PENN ANTHROPOLOGY COLLOQUIUM:

"Roadscapes: Everyday Life along the Rural-Urban Continuum in 21st
Century India"

Speaker: Dr. Durba Chattaraj Senior Writing Fellow of Anthropology and South Asia Studies, Critical Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania

As part of India's neoliberal economic transformation, rural spaces are
urbanizing in-situ, while peasants shift away from agriculture. This
paper examines a vast, informal industry of sari embroidery spreading
along National Highway 117, from the city of Kolkata to rural West
Bengal, which is a form of what I term ?rural outsourcing.? I describe
the commodity chain which links wholesalers in Kolkata to embroiderers
living over eighty kilometers away. I argue that growing urban
middle-class demand has contributed to the spread of this industry from
city workshops to faraway rural spaces. Focusing on everyday economic
life in the village of Kulpi, I analyze the transformations caused by
the spread of sari embroidery. Embroidering has created a new class of
rural entrepreneurs, and strengthened cash economies and consumption
practices. Is rural outsourcing then to be celebrated as a form of
production which has generated much-needed employment in rural areas? Is
it to be condemned because it is inherently exploitative? I argue that
before the specifics become obscured in a rush to normative judgment, we
must analyze what domestic industry is: an expanding form of production
in India which has deeply transformative effects on rural space,
economies and lifeways.