traverse : project documentation by Bharath h

traverse Diploma project documentation| 2010

October 2010 Final Diploma Project School of Art, Design and Technology. ÂŠ Bharath Haridas All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means- graphic, electronic, mechanical- without the prior permission of the author. Paper stock Natural Evolution 145gsm Printed and bound by Kolorkode, Langford town, Bangalore, India.

A people or class which is cut-off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or class than one that has been able to situate itself in history John Berger

John Berger

Contents Introduction

Changing India A microcosm Immigrants and small towns

Inhaling / Understanding Me and modernity Immigrants The Phenomenon The Town Mediums and forms

Exhaling / Reflecting Inferences Characters and stories

Creating / Assembling Units Arrangement Phone conversation Expanding the story Trunk and Branches Karsakow System Elements Structure and layers Fine tuning Dissemination

Appendix

Readings and theory

Introduction Changing India A Microcosm Immigrants and small towns

Changing India

I was personally sceptical and worried about the manner in which India is changing as it is transforming into a capitalist economy. I had been reading the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Society of the Spectacle written by Guy De Bord during the late 1960â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in France, This work is a compilation of comments,ideas and observation on the repercussions on social life caused by a capitalist mode of production. This triggered off a concern and curiosity for the future that holds for India since it is in transition into a growing capitalist economy. This was not the only form of change that the nation was going through, there were different factors affecting the landscape of the country such as issues of development, modernity, globalisation,simultaneously with this transition into a capitalist economy. I could see that the cities and its inhabitants were undergoing change and adapting to it, but I was curious as to what the case was outside these metropolitan cities of India, in the smaller developing towns, from which a lot of the people I meet in the cities have originally come from. There was more interest in how these factors worked out in those developing towns, since I felt that the metropolitan cities only represent a minority of India. However these developing small towns represents the growth of the middle class, which has been happening for the past few years in this country.. There is much discussion and research going on to tap into the consumer groups emerging from these spaces * There were also people undergoing the influence of this process of change without

the environment or conditions prevalent in metropolitan cities,but at the same time there is a common media landscape permeating into these spaces.

Inquiries I am looking at people and spaces that are being affected by the change that India is going through to bring out the different vagaries of modernity. Should we be concerned as to how modernity is being assimilated and expressed in the country? Where does one start looking for answers to understand this phenomenon in this huge country? What are the emerging conditions of modernity among the Indian middle class? What could possibly represent that part of the nation in question? How are these developing towns and its inhabitants dealing with the process of modernisation and globalization? Are the developing towns ready and equipped to handle this modernity?

Two Microcosms

The In-betweens in transition This nation is a container of two very contrasting worlds, the rural and highly modernised cities, and in between lies these small towns By the term small or developing towns I mean Tier III cities such as Agra, Amritsar, Bhiwadi, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Coimbatore, Kochi, Kanpur, Ludhiana, Mangalore, Mysore, Thiruvananthapuram, Visakhapatnam,etc. * and even smaller towns like Kozhikode Now there are ideas permeating into smaller towns with the onset of high connectivity, cheaper technologies and rising economic power. India is set into a movement of transition and there are different people and spaces affected by it. What lies between these contrasting worlds? What could be a possible intersection of the different domains in question? Where does one find the coexistence of a traditional and modern condition? What are the new hybrid cultures that are taking shape? The Developing towns This inquiry needed more focus. I started travelling in my hometown, Kozhikode in Kerala to understand the situation, and see evidences or repercussions of change. Since this inquiry was too wide in nature, there was a need to identify a smaller group of people or a space which embodies different aspects in discussion. The Immigrants As I was conducting field studies with middle class families in Kozhikode, I noticed that most of the younger members between the age of 19-35 had moved away to a nearby city or

abroad in search of work or education. Was this a result of the changes in India? There was an interesting intersection of the various domains of interest in this particular group of immigrants who have travelled from small towns to urban cities. They are affected directly by forces of modernity and globalisation and also hold a connection to towns and spaces which are in transition. The immigrants are people undergoing change the small towns are spaces undergoing change.

Immigrants and developing towns

The state of Kerala has seen a massive amount of immigration of young professional and students to metropolitans in the country and abroad. This phenomenon creates new social situations in these small towns and for these immigrants. The urban cities have been dealing with this contrast for a long time, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a new situation for smaller towns and for the recent emigrants People :Immigrants Why are there so many immigrants? What are their minds like? Spaces :Developing Towns If this is one the major indicators of how modernity has affected these developing towns: What are the other indicators? Which are the different groups that need to be understood for the totality of the situation in these towns to be represented? 1. Students and youth residing in small towns who has been exposed to global media 2. Communities that have come back from abroad or cities to settle down in their towns of origins.

Project Proposal

Wider relevance

Part 1 Using stories and characters to bring out different realities/opinions/ of people. To bring out the various socio cultural situations. Introduce new ways of seeing the towns through relevant characters and archetypes.

These portraits and inquiries in this town could therefore transcend beyond this geographical context and becomes a point of reflection for other towns and instances of modernity.

Aims and directions

Part 2 Creating a system through which the work can be disseminated to a dispersed audience

This project could become a metaphorical micro world that opens into similar situations around the country.

Does the town as a space hold different signs and indicators of how modernity is permeating and expressing itself at a visual,spatial and psychological levels? Can we have an insight into the psychological configurations or mind-set of people in or from these spaces

Understanding / Inhaling Me and Modernity The Immigrants The Phenomenon The Town Mediums and forms

Me understanding and Modernity my personal

journey with the changing times

I went through a process of introspection so that I can understand where this interest is coming from at a personal level and I relate better while interviewing and engaging with this material. 1. Looking at myself as a product of globalisation 2. Exoticism of memory Are my own memories becoming exotic? The emotional relationship I share with my past and roots,does it feel exotic in recollection? 3. Displacement/ estrangement I have felt a loss of identity and sense of belongingness in an urban environment and my hometown, a situation of neither here nor there. I had built a sceptic attitude towards the city culture, but at the same time cant seem to find oneself in the hometown. 4. Comment on consumer commodification My personal opinion and feelings about the consumer culture that has come up and is being rampantly adopted in India.

Looking at myself as a product of globalisation A short writing on how different forces of globalisation have shaped me.

Lots of things have changed for you and me. As I look back into my childhood and maybe get glimpses of yours. We started somewhere else. We have changed. Grown through ages. The world around has changed. With a tail of all these years of our lived experiences we seem to be what we are meant to be in this present moment. Relating to things and people who have managed to travel in a similar tunnel of time and place. How does my cultural upbringing relate to the world I am placing myself to be in. Why am I here and not back where the journey began? This is usually answered with various socio economic factors and on the basis of aspirations. I find those forces that have shaped me far away from my hometown. Those forces which once were presented to me as surroundings to aspire for. But I wonder how much of me has really changed as I move away from that starting point. How much have you moved away? I question it with a sense of curiosity and not with grief or regret. Not that I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t question the direction of the world. But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a flowing stream none the less. Whose waters wash upon shores of different nature and composition, shaping new contours and these contours pushing the water to flow differently at the same time. I value my past, but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to have a sense of longing to go back to it, for I have found myself in places far away from it. It reminds me of the beginning and questions my journeys ahead. I feel that I belong to a large group of people who are in motion as we speak. Not discounting that there were people who have moved away from their sources a long time back too, when it was a different world. When India was younger and closed, living

more with itself than being open to the rest of the world. Now, some people move with an awareness of their motivation, some people purely for survival and some just along with the flow. Now there seems to be a common language with which I can meet these people on new shores. A language that permeates slowly back to the origins, the origins which was giving a distinct flavour to the water flowing from there. Will there no longer be distinct flavours but just one global recipe? I cant find reflections of myself at the source. I felt I could change things back there, but its another place altogether, with a different texture of sand. But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the birthplace for a lot of us and it has obviously etched an impression of itself giving me that distinct flavour with which I wash upon new shores. As I move from one shore to the other , sand grains are mixing forming new flavours. All the shores are connected now, the source doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t live in complete isolation like an island in most cases, and now its impossible to be an island with advance of communications which creates smaller tubes and bridges sending a selected few flavours back to the beginning. These tubes which bring back parts of the flavour seems to be pushing more water out from the source, promising that different flavour, and a language to talk with everyone along the way. Streams flows towards an ocean. An ocean which now flows back through the stream.

Why immigrants?

Carriers of the dual and contrasting worlds which co-exist in India

This particular group of immigrants, those who have left small towns to urban cities was chosen since they seem represent a significant change in India. I got interested in immigrants because of the dual mind that they could be carrying. They could be a symbolic embodiment of the modern Indian condition. Do these immigrants carry in them a sense of nostalgic attachment to the past of this nation? What are these sentiments to the past while they are in a urban modern environment? How does it interact with their the optimistic or sceptic vision of a modern urban nation? How does it coexist ?Can this conflict symbolise the struggle of this nation? I was curious about those groups of immigrants who have moved from rural and small towns into metropolitan cities, because they embody the conflict that India is facing or about to face.

Its not just physical displacement Its a psychological transformation

How does one with memories from a localized culture and set of values transform and fit into an urban setting ? What happens when they are migrating from a smaller simpler traditional culture and economy to an urban competitive scenario?

Hoes does one exposed to this urban setting and global media return to their places of origins? What are their perception of their places of origin? How does this fragment their identities and what values do they finally subscribe or align to? For me this conflict embodies a struggle of the

young emerging floating population which could therefore speak of a condition that is going to be prevalent in this process of transforming India. This sense of displacement due to the contrast between their place of birth and the metropolitan urban spaces they have shifted to need not be triggered by a physical displacement in this era of a globalized world. A displacement could occur due to the exposure to globalized media while sitting in ones home. It is this condition of displacement that is of more importance than that of an actual physical displacement. Since the penetration and spread of cable television and the Internet is rampant and the absorption and awe for that western or global culture is on the rise, that resultant displacement can be realized by considering an immigrants mental space. The psychological displacement could result in a conflict or contrast between their immediate environment and ones mental virtual psychological landscape,This is the scene of investigation that I was interested in with this project. I started searching for this condition among immigrants who moved to Bangalore, but I realized that it could be at another intensity if we look at an international immigrant an NRI What is the difference between the actual immigrant and those who are being exposed to global media while sitting in their homes?

Where would one see a more

startling contrast between a mental space and their immediate environment or surroundings? In a small town with lots of NRIs? Is this a contrast that is forming in India? But immigrants werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the only ones being affected by this phenomenon, the interviews also had to include other groups from the town to expand the understanding of the situation. Who else were being affected by these changes and caught in the midst of it? 1. Youth in these small towns 2. School children

Why did they leave ? Do these immigrants carry in them a sense of nostalgic attachment to the past of this nation? What are these sentiments to the past while they are in a urban modern environment? How does it interact with their the optimistic or sceptic vision of a modern urban nation? How does it coexist ? Can this conflict symbolise the struggle of this nation? Is this phenomenon a by-product of the changes happening in India? Can they only realise themselves in urban cities, even though they grew up in a developing town? Does this represent a modern condition/ conflict that is growing in India? ? Is it possible to see glimpses of that Indian modernity and hybrid cultures through these immigrants? Are these people in transition? Do they embody the nation in transition?

Interviews

Immigrants in Bangalore

I started meeting and interviewing immigrants 1. Who have left their hometowns and come in search for livelihoods in Bangalore. 2. Who have come to their hometown of Kozhikode for holidays, they were primarily Nonresident Indians I started from a familiar space to get a good start with my inquiry. I met alumni from college who must have gone through a critical introspection of this phenomenon themselves. They had both left their hometowns a while back and travelled to Bangalore in search of an education and livelihood. Aniruddha Abhyankar 28 year old, Designer, Activist Left Pune a few years back He seemed happy to have left home, he feels he realised himself here in Bangalore due to the various opportunities it has thrown up and the nature of his work and interests. He expressed a nostalgia for home but was content as he lives with his family here Girish T.S 28 years old, Graphic Designer Left Kottayam in kerala a few years back During the conversation we realised we share similar memories of childhood, of celebrating festivals such as Onam, of walking through the country side etc. His concern was about the modernity in practice here in the city, He asked me do you think they are really happy? He was also concerned about how one sees value in individuals in this city, it was all based on money, but he continued and said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;at the same time I cant imagine going backâ&#x20AC;?

Summary 1. There was realisation of their identity and passion in the city 2. They expressed a nostalgic connection to their hometown 3. They expressed a contempt to what modernity has become, how everything is based on money 4. They cant imagine going back to their hometowns for good

Interviews

NRIs visiting hometown

Venu Menon, age 40 Sales & Marketing Director Venu Menon had an interesting concoction of hometowns in the past. He was born to Malayalee family but was brought up mostly in Mumbai. He speaks English,Marathi, Hindi and Malayalam. He told me how his parents had tried to preserve the cultural and traditional practices since they had migrated to Mumbai during his early years . His parents held onto their cultural memory, and identity during his upbringing. He currently heads the sales and marketing in Dubai for an information security company, I spoke to him when he came for a visit to his wifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hometown of Kozhikode, since the family has got a holiday. His wife and family now stays in the USA and he travels often to spend time with them. Identity He spoke of his work, and the life around it primarily while describing himself, and spoke of his family as part of his identity. â&#x20AC;&#x153;No one really recognizes me as a Malayalee, but yeah even though I was born in Mumbai. I guess I am a Malayalee, it comes up at times while I am in Dubai of course â&#x20AC;&#x153; He told me his religious, and believes in visiting temples and does a routine pilgrimage every year in Kerala. He has setup a small pooja room in his home in Dubai. Modernity He saw modernity as a technological and communication advance.

Daily Life He spoke of highly detailed intricate routines in the morning proudly. The 15 minutes of exercise,then the newspaper, and then checking email, breakfast and then driving to work. He travels very often and very far between countries and spends quite a lot of his time in flights and airports. Development In India Venu Menon expressed an apathy towards the development that is happening in India, he felt that it was highly unplanned and is quite sceptical of when it will become a developed nation in terms of infrastructure and amenities. Coming to Kerala has been mostly associated to holidays, and he is getting back to his routine in a few days. It was mostly family time, he felt no association with the town itself expect the fact that it was his childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s grandparents house and his wiveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hometown and family home. Asha Nambiar: age 35 Special Education Asha Nambiar was born in Kozhikode, and has done schooling in different parts of Kerala. She is a trained Bharatanatyam classical dancer and now lives in New Jersey with her children and her husband Venu Menon in Dubai. We spoke about her memories of growing up in Kozhikode. She was in a boarding school for a long time but had to come back to her hometown during first few years of college. She does recall it has the best of her times. She had got accustomed to a level of freedom

and coming back to her hometown was a slightly excruciating experience.“I remember how my parents were conservative with me. I share an honest relationship with my children now” Modernity “Something that’s ahead of its own time. I think I was ahead of my time compared to people around me maybe that was why my parents didn’t agree with most of my actions and beliefs. I guess it’s the personality trait that matters at the end of the day, right? We cook Indian food at home and the kids don’t seem to mind it all at the moment. Well I am a little apprehensive as to how they will grow up in New Jersey, but I am not very paranoid about it. We speak a lot of malayalm at home, but I am not sure how much of it my children will pick up, I am not planning to force it either.

Understanding / Inhaling The phenomenon

Readings and references Modernity Indian Modernity

What is modernity?

Before plunging into this space there was a need for a broader understanding of the phenomenon of modernity and the various ways in which it translates into being. So that one can start seeing it and recognise those signs while observing. What are the various ideas that are being discussed worldwide? I started reading different types of papers, and discussions: Where can one see the repercussions of change? Which ones are relevant to this theme of study? I constantly asked myself what was relevant to the inquiry here.

Readings and reference Emerging Youth Cultures in the Era of Globalization: TechnoCulture & TerrorCulture Sam George Acceleration. Changes in the structure of time in modernity Hartmut Rosa: The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth Benjamin M. Friedman Conspicuous Consumption: The Theory of the Leisure Class Thorstein Veblen

What is the modernity in India that is relevant to this inquiry?

Looking at essays and discussions on the subject matter within the context of study that is, India, developing towns, emerging middle class. They were carefully selected so that there is no one biased opinion running through but challenging each other. The answers should be pursued more at the level of ground realities but this birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye view helps one to see more important patterns.

Readings and reference Mistaken Modernity Dipanker Gupta India Is Getting All the Trappings of the New Century; But Is It Modern? Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India Pankaj Mishra Why Indian intellectuals and activists are hostile to the market Politics And Play / Ramachandra Guha The Elephant Paradigm Gurcharan Das Social mobility in Kerala: modernity and identity in conflict Filippo Osella, Caroline Osella

Understanding / Inhaling The Town

Field studies

Visual Culture Interviews

Understanding The Small Town Field Studies

The developing town was the second microcosm at study, I chose to explore my hometown of kozhikode in Kerala using different methods and techniques. What is the situation in this town ? What are ground realities, that need to be investigated? What I mean by the situation is the reflection of the psyche that exists within the environment and people. One can see reflection of that collective sphere in 1. Their own environments as physical manifestations, this is possible by recording and analysing the visual culture 2. Their thoughts and opinions

Interviews

Which are the different perspectives that bring out the totality of the situation? 1. School children in Kozhikode 2 Young people who wanted to step out of their towns but couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t.

Visual Culture

A media archive started taking shape as I started collecting and documenting various instances while travelling in the town.

Built Environments

I started documenting various indicators and visible manifestations of my concerns with modernity in the landscape 1. Through an exercise of photography and video observations from different spaces in the town Homes and public spaces

Media landscape

1. Recording and observing media consumption in the town,,I started collecting sounds and visuals from popular regional cable television programmes and regional cinema

Interviews Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan School,

School Children in Small town

Kozhikode

This school is among one of the premier schools in kozhikode, I decided to meet a few of the students from class 10 and 11 for a group discussion. A majority of the alumni from this school are no longer in the town, and are either studying or working outside. The group was selected by the principal and, in this group of six, four were girls, and two of them were abroad for a few years before coming to this school. Change We started talking about changes that have occurred in these last few years in Kozhikode. 1. They spoke about the new malls that have come up in unison. 2. Old Theatres that have been broken down, and proposed to become multiplexes but not much progress is seen. Aspirations 1. They only mentioned occupations of engineering and medicine 2. Upon further questioning they started mentioning aspirations of working for television such as travel and living, of being a writer, a performer but instantly said that they are only dreams and cant be realised. 3. They spoke of money and a secured job as their highest priority Modernity This was a tough conversation to trigger off, but I started building a mind map on the black board to get them going. For the

longest time the ideas that came out were quite conventional, and narrow, but I kept going. The first round of ideas that came up were Then some interesting results came out, one of them mentioned about inter-faith marriages that have started happening in many places across India. Her name was Rebecca and she was born in UK, and had spend only a few years of her childhood there and then she came to Kozhikode. She was the one who secretly wanted to work for television. We spoke more about the malls there seemed to be a lot of interest there. They spoke about how there is hardly any actual shopping that happens , but they occasionally go to the new Dominoes Pizza place that has opened up over there. Summary 1. What is the current state of the quality of education in these towns? 2. Doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t inequalities brought upon by family backgrounds get levelled in the education process? 3. There is an alarming interest and obsession for spaces such as malls that have come up. 4. Are new possibilities and career paths still a far away dream for them?

Interviews

SM Street Kozhikode

SM Street is an old trade centre in the town, there is a new trend that is very visible in these spaces, shops selling imitations of branded clothing.

Adel, age 38, Kozhikode, Shop owner Adel has two popular shops on these streets. These are some excerpts from the conversation I had. “ The young crowd here doesn’t want to go into retail stores. They prefer the small shop, the small talk, the small bills, the hunting around, the credit. As if retail stores got this taste running “ “Those huge retail stores are made for IT people, the whole place is like a super market right? You walk in pick up a few clothes you like, and then put it in a basket and take them out” He spoke about how he had started off with one shop and managed to expand. “People take their clothes seriously nowadays, I don’t sell fakes, because they can easily spot it and they just are not good design or of superior quality” “But the truth is business is not doing that great, there is not much money here, but there are NRI who come and pick up the more expensive ones, because they are rare, not at all easy to find in these prices” I have started travelling to various parts of south-east Asia, last week I was in China, it is a little difficult to get huge quantities of clothes back into the country now a days.

Jaffer age 45, Kozhikode, Cloth shop employee Jaffer works at another part of S.M Street and has been working in a shop that has been around for a long time. â&#x20AC;&#x153; The clothes here are not aimed for the youth as much as the other new shops, I travel to Bangalore mostly to get hold of the items sold here, I feel have a more steady consumer base than the new shops, but taste is changing so much, but our customers havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t changed much, I think they come from other backward districts and make purchases â&#x20AC;&#x153;

Understanding /Inhaling Form and Medium

Questions Research and references

Form and Medium In what form can I communicate these ideas and observations

I started looking at different ways in which I can represent the ideas that come out of these simultaneous processes. From the proposal phase the goal was to produce characters to represent the different perspectives and the format was to be in shorts which form a series. 1. Looking at different mediums 2.Modes of Story telling 3.Which point of view is suitable for this theme 4. Bringing context out 5.Binding all the different forms into a cohesive unit

References Film and Video

I started watching videos which were explorations in the themes that I was studying, and explorations of mediums which can communicate complex ideas

Arthur Lipsett: Very nice, Very nice

Lipsettâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s particular passion was sound. He would collect pieces of sound and fit them together to create an interesting auditory sensation. After playing one of these creations to friends, they suggested that Lipsett put images to it. He did what his friends suggested, and the result became the 7 minute long film Very Nice, Very Nice which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Short Subject, Reason to watch Representation of abstract concepts, sound and image associations, vertical montage

Free Fall (1964)

An experimental film from Arthur Lipsett, Free Fall is an assortment of film trimmings assembled to make a wry comment on humankind in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s world. It evokes a surrealist dream of our fall from grace into banality.

Usage of still pictures and portraits to create, montage, portrayal of public spaces

Louise Malle: God’s Country Drawing portraits of a town and its people, extracting stories during interviews It is about Glencoe, Minnesota. 5000 people live there and nothing happens, really. But still Malle manages to make it fascinating and interesting. His love for humanity, even racist or homophobic people, is so overwhelming that you just can’t help but also to fall in love with them too.” Malle filmed most of it in 1979. He came back 6 years later to see what had changed. This would have been a good film without the material 6 years later but this small addition makes it great. 1985 is the Reagan era and the farmers are suffering. Once a proud community, now no one sees much future at all and parents hope their children will educate them self and do something else than farming. This documentary is quite relevant today. Our financial crises today started because of what was happening then. Just take a look to these final words in the film, spoken by an older lawyer from the town (in 1985): “Well I have high hopes for this country because the things that are going on right now can only be characterized in my mind as an obsession with greed. And a nation doesn’t live long with that obsession. And particularly a democracy that… There’s good – there’s good – a lot of good in this country and a lot

of good people and they aren’t gonna – they aren’t gonna subscribe to this philosophy of greed that’s going on now. It’s horrible.”

(Szerelmesfilm) Love film: István Szabó

Imagery and editing for creating moods of nostalgia . exploration of spaces. recollection of memory Lovefilm’s novelistic kaleidoscope interprets Jansci’s reminiscences with a direct, cleareyed sensitivity that recalls the early work of French New Wave icons like Alain Resnais and François Truffaut. The cascade of details -- of life and death in Budapest between, during and after the wars, of limbo and longing within an expatriate Hungarian community in the south of France -- coupled with Szabó’s audacious visualization of Jansci’s sense of nostalgia makes for an unforgettable viewing experience.

Sound

Bob Ostertag: Sooner or Later(1991) Arranging sound to create mood and concept.

Solo. Based on a recording of a Salvadoran boy burying his father. Bob Ostertag did not simply create a political piece but a musical reality, in which sampling technology is used in a significant way for the first time. The music encircles reality, decomposes it into music and recomposes it until reality is no longer able to escape. It is this clarity that makes Sooner or Later great music, a music that has something to do with life again. -- Die Zeit

Exhaling/Reflecting Inferences and Effects Characters and Stories

Inferences and effects What are the different domains affected by modernity

I was able to make connections between the readings and observations from the field study.

Identity

As I was reading my introspective writing and going through the interviews I started noticing processes of fragmentation and amalgamation that has occurred due to globalisation There is a question on changing identities and a search for a sense of belongingness within most these groups.

Time

Routine and micro time management has become inevitable in urban spaces.

Social Mobility

There is a upward mobility felt by many different groups, but at the same time are bound by certain traditional paradigms, and economic deprivation in their daily lives.

Consumerism

There is a rise of consumerism, happening in different levels.

Paradoxes or coexistence

There was a coexistence of certain traditional and modern ideas.

Characters and Stories

As I was going through the various observations that have come out there was a combination of phenomenons, contexts, spaces and human emotions, How to communicate this complex and layered situation? Can I see them being embodied by different character with their personal stories? Since I had set out on creating characters from the proposal stage it was more or less that these characters took shape while moving in and out of theory and interactions in the town This is where my learning from reading Pankaj Mishraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Butter Chicken in Ludhiana came into practice. Through his book I was able to meet different people who embody different fragments, perspective and characteristics of India. And in a similar why the characters took shape which were a combination of different observations and readings and tried to place to them in one common space. A small town. These are fictional character created by stitching together various people I met, their stories and the combination of the ideas I wanted to communicate, and phenomenons that I observed. Here I used ideas from my readings and connected it to the appropriate situations. There was a need to put the characters in a reflective situation so that some of the ideas explored can be represented. I started collating the different groups I had interviewed and injected a dose of fiction to put them in a situation of crisis so that they undergo a reflection of their past,present and future It could also push a character to be highly critical of ones situation or environment.

Anil Radhakrishnan Character and Story

He was born in kerala to an upper middle class family, during the early 80’s late 70’s and the goes to premium schools in the state.. Picks up the guitar to sing bob Dylan, and listens to John Denver, the dire straits. He works in Bangalore for a year or something and leaves to Dubai, through his contacts, he’s been working in the it industry pursued management studies and works as senior manager for a mid size tech company. He’s comes back home for all the past holidays, and enjoys the visits to the temple, switches proudly to his fluent Malayalam, relishes the ‘nadan’ food. When he is back in Dubai he again enjoys food from home but switches to, Italian, Arabic and sometimes the occasional TGIF. But what he really wants at the end of the day is actually ‘curd rice’. He talks of coming back and working from India, how he is become sick of being abroad, feeling like an outsider. He claims that this is where he would rather be. This holiday turns out to be a little different, he doesn’t seem too happy to be home, it doesn’t feel like a holiday for him. Why? He might lose his job in Dubai, the market has gone through considerable change, the mid size companies are at stake. He is looking at the situation in his hometown and India very critically, His usual family gatherings are not so joyful anymore at least in his head. He knows India is transforming, growing developing, his investments have only grown, yet there is some uncertainty in leaving the urban city which he had started to detest. He looks around in his hometown, lamenting on its future

Background and intention

Anil embodies the urban educated elite class who travels to a metropolitan city. He is one of those who grows an acute sense of alienation in the urban environment and starts feeling that the urban capitalistic condition is that of a grotesque indulgence and consumer commodification, which all results an heightened feeling of alienation.*

Observations from an outsider, observations of change comes from someone who comes back and compare. This instance allows us to dissects different parts of the town far more critically.

He starts finding refuge in his memories and believes that his hometown, a developing small in Kerala can be his sanctuary, where there is no loss of that innocence. He has been constantly visiting his hometown during his holidays and then return to the metropolitan city for work. He always wishes to come back and setup work, livelihood and life in his birthplace and leave his urban mad world all together. In one such holidays he loses his job in the metropolitan city and realizes he cant go back. After feeling stuck in his hometown he realises the reality that he is a product of the urban world which has formed his identity, where his self -expression and happiness is realized,# He feels stifled in the small town that he fears is heading in a direction of an uglier form of modernisation and consumerism * This could have been contrasted with a similar character in an urban setting completely oblivious or optimistic or involved in the urban capitalist condition. From my interviews I learnt that they usually show or have no connection to a place of origin since they were born into an urban condition in the first place.

Rasheed Character and story

He was born in Malappuram a slightly cut off district of Malabar region and his family shifted to Kozhikode, when he was about 10 years old. His father was a struggling businessman, who tried setting up a cloth shop in S.M street. He used to travel a lot to procure clothes, materials, and ready-made, he didn’t own the shop, he was an attendant, and pick up guy. Rasheed was quite ambitious, when he turns twenty three he sets up a very modern shop, this is around the year 2003. He now owns two shops in S.M street, he travels to china, to buy cheap, ‘hip – hop’ ish clothes to sell for cheap. He picks up leftovers from second sales, The security has become tighter. He is not able to get in the clothes. He remembers the old days when they used to go to Bangalore with a bunch of other ‘ready-made’ clothes shop owners, with 8 people in one room, breaking the fast in the train. Those days seem to be over. He wears a skill cap goes to mosque and most of his peers are Muslims He was moderately religious, though deep inside he didn’t care much, but he wasn’t allowed to be rebellious. His wife wears a full burqa and his son attends a madarasa. He is not sure if he’s acting due to social pressure. Though his travels and general understanding of the world has increased some of his values haven’t changed much.

Background and intention

Represents the provider of or forces that cater to the aspirations of the above mentioned group, because he is selling fake branded clothes at a lower price. And thereby providing a false sense of gratification.

He is also affected by globalization since the above mentioned group is being constantly exposed to a globalised standard of styles and there has to travel abroad to procure theses products at the cheaper price in which it will sell back at home, but in the process he is getting exposed to a world he couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t dream of earlier. His trouble starts when coming back with his grey market products into India. He is stopped and checked at airports for two reasons, one being Muslim and because he is carrying goods that are illegal in a certain sense. This indicates how modernity has brought up the formal security systems and control over movement of goods, Which affects such small businesses. But at the same it also reflects a greater sense of social mobility, achieved by this group of people. Yet, there is a deep rooted conservatism apparent in such a situation where he displays his religious symbols and orientation and there is a sense of hypocrisy when we see him wearing and selling branded clothes and yet insists on the strict usage of burqa worn for his wife, and madarasa education for his children But this topic is highly debatable as a question of faith ,but becomes an interesting observation.

Appu Character and story

Appu was born in was brought up in Dubai but he came back to his parents hometown in kerala during his formative years, and only has few memories of the times back in Dubai, now his family is struggling in kerala. He had got used to the kfcs the play stations, the psps etc, now he cant afford all of them, but has access to few of it through his ‘rich’ friends, they go to dominoes quite often. He likes to go to the mall, he remembers it vaguely, but was very excited when it started a year back. Goes there walks around, cant buy much, his friend’s usually treat him, he wants the branded clothes, he likes Malayalam and hindi films,the new ones, he is on you tube though searching for Malayalam parodies He wants to throw a big party for all his friends. He feels its important to gain their respect through this ritual. His elder sister just got married, she wasn’t allowed to travel much after they shifted to back to hometown, stayed at home most of the time, was sent to one of the local colleges,his sister who received most of her education in dubai used to watch a lot of English, but he didn’t quite understand her world. He thought that his sister’s accent was just to show off. .

Background and intention

Represents the growing aspirations of an emerging middle class influenced by various forms of global media. They wish to see more malls more entertainment and subscribes to the appearances of development but from a position of limited economic abundance. His desire to gain respect by buying branded clothes and throwing a party at dominoes adds to this layer. His sister who gets married off early and was held in a protective environment at home is a sign of a conservative mode that exists in such middle class family

Summary Anil

comes to his hometown for a holiday after developing an aversion for city of dubai

> loses his job in dubai > critically analyses and re-evalutes his feelings for his hometown and the country

> Questions his sense of belongingness and identity

Search for identity, rootlessness, aversion to capitalism, estrangement

Appu

is fascinated by the new malls that have come up in his town

> thinks that he needs to spend > borrows money and gets money to impress his friends

into trouble

consumerism, media influences , tech-culture

Rasheed

has started travelling to China to pick up cheaper versions of branded clothes

> feels he has become more

aware of the world and his standard of living has increased

> is caught by the new strict customs laws and security checkups, remembers his simpler past

social mobility, terror culture, pressures on informal trade practices, paradoxes and coexistence These three stories becomes different levels and layers of the situation in this town.

Creating /Assembling Units Arrangement Expanding one story Trunk and branches The Karsakow System

Questions and concerns How had these stories taken Shape? What is the nature of material and ideas that I have been collecting and creating? How to tell these stories ? How to present these stories and talk about the town and the different concepts and ideas at the same time? How to present the various external conditions that build this situation ? How to represent the conceptual ideas that talk of the situation?

Why Video? I chose to work with video because of the complexity and layers involved in these stories. Video was a medium that could bring together various types of media together. There was a requirement to tell the stories with photo realistic images of spaces since we were looking at it from a visual culture perspective. There was also an element of nostalgia that needed to be ignited and this could be accomplished most effectively with moving images and sound. I was constantly observing and shooting different parts of the town while doing research and interviews and at the same time visualizing the ideas of conceptual fragments with the combination of sound. There was a media archive that was taking shape throughout the process and I could already see possibilities with this archive.

Units

The ideas that came up for describing the different themes explored in the project were disconnected units, but they started fitting into the linear story of the characters. I had to choose one of the stories and expand it. The idea to present the videos as if in first person point of view comes from the nature of the footage as I had not introduced a character foregrounding this footage. These small units were conceived in fragments, the story was born out of these fragments I had created. They had no direct connections or a sequence, but comes from a common context or intent.

Arrangement

How to arrange these video units which were inter connected and disconnected at the same time. By this I mean the videos that are born out of a particular context, but the nature of the videos themselves keep varying, the same way as a mind fluctuates between different devices of meaning making and experience. Since the idea of a fragmented narrative echoed with the ideas from the conceptual stage, and since this format results in a medium appropriate for digital dissemination and distribution over the web, I started exploring the possibilities.

How to convert these units into these videos that can be arranged onto a single frame or a page? How to convert files from the video archive into meaningful units? On what basis will they be arranged ? How will one navigate through this video book?

Expanding one Story

Since the immigrants were studied more extensively and since Anilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s story intersects with my own point of view. I decided to expand the narrative and see where these units will fit in. The scope of the project was determined by the time allotted and thereby I chose to continue with one central character, and I realised that the NRI would be the most approachable who could take the audience through this journey. The NRI could also be linked up to the different characters and their worlds through fictional instances.

Trunk and branches

Looking at the characterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s story and the different fragments conceived there was a possibility of arranging it either in a trunk and branch models. This means that there could be a back bone narrative and other ideas digressing or expanding the context of the events. If the back bone is based on the events that the character goes through the branches could be more abstract or informative pieces indicating the internal landscape or external events which affect the character,

Trunk Narrative

Is the sequence of events the character goes through. The Narrative which moves the story forward and from which the other videos can digress from. Form Phone conversations as sound layered with ambience, only the characterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s voice is revealed, the visuals are point of view shots, of their homes, streets, etc, Their voice becomes the commentary through which their conditioning and aspirations clash with their immediate surroundings. Their hometowns these small towns. Sound becomes vital to build up moods and to a place an emotional comment as experienced by the character through which the story and ideas are unveiled.

Branches

The branches are the sequences or units which digress from the main event based story that represent 1. The various thoughts, internal musing, opinions, recollection, dreams, and associations of the character Or 2. Contextual and informative units that could have been heard by the character or for the sake of the viewer, to support any of the other clips. These branches were conceived by grouping the various fragments into related clusters.

phone conversation

Excerpts from the script for The ideas of having phone conversations was brought back again and re scripted and put to several tests to see if it fits with the videos and the narrative

Phone conversations Car sequence 1 Anil: Slightly tensed voice, Hello my name is anil radhakrishnan, I am asst, tech ________ for etisalat, I would like to talk to the senior network engineer, this is concerning the product demonstration _________ this is to set up meeting. Hello? Hello? Ok I can hold Hello Mr, Sivadas.. I am anil we spoke before Eh.. Ohh malyali annu alle.. Sir that meeting wat should we do, I ll be leaving .. Natillake tomorrow,, Ahh athe anno onathinte community lunchil we met , athe aaa anil thanne sir Actual place is Kozhikode , yeah its been a while since I have gone home.. So .. Pause.. Yeah I can send you the technical documents tomorrow before I leave.. Yeah I know its late at night but thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s okay ,, everyone is working hard these days no sir. Okay bye I ll see you when I get back.. Hopefully soon sir,, okay goodnight Ends call Ringtone Hey!! George wats up da?!?! Ahh nale I am going, mathiyayada this city is killing me..in every possible way.. Well its like this man,, all this running around for money its become strange.. Only you will understand what I mean.. baki ellarum they are all still mesemerized by the money and the glamour.. The only other person who understood this was Rachna, hmmmmmm.. She is quite special that way..

She was kinda of a hippie apparently.. She is doing marketing now haha its quite an irony.. To tell you the truth I am getting sick of it, everyone thing is being judged by money and appearance what kind of shit is that? Yeah this hoilday should do me good.. Korochu divisam chorum kariyam, naaadum.. Veedum.. Pause.. Yeah I know its not the same at home.. I know things are changing there also.. But I am getting lost here da.. don’t know who I am anymore…. Haha don’t laugh fucker….. Okay I ll see you soon, after all this anyways I have to go and shop my ass off .. Hmm gifts for home.. To show that I have made money… quite a hypocrite… haha I love my folks back at home,,, cant say I ddidnt get anything just because I have started hating this concrete jungle and pseudo fake people… Okay da.. I ll see you soon.. Oye wait.. Wats the scene with Sharan and Yusuf I heard they are getting sent off ? Are they going back to India?? Car sequence 2 after reaching Hey rachna…I have landed home.. Hmm it feels good.. But the traffic is quite bad.. For some reason I did not imagine it so… well , there are also a lot of signboards than before… things have definitely changed here.. Oye and by the way.. I am buying some of the things here.. Yeah they are just gifts na at the end of the day.. Hey I thought you wouldn’t find that weird.. Oye anyways I got to go, I ll talk to you soon.. Now its going to be that routine,.. weddings.. Visiting family all of that.. Yeah sure.. Bye

Trunk: The different spaces and events

What all does Anil see? Where all does he go? What are the different spaces in the archive that can be used appropriately for the different parts of the back bone narrative.

Residential Areas

Where is such a character most likely to live? I explored residential areas where someone like anil is more probable to live, These places were filled with houses constructed during the 70â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s apart from houses in traditional architecture style. One of the most important element in these spaces were the narrow lanes which take shape due to the high moss covered walls,These narrow lanes could become an important visual element in the narrative,

Streets

When anil sets out explore the town he could go through a process of observing the streets in the town which depict many paradoxes and clashes of modern elements and traditional elements.

The metropolitan City

Anil develops an apathy towards the city lives in this was a challenge because it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t possible to go and shoot in Dubai. So I started using found footage from Dubai, collected from different family members who were staying abroad. There were collections of images at times, and this started building different types of photo - motion sequences, which were appropriate to differentiate it, as reminiscence.

Video Archive There was video archive coming to shape as materials were being sourced for the different characters. A database of different kinds of content was created so that the wide range of time, space and feelings could be constructed to expand the narrative. This database was at disposal so that one could connect different themes and imagery as driven by the core narrative. This material gains momentum and meaning after it undergoes a process of editing. The videos had to be logged and carefully picked as and when required.

Branches Conceptual Videos

What could Anil be thinking about? What does he feel ? What are the concepts forming in his mind ? There were different conceptual reactions which seemed to provide opinions and context to the story and on expanding the situation.

Nostalgia

The character and the theme required a lot of imagery from the past, to indicate the character sense of nostalgia and to bring out the comparison between the present times and the past. This was achieved by collecting home videos from family members. Most of this was on VHS cassettes and was then digitized. Some of the footage from the shoot were also treated in after effects or shot in older lens to bring about the effect.

Dadaist Malayalam

What if we artificially inseminate or accelerate the regional flavour, the cultural landscape with a sense of modernity,orchestrating a sort of evolution of representation the question was then. What is Dadaist Malayalam? One of the conflict arises from the perception that modernity, is something external, a western export, with the language of English. What if we reply to that with Malayalam that seeks to be post modern? As I was exploring this imagery and mood by tampering regional language books, and regional cinema it started going to a more abstract space. It brought out new feelings and

I realised that its not necessary a completely simulated representation, but indicates the fragmentation that is happening to memories and language among people such as the immigrants in this cultural space.

Mistaken Modernity

The opinion that the modernity that is being assimilated here is mistaken and resting on a base of an archaic paradigm. One of the visuals which came up from this was that of a microwave oven resting on an old kitchen cabinet, in a surrealistic mood, the microwave tunes into a television programme which looks like an ancient mythological story enacted in kitschy regional cable series programme.

What technology and tools would enable me to achieve an arrangement and navigation of videos? How to arrange these videos in a clickable interface? The idea is to arrange the units in such a way that one can navigate from one idea to another and follow the story at the same time. The nature of the videos themselves will change according to the possibilities thrown up by the software. What are the essential requirements that have come up from the last few stages? Linking of the video units Multiple Videos on a page Image and text Clusters of associated videos showing up A navigation system to go through these pages a product that can be disseminated over the web. After searching for different softwares that would enable me to do this, I finally found a software, The Karsakow System which has the ability to Arrange videos on a page Link videos in a nonlinear fashion use text as when required on the page give output as web page

Process summary map

The korsakow system The Korsakow System (pronounced ‘KOR-SAKOV’) is an easy-to-use computer program for the creation of database films. It was invented by Florian Thalhofer, a Berlin-based media artist. They are interactive – the viewer has influence on the K-Film. They are rule-based – the author decides on the rules by which the scenes relate to each other, but /he does not create fixed paths. K-Films are generative – the order of the scenes is calculated while viewing. Korsakow allows you to turn media assets (eg video files) into Smallest Narrative Units (SNUs, or ‘snooz’ for short). This involves making rule-based associations between all the media assets in your project, using two kinds of keywords: IN (“I am…” keywords) and OUT (“Looking for…”) keywords. For every SNU there is an associated Preview file (most likely a still image or a video). Preview files do not need to have the same name as their associated SNUs. A K-Film will only ‘work’ if there are multiple SNUs with keywords in common. (The keywords are derived by you, based on the content or meaning of each SNU. Where keywords coincide, links are made.) NB You must specify which SNU will play first. The default interface (ie the K-Film’s layout) is a main media panel with three auto-link previews underneath. Changes can be made to the interface by double-clicking on the interface file in the main Korsakow window.

Structuring according to the new language derived from the possibilities of the karsakow system The narrative has been divided into two simple chapters, and different themes that are linked to the emotions of the character are linked respectively. The small units of narrative follow three levels, Characterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actual point of view Recollection of a memory Visualisation of a concept or feeling.

Karsakow System Elements As I was exploring the possibilities with this software, I had to make changes to the different elements. Screen Layout Different variations were tried in terms of frame size preview video positions preview video shapes to work with the change in story and mood, but this lead to unnecessary confusion, due to the limitations of the system. Text and Previews The preview videos are the buttons which take the narrative forward. I used the characterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s voice as part of the button so that audience feels as if they are committing to the narration in some way. You can see the evolution of the interface and various possibilities which had to be dropped due to limitations of the software and the structure I was working with. Korsakow is designed for a more nonlinear access linking video fragments that can hold as

This becomes a screen based media product that is cross platform, and can be showcased through the web or downloaded as a full page and viewed with ones own time.

complete piece on its own. Structure and layers New connections, structures and possibilities started emerging when I started forming clusters of videos under the same keyword (Map) Issues Engagement time What is the maximum time the audience will spend with these videos, can it be used to my advantage or does it work as a disadvantage? I started breaking the longer videos into smaller pieces and started distributing it into different parts of the experience. Dissemination The entire work was then exported and uploaded to a web space, and linked to forums, and databases, with information of each piece, with credits and sources so that it becomes a detailed database and documentation which could drive further insights. Who were my audiences ? Who could benefit from this work? This could be either looked at as a holistic artwork published for an urban population so that we reflect on the various implications and effects of modernity in India? Or it could be an interesting method to get key-insights for various ongoing research processes on understanding the transforming Indian landscape.

Structure map

language language schools schools

old classmates old classmates context radio,radio, context thinking thinking aboutabout homehome

chapter chapter 1 1 Plane Plane Introduction Introduction

chapter chapter -1 -1

car ride car ride remembering remembering the the city city work work shopping for home shopping for home mallsmalls

househouse visits visits marriages marriages getting into routine getting into routine

driving home driving home

chapter chapter 2 2

depression losing job

chapter 3

beach on the street searching

chapter 4

remembering life in the city

chapter 5

Acknowledgements Technical Help Veecheet Dhakal Ragini Ramanathan Panel members Nicolas Grandi, Deepak Srinivasan, Raghavendra Rao I would like to thank everyone in Bilathikulam, Kozhikode And Adith Faculty A. V Varghese, Ayisha Abraham Thanks to peer group Ramya, Veecheet, Nanki, Deboo, Avinash, Soumya, Divya

Appendix

Appendix A

Excerpts from readings for understanding forces and effects of modernity at global level

Appendix B

Excerpts from readings for understanding forces and effects of modernity at a more local level.

Appendix C

What are the Tier II and Tier III cities in India? Various articles showing the increased interest in the emerging indian middle class

Appendix A Excerpts from readings for understanding forces and effects of modernity at global level

Emerging Youth Cultures in the Era of Globalization: TechnoCulture & TerrorCulture Sam George Globalization lies is at the heart of contemporary culture and cultural elements lie at the heart of Globalization. Some view culture as the ‘intrinsic aspect of the whole process’1 of globalization, while others assert the priority of culture by saying “material exchanges localize; political exchanges internationalize; and symbolic exchanges globalize.”2 The conventional approach confounds an explanation of the multidimensionality of globalization and we must avoid giving casual priority to one over the other. Nevertheless, cultural implications are central to understanding human side of globalization, and youth culture will have significant bearing on its future. Globalization isn’t about western culture any more, but it is a new form of culture that knows no boundaries and is spreading globally ‘Globalization from above’ and ‘Globalization from below’. It could also be viewed as McWorld and Jihad, or top-down and bottom-up, or the high and low cultures of globalization, respectively. The emerging culture defining the globalization from above would be Technology or TechnoCulture. Tech savvy-ness is a chief characteristic of the emerging generation around the world. The form of technology may vary and its knowledge and use may vary too. But their inclination toward it and capacity to acquire techno-skills and knowledge are universal. The common ground of the echnoCulture of the global youth comprises of computers, Internet and wireless devices.

TerrorCulture as ‘globalization from below’. Since the events of September 11, 2001, the culture of terrorism has been etched in the minds of people worldwide. The on-going war on terrorism and the growing militancy around the world have a youthful face Both are representative features of the global youth. It is not a either-or scenario, but a concurrent reality of global youth populace. They can be seen as swinging between these extremities and both is driving the debate in its own direction. Although, the former is more predominant in advanced countries and the latter in poorer parts of the world, streaks of it can be located throughout the globe. Both continue to cast considerable influence on the global society.

‘Living in the world’: dilemmas of the self Anthony Giddens, In conditions of late modernity, we live ‘in the world’ in a different sense from previous eras of history. Everyone still continues to live a local life, and the constraints of the body ensure that all individuals, at every moment, are contextually situated in time and space. Yet the transformations of place, and the intrusion of distance into local activities, combined with the centrality of mediated experience, radically change what ‘the world’ actually is. This is so both on the level of the ‘phenomenal world’ of the individual and the general universe of social activity within which collective social life is enacted. Although everyone lives a local life, phenomenal worlds for the most part are truly global . One thing we can say with some certainty is that in very few instances does the phenomenal world any longer correspond to the habitual settings through which an individual physically moves. Localities are thoroughly penetrated by distanciated influences, whether this be regarded as a cause for concern or simply accepted as a routine part of social life. All individuals actively, although by no means always in a conscious way, selectively incorporate many elements of mediated experience into their day-to-day conduct. This is never a random or a passive process, contrary to what the image of the collage effect might suggest

So far as the self is concerned, the problem of unification concerns protecting and reconstructing the narrative of self-identity in the face of the massive intensional and extensional changes which modernity sets into being. In most pre-modern contexts, the fragmentation of experience was not a prime source of anxiety. A second dilemma is that of powerlessness versus appropriation. If there is one theme which unites nearly all authors who have written on the self in modern society, it is the assertion that the

individual experiences feelings of powerlessness in relation to a diverse and large-scale social universe. In contrast to the traditional

world, it is supposed, where the individual was substantially in control of many of the influences shaping his life, in modern

societies that control has passed to external agencies. As specified by

Marx, the concept of alienation has served as the centre-point for analyses of this issue. As the forces of production

develop, particularly under the aegis of capitalistic production, the individual cedes control of his life circumstances to the dominating influences of machines and markets.

Unification versus fragmentation The first dilemma is that of unification versus fragmentation. Modernity fragments; it also unites. On the level of the individual right up to that of planetary systems as a whole, tendencies towards dispersal vie with those promoting integration.

Personalised versus commodified experience A fourth dilemma is that between personalised versus commodified experience. Modernity opens up the project of the self, but under conditions strongly influenced by standardising effects of commodity capitalism. We can detail the impact of commodification in the following ways. The capitalistic

market, with its ‘imperatives’ of continuous expansion, attacks tradition. The spread of capitalism places large sectors (although by no means all) of social reproduction in the hands of markets for products and labour. Markets operate without regard to pre-established forms of behaviour, which for the most part represent obstacles to the creation of unfettered exchange. In the period of high modernity, capitalistic enterprise increasingly seeks to shape consumption as well as monopolise the conditions of production. From the beginning, markets

promote individualism in the sense that they stress individual rights and responsibilities, but at first this phenomenon mainly concerns the freedom of contract and mobility intrinsic to capitalistic employment. Later, however, individualism becomes extended to the sphere of consumption, the designation of individual wants becoming basic to the continuity of the system.

Market-governed freedom of individual choice becomes an enveloping framework of individual self-expression. The very corruption of the notion of lifestyle’, reflexively drawn into the sphere of advertising, epitomises these processes.

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Advertisers orient themselves to sociological classifications of consumer categories and at the same time foster specific consumption ‘packages’. To a greater or lesser

degree, the project of the self becomes translated into one of the possession of desired goods and the pursuit of artificially framed styles of life. The consequences of this situation have often been noted. The consumption of ever-novel goods becomes in some part a substitute for the genuine development of self; appearance replaces essence as the visible signs of successful consumption come actually to outweigh the use-values of the goods and services in question themselves

Criticism and discussion on

The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth – Benjamin M. Friedman by ROGER KERR But why exactly should economic growth promote moral progress? Friedman explains the link in the following way. Surveys of people’s sense of well-being consistently report that people make relative judgments; they compare their situation against moving benchmarks. They typically refer to two such benchmarks: their own situation in the past and the situation of their contemporaries. That is, people evaluate their well-being by judging how they are doing compared with some relevant time in the past, and they also judge how well or badly they are doing in comparison with other people. This seems plausible. To judge their level of well-being, people need some idea of how well-off it’s possible to be. Their own past experience and the present experience of other people both provide those standards. Friedman goes on to argue that normally one of the two benchmarks is dominant in people’s judgments of their well-being. This is where economic growth comes in. Friedman says:By continuallygiving most people a sense of living better than they or their families have in the not very distant past, sustained economic growth reduces the intensity of their desire to live better than one another. Economic growthsatisfies the form of people’s aspiration for ‘more’ that is possible for everyone to fulfill

He goes on:

But when an economy stagnates … the importance people attach to living better than others against whom they naturally compare themselves is more intense. The fact that they cannot do so, or at least on average cannot, then takes on heightened importance in their eyes. The resulting frustration generates intolerance, ungenerosity and resistance to greater openness to individual opportunity. It also erodes people’s willingness to trust one another,which in turn is a key prerequisite for a successful democracy

The value of a rising standard of living lies not just in the concrete improvements it brings to how individuals live but in how it shapes the social,political, and ultimately the moral character of a people. Economic growth –meaning a rising standard of living for the clear majority of citizens – more often than not fosters greater opportunity, tolerance of diversity, social mobility, commitment to fairness, and dedication to democracy. This too seems plausible. Without economic growth, one person’s gain may well be balanced by someone else’s loss, and so social mobility maybe resented and resisted. But with economic growth, other people’s improved well-being need not be a threat, since we can all get ahead together, and so we are more inclined to be fair and generous to the upwardly mobile rather than to discriminate against them, and less inclined to resent those who are better-off than ourselves. So far so good. But there is one very important implication of this analysis that Friedman is at pains to stress. This is that the moral benefits

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of economic growth depend on indefinite growth. That is, growth must be acontinuous process, not a movement towards some final state of prosperity in which we can give up pursuing material improvements and concentrate on moral and other non-material ends. The reason is that we quickly get used to our changed circumstances and take them for granted. If an economy stops growing, however great the absolute level of prosperity,people lose the sense that they are getting ahead in their own lives, andstart to assess their well-being by comparing themselves with one another. And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s when the trouble starts.bearing out the theory; for example, inequality is increasing in China and India. But in those countries poverty is rapidly decreasing, which is surely the paramount goal. That is, economic growth brings widespread improvements in health, nutrition, and other basic indicators of well-being.

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Acceleration. Changes in the structure of time in modernity Hartmut Rosa

Why do we all have so little time, even though we can actually work more effectively than we could previously? The reason is that acceleration – the continuous increase in speed – is the basic principle of our time. – Modernity’s entire history can be written as a history of acceleration, says Hartmut Rosa. At the CULCOM seminar “Time and Modernity” the sociologist presented a new theory of modernity. Here, he shows that prevailing theories on modernity are insufficient. Most theoreticians describe differentiation, rationalization, and individualization as the hallmarks of modernity. But there is something more important, something that is itself the basis for differentiation, rationalization, and individualization- namely acceleration.

“Even though not all layers of society are equally exposed to this dynamic of change, it is still the logic of acceleration that determines the structural and cultural development of the modern society,” Excerpts from an interview What effect does acceleration have in relation to “others”? One could assume that we have a more relaxed relation to “the other” because we are constantly being exposed to something new? Is your analysis helpful for understanding the debate on immigration? -Yes, I believe so. In principle, there are two possible way to react to the acceleration dynamic of the 2000s. One type of reaction implies that people become postmodern

subjects. This means that they accept that they live during a time when nothing stands still and everything is inconstant. They are flexible and view life as a game. Such people exist. They are not afraid of strangers and have no problems with immigrants- quite the opposite. They view in the other an opportunity to realize themselves. -The other reaction consists of an easily panicked attempt to cling on to something. These people are easily drawn toward religious fundamentalism or a nationalism that is xenophobic nationalism. They search for a stability that no longer exists. In a way, they go back to static pre-modern identity patterns. -Acceleration certainly also leads to new cultural differences constantly arising? But you write about both standardization and the need to adapt in order to keep up? Is this a contradiction? -I hope this is not a contradiction. But

yes, the pressure of acceleration involves demands to adapt. Modernization means acceleration everywhere, but it has different consequences in different cultural contexts in Europe, Asia, Latin and North America, or Africa. Still, I believe that globalization often means homogenization. The highly dynamic

segments of society (the elites) resemble each other more and more when it comes to culture, life course and institutions. -But at the same time there are both here in Europe and other parts of the world, great and perhaps increasing population groups who are excluded from the game of acceleration. They would like to take part

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in the acceleration and perceive themselves as being disconnected or de-accelerated by force. This pertains to large parts of Africa, but also to the unemployed in Europe. In

this way, new great differences arise. The one part lives faster and faster in a way, and the other lives slower and slower. But this slowness is not something cultural; rather, it is a condition of deprivation, especially according to self-perception of the persons in question. -Some people profit more from acceleration than others? -Yes, the mobile elite within the sciences and economics, sports, art and media are the profiteers. They are not bound to one place, and have been in conditions favorable enough to accelerate their lives. The stationary masses on the other hand lack the resources to live flexibly. Those who cannot move, end up down at the very bottom. They are the losers.

What is sociologyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s task here? Is it enough to describe and analyze problems? -It is not enough, but it is important to recognize the society-related dynamic and to understand its character. When we have understood all of the causes, characteristics, and consequences of acceleration, then perhaps we are ready to diminish the consequences, and change and remove the causes. -But thus far we have not yet discerned, or we have even misunderstood

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modernityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s power of acceleration. Most sociological theories of modernization view differentiation (division of labor, specialization, etc), rationalization, individualization, and perhaps also commodification as the basic principles of modernization. Sociology has forgotten how modernity has set the material, social, and spiritual world unstoppably in motion. -Last words to the reader in front of the screen?

-It is not your fault if you no longer have time for the important things in life. Let us then think over together what constitutes the good life.

Conspicuous Consumption The Theory of the Leisure Class. Thorstein Veblen The term conspicuous consumption was introduced by economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class. Tts satiric look at American society, the instincts of emulation and predation play a major role. People, rich and poor alike, attempt to impress others and seek to gain advantage through what Veblen coined “conspicuous consumption” and the ability to engage in “conspicuous leisure.” In this work Veblen argued that consumption is used as a way to gain and signal status. Through “conspicuous consumption” often came “conspicuous waste,” which Veblen detested. Veblen used the term to depict the behavioral characteristic of the nouveau riche, a class emerging in the 19th century as a result of the accumulation of wealth during the Second Industrial Revolution. In this context, the application of the term should be narrowed to the elements of the upper class who use their enormous wealth to manifest social power, whether real or perceived. With significant improvement of living standards and the emergence of the middle class in the 20th century, the term conspicuous consumption is now broadly applied to individuals and households with expendable incomes whose consumption patterns are prompted by the utility of goods to show their status rather than any intrinsic utility of such goods. In the 1920s, economists such as Paul Nystrom theorized that lifestyle changes brought on by the industrial age were inducing a “philosophy of futility” in the masses, which would increase fashionable

consumption. Thus, the concept of conspicuous consumption has been discussed in the context of addictive or narcissistic behaviors induced by consumerism, the desire for immediate gratification, and hedonic expectations.

Whereas previously, conspicuous consumption was thought to be something engaged in primarily by the rich, recent research by economists Kerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst, and professor of finance Nikolai Roussanov points to a different understanding, that conspicuous consumption is more common among poorer groups of people and emerging economies. Displays of wealth in these groups serve to combat the impression that a person is poor, often because they are a member of a group perceived by society as poor The 1996 book The Millionaire Next Door also challenges the traditional views on conspicuous consumption by looking at the wealthiest Americans, finding that most millionaires are quite frugal and lead modest lifestyles.

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Identity Zygmunt Bauman In Identity, a short book based on an email exchange between Zygmunt Bauman and Italian journalist Benedetto Vecchi, the sociologist discusses the question of identity in the context of what he calls ‘liquid modernity’. Bauman’s thesis, set out in his book of that name (2000), is that we have moved from a solid to a fluid phase of modernity, in which nothing keeps its shape, and social forms are constantly changing at great speed, radically transforming the experience of being human. The idea of liquid modernity could be seen as Bauman’s attempt to resolve the tension that exists in much social theory between explaining social phenomena as aspects of modernity, and accounting for their appearance only recently. After all, the modern condition, with its overturning of tradition, has dominated the past two centuries. Liquid modernity seems perhaps to be the late realisation of a tendency that has characterised modernity from the start.

Bauman notes that while the workplace was traditionally a very important source of personal identity, changes in the economy have rendered it far less reliable.

He suggests that the enduring identities once associated with work have given way to looser and more provisional identities, and conceptions of community, that are subject to constant change and renegotiation. Indeed, Bauman points to a more profound transformation of how we understand what it means to be human in the absence of transcendent ideologies (traditional or otherwise) such as have characterised modernity until recently.

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The peculiar ‘liquidity’ of our times may be less the consequence of structural change than intellectual exhaustion, the failure of the great ideologies of the twentieth century to bring about change on a scale that really would transform what it means to be human. Bauman rightly warns against attempts to seek refuge in the identities of the past, but in his lament at the passing of lasting values, he perhaps underestimates the possibilities for self-assured human beings unencumbered by the past, and brave enough to face the future.

Rabbi Adin Even-Yisrael (Steinsalz) Just as there may occur mental complexes of an individual, so too there may occur mental complexes of a whole nation. It is proper to distinguish between these complexes as two different types, national and individual, and that in spite of their similarities they are not identical.

Sometimes a complex is national â&#x20AC;&#x201C; namely, it belongs to a collective of people. To the extent that we can speak about the aims, hopes or dreams of a nation, we can also speak about complexes that belong to this nation and affect it. There are

nations that are afflicted by paranoia. There are some that have superiority complexes; and some that have inferiority complexes. Sometimes it is possible to give an adequate historical explanation why there may have developed a certain complex or a certain madness in a certain nation. At other times there seems no clear and rational explanation. In any case, these national complexes, like other national characteristics, have to do with the collective. It is possible to say that when the large majority of people of a certain nation act with a certain uniformity, a certain unity, then there appear certain characteristics which are mental attributes or modes of behavior which belong to the collective as a whole.

it negative or positive, may become apparent only when the large majority of the public acts together on a large scale extensively, and even then there may appear characteristics which apparently do not show, or show only in a minor way, within the individuals. This very phenomena, the difference between the behaviors of individuals and collectives is known, and there is no doubt that individuals act, and to some extent feel and think, in a different way when part of a collective or crowd. The more common observation is that the psychology of individuals within a crowd are different from the psychology of each of those individuals when each is by oneself. There are also national complexes which are not necessarily a part of the public and collective milieu, but which extend and reach the psyche of each individual. The public then acts as an ensemble, a collection of individuals, separate persons, each of which has those mental characteristics.

Because this is a generalization, it is possible to find many individual cases which do not belong to this collective rule (as it is possible to find with any general rule). But moreover: sometimes a certain characteristic belongs only to the collective, to the large majority of the public, whereas the individuals themselves do not exhibit these characteristics any more than do the people of other nations and other collectives. A certain characteristic, be

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Appendix B Excerpts from readings for understanding forces and effects of modernity at a more local level.

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Mistaken Modernity Dipanker Gupta Mr. Gupta was referring to a particularly superficial version of modernity that he believed was taking root in the nation â&#x20AC;&#x201D; one defined more by Western consumer habits and lifestyles than by adherence to a cosmopolitan, tolerant set of values and democratic norms. He pointed, for instance, to the persistence of caste bias, oppressive traditions and historical inequalities in a nation where ownership of washing machines, cars and other material trappings of global capitalism was increasing. He argued that in many ways India was an unmodern nation. Things have changed a lot since Mr. Gupta wrote that book. But India remains a country where much of the population lives in almost medieval conditions, subjected to brutal poverty and oppression, often inflicted in the name of caste, religion or gender.

India Is Getting All the Trappings of the New Century; But Is It Modern? By Akash Kapur article from New York Times

PONDICHERRY, INDIA â&#x20AC;&#x201D; S. Durairaj is by all accounts a modern man. He drives a car, uses a cellphone and keeps up with international news. In his spare time, he studies for a law degree. He intends to pursue a career as a lawyer. A few years ago, though, when Mr. Durairaj found out his sister was planning to marry a member of a different caste, he and his parents cut off all ties with her. She now lives in a separate home with her husband and two children. The children hardly know their maternal grandparents. The country has become more materialistic, too, reveling in a U.S.-style orgy of consumerism and debt. Visit even a small Indian town today and the parade of shopping malls and brand names and bars and restaurants, all kept in business by a new generation armed with credit cards, is remarkable. Not everyone is thrilled about these changes. But there is no denying that the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s embrace of capitalism represents a striking reversal from the socialist austerity that defined it for much of its post-independence history. For better or for worse, I think it is fair to say that India, like Mr. Durairaj, has become a more modern country. It clings far less to the achievements of its ancient civilization, and looks proudly and with anticipation to the future successes of what many believe is destined to be an Indian century.

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When I was a boy, India felt isolated. Today, the country is a world power, its interests and actions helping to define the contemporary global condition. In June, The Asian Age newspaper reported that an estimated 1,000 “honor killings” take place in the country every year, many of them the result of hostility bred by inter-caste marriages.

In many households, girls are treated as liabilities by their parents — fed less than their male siblings, pulled out of school earlier, forced to take jobs as menial servants so they can start contributing to the extravagant dowries their parents will eventually have to pay.

the relevant question, then, is not so much whether India is a modern nation, but what form its modernity takes. Some scholars — notably Benjamin Friedman, in “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth” — have suggested that economic development is often accompanied by greater tolerance, and a heightened commitment to democracy and social mobility. Certainly, there are signs, if at times fleeting, of such a process at work in India.

Often, though, the nation’s economic growth seems to have spurred primarily a scramble for material acquisition that has little to do with democracy or other such ideals.

Some rural tea shops still keep separate sets of cups for their customers — one set for dalits (formerly known as untouchables), and one for the upper castes who fear contamination if they share cups with dalits. The persistence of such antiquated norms does not, of course, automatically disqualify India from the ranks of modern nations. Modernity is a complicated condition, one that certainly allows ample room for the endurance of the old within the new.

The point is that modernity is layered, defined more by a state of mind than by loyalty to contemporary trends or consumer fashions. As the German philosopher and social critic Theodor Adorno put it: “Modernity is a qualitative, not a chronological, category.” Perhaps

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The next few years are likely to be marked by something of a seesaw struggle between these two versions of modernity. Indeed, for all its ancient history, India sometimes feels like a work in progress, caught up in a whirlwind of equivocation over its identity. Albert Einstein once wrote admiringly of Americans that they were a people â&#x20AC;&#x153;always becoming, never being.â&#x20AC;? Today, it is less in the United States, and more in Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s furious search for self-definition, that I feel that sense of perpetual reinvention, of energy and forward momentum. If modernity is defined by an openness to change, an ability to accommodate newness and a willingness to shed the past, then I think the answer to the question is yes.

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Consumerism in India: A Faustian Bargain? , a recent five-part series by

Stephen Zavestoski, who writes the blog The Curious Stall; I want to focus on the other type of pollution that results. I call this second type of pollution the pollution of culture and mind. It results as the proliferation of consumer goods, and the cultural meanings ascribed to these goods-meanings that are mostly created by the agencies marketing the goods but also to a lesser extent by the people consuming the goods--transforms a culture. As the culture becomes transformed, marketing messages and the system of meanings attached to material goods begin to occupy more and more of our mental space.

Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: Travels in Small Town India, Pankaj Mishra In 1993 the writer Pankaj Mishra, then in his early twenties, was living in a village called Mashobra in Himachal Pradesh, working on a novel, when he received out of the blue an offer from Penguin India to write a travel book. Mishra took up the offer and, formulating a project around the kind of Indian milieu with which he was best acquainted and his reading of writers like Thorstein Veblen, set out to across India for a period of six months to chronicle the signs of what he thought was “a nascent sensibility”, a change in the self-conception and the aspirations of India’s burgeoning middle-class. And from the hundreds of impressions of Indian life logged in Butter Chicken — the appalling civic conditions of most small towns; the “aggressive individualism” and ostentation of the newly moneyed classes and their love of kitsch; the cultural impact of satellite television and the adoption of new styles of dress and speech; the hunger for and respect given to wealth, power and prestige regardless of the route taken to them; the nonchalant, unselfconscious, voicing of caste and religious prejudice; the widespread sexual harassment and the ubiquity of pornography — there emerges a kind of double-sided critique of Indian society. On the one hand there is the old feudal, hierarchical India, in which discrimination and injustice are rampant, life is heavily circumscribed by one’s caste or sex, and the free expression of personality is suppressed. As Rahul, an acquaintance in Banaras, says of life in many parts of Uttar Pradesh, “The modern idea

with wealth and power everything in his domain, including land and human beings, is his property.” Such a world is antithetical to the spirit of modernity, and there is every reason for wanting to see it changed. But the

supposed liberation that has arrived in its place in many parts is itself curiously distorted. To Mishra, while middle-class Indians show a great desire to embrace the the modern, all too often

their modernity is only something tacked on to their old lives, such as their participation in consumer culture. It is an ambiguous revolution which has mostly to do with wants and aspirations and very little to do with thought or ideas, and there is often something grasping and pathetic, if not frankly disturbing, about it. The relevance of this argument has not diminished in the decade since Butter Chicken was published. “No other book defines as clearly, and with such troubled irony, our last decade of change,” writes Amitava Kumar.

of regarding people as individuals with their inalienable rights is still centuries away here. For the man

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Why Indian intellectuals and activists are hostile to the market Politics And Play / Ramachandra Guha

A decade of liberalization has resulted in manifest gains. India’s software boom, for example, would not have been possible without the policy about-turn of the early Nineties.

Yet liberalization has met with great opposition. Among its fiercest critics are insecure businessmen (who fear competition) and power-hungry politicians (who fear losing control). These vested interests have found an unlikely ally: the Indian intellectual. However, in seeking to protect the interests of the workers against the capitalist, Indian

intellectuals overlook the interests of a more numerous class still: the consumers, who welcome competition as leading to better and cheaper products. And in focusing on the question of equity, the intellectuals altogether overlook the question of productivity. One must first increase the size of the cake before one can begin distributing it. And here the market is a more handy ally than the state: for it produces goods faster, and in greater quantities. To correct and improve the functioning of the market, civil society groups have a vital role. So does the state. It must educate its citizens, all of them, and keep them healthy.

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The market does have its imperfections. One is that left to itself, it tends to pollute and degrade the environment. A second is that employers generally do not pay attention to the health and safety of the worker. A third is that without consumer vigilance and action, industrialists do not always deliver on quality. A fourth is that the market disregards those without purchasing power. A fifth is that one cannot rely on the market to deliver on goods and services whose value cannot be reduced to monetary terms, such as primary education and basic healthcare.

Hostility to the market is ubiquitous among intellectuals and activists. Hearing them declaim self-righteously against “liberalization” and “globalization”, I wonder which economic system they would put in its stead?

“The Elephant Paradigm”, Gurcharan Das excerpts: Democracy and capitalism have emerged as the dominant problem-solving institutions for human beings in modern society. Gurcharan Das explains why India is a special case.

These institutions do not just happen — they take time to develop. Thus, reform is not an easy path. Experience around the world over the last two decades teaches us that markets generate perverse results in the absence of good regulatory institutions.

In this great adventure of modern civilization, each nation is trying to adapt democracy and capitalism to find the right mix of market competition, political pluralism, participation and welfare. In India, democratic institutions came up before we had the chance to create an industrial revolution. in almost every nation but India, democracy followed capitalism. In country after country in Europe, voting rights were gradually extended over the past 150 years. That process slowly altered existing capitalist institutions and practices. Not so in India. There, we had the right to vote well before capitalist institutions developed. This unique reversal explains a great deal about Indian society today, including the failures in governance and the painfully slow pace of economic reforms. Because of the unique historical reversal in India, populist pressures for redistributing the pie essentially built up before it was baked. Yes, we set up intricate regulatory networks — but we did so before the private economy had transformed a rural into an industrial society. We began to think in terms of ‘welfare’ before there were welfare-generating jobs.

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Appendix C What are the Tier II and Tier III cities in India? Various articles showing the increased interest in the emerging indian middle class

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As Indian economy experiences the boom in all sectors triggered by its economic and investment policies, the metros or the Tier I cities are the ones that are inundated with burgeoning investments in the industrial and the services sector. Along with large-scale investments has boomed the realty sector creating congestion, arising out of an increasing demand for residential and commercial properties. This congestion in realty structures has forced the respective governments and many investment companies to seek out for alternative smaller cities leading to a demand for Tier II and III cities. Ready built office space One of the basic reasons for investments flocking in to the smaller cities is available properties and affordable prices. Moreover, the special initiatives taken by the respective governments in providing the smaller cities with infrastructural facilities and creation of SEZs, has played a vital role in promoting these small towns into cities of the future. Keeping in view all the congenial factors necessary for setting up corporate infrastructure, the investing companies ranging from pharmaceuticals to financial institutions, automobiles to the IT & ITES sectors; to the retail and real estate sector are opting for the smaller cities transforming them into India’s fastest growing cities in a matter of few years. The large scale investments by the corporate sector in the smaller cities apart from initializing economic prosperity and job opportunities has also created demand for realty spaces. While developers from all the nearby areas flock in to cater to the real estate demands, the property markets in these smaller cities are witnessing along with a changing skyline, an unprecedented hike in real estate prices. While

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the realty trend in Tier I cities have reached a saturation point, with the yield gap witnessing significant margin of 9.5 to 10 per cent, the Tier II cities record a yield of 10.5 to 11.5 per cent. However, the emerging winners in the present real estate scenario of India are the Tier III cities, which offer greater yields of up to 12 percent. This rising prices and promising future of these cities are driving investors to buy properties predicting long-term gain in years to come. Recent trend also shows that due to lack of availability of business equipped infrastructure and exorbitant property prices in the existing metros, the IT, ITES and the BPO companies are vying for the smaller cities where they are promised better infrastructure, state-of-theart office spaces and also skilled manpower. A careful study of these Tier III cities reveals the close proximity of these cities, to the most happening cities of India like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore to name a few. Thereby, it will be no mistake if they are called the extension cities of the booming metros. Of late, the tier II cities like Pune, Kolkata and Hyderabad have made business opportunities and infrastructural development like never before. Now it is the turn of the Tier III cities or the smaller cities like Jaipur, Ghaziabad, Kochi, etc. to make it big into the realty business as the government and the corporate sector target them as ‘India’s Next Destination Cities’.

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