoot of this has been the growing concentration of wealth
and power in a few hands. This is not simply a matter of economic disparity.
When merely one per cent super-rich own half of all the global wealth,
they also seek to shape political regimes, cultural trends, and social space.
Escalating economic disparities poses serious challenges to democracy. In
countries of the developing world, extreme and rigid inequalities also hinder
the processes of economic growth, extension of basic human entitlements,
and citizenship rights across populace. The early twenty-fi rst century is,
thus, unsurprisingly marked by a revival of populism and authoritarianism
across the world.
India is being widely seen as a signifi cant emerging economic and political
power in the world today. Despite having the largest number of chronically
poor globally, it is also home to a sizeable number of rich and super-rich.
It has been among the fastest-growing economies of the world during the
‘post-reforms’ period. Equally important are its political dynamics. With
increasing participation of erstwhile-marginalized sections in the electoral
process, the social profi le of India’s political elite has been changing, making
way for those coming from the middle and lower strata of the traditional
social order, thus broadening the social base of political power.
This book series is to provide a platform to scholars working on the
subject to publish their work and develop a stock of scholarship that would
enable us to understand the dynamics of inequality, power, and emergent
social structures in India.
To
Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities/Centre de Sciences
Humaines (CSH), New Delhi, where it all began

Foreword
Surinder S. Jodhka and Jules Naudet
Inequality is endemic, a seemingly inescapable feature of human
life present almost everywhere and at almost all times. Its forms and
patterns may vary, but it is hard to fi nd a society where inequality
does not exist. Inequality matters because its presence is felt far
and wide. It shapes and is constitutive of social relations, cultural
values, spatial patterns, economic systems, and political regimes.
It conditions and regulates human potentials, aspirations, and
life-chances. Given its pervasive nature and multidimensionality,
it has been a subject of interest for a range of experts—economists,
sociologists, historians, anthropologists, political scientists, geo-
graphers, and even fi ction writers—who have deployed a variety
of theories and concepts to capture its diversities and complexities.
Given its sway, inequality has also been among the core moral and
ethical concerns across human cultures and civilizations. It has been
a source of many political contests, upheavals, and revolutions. It
even fi nds mentions in religious ideas and ideologies the world
over, positive and/or negative.
Since the early 1990s, new revolutions in telecommunication
technologies, political shifts, and the ensuing processes of globalization
have generated a huge amount of new wealth, at least in some regions
and countries of the world. One of the major consequences of these
shifts has been the increase and spread of inequality.
x Foreword
Given its phenomenal growth over the past decades, its study and
analysis has also seen resurgence. While it is widely recognized that
inequality is a multi-dimensional reality, most academic writings and
discussions in the popular media tend to revolve almost exclusively
around its economic dimensions, the growing disparities of income and
wealth among individuals, social categories, or nation-states. Economic
disparities are indeed very critical as they determine aspects of access
and exclusion. Th e economists have also worked out robust methods
and modes of calculating inequalities at the macro and micro levels for
comparisons across societies and countries. Th omas Piketty’s extremely
infl uential work, C apital in the Twenty-First Century , published in 2014,
and several other research writings and reports by individual economists
and civil society groups have been quite successful in highlighting
growing economic disparities in the world today. Given its nature, the
economic aspect is also relatively easy to capture and measure.
Th e obvious academic and political response to such emergent trends
has been to be concerned about the poor—those likely to experience
greater degrees of vulnerability with growing disparities. Th is is indeed
required and perhaps needs far greater attention than it has received
so far in the mainstream economics and contemporary policy regimes
in most parts of the world. However, the mainstream’s concern for the
poor or for poverty is not always seen as linked to growing inequalities.
Many contemporary economists would actually argue that the two have
nothing to do with each other. On the contrary, poverty tends to decline
when an economy grows at a faster pace, yet it—almost inevitably—is
also likely to enhance income disparities.
Th is book series on ‘Elite in Contemporary India’ begins with a move
away from such a narrative. We treat inequality as a far bigger reality than
disparities of income and wealth. It is, above all, a value and a process
that shapes almost everything else in social life. Inequality needs to be
taken seriously because it is the core of all power. It is for this reason
that we advocate that along with looking at poverty, exclusions, and
marginalities, we also need to explore their opposite, the spaces of power
and privilege. However, social science research on power and privilege has
not been done as much as it ought to have been and the reasons are many.
It is a widely recognized fact among those who do primary-level
fi eldwork that studying ‘down’ is always easier for the middle-class
professional social scientist than studying ‘up’ the elite. Accessing the
upper end of power is far more challenging and diffi cult. Th e elite and
Foreword xi
the upper end of power also tend to be invisible. Th e state policies and
social science funding regimes tend to fi nd merit more easily in the study
of the poor, the marginal, and the underclass. Th e elite do not merit
such attention from the state or the civil society NGOs.
Th is is not to suggest that the study of the ghetto or the slum is of
lesser value. We only wish to underline the importance of simultaneously
exploring the club, the gated communities, and other spaces of privilege.
Th e two sets of realities exist in a relationship. It is the nature or structure
of the relationship between these two sets of realities that perpetuates
inequalities and disparities.
India has always been an important case in the discourses on inequality
in social science literature. Social scientists the world over have referred
to the Indian caste system as an example, par excellence, of persistent
status hierarchies. In the contemporary world, India is being widely seen
as a signifi cant emerging economic and political power. However, India
is also a land of contradictions. Even though the country continues to
have the largest number of chronically poor, larger than those in sub-
Saharan Africa, it also has a very large number of billionaires in the
world today. Th e number of billionaires in India is growing at a rate that
is more than that of the country’s declining poverty levels. Th e absolute
size of relatively prosperous Indians, the upper-middle classes, is quite
large and may compare well with populations having similar economic
profi les in many big countries of Western Europe.
Equally important are the political dynamics of India. India is one
of the few countries outside the Western world where the institutions
of liberal democracy have gained roots over the past century or so. Not
only has the country been able to continue with the systems of electoral
democracy at diff erent levels of its social and political organization, the
social profi le of India’s political elite has also been changing over the
years, making way for those coming from the middle and lower strata of
the traditional social order, thus broadening the social base of political
power, even though the role of money in elections tends to fi lter out
candidates from lower-class strata.
Th e sociology of the contemporary Indian elite has a long way to go,
although scholarly work on the subject is slowly growing. Th e proposed
book series is designed to provide a platform to scholars working on the
subject to present their work to a larger audience.

Preface and Acknowledgements
Th is volume evolved over the past several years. It was sometime in
2014 when the two of us began to interact around a rather ambitious
project that would look at diff erent sections and spheres of the elites
in contemporary India. As part of our academic interest, we have both
been working on diff erent aspects or processes of inequality and social
mobility in contemporary India. Given its very nature, scholarship on
inequality tends to look at it in terms of its exclusionary consequences,
captured through categories such as deprivations, poverty, and human
misery. Th e obvious subjects of enquiry are, thus, those located at the
lower-end of the structure: the poor, the working class, the dalits or
Adivasis, women, and other similar categories that occupy positions
on the margins of social and economic formations in the given time
and space. We too have had similar preoccupations even though as
sociologists we all look at such processes relationally, where the other
side is also present but rarely explored.
Th e Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi, India,
provided us with the space and stimulation to take the idea forward.
Along with a small group of interested scholars, we initiated a bi-weekly
activity of reading relevant scholarly writings on the subject—theoretical,
comparative, and empirical—that enabled us to visualize the lives of
Indian elites and the diversity of empirical questions around the subject.
In the process, we also identifi ed relatively younger scholars working
on the subject and planned a conference in New Delhi. Th e political
scientist Gilles Verniers also joined us in the venture and the conference
was organized in January 2016 at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in
New Delhi. Besides support from the CSH, the Indian Council of Social
xiv Preface and Acknowledgements
Science Research (ICSSR) and the Institut Français en Inde funded the
conference. JNU provided us with a vibrant academic ambience for
deliberations on the subject, much talked about but rarely explored and
analysed.
Encouraged by the tremendous response to the conference, we
discussed with editors at Oxford University Press in New Delhi the
possibility of a book series on the theme, Exploring India’s Elite. Th ey
sounded equally enthusiastic. Th e idea of the book series was to use
the conference as a step towards building a community of researchers
around the subject of studying privilege and power in India.
We would like to thank the CSH, the ICSSR, and the Institut
Français en Inde for their crucial support. We are also grateful to the
colleagues and students from the Centre for the Study of Social Systems
(CSSS) and the School of Social Sciences, JNU, for their support and
the interest they showed in the subject. We wish to extend our deepest
thanks to all those who worked with us in making this book possible
in many diff erent ways. Amongst many others, we would like to record
our gratitude to Pratap Bhanu Mehta, C.P. Chandrasekhar, Dipankar
Gupta, Sébastien Chauvin, Bruno Cousin, Amita Baviskar, Ashwini
Deshpande, Satish Deshpande, Christophe Jaff relot, Michèle Lamont,
Partha Mukhopadhyay, Sudha Pai, Paranjoy Guha Th akurta, Rajeev
Gowda, and Ashish Gupta.
We are also grateful to several other colleagues and young researchers
who have been working with us on the subject and contributed to the
making of this enterprise in diff erent ways. Th ey include Bruno Dorin,
Maitrayee Chaudhuri, Nilika Mehrotra, G. Srinivas, Divya Vaid, Parul
Bhandari, Tarangini Sriraman, Jayani Bonnerjee, Ujithra Ponniah, Suraj
Beri, Ishwari Bhattarai, Mallika Chaudhuri, and Sreya Sen. We received
active administrative support from Amit Arora at CSH and Nicolas Idier
at the Bureau Du Livre.
Abbreviations
ABAS Akhil Bhartiya Agarwal Sammelan
AHC Ascending Hierarchical Clustering
BGC Bangalore Golf Club
BWSSB Bangalore Water Supply and Sewage Board
CA Chartered Accountant
CBI Central Bureau of Investigation
CEO Chief Executive Offi cer
COPU Committee on Public Undertakings
DPAS Delhi Pradeshik Agarwal Sammelan
ECFMG Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates
GDA Geometric Data Analysis
GOI Government of India
HUF Hindu Undivided Family
IAS Indian Administrative Services
IIM Indian Institute of Management
IIT Indian Institute of Technology
IPL Indian Premier League
IT Information Technology
JEE Joint Entrance Examination
JNNURM Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission
KGA Karnataka Golf Association
KSTDC Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation
LBZ Lutyens Bungalow Zone
MCA Multiple Correspondence Analysis
MS Master of Science
NCR National Capital Region