Overview

India’s global success in the Information Technology industry has also prompted the growth of neoliberalism and the re-emergence of the middle class in contemporary urban areas, such as Bangalore. In her significant study, BITS of Belonging, Simanti Dasgupta shows that this economic shift produces new forms of social inequality while reinforcing older ones. She investigates this economic disparity by looking at IT and water privatization to explain how these otherwise unrelated domains correspond to our thinking about citizenship, governance, and belonging.  Dasgupta’s ethnographic study shows how work and human processes in the IT industry intertwine to meet the market stipulations of the global economy. Meanwhile, in the recasting of water from a public good to a commodity, the middle class insists on a governance and citizenship model based upon market participation. Dasgupta provides a critical analysis of the grassroots activism involved in a contested water project where different classes lay their divergent claims to the city.

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9781439912584

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Reviews

BITSof Belonging is a very timely and important book, with significant theoretical insights and compelling data. Its critique of the rhetoric of IT leaders and professionals in India is rigorous. Dasgupta provides an exploration of lived experience of the IT boom for those on the ground in the city of Bangalore. Her analysis moves fluidly back and forth from slums and governmental water boards, to affluent IT firms and corporate parks. With a geographer s eye, she shows us firsthand the disconnect between these worlds which are all affected by the IT boom and it is extremely powerful. Winifred Poster, Washington University, St. Louis

Author Information

Simanti Dasgupta is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Dayton.

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