Time and Temporalizing Tactics I

Chapter 2 illustrates how in order to give currency to the reforms, the PMs conjure the idea of an idealized future. Growth is presented as a human necessity and reforms become the inevitable means to realize the dream of growth for all. India’s move to the future is presented not as an uncalculated measure, but a controlled trajectory which does not succumb to ‘unlimited capitalism’. However, behind this rhetoric emerges the category of an ‘other within’ India- large sections of Indian population who are no immediate winners of the reforms but are tranquilized, by being relegated to a “waiting room” condition. Trickle down is legitimized by informing people that they ought to wait for the benefits of the transitions to reach them. The PMs also paradoxically employ a vocabulary of the socialist past to project the future. Although what is being introduced is a drastic shift, the resources used to present the new borrow heavily from the lexicon of Nehruvian developmentalism. Thus, the new is sold by using a vocabulary which is not so new.