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The future of the rural world?
Edward Simpson
and Alice Tilche
"The future of the rural world? India's villages 1950-
2015" was an exhibition hosted by SOAS, University
of London. The event marked the end of a major
project funded by the UK's Economic and Social
Research Council on 'restudying' village India.
Most of world's scholarly and media attention is
on megacities and the story of rapid urbanisation
they are held to represent. Slums have become
photogenic and dramatic devices. However, the
greater part of the world's population continues
to live in rural areas. This will continue to be the
case for some time to come. The consequential and
untold story, however, is the radical transformation
of the countryside, as things formerly thought of as
villages become something else. These places mark
the emergence of a new form of settlement which
are neither cities nor villages in the conventional
uses of such terms. The language of social science
is ill-equipped for these new realities.
The aims of the original ESRC project had been
straightforward: to conduct newfieldwork in villages
where anthropological research had been undertaken
in the 1950s in order to see what had changed.
Anthropologists who then made the voyage to
India documented a sophisticated agrarian society
ordered by caste and institutionalised inequality -
where the division of labour mirrored the ritualised
and hierarchical exchange relationships of caste.
Today, their accounts form an unprecedented
and intimate historical account of what life was
like in villages during the heady years immediately
after Independence.
The world has changed. In India, Nehru's socialism,
strongly influenced by cold-war politics, has
given way to the forces of (neo)liberalisation and
globalisation. Waves of development policy have been
unevenly implemented across the country; political
devolution has passed some responsibility for
economic development, social justice and taxation to
the village level; affirmative action ushered in caste- |
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