India is the place where western theory goes to die, someone once joked at a PhD seminar I attended. For an anthropologist, India is too pa...
India is the place where western theory goes to die, someone once joked at a PhD seminar I attended. For an anthropologist, India is too particular, too unruly to categorise. It does not adhere to Euro-American ideas of culture or development.
Yet in one realm, western theory, far from expiring, actually thrives. This relates to markets in general and finance in particular. Indian capitalism continues to be both understood and performed through orthodox economics.
This is somewhat ironic. The 2008 economic crisis at least tempered western deference to the rationales that were followed since the 1980s when western countries submitted to business school urgings to privatise, deregulate and financialise. This was fronted by a technocratic confidence: algorithmic projections, econometric models.
Economies of scale could be achieved via large conglomerates, the argument went. Stagnant stores of value would be unlocked with private investment. Speculative activity and consumer debt should replace state-led provision.
Since the crisis, however, public discourse is less innocent on whose interests are served and what the costs are. Yes, the incentives and infrastructures of speculative capitalism remain. Debt, liquidity and low-interest rates are political dogma. Economists of this consensus still staff treasury departments and sovereign funds.
But the western public has seen the fruits of laissez-faire victories...
