TAPSA: “The Atmospheric Discontent of Make-in-India,” Ashima Mittal, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago (5pm, Foster 103)
This talk examines the mediation of economic and social interests that are enacted through the framework of “Make-in-India” in, what I call, the “Clean Air-Tech” Industry. I will trace the antagonisms and alliances between Make-in-India and clean air-tech across three registers: right wing/official narrations of the Indian nationalist present; the condensation and displacement of capitalist desires in clean air-tech entrepreneurs continued efforts of Making-it in New India; and the internal contradictions that arise through the changing fiscal relations between clean air-tech subjects. My anthropological and historical delineation of these aspects will follow three key actors: clean air-tech entrepreneurs, green workers, and the monopoly capitalist. The ethnographic explication of Make-in-India in terms of clean air-tech socio-economic relations, I will argue, capture the underlying class antagonisms, alliances, and crises in contemporary capitalism that are often rendered subterranean but are constantly unraveling as visions metamorphose into financial assets, bilateral agreements into manufacturing facilities, hype into balance sheets, and media reports into stock market crashes, igniting new forms of life and action