Communicative Flows between the Diaspora and ‘Homeland’

Abstract

Indian cities are experiencing significant processes of social, economic and political change, bringing together new configurations of urban identities. This is hardly a new phenomenon. During Imperial rule, nineteenth and twentieth century Bombay, for example, experienced considerably rapid metropolitan reconfigurations (Morris 1991: 235–37). Indian partition is, of course, the most glaring example in contemporary Indian history. However, what is distinct about recent changes in urban India is how they have been shaped by the wide-ranging economic liberalization policies of the early 1990s spearheaded by P.V. Narasimha Rao's Congress Party coalition. The previously socialist sheltered economy was ‘structurally reformed’ as the selected means to avert a near currency collapse.1 Over the last decade, Indian urban centres have seen enormous growth in the forms of upmarket housing (Appadurai 2004: 263), stylish coffee bars such as Baristas and Café Coffee Days, the building of high-tech private hospitals (Ray 2003) and other developments targeting the burgeoning middle to upper classes. Indian metropolises have been experiencing massive inflows of national, international and diasporic capital that have transformed the cities at an astonishing pace. New Delhi is no exception to this trend; its society has been the site of deep shifts ranging from kinship to consumption over the last decade (Mathur and Parameswaran 2004). Some very striking shifts have arisen from cultural, political and economic interactions with the diaspora. As India's capital, Delhi has also experienced unique political interactions with the diaspora. The lobbying by first-generation diasporic ‘non-resident’ Indians (NRIs) for dual citizenship is one example.2