Liberalization's Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India
Sometime back, a supermarket in the neighbourhood in India (where I live) was closing down. Though I had seen the preparations of stock-clearance sale going on for a while, had never really bothered to ask details of its closure, till I met Reena. Reena was in her early twenties and lived in a nearby slum. She used to work as a helping hand to a mother of two in an apartment close to ours. A girl born and brought up in an urban, metropolitan city of India, Reena’s original hometown was in a district of India that was mostly ridden with woes of water scarcity eight months a year- a hard fact that drove her parents to migrate to the nearby town in search of a better living. Now, Reena lives amidst supermarkets, new clothes designed after the latest Hindi film heroine, cannot bear the hot and sultry vacations and once a year trips to their thatched huts in their village and dreams of owing a house one day. She was more than heartbroken for the closure of the supermarket as it happened to be her shopping arena as well as a hangout location at many occasions.
India is changing and that never leaves a distinction between the urban and the rural locales. Reena might be a single example, but she represents the millions in urban as well as rural towns and cities of India, who has learned to look at culture, traditions and their values in a new light- one that glows under the banner of globalisation. Ritty A. Lukose’s Liberalization’s Children tries to bring into notice some of the important aspects of Indian society in present times. Her attempts to highlight the concept with the example of a significant state of India- Kerala, is also worth mentioning. Kerala remains to have several significant socio-cultural reflections that mark its historical path in India- including a communist movement, a significant claim for hundred per cent literacy rate and a high number of socially conscious people. As on one hand, the people are steeped in their traditions and cultural values that have been handed down to them, on the other hand, several venture outside to foreign shores for work and often settle down, though maintaining a strong contact and bond with their hometown and land. Amidst the youth in the state- change is often the other name of modern life. Lukose tried to represent an important part of this aspect of India as Kerala, like Reena, represents a miniscule part of the bigger picture that is India in present times. Lukose, also significantly touches upon the aspects of student mentality, gender biases and sensibilities and thought provoking pictures of an India that is often torn between debates of privatisation, new models of education, women aspiring for a choice of their husband as well as education and a new range of lifestyle across the nation that is often dominated by audio-visual influences of Indian Hindi films and television serials. Though Lukose paints each example with dexterity, however, the overemphasising effect and the socio-cultural implications of the impact of the Hindi film Rang De Basanti, starring Amir Khan on the youth of India is overtly overstressed. Though the film did attempt to articulate modern values and their occasional questioning by few handful young minds, yet the glitz and glamour of the film was also questioned by several urban youths to have only impressed a section of hero-worshipping film fans. The book is an important study for students of socio-cultural anthropology, but the inferences should be rather carefully driven to conclusion if comparison is to be made with other Indian states as the socio-cultural and political history of Kerala revolves around its own specific bandwidth. However, there still remains many examples within the research which are worthy of representing the aspect of liberalisation’s children in modern India, including the recent changes in economy, politics and education shaping and moulding a new range of lifestyle and thus, the story of Reena and thousands across India has found an echo in its chapters. The book would be an asset for studies pertaining to sociology and anthropology of modern Indian culture and changing patterns of lifestyle.