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Proposal
Labour in a Developmental Landscape: The New Town of Kolkata
Background
Studies on globalization are
concerned with mobility of capital, labour and other resources across
various geographical spaces. Proponents of globalization have focused on
shrinking of spaces and increase of transnational flow of capital and
social networks as one of the benefits of opening up of economic
borders. In other words, the myriad forms of mobility and the emerging
social relations “from organization of work to formation of citizenship”[1]
are some of issues that studies on globalization have looked into.
Studies on sociology of mobility indicate the interrelations in the
economic world where the signs (information, symbols, images, aspire),
space, and social subjects are considered to be mobile.[2]
For some, global technologies have replaced “place” with “space”,[3]
and Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) has played a
significant role. ICTs enable work units, work relations and workers to
be mobile. The role and growth of ICT has become synonymous with
development of a new kind- a development which will ensure service jobs,
in other words a jump to post-industrial informational age. India has
been no exception to this growth and expansion of IT- a new addition to
the global production systems.
The Global production systems has created new transnational work spaces
across regions, cultures which have been responsible for creating new
work opportunities for educated middle class youth. Global production
networks has led to increase of cross border flows of funds, goods, and
services in various sectors of Indian economy, Information technology
services, Information Technology Enabled Services and Business Process
Outsourcing sector in particular; resulting in networked and
transnational production systems. The marked growth of this sector is
evident in the recent shift from low-end off-shore activities (e.g.,
customer care, technical support and data entry) to high – end services
(e.g. transaction processes, R&D, and so on). What is significant to
this shift in services is the simultaneous change in cityscapes to
incorporate, the new workforce, a workforce that is mobile,
transnational and a corporate citizen. Technopark, India’s first IT Park
in Kerala was launched in 1990 and is home to 185 companies employing
more than 30,000 professionals. Bangalore was the first city in India to
witness such transition in its cityscape as a result of the new economy
and new workforce. Bangalore commonly known as Silicon Valley of India
witnessed the first change in cityscape to cater to a new workforce and
some of the technology parks which has been responsible for redefining
city skylines are Information Technology Park Ltd, popularly known as
ITPL, Cyber Park, Prestige
Technology Parks (Prestige Blue Chip Software Park and the Cessna
Business Park).
2.
The Newly Emerging Scenario in Kolkata
Kolkata, on the other hand, has been relatively new to this phenomenon.
Infinity Think Tank was the first IT project in 2001 which changed the
notion of workspace and also work destination in Kolkata. Sector V of
Salt Lake was seen as the new business district which needed to be
landscaped to cater to this emerging workforce of IT related industries.
Technopolis, Globsys Crystals, Infinity Benchmark, Infinity Waterside,
Millennium City, The Hub, Infinity ( Tower II), Videocon Salarpuria and
Bengal Intelligent Park are some of the IT projects housed in Salt Lake,
Sector V, Kolkata. Most of these IT projects are skyscrapers and
particularly stand out as architecturally different from the four storey
apartment blocks of Salt Lake town. In this way the entry of foreign
capital was instrumental in re-shaping work spaces, and city spaces.
These new spaces were justified on the grounds of need for “world-class”
infrastructure to suit the transnational citizen whose needs could be
met at a stone’s throw from their respective workplace. These new
workspaces usually have contractual arrangements with various leisure
zones and recreational opportunities for their workers. The new
workforce has not only replaced the industrial worker but has also
redefined workspaces.
3.
Purpose
of the Study
The
main aim of the proposed study would be to examine how “spacing”
technologies are adapted to create New Town in Kolkata and how they
impact on the interface between market rights and territorial rights.
Studies on special economic zones in India, and the Indian state’s
increasingly veering towards neo-liberal ways of running economy and
society to re-organise governance of zones, is often marked by the
ways of the market and capital, which determines the pattern of rule of
law. Under these circumstances, Rajarhaat New Town, which houses one of
the largest IT SEZ in Eastern India, IT Parks and residential townships
by big real estate players in India, like DLF, Unitech, Ambuja Realty
etc. provides an excellent instance of this new paradigm of development
where the territorial limits of governance are determined by capital
inflows. Rajarhaat or New Town in Kolkata, accessible by only one public
transport route from the central part of the city of Kolkata, is an
excellent example of how “spacing” technologies in terms of orienting
workforce, mobility, accessibility, and architecture has led to a zone
of exclusion through differential mapping of resources, access, and
communication within one unit called the city.
The proposed study will examine the role of the virtual economy to map
labour-in-transit; primarily through unstructured interviews and
in-depth field work in Rajarhaat with the migrant construction workers,
IT/ ITES workers, BPO workers and at the same time drivers of various
transport agencies engaged in ferring drivers from home to workplace.
The metamorphosis of the labour force in post- industrial townships like
Rajarhaat shows the ways in which the virtual economy, the informational
economy manages to erase the dirt and grime of primitive modes of
accumulation; be it the methods of land acquisition, the resistance
against such efforts of acquisition, land grab menace, crime and
mismanagement of funds to allocate land, the strategies adopted to
create New Town. A documentation of the labouring lives of the
construction workers who come from various districts in West Bengal, the
very nature of certain “laboring forms”, and the mobile nature of the
work that marks the transit nature of the “labour” and spaces of work
will show how this transition is shaped by primitive modes of
accumulation where certain segments of labour force like construction
workers, domestic servants, and other peripheral labour force of
servitude are constantly in transit like the workers in IT/ ITES. The
spatial location of the workers across two frames location and time are
responsible also for a peculiar coexistence of primitive modes of
accumulation and virtual economy on the other. The interface and the
exchange between the two remain to be explored.
There is a sense of temporariness in the functionality of the spaces -
be it the leisure zones, or the IT hubs where the workforce is not only
alienated from its product but is not allowed to “situate” itself in the
context, compared to the construction workers who stay and work day in
and day out to create the imagined world. The New town is the new site
of development where high rise towers are being constructed after
forceful acquisition of land from the local community. The big real
estate players are busy developing IT Parks, which are self sufficient
and therefore can afford to sustain without much public interaction. A
study of the spatial technologies of creating columns of high rise
residential apartments, IT Parks in Rajarhaat, and the interface of
capital and labour will be useful to understand that the global
economy is in the process of becoming – perhaps always. The spatial
technologies that are co-adapted by the business giants in various
off-shores have a specific tale to tell and Rajarhaat in its transition
from a large rural hinterland with plush green meadows, to a
municipality area, and then to a place synonymous with “new” spaces of
new workforce will show how notions of ‘borderless” world is about
creating new spaces of exceptionality and desert zones - a new paradigm
of development.
4.
Mapping
Themes
a)
Based on the above proposition we plan to undertake two mapping
exercises
a)
b) Mapping of literature on special zoning of production in
India, particularly in West Bengal
b)
c) Ethnography of an IT town in Kolkata - New Town, Rajarhaat,
with connections with Salt Lake Sector V.
These two studies can be presented in their first rough draft form in
coming Transit Labour gathering in Kolkata in early September. The
significance of these studies will be multi-dimensional. Plus they will
show some possible directions where mobility studies as well as labour
studies can go from their current state.
This research will be carried out as part of the Transit Labour project
covering three cities – Shanghai, Kolkata, and Sydney.
Notes
[1]
Marisa
D’Mello and Sundeep Sahay, “Betwixt and Between? Exploring
Mobilities in a Global Workplace in India” in Carol Upadhya and
A.R. Vasavi (eds.), In an Outpost of the Global economy -
Work and Workers in India’s Information Technology Industry
(London and Delhi: Routledge, 2008), p. 77
[2]
S. Lash, S.
and U. Urry, Economies of Signs and Space (London: Sage
Publications, 1996)
[3]
D.
Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An
Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. (Cambridge:
Blackwell Publishing, 1989)
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