Abstract
As questions of “knowledge economy” have come to the center of studies of the global political economy, the World Bank and other international organizations have begun promoting “knowledge for development” (K4D) in many postcolonial contexts over the last several years. These strategies toward broad goals of social and economic development presume a neoliberal orientation of the individual towards state and society. Using the example of contemporary urban India, this study examines the unexpected outcomes of imposing and legitimating the neoliberal political rationality that underpins K4D practices at individual and societal levels. Rather than having successfully produced a “new middle class,” as touted in media representations of India’s success, emphasis on K4D and a knowledge economy in India has had the effect of producing an elite with formidable economic strength, as well as the cultural dominance to re-imagine and negotiate meanings of Indianness. Here, I approach the knowledge economy as a “global assemblage” concretized and specified through the everyday practices of individuals, and aim to critique the assumptions of the knowledge economy by drawing on the articulations of contemporary Indian knowledge professionals.
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Notes
See http://www.developmentgateway.org under the heading “country evaluations” to get a sense of the number of countries discussing the knowledge economy at the level of policy.
For more details on India’s Knowledge Commission, see http://www.knowledgecommission.org.
The “four pillars” of the knowledge economy, both in World Bank and smaller NGO writings are agreed to include broadly: education and training, informational infrastructure, economic incentive and institutional regime, and innovation systems. Reference to the “four pillars” is common in online knowledge economy literature.
See the details of the World Bank’s Knowledge Assessment Methodology (KAM) at: http://info.worldbank.org/etools/kam2005/.
Low voter turnout among the middle and upper classes in India is a well-documented phenomenon (see Deshpande, 2003).
All the names used in this article are pseudonyms to protect the confidentiality of the interviews I conducted.
See http://web.worldbank.org/ (link to “learning” and “WBI learning programs” to find “knowledge for development”).
Contemporary Indian knowledge workers are not necessarily the first in India to identify with these values. Graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in an earlier generation adopted these values, but had to leave India to seek out opportunities that would support that orientation. These graduates, however, were far more elite, scarce, and relatively less visible, in comparison to Indian knowledge workers today.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Aihwa Ong for providing the intellectual tools and space to conceptualize this article, to Raka Ray for her encouragement and careful readings, and to the Editors of Theory and Society, whose insights allowed me to polish this work into its final shape.
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Radhakrishnan, S. Rethinking knowledge for development: Transnational knowledge professionals and the “new” India. Theor Soc 36, 141–159 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9024-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-007-9024-2