Ebook: Refashioning India: Gender, Media, and a Transformed Public Discourse

Refashioning India provides a chronicle of contemporary India, written by one who is as much a participant member as an observer of everyday life in a changing India.In 1991, the Indian state initiated new economic policies that led to India’s greater integration into global capitalism and the global economy. This marked a radical break with the policies and ethos of the past, with their emphasis on austerity and welfare measures; the Indian middle class now learnt that ‘thrift’ was no longer a virtue, while ‘shopping’ was a legitimate pleasure. The changes in this period led to new political visions and cultural imaginings. The 1990s marked post Mandal era in Indian politics and a growing assertion of anti caste politics. It also witnessed the growth of the Hindu Right, that dramatically challenged key ideas of secularism and pluralism on one hand and social justice on the other that defined dominant ideas of Indian nationalism. Refashioning India maps this process of new visualisations with a focus on public discourse and the place of gender within it. As the media played a key role in this process of recasting and re-visioning India, the book is also a study of the dramatic growth and transformation of the media, from dependence on state patronage to a dependence on the market to finally becoming a handmaiden of the executive, its hegemonic populist and majoritarian ideology.