CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

I

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS: NEW DELHI, INDIA, 2000

To an observer, there is 'newness' on the food front.

In New Delhi, India's capital, as also in other metropolitan cities, evidently,

multi-national companies: McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Domino's, Coke, Baskin Robbins

have a significant presence1• One can hypothesize that multinational fast food companies

have introduced a food culture and restaurant practices, hitherto unheard of. Indigenous

food companies are also not immune to change. The notable changes may be summarized

as follows:

a. In the food market2 of the National capital, Delhi, new products have been introduced

that are vying with the indigenous products. For instance, branded pizzas and burgers

compete with indigenous thalis and fast foods like go! guppe, chole bhature, chaat, dosa,

idli etc.

b. Increasingly, indigenous foods: mithai, namkeen, chaat, masala dosa are being

marketed as brands e.g. Nathu 's3, Sagar or Haldiram 's.

c. The multinational food companies put high premium on cleanliness of restaurant

premises. Sweeping and swabbing the floor and polishing glass doors and windows are

performed with ritualistic fervor. Anyone who has eaten at Sagar would testify the frantic

obsession with dusting carpeted floor.

d. It is preferred that restaurant personnel who are in direct contact with customers, on an

average, are in the age-group 18-24 yrs.

e. The restaurant personnel comprise members of both sexes.

f. These personnel undergo professional training4•

2

g. There is an emphasis on presentation and packaging of food. These practices are not

just a feature of food companies such as McDonald's or Pizza Hut; it is observed that

indigenous eateries have adopted these practices. For instance, gol-guppe-christened

'water-balls'- are presented in a packaged form at Haldiram 's. The presentation of the

Udipi5 dosa has undergone a make-over6 at Sagar and Sarvana Bhavan (the newest

'South Indian' food chain to have entered the National Capital); moreover, it is

considerably embellished. Nathu 's-the leading maker of traditional Indian sweets-has

branched into western style confectionery business. Nathu's 'new' 'Pastry Shop' is cafe

style and adorns a 'new' look. It does not offer traditional meal items; instead, it vends

coffee, 'cool' drinks and confectionery. The restaurant personnel wear uniforms and a

restaurant hostess is posted at the entry, greeting the customers.

h. A common perception of customers is that food items: pizzas and burgers can be eaten

anytime; i.e. they are not associated with a particular time (e.g. meal-time) of eating.

Similarly, a variety introduced in indigenous foods are perceived as 'anytime-foods'.

i. Specific types of foods are associated with specific types of customers. E.g.

McDonald's Happy Meal or Nirula 's Merry Meal targets 'children'; McDonald's soft

serve targets 'young' boys and girls (as depicted in the print advertisements). Cafe 2ls,

owned by Nirula 's targets the consumer segment 'youth'. The typical customer at Sagar,

by contrast, is a large family.

Not only is there newness on the production front of foods, novel developments are

detectable on the consumption front too. Continuing with our observations:

j. From a consumer's point of view, there is an unprecedented variety in the food market.

k. Eating out appears to be an established trend7•

I. The social configuration of restaurant customers are: family, friends and couples.

m. Celebrating children's birthdays at restaurants, especially McDonald's, is a popular

practice.

n. Weekends draw maximum customers to restaurants.

o. Generally, during weekdays (though far too thin m companson with weekends)

restaurant customers are college students in all-boy and all-girl bunches. Mixed groups

comprising boys and girls are relatively less common. 'Unmarried couples' 8 is the least

3

commonly visible configuration; though in particular restaurants, they out-number the

bunch configuration. In most cases, the bunch comprises students or, call centre

employees or young people in part-time employment: shop assistants or sales personnel.

p. Married couples (without children) frequent restaurants for 'catching up' during

weekday's evenings.

q. McDonald's products are advertised on national television and print media.

A curiosity kindled an interest in moving from preliminary investigations towards

formal sociological research despite apprehensions ensuing from doubts regarding the

worth of paying (undue?) heed to these observations. Is it worthwhile to feed a curiosity

stemming from McDonald's fast food and the newness it is spearheading, and the

popularity of the same among customers in a variety of social configurations?

II

WHY A SOCIOLOGY OF FOOD IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA?

This is the obvious first query my study should anticipate and duly respond to.

In New Delhi, the capital of India, 'food-hype' suggests itself to an observer.

Food is populating hitherto unrelated spaces in unconventional ways. There is food talk,

food styling, food presentation, cookbooks, food design, food expert, eating-out guides,

food courts, food festivals, cookery shows, celebrity chefs, food advertising, food

equipment, food technology, eating disorders, convenience foods, food packaging, beauty

tips, health care, nutrition charts, and food for spiritual well-being. Then, of course, food

is in its place in commercial establishments and eateries of all kinds. Noticeable is the

increasing mechanization of restaurant kitchens. Also, restaurants are venues for product

promotions and birthday parties.

These food facts would seem 'general' to talkers, readers of newspapers,

subscribers of magazines, television viewers, bookstore visitors, shoppers, film

audiences, radio listeners, car owners, airplane travelers, vacationers, morning walkers,

brand endorsers and career browsers. However, in this very milieu, there are another set

4

of food facts: hunger, starvation deaths and malnutrition. The criticality of cultural

analyses of these facts and their bearing on matters of policy, rights and entitlements is

more than endorsed by a Nobel decoration for Amartya Sen's contribution to the field

singularly, as also his studies in collaboration with Jean Dreze.

In contemporary India, the co-existence of these two sets of general facts, a

peripatetic life of food, its excursions into uncharted sectors and its novel forms are

compelling reasons for doing sociology of food.

Even though Sociology of Food is not an autonomous field of enqmry, a

substantial body of literature on food in relation to culture/society has broken ground for

research in this area and is a must-read for initiands. Following is a brief survey of this

literature orienting us to view food in relation to culture and society.

Food has provided food for thought. Its significance is seminal in social knowledge of

India bequeathed by the textual tradition of which Manusmriti, The Bhagavadgita and

Ayurveda are exemplars.

Manusmriti9 and The Bhagavadgita 10 are not treatises on food, but they merit a

respectable acknowledgement for they are powerful statements on the significance of

food in Hindu thought. Informed by the Vedic ideology, Manusmriti accords a religious

sanction to a social hierarchy by employing culinary metaphors. The Bhagavadgita

associates types of food with types of character of worshipers which in tum, are

associated with types of faith or modes to be applied to religious phenomena 11•

The Ayurveda, a traditional system of Indian medicine, places emphasis on

medico-moral properties of food. The medical theories in the Ayurvedic system are the

source ofHindu beliefs about food wherein diet is viewed as the mainstay of physical and

mental health as also the cause of disease. Ayurvedic dietetics, thought to have shaped

Indian ideas about the body, point to the relation between food and an embodied 'Indian

identity' 12.

Culinary texts are conspicuous by their absence from the textual repertoire of

Indian civilization which is a differentiated, literate and text-oriented civilization. This

counter-intuitive finding and the puzzle it poses for anthropologists is discussed at length

by Appadurai (1981; 1988). The references to food in philosophical and medical texts

5

alongside a ringing absence of texts devoted to culinary aspects of food, is attributed by

Appadurai to the instrumentality of Hindu thought and its sole concern to break the

epistemological and ontological bonds of this world. Food becomes relevant to this

concern as a matter of managing the moral risks of human interactions, or as a matter of

sustaining the appetites of the gods, or as a matter of cultivating those bodily or mental

states that are conducive to a superior gnosis. Accordingly, food stays encompassed

within the moral and medical modes of Hindu thought and does not become the basis of

an autonomous epicurean or gustatory logic (ibid.: 1988: 10-11 ).

Food has served administrators and professional anthropologists in generating knowledge

about Indian society. Indian Census serving the colonial administration, noted in their

accounts of caste that customs surrounding food and drink were sufficiently rich to fill

volumes (see Beteille, 1996: 158).

Indications of sociological thinking on food as a marker of civilizational traits

appear in G.S. Ghurye's review ofKroeber's Style and Civilization (see Ghurye, 1963).

Ghurye argues that a culinary art is a distinguishing trait of civilizations. For instance, the

main contrast between the European way and the Indian way is, while the bread in the

former is leavened, in the latter it is unleavened.

In theorization of society and culture in India, anthropologists and sociologists

have deemed food to be socially crucial within the Indian's world. Characteristically,

these studies were within caste, ritual, kinship and traditional economics (see Khare,

1992: 2)13. An exemplar is Dumont's monumental Homo Hierarchicus [1998 (1970)]

with an entire chapter dedicated to food 14• Through food, Dumont (ibid.: 137) proposes to

draw comparisons between caste and casteless societies.

That food is a bearer of a social logic expressing the internal organization of

village is demonstrated by McKim Marriott (1968). He argues that food signifies Hindu

ideas of rank15as expressed in caste, a system of social stratification. Further, the master

conception on which village thinking about caste rank constantly focuses is the idea of

inter-caste transactions employing food (and services): the transactional idiom is,

'honorific acts are performed; payment is given and received' (ibid.:148-9). Thus, by

formulating a model of stratified transaction to represent a ranking of castes in local

6

cultural terms of a particular Indian village, Marriott (ibid.) argues that villagers often

seem to apply a strictly transactional logic, treating all foods, objects, services and

persons as if they were substantially equivalent. Their main concern is to see that a

previously enacted order of castes is currently re-enacted.

Khare {op.cit.), while applauding Marriott's initiative m the direction of a

sociological analysis of food, points to a lack of comprehensive attention to food per se.

Khare advocates a 'gastro-semantic' approach to food wherein gastro-semantics 'may be

generally defined as a culture's distinct capacity to signify experience, systematize,

philosophize and communicate with food and food practices by pressing appropriate

linguistic and cultural devices to render food a central subject of attention' (ibid.: 44,

endnote 2).

Undertaking social and cultural analyses the Hindu gastronomic system, Khare

(1976a; 1976b) demonstrates that, underlying cultural conceptions of food and the

manner in which food is handled16, is a body of thought. The system thus, carries a

deeper and general message about a shared logic of relations and a cultural interpretation

of nature and culture relations: foods for Hindus are a highly ordered "meta-language",

which connects ideas with things "out there, and vice-versa" (see Khare, 1976b: 272). As

an ideological category of Hindu thought, food stands for widely different objects and

conceptions ranging from a mythological god to a philosophical concept, to a principle

connecting life with death, and death with life. In this highly expanded and inclusive

perspective, food acquires a cosmological significance. Consequently, it is an ideological

order that addresses itself to what in common economic terminology is an equation of

production, distribution and use offoods17 (see Khare, 1976a:140).

Appadurai's (1981) analysis of 'gastro-politics' 18 is based on the premise that

food has semiotic properties19• His analysis of food as a semiotic system, not unlike

Khare, is situated in the social context of Hindu South Asia where food is a focus of

much taxonomic and moral thought20• Gastro-political situations bring to the fore the

inherent ambiguity of food in the Hindu cultural system with regard to whether it is made

to serve the end of homogenizing the humans who share it or whether it is made to serve

the end of heterogenizing them. This in tum is explained by alluding to analysis of Hindu

7

thought at cultural and categorical levels and is attributed to attempts to negotiate

'incompatible goals' set for persons within the thought21.

Conducted in the tradition of functional analysis, Dilly Devi's (1986) study of the

Onges of Andamans, illustrates that food system is an integral part of the socio-cultural

system and is linked with material, social and ideological reality. Food, hereby, is not a

commodity in the chain of production, distribution and consumption; it is a symbol of

social relationships and an artifact of culture.

Vasudeva Rao's (1997) study examines the manifold meanings of 'sacred' food in

the religious sphere wherein food, takes on many connotations: gift, communion, grace; it

asserts hierarchy as well as neutralizes hierarchy. It is proposed that production,

distribution and consumption aspects of food need to be examined in the light of the

social structure, institutions and socio-cultural entities.

Iversen and Raghavendra's22 research aims to shed light on the influence of

notions of purity and pollution attached to food on employability in the eating

establishments. Their specific focus is on the vegetarian South-Indian eating places

popularly known as Udupi hotels.

In the studies cited above, though, food is saying 'something' about culture/society, it is

notable that the object of research herein, is not just food-the thing in itself; instead,

food is anchored in pre-defined social or cultural contexts of civilization, caste, tribe and

or community.

In contemporary India, food as a 'thing in itself has come into its own as a

general fact. It is not trapped in pre-defined contexts. It teases the researcher; it is

amenable to observations harvested incidentally when walking, talking, shopping,

driving, browsing, and so on. Appadurai's observation that food has emerged from the

confines of moral and medical modes of Hindu thought is borne out by the life of food in

contemporary India. So, one, food is 'freed' from traditional bounds; and two, it can now

be made to speak on behalf of 'not tradition'. The latter possibility points to the

emergence of modes of cultural production other than traditional.

8

Where food is the object of research interest, its pursuance is tantamount to, in Marcus's

phrase (1995), doing multi-sited ethnography adopting the follow the thing (ibid.:106)

mode of constructing the multi-sited space of research involving the circulation through

contexts of a manifestly material object of study.

The place of origin of the research object-McDonald's fast food-is not contemporary

India. However, its much-hyped arrival in India indicates that contemporary India is a

part of a global field, and a setting for a global cultural phenomenon.

In a way, my study aims to intercept a 'cultural logic that is at least partially

constituted' (ibid.: 97) in contemporary India-one among multiple sites of its

production. And, this to my mind reiterates the urgency of doing sociology of food.

III

MCDONALD'S FAST FOOD23: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMING

McDonald's-American fast food industrial enterprise-and its global presence has

generated considerable interest among observers of contemporary societies. George

Ritzer (2000: 1) argues that 'McDonald's is the basis of one of the most influential

developments in contemporary society. Its reverberations extend far beyond its point of

origin in the United States and in the fast food business. It has influenced a wide range of

undertakings, indeed the way of life, of a significant portion of the world. And the impact

is likely to expand at an accelerating rate'.

McDonald's has been employed as a trope for posing to contemporary societies

questions of power and resistance, process and change, and values and principles. Among

the varied theoretical frameworks within which 'McDonald's fast food' figures, or, which

it is solicited to endorse are: 'cultural imperialism' (Kincheloe, 200224), 'rationalization'

(Ritzer, op.cit.) and more recently, 'transnationalism and localization' (Watson, 1997;

Chua, 199825).

In Ritzer's 'theoretically based social criticism' (op.cit.: xv), McDonald's serves

to highlight principles and processes built on the American value system20, and the type

9

of society engendered. Ritzer argues that McDonald's IS the paradigm of

'McDonaldization'27-"the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are

coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of

the world" (ibid.:1). Lying at the heart of success of McDonald's model, and more

generally of McDonaldization, are four alluring dimensions-efficiency, calculability,

predictability and control-that McDonald's offers consumers, workers and managers

(ibid.: 11-2).

Where Ritzer's thesis contextualizes McDonald's system on its home-ground­

America-, by contrast, Watson and associates critique cultural imperialism28 thesis by

illustrating the localization of McDonald's through the agency of proactive consumers29•

The researchers, evaluating the social, political and economic impact of McDonald's on

five local cultures, argue that people in East Asia conspired to change McDonald's,

modifying the seemingly monolithic institution to fit local cultures.

The East Asian study intervenes in globalization debates by conceptualizing the

expansiOn of McDonald's m terms of transnationalism30. From within the

transnationalism-localization paradigm, the researchers address issues of cultural change,

continuity, identity and adaptability in East Asian countries. That these issues deserve

critical attention is reiterated by Sidney Mintz (1997) in the Afterword to the study.

Mintz notes that the introduction of privately owned and managed retail facilities for sale

and consumption of new, different foods, on the premises or off, can reflect a

fundamental change in the social circumstances for the conduct of daily life. He

forewarns that even though opening such a facility may seem like a minor event, the first

McDonald's in, say, Moscow or New Delhi or Beijing is not. The long term

consequences of such an opening for strikingly different cultures are unpredictable; they

could be substantial. In these three cases, at least, that they were allowed to open is

already significant (ibid.: 193-4).

Given the global-local/transnational co-ordinates of McDonald's, as we embark on this

study, we need to identify an explanatory model that can hold the following observed

facts: move to mechanize food production techniques; adoption by indigenous food

companies of McDonald's model as implicating food personnel and, restaurant

10

presentation and practices; popularity of McDonald's food; and the seemmg

regularization of eating out as an aspect of everyday life.

Ritzer's McDonaldization thesis brings to the fore principles of fast food industry

that impinge upon, not only production of fast food, but also on consumption by way of

'controlling' consumers; whereas, in Watson and associates' localization thesis, the key

focus is on consumer practices and as such, aspects of production of fast food are

peripheral concerns. In both these studies, consumers are taken as given. Further, the

tenor of the East Asian study is to celebrate the tenacity of local cultures or the

experience of everyday life31.

The understanding of culture as the experience of everyday life is a point we shall

return to subsequently. However, this understanding of culture falls short of detecting the

workings of the 'system'-into culture. We are suggesting that besides being subsumed

under the rubric of 'local culture', consumption of fast food merits an examination in

terms of 'consumer culture' produced/purveyed by the capitalist system.

Anticipating the discussion to follow, such an approach does not foreclose the possibility

of detecting the domination by the capitalist system, or power filtering through the

activity of eating into everyday life. Further, from this conceptual standpoint, the practice

of eating out provides a context to observe the articulation between the system and its

users; rather than mere usage by consumers of the system. Crucially, it enables us to re­

examine the notion of 'autonomy' of user practices vis-a-vis the system-a dimension

that the localization thesis precludes32•

Caiiing to mind the identity posited by Marx between production and

consumption: production produces consumption33, and every social process of production

is at the same time, a process of re-production (see Marx 1978, esp. Ch. 23), it is not

possible that eating practices-in our milieu-escape infiltration of the capitalist system.

With this, we are making a case for the suitability of 'capitalism' as an explanatory model

framing McDonald's so that production and consumption are not regarded as unrelated.

The ground for such a framing has been cleared by Ritzer ( op.cit.: 179-91 ).

11

In Ritzer's thesis, McDonaldization is subsumed under the rubric of

'rationalization' which in turn is a central process in the modern world. This being the

case, clearly, Ritzer does not work within the analytical framework of capitalism.

However, we wish to foreground aspects of Ritzer's argument wherein McDonald's is

linked with capitalism; albeit to make a case for modemitl4. As a matter of fact, Ritzer

alludes to the suitability of capitalism as a conceptual framework to examine

McDonald's. Such an approach holds that 'McDonaldism' is associated both, with earlier

forms of capitalism, as well as late capitalism35 signaled by the transition of industry

from Fordism to post-Fordism, and the transition of society from modem to post-modem.

The conceptual framing of McDonald's within 'capitalism' opens up the

possibility of interpreting the capitalistic logic of McDonald's from different theoretical

standpoints. For instance, emerging from Ritzer's formulation of McDonaldism,

McDonald's is an industrial system applying Fordist methods of production to food; it

epitomizes the logic of multinational or late capital as per Jameson's (1994) theorization;

and, going by Harvey's (1989) formulation, McDonald's epitomizes the shift in modes of

capital accumulation36• Further, it also furnishes an explanation for the creation of a

specific culture viz. consumer culture-identified by us as a key domain to observe

capitalism.

A hallmark of consumer culture is the extensive use of media for advertising; niche

marketing of products targeting specific consumer segments; premium on design,

ambience and signage. Thus sodden with signs and images, consumer culture, it is

argued, is symptomatic of the arrival of a post-modem society, registering a radical break

from modem society. However, as Harvey (ibid.) argues, signs and images are intrinsic to

the growth dynamic of capital, now in a post-Fordist economic order resulting in an

accretion of consumer culture with new arms viz. media and advertising. In Jameson's

(ibid.) parlance, the predominance of signs and images in consumer culture signal it's

unpacking in the stage of late capital-and not postmodemism37•

Consumer culture, thus, converges for an observer, the manifold dimensions of

capitalism itself; in fact, the domain of consumer culture comprising market, media and

advertising is an ensemble that concretizes capitalism for a researcher. But, there is much

12

more than capitalism here. A close observation of consumer culture directs us into the

realm of technology.

Jameson argues that at a concrete level, mechanisms underlying the shift to the

stage of multinational or consumer capital are technological as instanced by media­

technologies. Technology, in this perspective, is not simply a machine; on the contrary,

technology is viewed in terms of its reach and its capacity to penetrate. Further, it serves

the goals of capital by providing it leverage to penetrate in order to commodify.

Our investigations impel us to give a serious thought to technology. However, in our

understanding, the conceptual import of technology cannot be limited to its interpretation

as a means to reach and capacity to penetrate; we are thinking in terms of its constitutive

potential to shape people as well as things. Such an interpretation is called for if one is to

analyze the import of not just signs and images in McDonald's advertisements, but also

practices of fast food restaurants-an exemplar of which is McDonald's. The practices in

question implicate service personnel and customers; manufacture of fast food; and eating

of fast food.

Getting back to the domain of consumer culture, the question is what does such a

showing up of technology hold for an interpretation of consumer culture? I would like to

suggest that Jameson's conceptualization of technology be exegetically expanded so as

to factor in the working of technology on and with people and things, alongside its reach

and capacity to penetrate, in terms of McLuhan [1987(1964)], their consciousness via

signs and images. As a corollary of this operation, consumer culture ceases to be only a

culture of capital; it is a culture of technology as well.

To factor in technology in this fashion is to acknowledge the seminal contribution

of Marcel Mauss to whom we owe a conceptual clarification of 'technology'. In Mauss's

formulation, 'technology' is semantically paired with 'techniques': terminologically,

technology and techniques do not carry exclusive connotations. Mauss [2006(1948): 147]

argues that, "In order to talk meaningfully about techniques, it is first necessary to know

what they are. Now there actually exists a science dealing with techniques .. .it is the

science of technology". Techniques, as defined by Mauss are, "traditional actions

13

combined in order to produce a mechanical, physical, or chemical effect, these actions

being recognized to have that effect" [2006(1947): 98].

It follows that in course of an exegetical expansion of technology, another kind of

operation needs to be conducted i.e. to cast it in terms of techniques. With the

understanding that 'technology' is 'technique' for analytical purposes, we shall proceed

to examine its working on and with people in consumer culture.

Examined in the light of Mauss's theorization of technology/technique38, the

organization of the fast food restaurant space, training of service personnel, seating

arrangement, furniture design and restaurant events (e.g. Roland McDonald Shows,

Birthday Parties), are technologies that constitute and shape customers, service personnel

and food in definite ways. Fast food restaurant is a site where one can observe the

constitution of service personnel in course of 'training', or, in Maussian terms, a

technique of the body according to efficiency (ibid.:85). Training programmes are about

moulding speech, demeanour, bodies and approach to customers. For instance, the crew

at McDonald's is trained to cheer the 'team' intermittently; girls undergoing hostess

training, are trained to wear a perpetual smile. Customer-specific techniques-working

simultaneously on children and adults-are executed through the modality of 'finger

foods'-Mauss's consumption techniques (ibid.:91)-,'child chairs', 'play area', Roland

McDonald Shows-wherein children are encouraged to repeat Roland McDonald's

yelling and body movements39- and birthday parties.

Not only are body techniques in full force in the restaurant, it is also a site

wherein effects of machine technology take final shape of a 'burger'-a generic type of

fast food which is the end product of 'advances in automation'40• In the present study,

thus, fast food restaurant is a site for concretizing consumer culture wherein one can

observe the workings of capital and technology.

As per the scheme of restaurant classification, fast-food restaurant is a genre of the

'restaurant'-a modem commercial establishment41• The designation of the fast-food

restaurant as a site for sociological investigation is methodologically in line with, for

instance, Finkelstein's 'ethnography of the restaurant' aiming to 'theorize the inauthentic

experience of the self in modem society'42 (see Finkelstein 1989: 26; also Mennell et.al.,

14

1992: 84-5). Even though our aim diverges from that of Finkelstein in that we focus on

'practice' rather than 'experience' in theorizing the restaurant, the common denominator

of both of our studies is an attention to the restaurant space to present our respective . f . 43 pomts o vtew .

In a conceptual framing of McDonald's fast food, thus, consumer culture emerges as a

key conceptual domain.

IV

THE CASE OF INDIA IN A COMPARATIVE CONTEXT: CHANGING TIMES?

McDonald's lends itself to evaluating questions of social change. In fact, Ritzer

( op.cit.: 167-71) attributes the great momentum of the process of McDonaldization to its

affinity with other changes occurring in the American society and around the world.

No differently, the presence of McDonald's in East Asian countries is an occasion

for observers of these societies to assess social change in the wake of globalization and

liberalization of the national economy articulated in the language of 'reform ' 44• These

changes pertain to the emergence of affluent middle class consumers, consumerist

lifestyles, employment opportunities in metropolitan areas, declining importance of

extended kin networks, employment of women outside home, change in childrearing

practices and residence patterns. The critical change is in the direction of class formation

and its impact on family structure, functions and authority (see Watson, op.cit.: esp.

Introduction).

Given the national presence of McDonald's, India qualifies as a comparative case

in context of South Asia. Paradoxically, 'India's affair with junk food' is making news

alongside concerns regarding children's health and campaigns against fast food

spearheaded by schools45• Finkelstein (op.cit.: 46) cautions that the popularity of fast­

foods is not a benign fact; for, the meaning of food has become intricately interwoven

with the macro-social conditions of economics and politics. Contextualizing fast food

industry in the prevailing conditions of American econom/6, Schlosser's best seller

l5

expose, reminds us that the birth of fast food industry in America coincided with the

Eisenhower-era's glorifications of technology, with optimistic slogans like 'Better Living

through Chemistry' and 'Our Friend the Atom' 47•

Apropos of our preliminary observations, it is imperative that the developments on the

food and eating front be contextualized in economics and politics of our present-the

Contemporary Era. In other words, our primary concerns are: what is the Contemporary

Era? And how might we demonstrate that food and eating practices refract it?

Subsequent to the NCAER48 report's projection on the New Middle Class market

(henceforth NMC)49, India-like the East Asian countries-is a favoured destination of

multinational corporations It is noteworthy that the point of departure of sociological

inquiries situated in contemporary India, are 'economic liberalization' and the emergence

oftheNMC.

At a pinch, if economic liberalization is a watershed event in India's history, then the

significance of the relation between economy and nation needs to be posited. In fact, this

is the intent of Deshpande's thesis, the nation as an imagined economy (see Deshpande,

2004a). Herein, it is established unequivocally that economy is the pivot on which the

nation turns.

Deshpande (ibid.) argues, with reference to India, that the mode in which the

nation has been imagined is 'economic'. The predominance of the economic motif in

India culminated in the implementation of the Nehruvian model of the economy:

development became the historical shortcut to nationhood50• Such a phasing entails that

the Contemporary Era is an era 'after development'. Further, given that the New

Economic Policy launched in 1990s has been followed uniformly by all political regimes,

the Contemporary Era is simultaneously the 'pro-globalization' era.

In order to appreciate the 'shift' registered in the 'after-development' Contemporary Era,

it is crucial that we qualify the notion of development as it took shape in modem India.

Characteristically, the Indian version of 'development' was hitched to another goal.

According to the Rudolphs (1987: Introduction), India's development plans have been

16

oriented toward one overriding and widely accepted national goal: maximizing self­

reliance. This national goal led India to participate in world markets less than other large

Third World countries, in order to maintain control of the resources of economic power51•

The emphasis on self-reliance is attributed to the influence of Gandhian socialism

in Nehru's model of development by Frankel [2005 (1978): 17-8]. She argues that a

fallout of this is a uniquely 'Indian' variety of socialism-a social pattern that could

reconcile the modem goals of economic development with traditional values of small­

scale agrarian societies. The Indian notion of development, from the very outset, thus,

presented the paradox of transforming to a modem industrial economy, but, within the

framework of socialist norms and patterns of organization.

If in modem India, development is in-dissociable from the national goal of

maximizing self reliance, then, in a way, is the major shift in the Contemporary Era-­

after-development-is a turning away from self-reliance?· Rajni Kothari (2002: 423-4)

maintains so. He argues that the Contemporary Era heralds a new model of 'nation states'

on strongly neo-liberal lines; as also India's integration into the global economy52•

Consequently, gone is the dream of 'nation-building', self reliance and equidistance

between rival power blocs. Kothari observes that the penetration of world-capitalism and

the idea and ideology of neo-liberalism all round the world has complicated the overall

picture of contemporary India: a rich middle class co-exists with a poor one53• The

complicated picture of India is corroborated by Barbara Harriss-White (2000) who

designates 'metropolitan India' as the India of just 12 percent Indians 54•

These analyses portend an eclipse of the principle of self-reliance and an ever

deepening divide in Indian society. This bears out Srinivas' [2002 (1977): 430] incisive

observation: "looking at the country as a whole, I see the emergence of what I may call

broadly, dual cultures, and the dynamics of the relationship between each of them is

likely to have profound consequences for the Indian economy, polity, society, and world­

view. The dual cultures are each based on the urban middle class and the rural poor

respectively".

The after-development era, thus, poses a challenge to India's modernity

articulated in terms of the principle of self-reliance-in the wake of its seeming

17

'defeat'-in conjunction with the emergence of middle class-a socio-cultural

manifestation of Indian dualism.

Posing questions of change in such a scenario, entails investigating the relevance

of the principle of self-reliance for the purported (new) middle class. Of course, the field

in which we put this to test is food and eating practices.

v

NMC: SIGNPOST OF THE CONTEMPORARY ERA

An entry point into the Contemporary Era, as per our discussion above, is the NMC--a

sign of changing times. Significantly, the question of middle class is linked to that of

modernity.

In the Nehruvuan era, Deshpande (op.cit.) maintains that the hegemonic

consensus impacted questions of national identity: patriotism and production were linked.

The protagonist of this model of national development is the 'producer-patriot'. The

Nehruvian nation-state, thus, identified the 'other' only as a shirker i.e. the person who

refused to participate in the collective task of 'nation building' 55. By contrast, in the after­

development era, only those producers are valued who produce for the global market and

bring in foreign exchange. The implication for the issue of national identity is that the

'patriotic producer' is replaced by the 'cosmopolitan consumers' 56 who are prosperous

'upper middle class' 57 Indians (ibid.: 72-3).

On the basis of this formulation, it is reasonable to suggest that the semantic array

forming in the Contemporary Era is 'Indian-Middle Class-Consumer', by which token,

'Being Indian' is 'Being a Consumer', and, the socio-structural co-relate ofthe consumer

is middle class. The synonymy between middle class and consumer is noticeable in

official statistics, perception of marketeers58, and in a growing body of social science

literature.

With reference to the NMC-a lens for refracting post-liberalization society in India-it

would be naive to bypass the accent on new. The point is that connotations of middle

18

class stand vexed, as a distinction between the 'new' and the 'old' is implicit in the

conceptualization of the middle class. This perhaps, reflects the changing social context

of knowledge production; in which case, we have to concede that the purported

distinction between the 'old' and the 'new' sheds light on how the middle class is

acquiring historical connotations in course of analytical gazing on post-independent/pre­

liberalization India on the one hand, and, by default, on post- liberalization India. The

task awaiting us is to render this distinction explicit59. In order to do this, we shall re-visit

scholarly reflections on the middle class.

D.P. Mukeiji [1979(1948)] links the historical emergence of the (now 'old') middle class

to processes set in motion by the East India Company and subsequently British

administration that upset the existing equilibrium between economy and society; and, a

new middle class was created60 to restore the equilibrium. Mukeiji points to the break in

the social process involved in the liquidation of the older middle class and the creation of

new land-owning and professional groups to consolidate foreign rule61• This class was

offered land ownership and facilities for education in English. But, the former remained

unconnected with agricultural productivity and the latter with mainstream of Indian

cultural traditions. Thus, the essential resulting feature of the middle class-which in any

case is not genuine62-is a feeling of historical denial. Notably, in Mukeiji's thesis, the

middle class is a creation of English education63.

B. B. Misra's (1961) pioneering systematic study examines the Indian middle

classes from a historical perspective, tracing the growth of Indian middle class from the

181h century to modem times. A distinctive aspect of Misra's study is the alertness to the

diversity of the middle class and an empirical identification of eleven middle class

fractions (ibid.: 12-3). Misra's historical survey of the composition, character, and role of

Indian middle classes, stands apart in that it departs from the dominant Macaulayan . 64 view

A.R.Desai [1982(1948)], evokes the middle class65 in his thesis on the structural

transformation of Indian society consequent the British rule. Notably, this middle class is

also one of the new classes that emerges in the wake of a 'new economy' (ibid.: 177);

except that the new-ness of the economy, in this case, is engendered by the basic

19

economic transformation brought about by various acts of British government66. This

middle class is a product of the new system of education implemented by the British

government in India. Desai assigns a political role to this Macaulayan middle class in the

emergence of the nationalism; in the growth of political current of militant nationalism;

as also in 'trade union' action.

In Partha Chatteijee's (1994, esp. Ch.3) formulation too, the middle class is a

colonial, Macaulayan middle class which has played a pre-eminent role in creating

dominant forms of nationalist culture. Historically situating this middle class in

Calcutta-a presidency capital and a centre of power-, he argues that nationalism itself

was a hegemonic project which placed the middle class simultaneously in a position of

subordination in one relation and a position of dominance in another: the experiences of

simultaneous subordination and domination were apparently reconciled. Such a

positioning was an ideological construction emphasizing the primacy of the family

rendering it the 'original site on which the hegemonic project of nationalism was

launched' (ibid.: 147). Further, the form of family institutionalized within the middle

class in Bengal was the conjugal family (ibid.: 149).

Chatteijee is primarily concerned with the social agency of the middle class rather

than its sociological characteristics. He argues that the ideological construction of the

middle class needs to be examined for more than the cultural leadership it provides its

followers i.e. as a middle term in a social relationship. The 'middleness' and the

consciousness ofthe middleness, thus, poses questions of mediation (ibid.: 35).

Thus, one of the dominant narratives of the rise and growth of the 'old' middle class in

India has been a 'Macaulayan' one in which a pride of place is given to the English

educated professional. In a succinct summarization of the contrast between the old and

the new middle classes, Deshpande (2004c) notes that the contemporary importance of

the middle ciass and its post-colonial trajectory were shaped by its colonial role and its

role in creating Indian nationalism. This class assumed a morally privileged stance as

manifested in its nationalist revival pre-independence, and, it took a lead in managing the

development process on behalf of the nation post-independence.

20

Bringing the question of identity to bear on the middle class, in the Nehruvian era, the

identity of the middle class is a patriotic producer, and the semantic array signposting the

Contemporary Era is Indian-Middle Class-Consumer: consuming is the vital input in an

Indian's identity in the Contemporary Era.

VI

NMC: CONSUMER PAR EXCELLENCE

A perusal of social science literature furnishes evidence that studies contextualized in

contemporary India bring into play the NMC to address issues: modernity, cultural

identity, gender identity and sexuality67• Notably, consumption is the privileged site for

identifying the NMC; further, 'middle class consumption' is tested on different sites.

As per Appadurai and Breckenridge's (see Breckenridge ed., 1996) formulation,

consumption is a distinctive characteristic of the middle class. Not surprisingly, the

middle class-counting for at least a million Indians with disposable incomes- is seen

as an economic support of new forms of cultural consumption and is frantically pursued

by market research firms68• The privileged site of consumption, according to this view, is

'public culture' in the contested space of 'public modernity'.

In a similar vein, Rajagopal (1994) reiterates that the consumerist ethos in India is

officially sanctioned by economic liberalization in the mid 1980s and the beneficiary

class is the new middle class. The site of consumption herein is televised images and

advertisements in particular69.

Leela Fernandes (2000a, 2000b, 2004) observes that the policies of economic

liberalization have been accompanied by the idealized images70 of the urban middle class

in the print media71 and television. Herein, the urban middle class has left behind its

dependency on austerity and state protection and embraces social practices of taste and

d. . 72

commo 1ty consumptiOn .

Mankekar ( 1999) argues that in its mediatized images, the lifestyle of the modem

middle class is consumerise3. Further, the middle class is also the target audience of

discourses on Indian culture mediated by consumer culture. Her thesis explores the

21

cultural and political significance of television which she proposes has played a crucial

role in the cultural constitution of these middle classes as a powerful historic bloc.

The employment of the concept middle class, for an understanding of the Contemporary

Era calls to mind Veena Das's (2003:3-4) insightful remark that certain 'gate-keeping'

concepts have functioned as sociological and anthropological categories for rendering

Indian society knowable. So, can one hazard the suggestion that 'NMC' is emerging as a

gate-keeping concept of the social knowledge about the Contemporary Era produced in

academia and outside of it74 ?

The reception extended to the concept middle class in academia is accompanied by

substantive and methodological skepticism. The postulated synonymy between

'consumers' and NMC75 is a contentious issue. Dipankar Gupta (2000: 7-16), for

instance, argues that when defined on the basis of consumption figures, the middle class

'cuts a pathetic figure'. Hence, consumption should not be mistaken for a general middle­

classing of society; for, in the latter, consumerism appears rather like an engine of

economic progress and an active agent of consumer satisfaction, than merely as a symbol

of wealth and cultural alienation.

This dovetails with skepticism about the middle class stemming from considerations

of its size. Deshpande (2004c) and Vinayak (2002) question the reliability and validity of

data that estimated potential middle class consumers at around 300 million or 30 percent

of the Indian population during the early 1990s.

Andre Beteille (200 1 ), while recognizing the growth and differentiation of the

middle class as one of the most significant developments in Indian society since

independence, reminds us that there is a lack of reliable and systematic empirical material

on the middle class, whereby, discussions on the middle class proceeds more by method

of apt illustration than that of controlled analysis. In Beteille's estimation, the middle

class76 is a polymorphous class posing the challenge of an empirical concretization.

Notwithstanding the skepticism, thinking about the new middle class in terms of

consumption, is a way to confront the 'problem' posed by the middle class. Be it

consumption of images, goods or urban spaces, consumptive TH

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22

practices are by far the most popular site for converging interests on the middle class in

the Contemporary Era; and the middle class itself77• This impels us to think about the

middle class in terms its symbolic significance. A run through the inventory of concerns

propping up in tandem with the NMC-economic internationalism, possibilities of

politics, exercise of state power78-more than supports the view that the NMC is a

significant category.

True, that the category is attracting attention of academia. True, that it is the

currency in vogue for media and market. True that it inadvertently acquiesces with pop

sociological renditions of a 'group' that perhaps thrives as a sociological fiction. The

point is that where the middle class has arrived in rhetoric, it is wanting in empirical

grounding and theoretical integration. The privileging of consumption as a site for

identifying the NMC is a step in the direction of theorizing the category; and the present

study seeks to contribute to this measure.

VII

CONSTITUTING NMC IN CONSUMER CULTURE: TARGET CONSUMERS,

NUCLEAR FAMILY, LIFE-COURSE

As anticipated in our discussion of techniques constituting restaurant personnel and

customers, especially child and adult customers, when observing consumer culture­

comprising media advertising, restaurant practices and presentation--our attention IS

drawn by the social entity implicated in the workings of capitalism and technology,

In consumer culture, customers are socially configured in terms of class co­

ordinates; they are positioned as the NMC or, consumers par excellence or, eaters of fast

food. Hence, we delve into the constitution of eaters, guided by the assumption that

capitalism and technology work on the eaters and into the activity of eating fast food. The

underlying premise is that the NMC is not a-priori category awaiting discovery; rather, it

is constituted in the domain of consumer culture-a culture of capitalism and technology.

23

In a frequently evoked formulation attributed to Mike Featherstone (see Featherstone,

1991) consumer culture entails that the world of goods and their principles of

structuration are central to the understanding of contemporary society. This being the

case, it could be argued that the concerns encapsulated by the concept consumer culture

are not inaugurated by post-modem theorists; in fact, they are traceable to a distinguished

lineage of thinking about society and culture. Further, vital to the formulation of

consumer culture are a classification of realms and a subsequent 'mapping of two realms'

viz. cultural (goods) and social (consumers).

A close reading of Veblen [1970 (1899)], Weber (1948), and Bourdieu (1984)

suggests that even though these sociologists do not situate analyses within the conceptual

framework of consumer culture, the modes of analyses employed by them open up the

possibility of theorizing consumer culture as a principle of classification, wherein the

social and cultural realms are mapped. In the conceptual repertoire of the three thinkers,

consumption might be regarded as a key term for, social class and status groups are but

methods of categorizing consumption patterns; and it is here that we detect the modality

of mapping social entities and cultural goods.

Weber's starting point is not the consumer. However, analyses of social structure

propel him to factor in consumption as a mode of differentiation thereof. This holds

specifically for the delineation of 'honor'-as expressed in a 'style of life'-as a

principle underlying the formation of status groups. Similarly, Bourdieu's analyses are

not framed within the conceptual field consumer culture. Even though Bourdieu does not

operate with the category 'consumers', his theory of social distinction maps a scheme of

social classes with a scheme of cultural goods. The same is the case with Veblen who

theorizes the leisure class on basis of its propensity to consume. Thus, one can draw

parallels between Weber, Veblen and Bourdieu on the basis of the social class/status

group method of explaining consumption and categorizing patterns of consumption.

There is, however, an important respect in which Veblen differs from Weber and

Bourdieu, and it is to this that we tum. Based on a reading of Veblen that follows, it is

plausible to argue that, a pioneering sociological analysis of consumer culture is traceable

to Thorstein Veblen.

24

Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class79 (op.cit.) lays the foundations for

conceptualizing the consumer by methodologically classifying and mapping the social

and the cultural realms. Moreover, the social entity implicated in this mapping is class.

Our reading of Veblen enables us to cull out strands from Veblen's work in support of

our claim that Veblen's is a pioneering analysis of consumer culture.

Veblen80 proposes that the 'institution of the leisure class' 81 is associated with

non-industrial types of employments. Leisure, in Veblen's conceptualization is a

"pervading sense of indignity of the slightest manual labour" (ibid.:45), and an

"abstention from labour is not only a honorific or meritorious act, but is presently comes

to be a requisite of decency .... Abstention from labour is the conventional evidence of

wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing; and this insistence on

the meritorious ness of wealth leads to a more strenuous insistence on leisure" (ibid.: 44).

Veblen's conceptualization of leisure suggests that productive activities are

transposed to the plane of time: an abstention from labour connotes 'being

unproductive'/'consuming time'. For our purpose, a vital finding deriving from this

conceptualization is that in its very inception, leisure cannot be realized without

consumption; in fact, leisure connotes non-productive consumption of time. Moreover,

Veblen's theory is premised on the constitution or identification of the leisure class in

acts of consumption. Here one can detect a classification of two domains: social and

cultural; and a subsequent mapping of a social entity (upper classes) and a cultural good

(leisure )82•

Veblen, however, is not commenting on consumer culture defined as an aspect of

market characterizing the modem West83• This is why, even though in Veblen's

formulation, the leisure class-a social group-is identifiable on the basis of its

consumptive practices of time and goods, the latter are not necessarily sold on the market.

Subsequent commentaries and debates on consumer culture, however, situate 'goods' in

the milieu of the market and the consequences of their consumption on social life. This

tilt in orientation yields a new set of concerns and hopes that are projected as issues and

questions asked in wake of the emergence of 'a consumer culture' or, a culture of

consumption.

25

However, the discussion above establishes that the concerns encapsulated in the

concept consumer culture pre-date its formal conceptualization: it might be traced to

Veblen's pioneering analysis of a sub-class viz. leisure class, a consumer par excellence.

Consequently, post-modem theories claiming to have discovered the consumer betray

short -sightedness. The consumer has been around for at least more than a century now;

though, it gets variously configured as class, mass and lifestyle group.

In the domain of consumer culture the modality of mapping the cultural and social realms

is noticeable. As noted above, a hallmark of consumer culture is niche marketing or,

targeting products at specific consumer segments. Our investigations reveal that in the

consumer culture generated by McDonald's, the quintessential eater of fast food is NMC.

Further, an examination of McDonald's advertisements on national television indicates

that the specific form taken by NMC is the nuclear family or the 'eating family' in media

images. This family is not just an eater of food; but, it is a consumer of a lifestyle.

Taken together, media images, restaurant practices and restaurant presentation,

are operations that conceptualize as well as constitute target consumer segments viz.

child, adult, couples and youth. Thus, the eating family is disaggregated into its

constituent elements based on the modality of life-course. These operations map specific

consumer segments with specific food items. Further, consumer culture creates blueprints

of life-course for these consumer segments, analyzable as adulthood, childhood and

youth.

In thinking about NMC, it is imperative to be alert to the modality of social

classification that re-presents to us, in image form, the NMC as a nuclear family; and, the

nuclear family in terms of life-course. This new development in the realm of food is

borne out by parallel examination of indigenous food companies: Nirula 's and Sagar. It

is bizarre that 'now on' it does not suffice that fast food be eaten by a 'buyer'; it is

essential that the eater of fast food should take the form of the nuclear family that

composes its members in terms of life-course.

How else should one understand these operations, if not as directed at the

constitution ofNMC in form of nuclear family and life-course?

26

VIII

EATING OUT: MODERNITY IN THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE:

An attention to the aspect of eating fast food is crucial for our investigation aiming to

shed light on the workings of capitalism and technology. Further, it is way of factoring

the consumer point of view so as to explain the popularity of McDonald's fast food.

In our research context, NMC or consumer is a consumer of food. Consequently,

its relation with food is double: one, in terms of consumption, and two, in terms of eating,

for, the consumer is also an eater. Thus, where it concerns food, consuming is articulated

in terms of eating. This entails that in order to observe the consumer or NMC, we have to

observe the practice of eating; further, this implies that the consumer be thought of not

only in image-form, but, also as an eater of food. Now, the practice of eating

conceptually belongs to the realm of everyday life; whereby, observing everyday life

shall be our approach to the NMC.

So eating it is. But, where should we observe eating? It goes without saying that the act

of eating could be accomplished in a variety of settings. But, keeping in view our aim,

viz. to observe eating in settings wherein workings of capitalism and technology can be

recorded, fast food restaurants emerge as a suitable field. In other words, given that a

restaurant, besides being a commercial establishment is also a modem setting for the

public provision of food, the activity of eating we need to observe is eating out

With regard to eating out, Appadurai ( 1988) observes that the history of food

consumption outside the domestic framework is yet to be written for India. Even then, the

ground has been cleared for bringing into play 'eating out' to reflect on issues of tradition

and modernity. For instance, Khare (1976b:246) argues that a modem restaurant

represents a total refutation of the entire orthodox culinary and jati commensal rules that

tradition inculcates at the level of the domestic hearth. He notes that commercial dealings

and food transactions were insulated from each other because in the Hindu scheme of

life, food is central to the links between men and gods. Conlon's survey of restaurants in

general, and a history of public dining in Bombal4, furnishes historical evidence in

27

support of Khare's explanation. Appadurai (op. cit.:9), in a slightly different vein,

maintains that traditional non-domestic commensality is a historical fact in the public life

of India; however this was confined to religious and royal milieus, where traditional

social or religious boundaries could be maintained even in public eating places.

In these reflections, restaurants are sites where the contradictions between

tradition and modernity are palpable. Appadurai (ibid.) notes that public eating places in

modem India still seek to maintain boundaries among castes, regions and food

preferences. But, all the same, restaurants-both humble and pretentious-have

increasingly become arenas for the transcendence of ethnic difference and for the

exploration of the culinary 'other' 85• Further, the setting up of restaurants reifies and

reflects an emerging culinary cosmopolitanism linked to the cultural rise of the new

middle classes.

Similarly, Conlon ( op.cit.: 90-1) suggests that restaurants reflect, permit, and

promote the introduction of a wide variety of changes in modem Indian life, including

modifications of urban budgets and work schedules, entry of women into the middle class

workforce, new patterns of sociability, and, growth of new ways to enjoy wealth through

conspicuous consumption.

Deriving from the discussion above, eating out and restaurant eating are about modernity;

and, the 'social world' 86 of this modernity is the middle class. With these insights, we

return . to our research concerns; especially to the question of the popularity of

McDonald's fast food among consumers.

At the outset, it is clear that given our research context-eating out-and its

social world-middle class-, our research is fundamentally addressing the issue of

modernity. Except that, we shall be approaching it from the standpoint of the consumer as

also the activity of eating. This is a departure from orientations that invoke modernity in

eating out contexts, in form an increasing 'culinary cosmopolitanism' or, in 'rejection of

caste based commensal rules' in contexts of public dining.

A tum towards the consumer or eater of McDonald's fast food, as we specified above,

takes us into the realm of everyday life. This is in keeping with the East Asian study that

28

makes a point of localization by delving into the local culture or everyday life of

consumers. The conceptual peg for an explanation of eating is Michel de Certeau's

(1988) formulation practice of everyday life.

Culture, in de Certeau's formulation is ordinary87. Everyday activities such as

cooking, dwelling, ·reading and talking are ways of operating, and ways doing things, and

not just activities that appear as merely the obscure background of social activity88• These

numerous ways of doing, in general terms, are interpreted by de Certeau as consumption;

further, consumption is the same as 'usage' 89•

The point of view privileged by de Certeau, is that of the actor, who is an active

operator, user and consumer, rather than one who is passive and guided by established

rules. Hence, for de Certeau, it is necessary that the knowledge acquired by a study of

social phenomena should be built upon by the study of uses to which they are put by

groups or individuals. The practices of consumers are tactical in nature: they are

intrinsically related to opportunity and circumstance.

Consumption or usage, as specified above, is the basis of a model of action.

However, it is noteworthy that the actor/consumer/user who executes the action is

simultaneously a producer for, the consumer's ways of operating are a making or, a

production90• Thus, consumption is 'another production' or 'secondary production',

manifested not through its own products, but through ways of using these products.

Secondary production, itself, is predicated on specific 'techniques', on which

'procedures' of everyday activity draw. Practice is thus constituted by 'ways of

operating'; the latter themselves are means by which users re-appropriate the space

organized by techniques of socio-cultural production. Perceiving and analyzing practice

is tantamount to perceiving and analyzing microbe-like operations that proliferate within

technocratic structures and deflect their functioning by means of a multitude of 'tactics'

articulated in the details of everyday life91•

Thus, when articulated in de Certeau's terminology, the activity of eating is a

practice of everyday life or a technique by which the eater/producer, converts ordinary

activities into an opportunity and a circumstance to re-appropriate the space organized

by techniques of socio-cultural production.

29

IX

THE EATING FAMILY: ASPIRATIONS TO 'BE' MODERN

The crucial question to be posed at this juncture is: to what end is the activity of eating

put by the eater? In other words, what end does eating McDonald's fast food serve for the

eater? As specified above, we intend to approach modernity from the standpoint of the

consumer. So, how does eating McDonald's fast food relate to modernity? But before we

answer these questions, we need to cast the consumer in a social configuration, for this is

the 'way of the consumer' in the realm of everyday life.

The transition from Fordism to post-Fordism, as we have noted above, necessitated niche

marketing and identification of consumer segments. The early history of marketing

separated consumer groups into socio-economic categories and targeted them with

specific products. Modem marketing by contrast, has moved away from delineating

socio-economic groupings to exploring 'new' categories of life style, life stage, and

shared denominations of interest and aspiration. This describes market segments not from

an 'objective' point of view, but from the point of view of the consumer. The image of

the consumer, thereby, is projected through advertisements in particular and consumer

culture in general92•

In consumer culture generated by McDonald's, the consumer or NMC is

segmented into target consumers: nuclear family, couple, child, youth and adult. Our

attempt to empirically ground NMC takes us to the realm of everyday life wherein, it is

an eating family. Approaching the eating family in order to factor in the standpoint of

consumers requires a slight modification in the research orientation: instead of thinking in

terms of classification-of family into couple, adult, child and youth-, one needs to

think in terms practice by posing the question 'what is the family doing'?

Our investigations reveal that from the point of view of the eating family, eating a

McDonald's burger is a matter of not merely eating out; by which token, the notion of

modernity for this family is not simply participation in the public domain. Eating a burger

30

is a practice of consuming a lifestyle that is modem by virtue of being American. Also,

importantly, going to McDonald's is a must, for everyone does so; it in fact is a symptom

of Keeping up with the Joneses syndrome. Putting the two together, from the standpoint

of the eating family, the end served by eating. the burger is a striving towards an

aspiration to be modern by consuming a lifestyle as also as to catch up with others

aspiring to do the same.

The concept lifestyle is traceable to Weber93. Weber (op.cit.: 187) attributed a

'style of life'--expressing status honour given by others-, to status groups or

communities. Further, consumption is the means to a style of life. However, in its current

usage, according to Giddens ( 1991 ), lifestyle is not defined in relation to a social group; it

is defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces, not

only because such practices fulfill utilitarian needs, but because they give material fonn

to a particular narrative of self identit/4• Lifestyle, then, is an identity project in which .

the eating family is immersed. This lifestyle is projected in consumer culture-the culture

of capitalism and technology.

Such a project is not just a means of fashioning an identity, but, it is also a means

to catch up with others who seem to be doing the same. Consumption is thus put to ends

such as these by the eating family. This way of operating, bears out Veblen's (op.cit.; see

esp.Ch. 2) celebrated concerns in The Theory of the Leisure Class that explain the

cultural significance of consumption as a striving for status by the upper classes.

Veblen's theorization of the leisure class is a classic statement ori uses to which

consumption is put viz. fulfilling aspirations by striving towards a way of life exemplified

by others of a superior rank-indicated in possession of wealth and leisure- manifesting

as emulation and its display as conspicuous consumption. The usage aspect of

consumption echoes in de Certeau' s theorization of the practice of everyday life; but for a

theorization of the emulative ends of usage, we need to go back to Veblen.

An inquiry into the everyday life of an eating family allows us to investigate the 'how' or

modality resorted to in course of striving towards the fulfillment of aspirations to be

modem. No, we are not trapped in a tautology whereby the response to the 'how' is

'eating the burger'. Rather, the practice of eating the burger is a generic practice, itself

31

composed of a multitude of practices that illuminate for us myriad everyday concerns of

the eating family. Among the multitude of practices are 'Going to McDonald's',

'Treating Children', 'Celebrating Birthdays', 'Catching Up', 'Celebrating the Wedding

Anniversary', 'Being with Friends', 'Sharing Secrets with Siblings', 'Celebrating the End

of Exams' and so on. These practices take us into the worlds of 'Contemporary

Adulthood', 'Contemporary Childhood' and 'Contemporary Youth', demonstrating in

course, the historic production of these spheres by the eating family.

This historic production is tied to a project of reproduction. Beteille (1991)95

alerts us to the vital role of the family in reproduction of inequality. He maintains that in

every society some measure of continuity from one generation to the next is maintained

by means of 'what is described by means of a biological metaphor as social and cultural

reproduction' (ibid.:13).

The features of contemporary childhood and parenthood----<ieriving from our

analyses-are anticipated by Beteille; especially, the mechanism of socialization. He

stresses the active role of the family in transmitting to its younger members all the

advantages it has at it command: social, cultural and material capital. The school is

regarded as an institution that plays a major part in the reproduction of inequality. Middle

class parents take an increasing part in educational progress and career prospects of their

children. They help children with their lessons or, engage tutors or send their children to

coaching classes.

Thus, Beteille's arguments, though not contextualized in the Contemporary

Era-in the specific sense in which it figures in our study-point to the urgency of

investigating the role of the family. Viewing the eating family in the light of Beteille's

insights, one might suggest that this family, the space of which is global-local, is playing

a decisive role in consolidating a structure of inequality by inserting the NMC wedge in

the existing social structure.

Uberoi's (1994:391) response to Beteille's essay, aims at rounding up the family's role in

social reproduction. She notes, "What he does not stress in this essay is the extent to

which parental investment in the maximization of their children's potential. is

32

complemented and reinforced by well considered strategies of match-making, as a quick

glance at the 'matrimonial' columns of Indian newspapers will soon disclose".

Our research findings bear out Uberoi's insights. Thus, where investigating 'what

is a family doing' even as it eats, it is the reproductive-biological as well as social­

functions of the family that command attention. Our findings suggest that it is the

'reproductive impulse' that cycle through Adulthood, Childhood and Youth. This, in fact,

has necessitated that we adopt a life-course mode of analysis of the family, keeping in

view its functions.

Such analyses explain 'how' the eating family strives towards a fulfillment of

aspirations to be modem. In a way, the eating family-the empirically grounded NMC-,

is a response of everyday life to consumer culture, driven by aspirations to be modem.

Inadvertently, this light on the eating family also falls on the NMC given the latter is a

consumer par excellence.

How does the eating family in everyday life compare with the NMC family

projected in consumer culture? Our findings suggest that, the family form of NMC

projected in consumer culture resonates in everyday life; but, the aspect of it being

nuclear or otherwise is not significant when it is a matter of eating at McDonald's.

With regard to consumer culture's conceptualization of family in terms of life­

course as child, youth and adult, and adults as couples and parents, there is an uneasy

resemblance between consumer culture and everyday life. This is because, the eating

family of everyday life, traditionally not given to thinking of classifying members as

adult, child or youth, is doing so. This palpable pull in contrary directions causes aspects

of the eating family in everyday life to resemble or differ from those in consumer culture.

This contradiction seems to be a distinctive characteristic of the family in the

Contemporary Era.

X

FOOD AND IDENTITY: MODERNITY AS CULINARY PRACTICE

In the light of the discussion above, Food and Identity serves as a suitable explanatory

model for shedding light on the Contemporary Era, a brief recall of which is in order.

33

The Contemporary Era is an era 'after-development' or, an era of integrating with global

capital. This is a shift away from the Nehruvian model of development influenced by

Gandhian socialism; by which token, it is a shift away from the national-goal of

maximizing self-reliance. This is also a shift from the producer to the consumer. Given

that in context of the liberalized economy, 'Being Indian' is 'Being a Consumer'; and, the

socio-structural co-relate of the latter is the middle class, the Contemporary Era is

signposted by NMC who is the consumer-citizen96 of contemporary India. Thus, post­

liberalization, national identity is linked with NMC identity.

So, what is the distinctive aspect of national identity in an era of the NMC? To

answer this question, we have to get past another one viz. what is the distinctive aspect of

the NMC identity?

By now, we are more than acquainted with the identity project of the NMC

executed by the eating family and underway iri everyday life. Moreover, we have

observed that food and eating practices are vital operations in this project. In a sense,

then, food and identity form a semantic array for defining the NMC. The point is­

identity project of the NMC linked to food practices inadvertently renders national

identity being predicated on food practices. Paraphrasing Mintz and Du Bois (2002: I 09),

the core concern is how food functions in social allocation in terms of nationality and

class.

The significance of 'food and identity' for an understanding of modem India, is

the theme of, quoting from Mintz and DuBois (ibid.), 'Appadurai's classic paper on how

to create a national cuisine'. In Appadurai's (1988) essay How to Make a National

Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India, food-the cuisine aspect of it-is a cultural

device to imagine the nation, the site of which is the cookbook. In the imagined nation,

there is interplay of regional inflection and national standardization; and, the imagination

of the nation is the handy-work ofurban middle class who are constructing a new middle

class ideology and consumption style for India. Noteworthy in Appadurai's analysis is

the co-relation between an imagination of the nation and the cultural formation of the

new middle class.

34

For the sake of generalization, food practices could be interpreted as consumptive

practices by a simple inversion of particularization of 'consumption' into 'eating'-an

operation we performed above. This 'reverse' operation enables us to draw on Emma

Tarlo's research on the theme 'dress and identity in India' (see Tarlo, 1996)97• Tarlo's

study sheds light on the role of clothing in identity construction in India. She argues that

"deciding what to wear is one of the ways in which people try to 'pin down meanings'

and control both presentation and interpretations of the self' (ibid.: 18).

Tarlo's historical sketch of the 'Recreation of Indian Dress'98 by Mohandas

Karamchand Gandhi and his setting out to convert the nation to khadi is germane to our

parallel research theme: food and identity. We now turn to Gandhi for illustrating the

relation posited between food and identity in personal life, in leadership to the nation and

in 'political modernization' paving way for India to become a nation99•

A characteristic aspect of Gandhi's leadership is that he drew upon the social and

historical resources surrounding his life path. He recognized the ideological need to relate

national identity and self-esteem to indigenous cultural traditions. His commitment to

non-violence and truth (satyagrah, or "truth force")-reflected in his political style as

well as his personal life-suggest how he transformed traditional ideals for modern

purposes (see Rudolph and Rudolph, 1967: Part 2).

Gandhi's Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth 100 [1982

(1927)] testifies the harmony between Gandhi's political and personal commitments. The

Rudolphs (ibid.: 169-71) argue that this book is a document that makes clear that Gandhi

meant to be simultaneously judged as a private and a public person. They urge that it be

read with a 'particularly sensitive ear' for, "In the Indian context, it is very much a

political document central to Gandhi's political concerns in a double sense, the function it

served for him and that which it served for his public. It is from his 'experiments in the

spiritual field' that he believed that he had 'derived such power as I possess for working

in his political field"'.

Taken to be an autobiography, The Stmy of My Experiments with Truth

authenticates a reflexive self101• It is a quintessential modernist project shedding light on

the experimental method 102 adopted by him in the spiritual field to reflect on existential

35

questions of self-identity. The privileging of the spiritual domain suggests that Gandhi

life-project was a striving after a 'moral self; however, this self was to speak to the

experiences and problems of Indians living under foreign imperial subjection103• Thus,

the ~elf for Gandhi is not an individual; 1 fact, it is a collective self. As his story goes: /""-'

'But as I have all along believed that what is possible for one is possible for all ... "

(Gandhi ibid.: 14)

The self, in Gandhi's ethics of living is one that has to be realized; he writes,

"What I want to achieve-what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty

years-is self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain moksha. I live and move and

have my being in pursuit of this goal. All that I do by way of speaking and writing, and

all my ventures in the political field are directed to this same end" (ibid.).

The Autobiography establishes, irrevocably, the significance of food and identity

in Gandhi's project of 'scientific Satyaghray' (ibid.: 16) aimed at meeting political as well

as personal goals. In pursuance of the latter goal of self realization, Gandhi conducted a

series of 'Experiments in Dietetics'. The impulse for these experiments came from

searching the self deeper. In Gandhi's words, "As I searched myself deeper, the necessity

for changes both internal and external began to grow on me ... .I began to make changes in

my diet" (ibid.:66). At first glance, these practices convey a metonymic connection

between food and identity; and of absolute individuality. However, for Gandhi, food in its

eating aspect was not an individual matter; it was hitched to the goal of political

modernization.

Gandhi's 104 versiOn of Indian nationalism was predicated on the practice of

Satyagraha that expressed deeply embedded cultural values: definition of courage and a

view of conflict resolution. These drew on self control, self-suffering and restraint of the

impulse to retaliate which reflect traditional Hindu thought's emphasis on ethical as

against institutional restraints. Gandhi's asceticism enacted these ethical standards. It was

thought to have a power-enhancing function, rendering it politically potent. This ethical

measure aiming to command presence in public life, in private life found culinary

expressiOn as 'vegetarianism', having run through a series of experiments with meat­

eating.

36

Vegetarianism was about self-restraint and found a parallel expression in the vow

of brahmacharya or sexual asceticism. For him, the control of palate was essential in the

observance of celibacy. This explains Gandhi's meticulousness with his diet.

Recognizing that 'cool foods' augment self-restraint, whereas 'hot foods' are given to

promote a life force given to lust, he took to the former. In fact, he developed a list of

cool foods for his followers as well.

Gandhi's 'this worldly asceticism' in fact, was a model of leadership linked to his

visiOn of post-independence India. As discussed above, the influence of Gandhi in

Nehruvian model of development rendered maximizing self-reliance as a national goal. It

follows that, Gandhi's this worldly asceticism transmuted into principle of self-reliance

gave India a sense of coherence and national identity in the development era.

For Gandhi, the principle of self-reliance was linked to a vision of society. This

derives from his post-industrial critique of industrial civilization. In line with critics of

industrial society, Gandhi saw an industrial society as brutalizing men and alienating

them from self and society; consequently, he articulated a vision for India as one

comprising self-sufficient villages.

The foregoing reading of Gandhi, besides firmly grounding the relation between food and

identity in Gandhi's personal life, his leadership to the nation and the political

modernization of India, also illuminates the link between food and society. This instances

the culinary practice of modernity as also modernity as a culinary practice.

This takes us to the question we set out with: what is the distinctive aspect of

national identity in the Contemporary Era or an era of the NMC whose distinctive

characteristic is a striving towards the fulfillment of aspirations to be modem by eating

McDonald's fast food?

The answer to this question IS predicated upon a comparison between the

Contemporary Era and the era pre-ceding it. Given the latter's upholding the principle of

self-reliance as a national goal, for the Contemporary Era, it is reasonable to ask, whither

self-reliance?

37

Awaiting an examination is the model of society ensuing in the wake of a consumerist

culture in the Contemporary Era linked to eating of McDonald's fast food. Such a linkage

between fast food and type of society has a classic precedent in Ritzer's McDonaldization

of Society thesis. The McDonald's system, evaluated in terms of the principles of

rationality, has the potential to shape the society in its image. And given that late capital

charts for McDonald's a global trajectory, the coming of McDonald's to India is

significant and poses the urgency to investigate and examine its societal effects.

If a society be found on principles-as with the McDonalized society founded on

the principle of rationality and, post-independence India on the principle of self­

reliance-then, what shape is society taking in Contemporary Era in course of a seeming

demise of self reliance, is a reasonable query. Moreover, with the arrival of McDonald's

fast food to India, are we heading to become a McDonaldized society?

Our concern regarding the societal consequences of the McDonald's system depart from

the McDonaldization thesis i.e. we are not heading to examine the shaping of society by

rationality. Instead, we aim to shed light on the societal analogue of fast food. The

models of society purveyed by the McDonald's system--designated by us as family

society and peer group society-are modernist. However, to understand 'what, how and

why' of these models, we need to go through Adulthood, Childhood and Youth-the

themes of the chapters to follow.

XI

THE STUDY

False Starts, Start

The converston of my theoretical interest-food and identity-into a researchable

proposition was a tricky affair. To begin with, McDonald's did not figure in my research

design. My aim was to examine national identity in a culinary idiom. Somewhere along

the way, I changed course: my research aimed at investigating ethnic identity. Then, I got

~8

drawn into the problematic of identity as it plays itself out in the eating cultures of the

capital city. These false starts105, in retrospect, were a symptom of a poorly defined

problematic. Also, I suspect, this is to do with the nature of the field itself. Here was I,

intending to pin down food within familiar conceptual frameworks of national and ethnic

identity; whereas, food was all around me and it teased me relentlessly. My settling down

with McDonald's fast food and its bearing on the identity of consumers has antecedents

which, as I look back, prepared me for resistance as well as yields from the field.

My pilot survey found me tracking McDonald's fast food-in restaurants, in the hands of

the eater, in the talk of adults, as a reward for children, in advertisements, on the drive­

way counter, on the restaurant kitchen shelf, disaggregated into buns-sauce-patty, on the

service tray, in the garbage bin, in a half-eaten form doled as charity to a beggar by a

traffic signal, so forth and so on.

In due course, I arrived at the supposition that there is more to fast food than just

buying and eating; that fast food comprises a range of phenomena, that it is a culmination

point of manifold processes, that it congeals forms of knowledge that are not culinary,

that it conceals coercion beneath a veneer of a persuasive charm. With these suppositions,

my object of interest underwent a conversion: from McDonald's fast food to 'more than

fast food'. The challenge was to identify and investigate this 'more'.

Emerging alongside this tracking were questions: what explains the popularity of

McDonald's? Why do young boys and girls take on part-time jobs in restaurants? Why

are children taken in by McDonald's? Why are McDonald's birthday parties such a rage?

Why do people eat out more often then they used to? Or, do they? What explains the

imitation of McDonald's model, especially, restaurant practices, food stylizing,

packaging and advertising? The publicity by McDonald's, especially the television

advertisements, drew my attention. I was particularly curious about the motif of nuclear

family that featured in the communication strategy; that 'eaters' should be cast as a

standardized family set me thinking.

My tracking exercise and mulling over these questions gradually distilled into

related themes. These are fast food, eating at McDonald's restaurants and a certain

notion of being in tune with the times held by consumers or NMC-the social co-relate of

39

the consumers according to marketeers, which assumes the form of nuclear family in

media images.

Concretizing Conceptual Domains: Constructing the Field

The preliminary observations and questions, where pegged to a conceptual apparatus,

rendered this study an examination of consumer culture and everyday life and, an

articulation between the two so as to understand the modality of constitution of the NMC.

The location of the NMC is undoubtedly median. Empirically, the NMC exists as

'eaters of fast food' and as 'persons striving to become somebody'; while in conceptual

terms, it is in the middle of 'system' and the 'life-world' or, 'consumer culture' and

'everyday life'. Consequently, the domains concretized in this study are consumer culture

and everyday life. The trajectory of the research process is a series of steps towards the

identification, 'getting to' and 'pinning down' consumer culture, everyday life and their

point of convergence, so as to understand the dynamics of their articulation, and test the

veracity of claims made by consumer culture on the subject of the NMC.

The research field, however, was not 'out there' waiting for me; it had to be

constructed.

Research-Scapes 106: Media, Market, Consumers:

I went about constructing the field by demarcating respective 'research-scapes'

corresponding with the three themes-fast food, eating at McDonald's restaurants and a

certain notion of being with the times. The identified research-scapes were media-scape,

market-scape and consumer-scape. This was followed by identifying specific research

sites within each of the three scapes. Thus, I embarked on a process of research at

multiple sites.

Media-scapes clustered in a single realm print advertisements, television

commercials, promotional campaigns, expert ratings and eating guides.

The fast-food restaurant-as a generic type-was selected as a site representing

the market-scape. Market-scape was the rubric under which I observed presentation and

40

practices of the selected restaurants. Also, I studied effects of location of the restaurant,

ambience; observed the personnel, what they do, where they come from; kept track of

product innovations and their stylization; observed customers through the day; noted their

social configurations; discerned patterns of the same; and participated in restaurant

events. However, McDonald's is not the only restaurant I identified as a site for

investigation. Since I sought to investigate and evaluate the extent and limit of its

impact; the continuity of existing practices and, nature of articulation between the new

and existing forms and practices, it was crucial that McDonald's be compared with

existing practices. In order to reap the clarity accrued by comparison, and to examine

McDonald's in a relative perspective, I selected two other restaurants, Nirula 's and

Sagar-two indigenous food companies; the former Northern, the latter Southern; both

on an expansion and diversification spree in the national capital; and, of course, both

popular. Another crucial factor . guiding the selection of Nirula 's and Sagar as

comparative sites is a commonality the two share with McDonald's i.e. all the three are

family restaurants. Consequent to such a comparison between the indigenous and the

global for an evaluation of continuity and change, the family emerged as the crucial

social entity as well as a key site for such evaluations.

The popularity of the three restaurants, their metonymic association m food

courts, shopping areas, malls, residential areas, made me ponder the effective difference

between their target customers. McDonald's, one was made to understand, came to India

seeking the NMC or consumer. Having noted the juxtaposition of McDonald's, Nirula 's

and Sagar, I arrived at the conclusion that the three restaurants target an identical set of

customers; by implication then, all the three target the NMC. Consumer-scape thus,

congregated under one head, the buyers and eaters in commercial establishments or

restaurants, as well as the NMC.

•catchment Areas': An Empirical Grounding of Consumers

'For the marketeers, the abstract category--consumer-, on the ground should transmute

into a 'catchment area' for products'. This reasoning guided me to track the marketeers'

identification of the NMC on the ground, in order to concretize eaters. Simultaneously, I

41

was going ahead with observations in restaurants and was conducting informal interviews

with customers.

Shopping areas, malls, movie multiplexes, food courts, are catchment areas of

consumers who patronize public leisure centres; but, the location of restaurants-and

increasingly so--within the proximity of residential areas, was counter intuitive. Why

would the marketeers invest in ventures that faced stiff competition from domestic food

arrangements? Herein was a clue to a 'catchment area in the making', perhaps. This led

to the identification of a residential locality within the vicinity of selected restaurants.

From the point of view of a researcher, the catchment area is an 'ethnographic

real', observable and describable. Hereon, the imagined NMC or consumer who avails of

commercial provision of food can be met with in reality; the consumer becomes a person

who is a customer, who has an income who practices a profession and who identifies with

a lifestyle. Given an understanding that the target customers of these restaurants are 'new

middle class', the catchment area qualified as a new middle class residential locality ..

An empirical grounding of consumers thus, pointed to an ethnographic context.

Ethnographic Setting

A South Delhi locality

The South Delhi locality, Vasant Kunj, stands out as consumer-scape because it serves as

a catchment area for McDonald's, Nirula 'sand Sagar. Nirula 's has an express outlet at

B-10 Vasant Kunj and a Family Style restaurant at Bawa Potteries, Vasant Kunj. A Sagar

restaurant is located in the Central Market shopping complex. A McDonald's restaurant,

in Priya shopping complex, Vasant Vihar, is a 3 km driving distance from Vasant Kunj.

This particular restaurant is the first McDonald's to be set up in India.

The target customers of these restaurants reside in this locality. In course of my

investigations, I was convinced that the pulse of this locality beats the developments of

post-liberalization India. So, not only does the locality concretize for the marketeers the

NMC; perhaps it does so for the researcher as well.

42

The V asant Kunj complex is developed and planned by the Delhi Development

Authority (DDA}-whose motto is where city building is an unending process.

The plan to build this multi-storey complex was announced as the fifth self­

financing housing scheme (SFS) in 1982, the registration to which opened from May 14,

1982 to August 14, 1982. The concept of multi-storey housing was borrowed from

Russia. The SFS was designed with a view on the salaried employees. HDFC (Housing

Development and Financing Corporation) started to offer housing loans for group

housing societies by the late 1970s. It seems to me, not far-fetched, to read into the

planning of Vasant Kunj a certain notion of a 'middle class' defined by state interests;

perhaps also created by it.

What is presently Vasant Kunj stretches between Andheria Morh and Mahipalpur

village. Till about early 1970s, the land on which Sectors A, D-I and D-II stand was used

for agriculture; whereas, the land area earmarked for Sectors Dill and DIV was rocky

land.

The chronological order of allotment of houses is as follows: 1983-4: Sector A,

pocket Band C; 1986-88: Dill, DIV; 1989: Sector B; 1989-90: DI, Dill; 1990-91: Cl, C8

and C9. These allottees and first occupants, by and large, were from Delhi who had

retired from government service, particularly the defence services, or were due to

superannuate shortly.

The 1990's decade coincided with a phase when children of the first occupants

were seeking jobs. This phase also saw a growing private sector attracting a considerable·

proportion of these job seekers. Effectively, this was a turn towards hefty pay packets,

and a turn away from public sector salaries that seemed paltry on a relative scale. The

salary jump when compared with those of parents was substantial. Most of the new jobs

were in the hospitality industry (The Indira Gandhi International Airport, is at a distance

of a couple of kms.); or, in multinational firms that set up offices in Gurgaon-a

township adjoining the complex.

Thus, the occupational profile of second generation residents of Vasant Kunj

underwent a change. The archetype resident was now a young professional with a job in

the service sector; further, a good number of these professionals were employed by

foreign firms. As a consequence, the professional had to get attuned to a work culture

43

which is global. Further, given the possibility that air travel is a regular feature of such a

job profile, as is interaction with a 'team' that is dispersed across the globe, the

professional is immersed in a transnational cultural milieu.

A survey of the residents' information directory indicates that post 1990's,

prominent among the spectrum of professionals are doctors, managers, software

engmeers, media executives, employees of hospitality industry, accountants and

architects.

My investigations aimed at observing everyday life of residents, suggest that woes of the

residents could be taken to be symptoms of the impact of post 1990s happenings on h

everyday life of residents. Prominent among the everyday woes are 'car park woes',

'space woes', 'water woes' and 'domestic helper woes'.

As per the construction plan, two-wheeler scooter garages are provided for every

flat and the concept of a car park per flat does not exist. But, the clamor for parking space

is a glaring feature of everyday life. Residents usurp parking space for their cars by

encroaching upon walkways; they have erected enclosures for their cars. According to the

locality lore, there are vicious people who put scratch marks on the car-body, or deflate

car tyres if their (illegally occupied) parking rights are violated.

Seizing land is a characteristic feature of this locality. The occupants of ground

floor houses extend the covered area by putting up barricades; they lead an anxiety ridden

existence lest walkers, stray dogs, vegetable vendors, children paddling bicycles or

motorists, cause damage. Nearly every house has modified the original construction and

design to construct rooms, extend balconies, build a unit on the building roof, install

additional toilets-all of these as per the 'latest style'. These modifications are attributed

to the necessity of 'more' room to accommodate married sons and their families since the

family needs to stick together for emotional and financial support. An extra room or a

lone toilet on the roof is also to accommodate servants. Every household employs at least

two domestic helpers. Some of these are inhabitants of the adjoining village Kishen Garh

or Mehrauli; some may be hired from private agencies.

Water problem is a regular affliction. Anyone heading towards this locality cannot

miss the sight of mobile water carriers operated by private water suppliers. There is a

44

perpetual water shortage despite every house augmenting storage capacity. Some people,

one hears, have fitted underground water storage tanks. One also hears the justification

for this act of violation viz. neighbours have installed booster pumps to siphon off the

regular municipal supply as a result of which water pressure is low and the collectable

quantity inadequate. Everyone suspects everyone of having installed booster pumps. The

gross result of these recursive allegations is an assured shortage. This is the raison d'etre

for not just the water woes, but also the 'water business'; besides, it explains why this

locality is dotted with water tanks potted into earth choc- a- block.

Where, on the one hand, there are woes, on the other hand, in the perception of residents,

this locality has many advantages to offer. The 'biggest' advantage is facilities by way of

easy availability of daily provisions, consumables and services. This is; I am told, a

recent development. Basic-provisions stores now retail processed foods: juices, fruit

preserves, carton-milk, cheeses, Indian sweets, snack foods, ready meals, chocolates,

brown breads, yogurt, and meats (Green Chick is the most popular meat shop). There has

been a mushrooming of eateries, take aways, and home delivery services. The yesteryears

basic provision stores too-say what of the new stores-provide home delivery service:

delivery boys on bicycles are a regular sight in the locality.

These facilities, primarily the availability of services, are advertised through

hand-outs and brochures distributed free of cost to all residents. The Vasant Kunj

Shopper and Informer disseminate vital information regarding gift and toy shops,

property consultants, flower shops, eating places, home delivery services, bill payment

services, play schools, career consultants, medical centres, management institutes, car

service stations, day care schools, hair and beauty salons, cosmetic and clothes boutiques,

tailors, electrical fittings specialists, air-conditioner maintenance and service centres,

packers and movers, interior designers, veterinary doctors, property dealers, vaastu­

shastra consultants, astrologers, water delivery services, fruit and vegetable marts, take­

away meals, event managers and specialist doctors.

There has been a spate of private medical and educational centres in this locality:

Apollo Clinic-a wing of super specialty Apollo Group of Hospitals, Spinal Injuries

Centre; Delhi Public School, G.D. Goenka School, Heritage School, Vasant Valley

45

School, Ryan International School and JIMS-a management institute. This is surpassed

only by the proliferation of play schools; so also by the A TM counters in the local market

complexes.

This locality is in news regularly. Every other day, old people are murdered; there are

robberies; Residents Welfare Associations are protesting against the mounting crimes in

the locality. The primary suspects or a party to the crime are thought to be domestic

helpers, who are thereby, subjected to harrowing police enquiries and are issued identity

proofs. The general security concern is signaled by hiring security guards from

specialized agencies.

This locality made it to the international press circuit, the day Sushmita Sen, a

local, was crowned Miss Universe in a beauty pageant.

If asked to pin point a distinctive feature of this locality, I would pick on the

burgeoning of services. Food service, hence, is to be viewed as one of the services,

prominent in a consumerist landscape that is sought to be fashioned by new style

consumption, advertised and promoted by local shoppers and informers and sites:

restaurants.

Fast Food Restaurants: Market Areas, University Campuses

My investigations sounded that in the South Delhi locality, the pnmary customer

configuration is the family; not teenagers. Thus, to observe consumer segment delineated

by marketeers as 'youth', I had to identify catchment areas other than the South Delhi

locality. This took me to university campuses. I scouted in and around Delhi University,

Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Milia University.

I tracked these target customers in two other localities-NOIDA (New Okhla

Industrial Area) and Greater Kailash. The new shopping complex in NOIDA'S Sector 18

is a hang out hub of call centre employees, students of management and IT institutes,

part-time staff of service industries adjoining NO IDA, couples and young professionals.

The selected restaurants have a substantial customer base in the area. The McDonald's

46

restaurant at Greater Kailash attracts students and shoppers from Delhi University

colleges in the vicinity.

To observe the employees of McDonald's, I identified McDonald's restaurants in

Connaught Place107-an old shopping complex in New Delhi-having learnt that the

part-timers, especially girls, preferred this location.

On realizing that McDonald's restaurants at Connaught Place are favourite haunts

of couples, I started frequenting this location. These jaunts proved rewarding for, I had an

occasion to participate as an observer in a 'Roland McDonald's Charity Show'. The

highlight of this show was celebrity invitees-film actress Bipasha Basu and award

winning sportsman Jaspal Rana-who made the charitable gesture of serving customers

from the counter and generating hysteria.

In the Field

My fieldwork conducted in Delhi, the national capital, spanned a period of four years-

2000-2004. The research field comprised three research-scapes: media-scape, market­

scape and consumer-scape; each with specific research sites. This required me to apply

multiple research techniques depending upon the research-context and the aims of my

investigation. But, before all of this, I had to enter the field.

A well-learnt lesson from my 'false-starts', especially my forays into NCHMCT was that

I have unwittingly entered a field where every aspect is engulfed in an air of secrecy; and,

that my research activity is pre-decidedly espionage. In the face of such perceptions and

suspicion, my research, on its own merit, would not be welcomed.

Preliminary investigations portended, accurately so, that it is not any different in

case of media-scape and market-scape. Allied in the production and dissemination of

consumer culture, these sectors too, are couched in secrecy. As such, it was practically

difficult to separate the two contexts during the research process because commonality of

ends renders them conjunct.

The media and market contexts for research, were not 'out there', nor easily

accessible; rather, they had to be constructed employing multiple methods and suitable

47

techniques. My entry into the fields of media and market was made possible by friends

and acquaintances.

Media Context

The media context comprised print advertisements, television commercials, promotional

campaigns, expert ratings and eating guides. Given that my research interest in media

was shaped by my interest in McDonald's advertisements, it is serendipitous that I could

get access to the boardroom communication and marketing strategy of McDonald's. A

friend was related (as a prospective 'in-law') to this person (Ml), who was a part of the

team handling McDonald's account with the concerned advertising agency. This friend

introduced me to Ml-as friend, researcher and college lecturer-who then, had no

qualms in sharing with me, in course of two rigorous interview sessions, marketing and

communication strategies, factors shaping them and market research by McDonald's. I

was also 'gifted' a compilation of McDonald's ad films (2000-03) in a video CD format,

which I was told has been smuggled out of the ad agency's office. Acquaintances

introduced me to M2, M3, and M4 (food experts and food columnists). Informal

conversations with these professionals were informative; further, this confirmed for me

the general importance of newspaper columnists and their role in devising ratings of

eateries that find way into eating out guides. I was required to 'simply listen'; so much

did they enjoy chatting on the subject of food and their expertise in related matters.

My research activities in the media context, other than being personnel-directed,

involved content analysis of McDonald's televised advertisements. My focus was on the

narratives articulating everyday concerns via the medium of the family. This exercise was

geared towards an examination of notions of family and NMC projected through the

content of these advertisements. Besides television ads, I also analyzed ads appearing in

print media, not just McDonald's ads, but those of Nirula 's as well.

Market Context

For developing the market context, my first research activity was familiarizing myself

with the field keeping in view my research concerns. I embarked on this by collecting

48

information about the food market. This did not require any search effort, for I realized

that information is all over. This struck me on the day I was buying peanuts from a street­

vendor. The peanuts after being duly measured to weigh 200 gms., were packaged in a

paper envelop--recycled newspaper sheet carrying a printed advertising of an eating out

guide. The ubiquity of information, as I was to qualify shortly, is a 'social fact' for those

who are literate, and have means to access or buy it.

Systematically and regularly, I skimmed news dailies, glossy supplements,

magazines ( esp. India Today, Outlook, Business Today, Business Standard and Business

World), publications specific to the hospitality industry ((I procured a two year

subscription of the weekly Hotelier and Caterer and a copy of Feasibility Report on Fast

Food Restaurants). Besides these, I dipped into 'anything' that I thought would carry

information related to food: magazines I could lay my hands on, flyers, hand-outs, pull­

outs, billboards, employment news, career guidance supplements, eating out guides,

recipe columns, restaurant reviews, cookery shows, travel and lifestyle guides, kitchen

equipment and design brochures (acquired for free from Consumer Exhibition & Fairs

held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi) and information accessible via the internet. I also

conducted impromptu chats and pre-planned interviews with owners or managers of 'old'

restaurants-United Coffee House, Wengers, Madras Hotel in Connaught Place; Udipi

Hotel in Munirka; Moti Mahal in Old Delhi-with the intention of sketching a mental

map of the food market prior to the 1990s.

Invaluable inputs that contributed towards familiarizing me with the market context came

from former staff of the President of India's kitchen. I learnt from the 'Presidential

cooks' that the cooks serving the Rashtrapati hailed from a single village in Assam, and

were related in a 'line'. However, after Rajiv Gandhi took over as Prime Minister,

Rashtrapati Bhawan's kitchen culture changed markedly. The major change was

'professional training' for the kitchen staff. The practice of hiring trained chefs from the

Ashok Hotel for the President's kitchen had also started.

I learnt that the market dynamic is signaled by the growing prominence of professional

cooks and the hospitality industry. At this juncture, I could not have imagined my

49

effortless entry into this professional context. Even before I had started to think out a

way, a chance meeting with an ITDC (Indian Tourism Development Corporation) official

at a local Diwali get together turned out to be a precursor to an introduction with Chef

Sibbal. This individual has been instrumental in introducing me to his professional

fraternity in the hospitality industry. Consequently, my research activities saw me

interviewing these professionals; some among these were employed by state run

institutions: NCHMCT, Hyderabad House, ITDC, International Airport; others were in

private hotels owned by business houses. This activity was unrelated to McDonald's or

fast food per se; but it was rewarding by way of familiarizing me with the market context;

in fact, it enabled me to grasp it moderately.

I was meeting Chef Sibbal on a regular basis. I could say that he has been my

window to a profession and the hospitality industry. When I was at dead-ends, I would

talk to him; and hope for new directions. Chef Sibbal was enthusiastic about my project

and would ask me many 'sociological' questions. I learnt and acquired self-clarification

regarding aspects of my work in course of responding to these questions.

In a spirit of reciprocity, Chef Sibbal introduced me to Mr. Lalit Narula, the

owner and MD of Nirula 's Corner House Private Limited. Responding to my research

proposal forwarded with a reference letter from my university, Mr. Narula invited me to

his Connaught Place office. I was readily and graciously promised every kind of

assistance. Mr. Narula has been most gracious, encouraging, and regular with following

up the advances and findings of my research.

In a jiffy, I had access to press cuttings, restaurant personnel, top level managers

and area managers. Further, my request to participate in a training workshop (third week

of June, 2003) was granted. I conducted formal interviews with Mr. Narula (on three

occasions), with top level managers, with area managers and with managers of

restaurants located in different parts of Delhi. With the information and data generated, I

have constructed a socio-historical sketch of Nirula 's from the 1934-the year of its

establishment-up till the present.

It was an accident that got me in touch with a batch-mate who was a semor

manager with McDonald's India, Connaught Plaza Restaurants Pvt. Ltd. With much

caution, he extended all the cooperation he could without jeopardizing his 'job'. I was

50

introduced to colleagues whom I eventually interviewed. I was granted 'official'

permission to join the Basic Shift Management Course (24th to 281h Feb, 2003) and to

participate in to HR Systems Day (8th April, 2003)108• He also arranged for my interviews

with area managers, who in turn directed the restaurant managers to respond to my • 109 quenes .

I am certain that my access to McDonald's was expedited and hassle-free because

of my personal acquaintance with somebody high-up in the organizational hierarchy. For,

I could sense that some of my batch-:-mate's colleagues did not take too well to the access

I had; they were extremely suspicious. A manager had hinted that, McDonald's had too

many competitors; so, one has to be very careful.

I had selected Sagar as a research site to factor in a relative perspective and

comparative insights. On a couple of occasions, I tried striking a conversation with the

manager, but my point could not get past the lunch hour din. My attempts to meet with

the owner, Mr. Jayaram Banan, did not materialize. Eventually, I decided to stick with

the technique of observation. As for the history of the food chain and its trajectory,

relied on media reports and interviews of Mr. Banan appearing in business magazines.

My research activities in context of market, involved multiple techniques: observation,

participant observation of restaurants events, interviews with restaurant personnel, area

managers and senior managers, participation in 'human resource' training workshops,

rummaging for information strewn around and, interviews with cooks and hospitality

industry professionals.

Consumer Context

During the phase of preliminary investigations, the consumer context comprised

customers of the three restaurants at different locations in Delhi, movie goers, shoppers

and restaurant employees-for these too are consumers, I reasoned. My primary research

activities were impromptu conversations and observation. This phase prompted me to

constantly reflect on my research techniques even as I working out my approach.

51

The restaurant personnel had started noticing my repeated visits and attempts to strike

conversation with their clients. This was especially in case of McDonald's and Nirula 's.

In case of Sagar, I could approach customers barely on two occasions. It seemed

impossible to do so; not only because the managers are very watchful but, also because

the customers, I sensed, were utterly unwilling to respond to questions. I also thought it to

be awkward to butt into the eating/meeting ritual of a larger group. This is in sharp

contrast with McDonald's where striking a conversation has been relatively easy.

Nirula 's falls somewhere between the two. But even at McDonald's which assumes an air

of informality, I could sense that my attempts to talk to customers are being watched. On

one occasion, at McDonald's in NOIDA, a crew member requested me to not disturb

customers. Apparently, the couple I had 'disturbed' by requesting them to for an

interview had made a complaint. This lone episode gave me a whiff of the embarrassing

situations that could arise. I could not bear the prospect of infringing the 'privacy' of

customers; and I was gripped with the thought that being on either side of an interview

could be extremely coercive. This is when I decided to call it a day.

This phase was revolutionary from a personal standpoint, for, it trained me to

initiate conversations with strangers. To this phase I owe a realization that went on to

become the principle I followed through the course of my research viz. non-coercion and

volunteerism on part of both, the researcher and the respondents.

Once the South Delhi locality, University Campus and Market Areas were identified as

research sites, the research techniques formalized. I prepared structured questionnaires

and interview schedules. The questions, I reckoned, had to be research site- specific;

which required that I devise non-standard questionnaires and modify my questions while

interviewing. The questions framed were direct and brief because I fathomed that during

an interview session maximum time should be allocated to the respondents. Initially, I

was hop~ng that my questions would emerge from the responses; but, by and large I stuck

to my questions as they seemed to be comprehensive and coherent to the respondents.

Having framed the questions thus, provided the leverage to switch easily from English to

Hindi or vice-versa.

52

My entry into the consumer context was inaugurated at McDonald's Vasant Vihar. On . field-work one afternoon in this restaurant, I spotted two children in school uniforms with

identity badges bearing a Vasant Kunj address, gorging into burgers. Sitting besides them

were their mothers (as I was to learn later), in animated conversation. Well, why not? I

approached these women, introduced my self, and requested them for their analyses of

children's craze for McDonald's Happy Meals. One of the two women happened to be

the Principal of a day care school in Vasant Kunj. And, to my pleasant surprise, she

invited me to her office the following week. I was introduced to some of the teachers and

permitted to interview them. I learnt that the teachers were residents of the locality. Also,

that their children were obsessed with the McDonald's Happy Meal. Here on, my

research took off. Respondents were identified by the 'snow balling' technique. One

parent was linked to all others whose children are invited for their child's birthday party.

This 'network' of children is created by common schools and neighbourhood. The

network between children created a network between adults. So, once I was acquainted

with one adult, I had access to an entire network instituted by children, but, maintained

and managed by adults.

The other two entry points to consumer context were family members and friends

who introduced me to office bearers of R WAs (Residents Welfare Association), property

dealers, colleagues, friends, schoolmates and relatives. Hereon, I found myself in the

midst a deluge of willing 'respondents' who did not regard my research activity as

espiOnage.

Rigorous interviews with Vasant Kunj residents were conducted over a period of five

months from June 2003 to October 2003. Baring a few exceptions-respondents I

approached directly at the local Nirula 's and McDonald's-, most of my respondents

were introduced to me by another. Students were interviewed in phases over the four year

period. In order that a relative perspective on everyday life informs my approach,

respondents of the grand parental generation were also interviewed.

The eagerness and relish with which my respondents shared their everyday lives

challenges the view that we do not wish to speak about our 'private lives' or, that there is

a strictly private realm. Here were respondents who seemed to enjoy it; who identified

53

with the theme of my research. The questions evoked nostalgia and memories­

especially in case of the grandparental generation-, pleasures and pressures. On at least

two different occasions, a 'grandfather', and a 'mother' broke down into tears when

narrating certain episodes of their lives.

I had an interview schedule which I could keep up to by and large; in most cases,

the questions fell short of the interest they generated. I was noting the responses on the

spot-an extremely challenging task for me. The respondents did not object to my note­

taking. After an interview, I returned with the telephone numbers of prospective

respondents whom I would call up at an hour that seemed to me least intrusive-forenoon

or evening-, seeking appointment. I had to maintain a planner to accommodate my

respondents' schedules, and manage interview schedules over the day. On several

occasions, at least four interviews were slotted; these were mainly weekends. I

preferred-though I could not control-interviews to be scheduled for weekends,

because chances that all members of the household, especially men, are present is greater.

However, this was not necessary since I was not focusing on the household. For that

matter, my focus was not even the family. It would be more accurate to say that the

family emerged in 'parts' in the guise of answers to my questions, in conversations about

food and eating.

I have been constantly reflecting on the possible reasons underlying the readiness

and eagerness of the respondents. I would attribute this to the principle of volunteerism

and non-coercion: No body was coerced into an interview. Even I was not: The volume of

potential respondents offered me the luxury to not interview those who 'seemed'

reluctant or unwilling or, made me uneasy. And, the indices of reluctance were not

necessarily 'declining' my request for an interview, but, postponing indefinitely. I did

pursue a person till as much as three phone calls after which I moved on. I often

wondered why should anyone not decline in the first place; what could be the

compulsion? I began to realize that the compulsion was to keep up a face with neighbours

or friends or whoever had requested you to meet this researcher.

It is a fact that, I was riding on waves of relationships between people who were

acquainted and trusting of each other with an iota of suspicion.

54

Interviewing university students was remarkably easy and effortless; effectively,

these were frank informal chats. The respondents were more than familiar with the figure

of a researcher and, my own experience of teaching undergraduates was handy in

eliciting responses from students.

My Location

My sense is that my professional-' lecturer' in a college of Delhi University-standing

had a bearing on the way I was received by my respondents. Further, my ability to

converse in the English language seems to me, to have been decisive in according me

respectability and 'status'. I have arrived at a conclusion that women in this profession

are well regarded and respected.

My sartorial manner and mode of travel (by car), I suspect, have a significant

bearing on my acceptance by respondents by way of generating an instant identification.

My hunch is that, to my respondents I must have appeared as 'one among us'. Not

surprisingly, I was invited into the comfort of drawing rooms; and I was lavished

hospitality befitting an 'important' guest. My declining 'cold drinks' and cold coffee

during the hot season, and availing of the tea option surprised most of my hosts. The

snacks served to me were not 'make do'. They were the 'special'.

Where English accorded me status, it was my ease with conversing in Hindi that

stood me in good stead. I would in a matter of no time, decide upon the language with

which to take a conversation further. In most cases it was Hindi because in my reckoning,

the responses were far more nuanced and detailed when rendered in Hindi; further, a

conversation in Hindi generated enthusiasm and facilitated a democratic participation.

Had this escaped my notice, I would have lost out on interaction with members of the

grandparental generation, especially women.

My being a female researcher, I sense, helped in winning trust of my respondents

who thereby, allowed me into their houses and homes. My being a female, also invited

curiosity. A characteristic aspect of this research is that I answered as many questions as I

asked, if not more. And this is how it would be. After the interview, generally, my

respondents, utterly at ease with me, enquired about my personal life. They were

55

interested in my 'family'; these questions culminated in quizzing me about my marital

status. It seemed to surprise most people that I was single. With a teaching job in a

reputed college, why the delay? On one occasion, a well-meaning elderly couple gave me

their visiting card if I ever needed help 'of any kind'. These questions did not surprise

me. In fact, each question encouraged me to keep going and helped assuage traces of

guilt about prying into people's lives. As if naturally, questions about food and eating

lead both me and my respondents into the realm of 'private lives'. I never intended a

probe into private worlds. Nor did my questions pertain to private matters. But, it is

fascinating that these questions-about eating-induced respondents to talk about

relationships, sentiments and roles. My hunch about the link between consumption of

food and family was further validated.

Respondents: Identification, Categorization

My questions to respondents pertained to not only eating practices. I also inquired about

the respondent's age, sex, marital status, modality of spouse selection, composition of the

household, educational institutions where children study, factors influencing selection of

institutions, community affiliation, occupation, educational qualification, shifts in

residential locations and considerations underlying this, geographical spread of kin

network, frequency of family get-togethers, occasions celebrated, the frequency and

occasions when the family dined out.

In the comfort of drawing rooms, all respondents at a first glance, seemed to be just

'eaters'-responding to my questions pertaining to food and eating. Similarly, in

restaurants, the customers I observed were also eaters. However, my research required

me to make a sociological sense of eaters or consumers so as to make comparisons with

the nuclear family and its everyday concerns projected in consumer culture. Thus, I was

faced with the challenge of identifying and categorizing eaters.

The clue lay in thinking the eater from the standpoint of the respondents. It is a

fact that the respondents introduced themselves in terms of configurations: husband-wife;

mother-child; parents-children; grandchildren-grandparents; uncles-nephews; aunts-

56

nieces, sisters-in-law, parents-in-law-daughter-in-law; siblings; friends; neighbours; or,

they were simply women, men, adolescent boys and girls, school-going children. But, the

'home' was not the research setting. My curiosity was about the social configurations that

'eat-out' as well as their everyday concerns.

I resorted to perform an operation of culling out from eating activities, the social

configurations of eaters and their everyday concerns. I could see that eating activities of

my respondents were embroiled in social relationships; that eating activities signified

social relationships. Hence, such an operationwas bound to make possible a comparison

between consumer culture and everyday life and bring out the resemblance or disjuncture

between the two.

What follows are the sets into which I categorized consumers and the parameters I

devised to do so.

SET 1

The Happy Meal/Merry Meal eater categorized as Set 1 is approximately 3-7 years old.

S/he is either enrolled in a play school or, is a student of class I, II or III. This eater is a

poor and disinterested interviewee, generally, not inclined to answer the question, why is

the 'Happy Meal' a favourite. Some confess their liking for like the toy. Their disinterest,

or was it ignorance, has been a vital clue in advancing my learning. Well in time, I

realized that the 'older children' had to be asked questions that were different from those

I was posing to respondents from Set 1.

SET2

The 'older children' categorized as Set 2 studying in classes III-VIII, are in the 7-13yrs

age-group. Like Set I, their birthdays are celebrated by parents; they are 'treated' by

parents; but, unlike Set I, for the older children the pressure to perform well at school has

increased many-fold. By taking recourse to the reward mechanism, parents 'play a trick'

on unsuspecting members of Set I in order to introduce them to the idea of school, the

necessity of doing homework on time and playing; however, parents cannot do the same

to members of Set 2. Unlike Set 1, this set is relatively less unsuspecting. The ideas

pertaining to importance of studies introduced playfully are now sought to be seriously

57

reinforced. Tuitions are arranged; lucrative study courses are identified; ideally, a hobby

is invented; there is a concerted effort to rationalize expenditure on grounds that shaping

the child's future is a paramount duty. Rewards and prizes continue to be bestowed upon

the child. It is noticeable that 'gifts' increasingly give way to 'prizes' that are

appreciations rather than bribes that are made to Set 1.

Set 2 does not eat Happy Meals; the members of this Set are likely to eat what

adults eat; they are more discerning; they are more aware of the menu options, though

most are likely to eat vegetarian or chicken burgers and ice-creams. So, when viewed in

terms of food items, is one to believe that this Set can be clearly differentiated from Set

1? I realized that a focus on food items was misleading; for, the reasons underlying the

consumption of a Chicken McGrill or a Big Boy burger or a Soft Serve were the same as

for Set 1. Thus, Set 2 could not be differentiated from Set 1; the two Sets in fact, are

conjoined by the idea of 'being achievers at school'. And, in order to ensure this, parents

intensify practices: treating children.

SET 3:

Eaters wearing school uniforms obviously do not belong either to Set 1 or to Set 2. So,

how are they different?

They are within the age-bracket 13-17 years and are studying in classes VII-XII.

This Set 3 is part of a larger group that eats at restaurants or, of a relatively smaller group

comprising 2-3 adults and 1-2 members from Set I or Set 2. When in company of adults

and members of Set 2 or Set 1, members of Set 3 are not in school uniforms. To begin

with, it is the school uniform that drew my attention to this group; but, once I had

identified this group thus, I noticed that the school uniform was not the only marker of

this group. Set 3 appeared just as a group of boys and girls who dressed in styled outfits

as advertised in print and electronic media. They are busy, either, s-m-s-ing on their

mobile phones, or, chatting with their schoolmates, siblings, cousins, neighbours or

'friends'. I flagged this group and pursued it with interviews. I treated Set 3 as a different

category; primarily on account of their presence in restaurants without adults. I

interviewed Set 3 members in their homes or in the nearby coffee shop. They, thus, are

also consumers' as well as boys, girls, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends

58

and students; they are preparing for board examinations, other competitive examinations

or are enrolled in computer courses. They also have some games: tennis or swimming or

cricket.

This Set is not any different from the previous two Sets with regard to the

premium on education. There is however, the genesis of the notion of 'relaxation'.

Members of this Set do not go out to play; they 'relax' after returning from school and

during interludes between study hours. Relaxation entails playing games or calling up a

classmate to discuss homework, discussing music with friends, going out for an evening

stroll or accompanying mother to the market. In my view, this Set differs from the

previous two on grounds that it is 'sans-adults'.

Interviews with parents-especially mothers- revealed that in their day. to day

lives, this Set inaugurates the necessity, of being vigilant, of imposing restrictions, of

do's and don'ts, especially where girls are concerned. Mothers begin to keep a tab on the

kind of 'friends' their children, especially daughters, are moving with when going for

tuitions or dance classes. In the everyday lives of daughters, the notion of dressing

'properly' emerges; so does the slight 'behave properly'.

These provide clues to re-think the criteria differentiating Set 3 from Set 1 and Set

2. Being able to eat out without accompanying adults, are simultaneously possibilities to

be with classmates, siblings, cousins, neighbours and friends. I noticed that the category

'friends' draws a great deal of attention from Set 3 and their parents. This has been a core

factor in my re-examination of the defining parameters of Set 3. This Set, as I came to

understand, begins to broaden its radius of interaction beyond the kin group and family:

the new sphere of interaction is constituted chiefly by a circle of friends. Even though the

connotations of 'friends' as a category is not worked out; classmates, schoolmates,

neighbours, teachers could all be friends or 'like friends'. These observations necessitate

the factoring of difference between sexes when examining Set 3; for, Set 3 actually is

bifurcated into two: Set 3F(F standing for females) and Set 3M (M standing for males).

SET4

My visits to McDonald's and Nirula 's located within the precincts of Delhi University

Campus, persuaded me to start thinking about this type of a group. A conceptual

59

underpinning of this group has been challenging. Advertisers and marketeers refer to this

category as 'youth'. Political parties have 'youth wings'. Demographers' statistics tell us

that the youth are a significant proportion of India's population. Call Centres are tapping

this 'human resource'. So, should this group conceptualized as 'youth'? There was no

ready answer. I continued to think.

Even as I was thinking, it occurred to me that no matter the marketeers'

conceptualization, the fact is that in everyday life, this group is embedded within the

ambit of the 'family'. College-going girls and boys are not separate entities; they are sons

and daughters, brothers and sisters.

My observations and conversations threw into sharp relief that girls tended to eat

more commonly in all-girls groups and same was the case with boys. Mixed groups of

boys and girls also ate at restaurants but, observations over a period of four years confirm

that the mixed group is less common when compared with 'only girls' and 'only boys'

groups.

In the campus restaurants, couples are commonly sighted. This configuration is by

and large absent from restaurants within the vicinity of residential areas; is erratically

spotted in restaurants located within shopping complexes especially during forenoon and

afternoon.

Students of colleges and universities, management institutes and computer

institutes, or, those working in call centres or, those in part-time employment in

restaurants, comprise Set 4. To factor in the differentiation between girls and boys, this

Set is bifurcated into Set 4a and Set 4b.

SETS 5, 6, 7

I categorized 'adult' consumers into married couples-without children or with children

and parents. This distinction was sharply visible because, as my observations and

conversations revealed, consumers make this distinction themselves. Set 5 comprises the

married couples who, as I noted, outnumbered unmarried couples. I categorized the

nuclear family as Set 6 and the larger group comprising more than two adults and more

than one conjugal couple with or without their children as Set 7. This group lends itself to

be categorized in terms of generations-2or 3, as in this case.

60

I had to devise parameters for distinguishing married couples from unmarried

ones. I went about this, taking cues from appearance and manner. In case of the

unmarried couple, the woman did not display conventional markers of being married. I

could not identify markers of marriage on men.

Gradually, it was confirmed that unmarried couples are pre-occupied with

working out tactics of 'touching' each other or 'locking looks'. In most cases, I

estimated, it was the man who initiated this, while at the same time betraying an

unease-manifested in a shifting body language-lest others stared or furtively glanced;

never mind the burger getting cold or the ice-cream melting (so much for McDonald's

promise of serving food while it is hot!). The couples where women displayed markers of

being married, I assumed, were most likely to be related as husband and wife; besides, I

thought, they seem to be keener on food and betrayed no embarrassment or a care for

having touched or spoken or looked at each other. Also, the logic of a 'man initiator' did

not apply in this case.

XII

SCHEME OF CHAPTERS

The research question, who is the NMC, germinated in the context of post-liberalization

India. The privileging of consumption in the Contemporary Era renders the NMC its

signpost. The themes emerging from the research question- food, identity and society­

are explored in four chapters.

Chapter 1, Fastfoodfamily restaurants: Constituting the new middle class in the

contemporary era demonstrates the constitution of NMC at the site of fast food family

restaurants. Observations indicate that a characteristic feature of the Contemporary Era is

the linkage between NMC and family; whereby, 'family' is a key motif in consumer

culture. Moreover, in this realm, the connotations of the family stand modified when

compared with the operating ones.

In order to demonstrate the changing connotations of the family, we sketch a

socio-historical trajectory of Nirula 's, a food company that has been on the restaurant

6.1

map ofNew Delhi since 1934. To illustrate the linkages between the NMC and family in

consumer culture, we undertake a content analysis of the televised advertisements of

McDonald's. An examination of Sagar is undertaken so as to not lose sight of a

conception of family other than the nuclear type.

The themes of the Chapters 3, 4 &5 respectively, are Adulthood Childhood and

Youth. The three chapters are composed of three parts. Part I demonstrates the

conceptualization and constitution of a specific consumer-segment/life stage in the realm

of consumer culture. Part II comprises case studies drawn from the realm of everyday

life; the objective being to grasp the 'analogue', in reality, of particular consumer

segments and their everyday lives through eating practices. Part III comprises analysis

wherein the attempt is to examine the specificities of the articulation between marketeers'

conceptualization of life-course and reality of everyday life. Our study thus, attempts to

capture a dynamic between consumer culture and everyday life in the Contemporary Era.

In these chapters, we argue that, in choosing a lifestyle, of which food practices

are an aspect, the consumer is 'being modem'. As per its unfolding at the intersection of

everyday life and consumer culture, 'being modem' is about fashioning an identity

propelled by aspirations, the ramifications of which take form of child-centered practices,

relationships of friendships and conjugal intimacy. Also revealed are workings of the

family; to ends that a family is put; and what the family is doing in the Contemporary

Era.

XIII

CONCLUSION

The present study is a sociological analysis of fast food.

The analysis posits a relation between three terms: food, identity and society. In

the Contemporary Era, these three terms appear as two sets of co-relations: one, between

fast food and NMC identity; and, two, fast food and society. The slippage between NMC,

identity and contemporary Indian society is evident, given the projection of NMC as the

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privileged social entity in contemporary India. The question of NMC identity thus, is

vital for an understanding of contemporary society.

The three terms in our analysis of Contemporary Era-fast-food, identity and

society-address modernity. Modernity, thus, is the key theme of the present study. If

modernity is cast as a structure, then, food, identity and society, are its three poles. And,

in the Contemporary Era, this is the form in which modernity is purveyed by consumer

culture.

The three research themes are expansive in that they require a conceptual field

that opens'up for analyses the domains of consumer culture and everyday life; and the

NMC, who mediates between these two domains. In this way, the three research themes

food, identity and society, in the conceptual field, transmute into consumer culture,

everyday life and NMC.

An investigation into the workings of consumer capitalism reveals the linkages

between NMC and the family. The constitution of NMC is via the modality of life­

course. The life-course scheme, as conceptualized in consumer culture comprises three

stages viz. adulthood, childhood and youth. Further, these three stages implicate the

spheres of work (learning) and play.

It is notable that the three elements of modernity-food, identity and society-­

undergo a series of transmutations with a shift in the level of analysis. So, whether it is

consumer culture, everyday life and NMC; or adulthood, childhood and youth; or

workers, learners and earners (consumers), the address is to the specific structure of

modernity purveyed by consumer culture in the Contemporary Era.

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NOTES

1 For useful information on the burgeoning of the food service market post economic liberalization, see Muketjea, Kaul, Anand, Assisi, 2001. For a report on food being 'the hottest new commodity', see Vishal, 2001. Bhattacharya & Chakravarty, 2003 report that everyone wants to dig into eatery business', be it MNCs, Indian business houses (Dabur, lTC, Thapars) or celebrities (cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, actor Sunil Shetty). This is attributed to the profit margins at around 22% in restaurant business; consequent to which according to industry analysts, investment in restaurant business has gone up by 300%.

2 David Wu, in a similar vein, points to changes in food and foodways as indexing societal change in Taipei in the mid-eighties. Wu tracks down these changes from to recent Taiwanese history and the Cold War, up to the contemporary scenario marked by the economic boom of the 1970s and the emergence of an affluent middle class. He notes that this period saw the most obvious changes by way of a radical transformation of Taipei's already thriving restaurant trade. During the 1960s and 1970s, the city was renowned as the repository of the great cuisines of mainland China. However, by the mid-1980s, most of these mainland-style restaurants had either disappeared or were hidden away in obscure neighbourhoods. Compared to the newer "Taiwanese-style" and Western establishments, the mainlander restaurants seem small, dirty, run-down, and old-fashioned in both decor and presentation. See Wu, 1997: 110-4.

3 Nathu's, was known because of its location at Bengali Market-a popular market complex in central Delhi dotted with eateries serving traditional Indian food-and not because of its trade name. This perception of Nathu 'sis borne by many respondents. Bengali Market is a 'happening hangout' that claims to be the first in the city to provide authentic Bengali sweets to Delhi since five generations. See Batra, 2003.

4 The restaurant personnel wear uniforms. They are trained to cultivate informality in interactions with customers. This departs significantly from conventional styles of interaction with customers.

5 Udupi is a temple town in the state of Karnataka in southern India. This temple town is the homeground of the Udipi cuisine.

6 In fact, makeover of food items is rampant. Take for instance the striking makeover of the humble paan (beetle leaf) vended from every nook and corner. And this is making news! Read this: "The country's first paan parlour opened in Connaught Place in 1993-94. Called Yamu's Panchayat, this is an air-conditioned paan-beedi shop with marbled floors, tiled walls and piped Hindi film music.promising customers a never-before experience of after-meal paan-chewing. The attempt has been to recreate the ambience of a roadside paan-beedi shop but with certain value additions. A sweet fragrance, along with the smile of a salesgirl, greets you as soon as the uniformed guard opens the glass door. A team of 15 girls serves the customers. Each salesgirl has been put through a six-month intensive course in paan-making. Peak time is after meals, and as the clock strikes 2 p.m., the salesgirls rush off to the dressing room to get into green sarees, ready to meet the customer onslaught. Nine varieties of paan are served within the price range Rs.S (for children) toRs. 51 (for foreigners); and a package deal for Rs. 101 ". See Bhatia 1994. The roadside dhaba has undergone a similar makeover. "It is dishier, more decorative and better packaged than what it had been ten years ago. Dilli ka dhabawallah has cracked the marketing and transformed his cuisine to something colourful and fashionably rustic". See Birla, 2003.

7 A similar trend is observable in China. Yan (1997: 70) attributes the popularity of eating out among virtually all social groups to growing consumerism.

8 At this stage my categorization of couples as unmarried was based on a commonsensical perception.

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9 Manusmriti-rendered in verse form-is a work of encyclopedic scope, encompassing representations of life in the world, how it is and how it should be lived. It relates to varied topics, food and eating being one oftherri. See 'Introduction' in Ihe Laws of Manu, translated by Wendy Doniger with Brian K. Smith, 1991.

10 Ihe Bhagavadgita is a religious treatise dating to the fifth century B.C. The book is both, metaphysics and ethics; the science of reality and the art of union with reality. See Ihe Bhagavadgita, translated by S. Radhakrishnan, 1993, Introductory Essay.

11 See Chapter XVII, ibid.

12 The essay 'Health and Healing; Dying and Death' delves into the relationship between food and Indian culture. See Kakar and Kakar, 2007: 107-33. For an elaboration of the body image in the Ayurveda, see Kakar 1990, esp. Ch. 8. For an Ayurvedic classification offood, see Khare, 1976a: 82-6.

13 For a review of food focused studies in India, see Khare, 1992.

14 The title of the chapter is Rules concerning contact and food. See Dumont, 1998 (1970), Ch.6.

15 Through the application of the transactional model of caste ranking, Marriott demonstrates that the rankings-based on opinions of villagers-are validated by their resemblance to the realities and presumed potentialities of the rankings established by food transfer The model applied is based on an implicit local postulate of the symbolic equivalence of transactions in any medium between any two castes: high rank is always derived from giving and low rank from the receiving of foods Gaining dominance over others through feeding them or securing dependence on others through their being fed by them appears to be comprehensive goal of actors in the system of transactions. Purity and pollution, among other values, are used as expressions of achievement towards these goals. Dietary or occupational purity and pollution, regarded as attributes of the castes, do not correlate closely with the rankings found either in transactions or in opinions. However, major distinctions in verbalized opinion among higher and lower blocs of castes correlate closely with large distinctions in transfer of food, pollution, and other symbols of dominance and subordination. The distinction of high versus low corresponds to a shift from net creditor to net debtor status in food transactions. See Marriott, 1968:169.

16 The following quotes culled from Khare (1976a) are illustrative: a. Food is an essential substance (ibid.: 161 ). b. It is moral whereby, even the way it is handled is related to Hindu esoteric thought (ibid.: vii). c. Underlying the handling of food are 'cultural purposes' (ibid.: .5). d. This entails that even common cooking is culturally treated as are food categories (ibid.: 9). e. The cultural quality of food is a subject of elaborate classification and ranking within the Hindu system, partly because of the ranks of individuals or groups who handle them, and partly because of the native­conceived 'intrinsic qualities of food' expressed in relation to other foods and food properties. Similarly, with reference to cooking, there is a native (non-technical) scheme of classification of uncooked and cooked foods. (ibid.: 19) f. Thus, semantic and syntactic arrangements of food during the process of cooking are to be studied in terms of attendant cultural values. (ibid.: 5)

17 Khare (ibid.:139) argues that, 'A body of thought has shaped for centuries Hindu attitudes towards how to consume foods to reach various cultural aims. The Hindu is also trained in the way he should go about procuring and distributing foods, implying what moral efforts to make to procure it either for one's own family or for the society-at-large'. 'Since the moral order is the ultimate order for the Hindu, economic or political orders cannot be allowed to exist either beyond it or beside it, but only within it' (ibid.: 161 ).

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18 Appadurai's ethnographic analysis of gastro-politics is based on a study of the Tamil Brahmin community in South India. By gastro-politics is implied conflict or competition over specific cultural or economic resources as it emerges in social transactions around food. Gastro-politics is a context where the general semiotic properties of food take particularly intense forms: food is. the medium, and sometimes the message of conflict. See Appadurai, 1981: 494-5.

19 Appadurai (ibid.) maintains that, when human beings convert some part of their environment into food, they create a peculiarly powerful semiotic device. In its tangible and material forms, food presupposes and reifies technological arrangements, relations of production and exchange, conditions of field and market, and realities of plenty and want. It is therefore a highly condensed social fact. It is also a marvelously plastic kind of collective representation. Even the simplest of human cuisines, encode subtle cosmological propositions.

20 According to Appadurai (op. cit.: 496), "South Asian cuisine is not simply a function of technical complexity, literacy, taxonomic elaboration, the logic of the recipe, and the social innovation of table manners and gastronomic propriety. South Asian civilization has invested perhaps more than any other in imbuing food with moral and cosmological meanings".

21 'South Asian social thought appears to view persons as complex, unstable, and weakly bounded aggregates of biomoral substance. They are therefore constantly prone to moral and physiological transformation in transacting with other persons. The prescriptive order, however, encourages individuals and groups to stabilize their states within a general cosmology or to increase certain biochemical properties through appropriate transaction. At the sociological level, though, fixity of individual and especially group (caste) status is the desirable homeostatis. But the always real possibility of disturbing any particular biomoral homeostatis, joined with the practical requirement of shared productive and reproductivt: activities, always threatens such achieved homeostasis. The vaunted Hindu preoccupation with 'purity and pollution', with its vast plethora of rules about contact, can best be seen as an attempt to negotiate these incompatible goals. In an unstable bio-moral cosmos, food, along with blood and semen, is a particularly powerful medium of contact between persons and groups. In a cultural universe that sets considerable store by a host of heterogeneous persons, groups, forces, and powers, food always raises the possibility of homogenizing the actors linked by it. The elaborate rules that surround food in South Asian contexts are culturally organized efforts to compensate for biophysical propensity of food to homogenize the human beings who transact through it. This is achieved by a variety of rules which regulate contact with food, prohibit certain classes of food to certain classes of persons, restrict certain foods to certain contexts, and dictate sequences of the· eating cycle'. Ibid.: 507.

22 The draft-version of the paper (2006) I consulted is: What the signboard hides: Food, caste and employability in small South-Indian eating places by Vegard Iverson and P .S. Raghavendra.

23 An analytical privileging of McDonald's fast food must proceed only after duly acknowledging its symbolic reversal in slow food. Ritzer (2000: 217), propounder of the McDonalization ofSocie(y thesis, designates slow food as a manifesto for a non-McDonalized society. For insights into the origins and politics of the Slow Food movement, see Leitch, 2003.

24 According to Kincheloe's thesis, McDonald's burger is a sign of the culture of power. I could not locate the book; however, the introductory chapter of the book was accessed from the internet. At http://www.amazon.com.

25 Watson's edited volume Golden Arches East (1997) compiles studies by a team of researchers investigating the impact of McDonald's in East Asian societies.

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Chua (1998: 995) hypothesizes that instead of marketing itself against local culture, McDonald's seeks to insert itself into the Singapore context.

26 Ritzer argues that McDonaldization does not always make economic sense; hence it cannot always be explained solely in terms of material interests. It stands for value: rationalization and efficiency. · · For example, eating in a fast-food restaurant or having a microwave dinner at home may be efficient, but it is more costly than preparing the meal "from scratch". But because people value efficiency, they are willing to pay the extra cost. See Ritzer, op.cit.: 169.

27 Ritzer's formulation of McDonaldization is an amplification and extension of Weber's theory of rationalization and the fast food restaurant is a model of rationality (ibid.: 23). The discomfort driving Ritzer to adapt Weber's theory to new realities of the twenty first century is the creation of an iron cage by the increasing ubiquity of the fast food restaurant (ibid.:39) Ritzer's analysis offers insights into the society being created and the possible steps that people can take to humanize a McDonalized society (ibid.: xvi).

28 The proponents of cultural imperialism equate McDonald's and its rivals in the fast food industry with agents of a new form of exploitation that results from the export of popular culture from the United States, Japan and Europe to other parts of the world. The assumption underlying this thinking is that in the postmodern, post-socialist and postindustrial world, what matters most is the domination of popular culture rather than outright military or political control. See Watson, op.cit.: 5 and Introduction (notes 9 and 11 ).

29 The privileging of the standpoint of the consumer, according to the researchers is 'a distinguishing characteristic ofthe book'.lbid.: 20.

30 Watson argues that 'globalism' and 'transnationalism' represent different social processes. The former describes an essentially impossible condition that is said to prevail when people the world over share a homogenous, mutually intelligible culture. On the other hand, transnational ism describes a condition by which people, commodities, and ideas literally cross-transgress national boundaries and are not identified with a single place of origin. The classic model of the transnational corporation assumes a non-national, or even antinational, mode of production controlled from a headquarters complex located somewhere in the First World. McDonald's, according to Watson, is certainly not global; neither does it conform to the classic model of a transnational corporation. Rather, it resembles a federation of semi-autonomous enterprises. And, in the words of James Cantalupo, President of McDonald's International, is a multilocal. See Watson, op.cit.: Introduction.

31 Th~ term 'local culture' is shorthand for the experience of everyday life as lived by ordinary people in specific localities. In using the term local culture, the researchers attempt to capture the feelings of appropriateness, comfort, and correctness that govern the construction of personal preferences, or tastes. Dietary patterns, attitudes towards food, and notions of what constitutes a proper meal are central to the experience of everyday life and hence are integral to the maintenance of local cultures. The attempt is to move from the proponents of global culture- not bothering to clarify what they mean by culture-, towards people across the world sharing a common culture. It is proposed that culture is not something that people inherit as an undifferentiated bloc of knowledge from their ancestors. Ibid.: 8-9.

32 The localization thesis has invited criticism that detects in it the continuing complicity of anthropology and power. Lal and Sardar (2005) remark: 'Having read the anthropologists' account of how each culture moulds McDonald"s to suit its own norms, one begins to comprehend how anthropology, once an academic arm of Empire that was deployed to manage and control the unruly native mobs in the colonies, is so easily placed in the service of corporate imperialism. We are inclined, rather, to sympathize with the South Koreans who equate eating Big Mac with cultural and economic treason as well as with the American commentator Ronald Steel, who declared

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that, unlike traditional conquerors, Americans are not content simply to subdue others but insist that 'they be like us'.

33 'Production achieves this a) by providing the material of consumption; b) by determining the mode of consumption; c) by creating in the consumer a need for the objects which it first presents as products. Production therefore produces the object of consumption, the mode of consumption and the urge to consume. Similarly, consumption produces the predisposition of the producer by positing him as a purposive requirement'. See Marx, 1984: 197-8.

34 Contending the claims of post-industrialism, post-Fordism and postmodemism that we have moved beyond the modern world into a new, starkly different society, Ritzer (op.cit.:179) maintains that McDonaldization-connoting modern as well as industrial and Fordist- is here to stay.

35 'McDonaldism', has many things in common with Fordism-characterized by mass production of homogenous products, inflexible technologies (such as the assembly line), standardized work routines, economies of scale, market for mass-produced items-and post-Fordism the distinguishing characteristics of which are, declining interest in mass products and growing interest in more customized and specialized products; shorter production runs; flexible production; more capable workers and greater differentiation. Ibid.:181-4.

36 Harvey (1989: 124) argues that recenthistory is characterized by a shift from Fordism to what might be called flexible regime of accumulation. To understand what this shift entails, let us re-visit the argument.

The symbolic initiation date ofFordism must, surely, be 1914, when Henry Ford introduced his five-dollar, eight hour day as recompense for workers manning the automated car-assembly line he had established the year before at Dearborn (ibid.: 125). Ford's organizational and technological innovations were, in many respects extensions of well-established trends. F. W. Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management-published in 1911-described how labour productivity could be radically increased by breaking down each labour process into component motions and organizing fragmented work tasks according to rigorous standards of time and motion studies. Taylor's thinking had a long ancestry, going back via Gilbreth's experiments of the 1890s to the works of mid­nineteenth century writers like Ure and Babbage, which Marx had found so revealing. The separation between management, conception, control, and execution (and all that this meant in terms of hierarchical social relations and de-skilling within labour process) was also already well under way in many industries. What is special about Ford was his vision, his explicit recognition that mass production meant mass consumption, a new system of the reproduction of labour power, a new politics of labour control and management, a new aesthetics and psychology, in short, a new kind of rationalized, modernist, and populist democratic society (ibid.: 125-6). Ford believed that the new kind of society could be built simply through the proper application of corporate power. The purpose of the five-dollar, eight hour day was only in part to secure worker compliance with the discipline required to work the highly productive assembly-line system. It was coincidentally meant to provide workers with sufficient income and leisure to consume the mass-produced products the corporations were about to tum out in ever vaster quantities. Thus, the very existence of Fordism was a prescient signal of the deep social, psychological, and political problems. (126) Fordism also built upon and contributed to the aesthetic of modernism-particularly the latter's penchant for functionality and efficiency. (ibid.: 136) How Fordist system was put into place depended on myriad individual, corporate, institutional, and state decisions, many of them unwitting political choices or knee-jerk responses to the crisis tendencies of capitalism, particularly as manifest in the great depression of the 1930s (ibid.: 127). Fordism depended upon the nation state taking a very special role within the overall system of social regulation (ibid.: 135). Postwar Fordism has to be seen, less as mere system of mass production and more as a total way of life. Mass production meant standardization of product as well as mass consumption; and that meant a whole new aesthetic and a commodification of culture (ibid.). Postwar Fordism was also very much an international affair (ibid.: 136). This meant the formation of global mass markets and the absorption of the

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mass of the world's population, outside the communist world, into the global dynamics of a new kind of capitalism. Furthermore, uneven development within the world economy meant the experience of already muted business cycles as so many local and broadly compensating oscillations within a fairly stable growth of world demand. At the input end, the opening up of foreign trade meant the globalization of the supply of often cheaper raw materials. The new internationalism also brought a whole host of other activities in its wake-banking, insurance, services, hotels, airports, and ultimately tourism. It carried with it a new international culture and relied heavily upon new-found capacities to gather, evaluate, and disseminate information (ibid.: 137). In retrospect, it seems there were signs of serious problems within Fordism as early as the mid-1960s (ibid.: 141 ). In the social space created by the flux that ensued, a series of novel experiments in the realms of industrial organization as well as in political and social life began to take place. These represent the early stirrings of the passage to an entirely new regime of accumulation, coupled with a quite different system of political and social regulation (ibid.: 145). Flexible accumulation is marked by a direct confrontation with the rigidities of Fordism. It rests on flexibility with respect to labour processes, labour markets, products, and patterns of consumption. It is characterized by the emergence of entirely new sectors of production, new ways of providing financial services, new markets, and above all, greatly intensified rates of commercial, technological, and organizational innovation. It has entrained rapid shifts in the patterning of uneven development, both between sectors and between geographical regions, giving rise, for example, to a vast surge in so-called 'service-sector' employment as well as to entirely new industrial ensembles in hitherto industrial underdevelopment regions (ibid.: 147). The labour market has undergone a radical restructuring. Faced with strong market volatility, heightened competition, and narrowing profit margins, employers have taken advantage of weakened union power and the pools of surplus labourers to push for much more flexible work regimes and labour contracts. There is an apparent move away from regular employment towards increasing reliance upon part-time, temporary or sub-contracted work arrangements (ibid.: 150). Flexible accumulation has been accompanied on the consumption side by a much greater attention to quick­changing fashions and the mobilization of all the artifices of need inducement and cultural transformation that this implies. The relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all the ferment, instability, and fleeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that celebrates difference, ephemerality, spectacle, fashion, and the commodification of cultural forms (ibid.: 156). The need to accelerate turnover time in consumption has led to a shift of emphasis from production of goods to the production of events. This has put a premium on smart and innovative entrepreneurialism, aided and abetted by all of the accoutrements of swift, decisive, and well-informed decision-making (ibid.: 157). The tension that has always prevailed within capitalism between monopoly and competition, between centralization and decentralization of economic power, is being worked out in fundamentally new ways. This does not necessarily mean that capitalism is becoming more disorganized. This implies that capitalism is becoming even more tightly organized through dispersal, geographical mobility, and flexible responses in labour markets, labour processes, and consumer markets, all accompanied by hefty doses of institutional, product, and technological innovation (ibid.: 159). There has been a sea-change in the surface appearance of capitalism since 1973, even though the underlying logic of capitalist accumulation and its crisis-tendencies remain the same (ibid.: 189).

37 Jameson ( 1994) argues that the theories of the post-modern indicate the arrival of a whole new type of society: post-industrial society (Daniel Bell), consumer society, media society, information society; electronic society or high tech society. Thus, perspectives seeking to explain the break focus on 'social formation' rather than culture. A mode of analysis to which Jameson subscribes, is one that does not dwell upon the type of social formation; instead, it seeks to analyze the 'logic of capitalism' underlying the type of social formation. Instead of, as Jameson phrases it, 'anatomizing the historic originality of this new society', this mode of analysis developed by economist Ernst Mandel in the book Late Capitalism, views the social formation in question, as a third stage or moment in the evolution of capital. In the latter's view, there are several stages of technological revolution within capital itself; and the development of capital leads to a corresponding evolution in machinery. This explains Mandel's outlining

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three fundamental breaks or quantum leaps in the evolution of machinery under capital. It is thus, the capitalist mode of production that engenders three general revolutions in technology. Correspondingly, there are three fundamental moments in capitalism-market capitalism, the monopoly stage or the stage of imperialism and multinational capital or consumer capitalism-each one marking a dialectical expansion over the previous stage. A characteristic feature of the present age of a 'purer capitalism' is the prodigious expansion of capital into hitherto uncommodified areas: enclaves of pre-capitalist organization-hitherto tolerated and exploited in tributary ways by it-are eliminated. In this connection, there is a new and historically original penetration and colonization of Nature and the Unconscious:

38 Particularly relevant is Mauss's essay 'Techniques of the Body'. The expression suggests, quoting from Mauss's, " ... the ways in which from society to society men know how to use their bodies." See Mauss [2006(1935): 78].

39 This observation validates Appadurai's insight that as a general feature of the cultural economy, consumption falls into the mode of repetition and of habituation centered around the body. See Appadurai 1997: 66.

40 Watson, discussing the automation and industrialization of fast food suggests that 'advances in automation have revolutionized the worldwide food industry .. . McDonald's was the first fast food company to use computers that automatically adjust cooking time and temperatures'. See Watson op.cit.: 25-6.

41 Occasions when food is 'eaten away from home' have been recorded by social anthropologists, and are not necessarily accounted for in terms of commercialization of food. These are discussed under the rubric of hospitality, potlatch, gifts, and feasts; and, are shaped by personal social obligations and relationships. See Mennell et.al., 1992:115. Historical accounts (see Beadsworth and Keil, 1997, esp. Chapter 5) attribute the activity of eating out to contingency and necessity, as aptly encapsulated in the figure of the traveler. In Europe, even though for travelers, there was an undeveloped market in food in pre-modem times, the provision and partaking of food away from home or, eating out, engendered a social obligation rather than a commercial transaction. For instance, the emphasis on hospitality reflected in food transactions. The need to travel was limited under the feudal system; and those who needed to travel were taken care of. Eating away from home, anyhow, was, borne out of necessity. The commercialization of food is viewed as a feature of modem societies Historical accounts of West Europe, attribute the commercialization of eating out to the weakening of traditional social relationships, particularly those of feudalism, and to the growth of towns and cities. Such changes, which accelerated after the industrial revolution and the separation of home from work, had far-reaching consequences for the organization of both employment and domestic life. The processes of commercialization of food provision are linked by Habermas ( 1989) with the forging of types of social intercourse different from those shaped by social obligations. He cites the example of the coffee house in context of structural transformations of the public sphere and civil society. With commercial provision of food, different types of food outlets were established. A specific type of commercial outlet is the restaurant. In fact, it is popularly believed that the restaurant as a social institution dates, in the Western world, to the French Revolution (Mennell et.al, op.cit. p.81). Historically, the increasing demand for restaurants is explained in context of the formation of new social and economic classes and the development of new social relations between individuals. From its modem beginnings the restaurant has been a commercial enterprise-a business, part of a new, unfettered market and service economy demanded by the bourgeoisie. The restaurant provided commercially prepared food to clients who now required such a convenience because their lives were conducted more regularly in the public domain. When Brillat-Savarin first defined the restaurant in 1825, it was mainly in economic terms as a business offering to the public a repast which is always ready and whose dishes are served in set proportions at set prices, on the order of those who wish to eat them. He also pointed out that it was necessary to advertise the costs of these services prior to consumption that the obligations of the customer could be known and any embarrassment over the expense is avoided (see Finkelstein, 1989: 35-8).

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42 Finkelstein (ibid.: 23) argues that a restaurant setting reflects dominant forms of power in popular cultural forms. Her analysis, besides critiquing the premise that people derive inordinate pleasure from the consumption of foodstuffs in the public domain, also proposes that the pursuit of pleasure in public is considered a benign fact of modem life. The conclusion of the study is that the modes of sociality engendered in the restaurant, are not benign and should be reconsidered as the structural mechanisms which inculcate incivility. Such patterns of sociality commodify emotions and in doing so, transpose the other into an object to be harnessed to one's own desires. However, one shortcoming of Finkelstein's argument is that claims made on behalf of the consumer are devoid of empirical grounding.

43 Finkelstein's ( op.cit.: 3) conclusions suggest that the restaurant is a modem theatre- providing the setting, props and personnel-in which the tension/relationship between the power of dominant ideas and the autonomy of the consumers is played out. This accords significance to the food, ambience, decor, furnishings, lighting, tableware, and the physical space of the restaurant which is as important to the event of dining out as are the comestibles. Finkelstein notes that McDonald's is recognizable because of decor, architecture, uniformity of service, food and a self-regulating internal order, characteristics of fast food restaurants. She writes: 'The restaurant most often uses polymer-tile flooring, plastic chairs and tables. The surfaces on the floors and tables are smooth and easily cleaned. The furniture is generally fixed to the floor and cannot be moved or adjusted to suit the size of the patron'. Ibid.:93-5. In a similar vein Ashley et.al (2004) comment that the restaurant atmosphere has become an important aspect in the projected image of the restaurant. In fact, it is as important in the promotion of restaurants as is the food itself. This is reflected in the feedback cards in restaurants, where customers are asked to respond to a range of indicators very much wider than mere culinary ones. Not only have eating spaces have become increasingly striking in design, and style, they are also staffed strategically by carefully selected people who look and sound just right as proprietors compete to outdo each other in re-defining ways in which the restaurant becomes a new way of spending an evening. See Ashley, Hollows, Jones and Taylor, 2004: 143.

44 Commenting on the co-incidence between economic reforms and entry of multinational corporations­global institutions in China, Yan (op.cit.: 66-7) notes that, underlying the promotion of economic reforms was the government's political agenda. In an effort to revitalize Chinese market forces, consumer spending was encouraged during the early eighties. The official ideology of Maoist socialism emphasizing 'hard work and simple living' was replaced by 'being able to make money and knowing how to spend it' (nengzheng huihua). Watson (op.cit.: 82) citing the example of Hong Kong maintains that the entry of McDonald's in the 1970's corresponded with an economic boom associated with Hong Kong's conversion from a low-wage, light­industrial outpost to a regional center for financial services and high technology industries.

45 Sachdeva and Baruah 's (2003) newspaper report 'India's affair with junk food' is a representative sample of a plethora of reports on the trend. According_ to statistics presented in ITCOT's Feasibility report on fast food restaurants, prepared for entrepreneurs interested in promoting fast food centres, the food service market in India is around Rs. 36,000 crore, of which the urban fast food restaurants account for around Rs. 1000 crore. This segment is witnessing high growth of around 25-30 percent per annum. The business potential of fast food centres in the country is reckoned at Rs. 7500 crore by 2010. The reported turnover for the year 2001 is: McDonald's: Rs. 125 crore and Nirula 's: Rs. 100. See ITCOT, 2002.

46 Evidently, in America, the extraordinary growth of fast food industry over the past quarter century did not occur in a political vacuum. Adjusted for inflation, the hourly wage of the average U.S. worker peaked in 1973 and then steadily declined for the next twenty-five years. At this time sophisticated mass marketing techniques were, for the first time, directed at small children. Federal agencies created to protect workers and consumers too often behaved like branch offices of companies that were sought to be regulated. Ever since the administration of President Richard Nixon, the fast food industry has worked closely with allies in

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Congress and the White House to oppose new worker safety, food safety, and minimum wage laws. While publicly espousing support for the free market, the fast food chains have quietly pursued and greatly benefited from a wide variety government subsidies. During this period women entered the workforce in record numbers. The entry of so many women into the workforce has greatly increased the demand for the types of services that housewives traditionally perform. This has resulted in the budgets allocated for buying food to be diverted to eating in fast food restaurants. See Schlosser, 2002: esp . .Jntrodriction).

47 Schlosser (ibid.: 5) argues that the sort of technological wizardly that Walt Disney promoted on television and at Disneyland eventually reached its fulfillment in the kitchens of fast food restaurants. For a discussion on how the Walt Disney Company set out to make a profit but also to portray themselves as the vendors of good-value family entertainers, see Hunt and Frankenberg, 1999: 116.

48 The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) has been the chief source of data on income distribution in India. The MISH (Market Information Survey of Households) conducted by the Council four times between 1985-86 and 1989-90 collected information about purchases of selected manufactured consumer goods over the country. The findings of these surveys suggest changes in the consumption pattern of selected manufactured goods over the country. Especially, the second half of the 1980's witnessed a boom in the production and consumption of manufactured consumer goods; moreover, there was also a considerable increase in consumption especially in rural areas and among low income groups. These consumption trends underpinned the appeal of the Indian market for foreign investors, triggering off consequently, the search for middle class market. This in no way suggests that the 'commonplace talk of the large and growing middle class in India' was based on its empirical identification. On the contrary, a dilemma to arrive at a formula for its identification goes hand in hand with an increasing interest in the middle class. For instance, Rao's caution is that foreign and domestic investors, as well as Indian marketers, must realize that the term middle class is misleading because, for business and marketing decisions, it is the pattern of consumption· that is relevant and not a classification based merely on income. In fact, in India, incomes and the resultant purchasing power differ greatly depending on origin and location; See Rao (ed.), 1994: esp. Ch.1&2.

49 The target groups for fast food restaurants are the upper middle-income group and the high-income group. According to NCAER survey, the upper middle-income group ($1, 275-$ 1,974) and the high income group (>$2, 740) together account for over 10 million households or 60 million persons. India's per capita purchasing power is expected to increase from $2, 149 in 1999 to $5, 653 in 2020. See ITCOT, op.cit.:19.

50 Besides the Nehruvian model, the other model for imagining the nation is the Gandhian model. Deshpande argues that both the models are alternative ways of visualizing the nation and its future. See Deshpande,2004a: 64.

51 The Rudolphs argue that Nehru's basic industries strategy, launched in the second five year plan (1957-62), succeeded insofar as India became relatively self-sufficient with respect to the production of capital and intermediate goods. The import substitution of the first three plan periods (1951-66) created a situation in which India home-produces most consumer durables. See Rudolphs, 1987: II.

52 Kothari (2002: 423-4) argues that capitalism is no longer an offshoot of the imperial thrust of the Industrial Revolution. It is rather one in which the state itself has become an instrument of a corporate capitalist, transnational, globalizing 'new world order'. Likewise, capitalism, has undergone a major change, from the colonially-structured 'imperial' domain of 'exploitation' to a reign of sheer terror in which transnationals provide the new intellectual model of marketising the whole (or large parts) of humanity with the diverse nation states providing stepping stones to a corporatist model based on Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank and the IMF and now the WTO and transnational corporations.

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53 The picture is complicated indeed! Kothari notes that, " ... many of our own countrymen have made it to the list of billionaires in the pages of Fortune, projected by our own media as the rich and the super-rich heralding a growing middle class of high peaks of 'excellence' joining the globalizing march of 'history' which had got drawn centripetally towards metropolitan locations in every society and from there on to a new phase of world capitalism. All the same, poverty, destitution and starvation co-exist with islands of immense prosperity. Ibid.

54 White reiterates that the true significance of India's development is impossible to grasp unless, metropolitan India is related to the economy of 88% Indians. She writes: "While the primary objective of this book is to describe and analyze the economy of India's 88 per cent, it has a wider aim as well: to contribute however modestly to the analysis of contemporary capitalism .. .In particular, it seeks to be a sustained interrogation of the now commonplace notion that economic 'liberalization' means that the economy is released from political control. If the detailed study of India's economy reveals one thing more clearly than another, it is that 'liberalization' means a change in the character of this control, not a release from it. This change owes much, paradoxically, to historical continuities in India's social structures of accumulation". See Barbara Harris-White, 2004, Introduction.

55 In other words, the 'other' did not have a cultural identity, except the generic one of the anti or non­modernist. See Deshpande op.cit.: 70-1. In constructing the identity of a patriot as a producer, the modernist forces thus laid a claim to a culturally abstract identity. See Deshpande, 2004c: 183,endnote 9.

56 Deshpande, however, notes that identities are no longer conceptualized as culturally abstract, as is with the identity 'patriotic producer' or 'cosmopolitan consumer'. The modification in the modes of conceptualization of identity in the contemporary era is suggested by recent studies. So much so that, consumers too are sought to be identified in cultural terms. Arvind Rajagopal (2000), on basis of examination of television advertisements, argues that these advertisements reflect the ideology of Hindutva, suggesting thereby that the consumer is conceptualized as a Hindu. Melissa Butcher (2003) focuses on the consumer segment youth for assessing the impact of Star Television on cultural identity. These studies, in a way also point to the significance of identity as an important research theme in contemporary India.

57 However, we are advised to exercise caution when paying undue heed to the social consequences of economic liberalization. In Beteille's view, "the recent shifts in economic policy in favour of privatization, liberalization and globalization have generated a wide interest in the middle class, its size and composition, and its social values. While acknowledging its importance, one must not exaggerate what economic policy can do to alter the currents of social life. Economic policy, whether designed to enhance state control or to encourage private initiative has both intended and unintended consequences. Changes in the character of economic classes and their values follow rhythms that are quite different from those that mark changes in economic policy. Moreover, the economic reforms of the last ten years have themselves gone through unforeseen oscillations." See Beteille, 2001: 73-4.

58 The product-analog of the 'old middle class', according to adman and newspaper (The Times of India) columnist, Santosh Desai (2005) is the two wheeler scooter. He remarks, "If the Indian middle class man were to be reborn as a product, chances are it would be as the Bajaj scooter. .. For decades the scooter was both literally and metaphorically at the heart of the Indian middle­class consciousness, imparting its own unique flavour to how we lived our lives .... (This has been replaced by the bike today.) ... The bike today speaks of the emerging India that is driven more by outward appearances and is not afraid of the motor force of change ... ".

59 Even as we work out the connotations of the old and the new middle class, it is crucial to be alert to the fact that a consensus regarding the applicability of the concept middle class in the Indian context is lacking.

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Beteille (1996) drawing attention to this tendency, remarks that section of society loosely circumscribable as 'urban middle class(es)' is variously referred to as 'intelligentsia', 'professionals' and 'service class'. Rudra (1989), employs the term 'intelligentsia' for this section of society. His thesis is that the intelligentsia has become the ruling class, as a result of which the country now has a coalition of three ruling classes. The two other members of the coalition are: class of big industrial capitalists and class of big landlords. [For a critique ofRudra's thesis, see Beteille (1989)]

Bardhan (1989: 155) prefers the nomenclature 'professional class' to Rudra's term intelligentsia. For Bardhan, the professional class is the 'third dominant class'. This class includes all white collar workers. He argues that given the relative autonomy of the state, by comparison with most western countries, as an economic actor, sections of the professional class running the gigantic machinery have acquired powers which are not just of a junior partner in the ruling coalition. Further, the property base of this class is its 'human capital'. This is based on the premise that property after all, is nothing but a bundle of rights which entitles one to acquire part of the surplus generated in society. The members of the professional class, by virtue of their ownership of some scarce skills, information or organizational resources, stake a claim on the social surplus. Property in this general sense is as much the material base of this class as any other. He refers to this class as a new rentier class deriving its income from its ownership of some scarce resources.

Seth (1999) illustrates the process of middle class formation on the basis of the findings of a survey conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing. Societies. He argues that the middle class is linked with caste in particular, and the trajectory of change in Indian society, in general. In his view, crucial to the formation of the new middle classes in India is the fact that while using collective resources of their castes, individuals from all castes entering it undergo the process of classisation: they become distant from ritual roles and functions attached to their castes; they acquire the identity of belonging to middle class and their economic interest and life style converge more with other members of the middle class than with their non-middle class caste compatriots.

60 In Mukerji's thesis, the backbone oflndian society was feudal; it was served by a considerable amount of commerce capital. Foreign commerce sought to displace the commerce capital. Moreover, as commerce capital and feudalism were symbiotic, the former could not be tampered with without upsetting the social equilibrium. Thus, a new type of land settlement was introduced by the East India Company to achieve equilibrium. Consequently, bankers-the class of people who were in charge of the commercial interests­had limited duties thereon. The land settlement created a new class of men who were not necessarily the descendants of the older chiefs, headmen, farmers and assignees. Also, this new body was Hindu as its predecessor in the Muslim period was. See Mukerji, 1979: Chapter III.

61 The trajectory of the creation of the middle class in India, Mukerji argues, has been quite different from that in Europe. In case of the latter, there has been a continuity in the rise of the industrial bourgeoisie out of its own feudal and commercial orders. Ibid.: 82.

62 'The zamindars became parasites on land and the graduate job hunters. Though, in course of time their numbers, through sub-tenures and the extension of schools, increased and quickened the social mobility, but since then nothing has happened to their structure vis-a-vis the people. This Indian middle class is still a spurious class and has no roots in the soil, however desperately it may try to strike them. Its inner bastions have fallen, but the no-man's land outside remains barricaded. The sense of impotence inside, and the fear of the people on the other side, haunt its precarious existence and overhang its achievements in literature and fine arts. '.Ibid.: 116.

63 An exemplar of the middle class in Bengal is the Bhadralok or the Baboo. Ibid. 82. The significance of education for this emergent middle class is discussed at length by Karlekar (1993: Introduction).

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64 In the main, as Misra states, his story is of the social policy and changes that occurred in the course of about 200 years of British Rule, largely as a consequence of Western education and modem capitalist enterprise, of improved communications and commercial progress and legal administration. See Misra,, 1961: 1.

Markovits designates Misra's view on the middle class as a 'decidedly Whiggish view' wherein the rise and growth of the middle class in India is equated with a phenomenon of modernization induced by colonialism and the impact of the West. The other dominant narrative, is a 'Kaleckian' one, in which merchants and entrepreneurs occupy a central position. Markovits refers to as Kaleckian, the view whose original inspiration was a short article on 'intermediate regimes' by the famous Polish economist Kalecki written in the 1950s. See Markovits, 2001: 42-6.

65 According to Desai (1982: 176), the middle class is one among the cluster of classes compnsmg professional classes such as technicians, doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists, managers, clerks and others comprising the intelligentsia and the educated middle class.

66 These transformations pertain to a new type of land relations, the penetration of Indian society by commercial and other forces from the outside capitalist world, and the establishment of modem industries in India. Ibid.

67 See Breckenridge (ed.), 1996; Butcher, 2003 (op.cit); Choudhary, 1998; Fernandes 2000a; John, 1998; Mankekar, 1999; Rajagopal, 1994; 2000 (op.cit.); Srivastava, 2005.

68 In the prefatory remarks to the book, Breckenridge (ibid.: vii) notes that in the event of speeding up privatization and the denationalization of industry by the Rajiv Gandhi government-admitting a steady stream of multinational and transnational corporations with their products and projects-, the consumer economy catering to an apparently growing middle class was a sure sign of a surplus in the domestic economy.

69 Rajagopal's analysis of television advertisements (see Rajagopal 2000op.cit.), goes beyond the lifestyle aspect of the new middle class to probe further into its symbolic significance. He argues that an appropriate focus of analysis of the 'new Indian middle class' should be on the ways in which such terms are constructed, and the uses to which they are put. For instance, in the advertisers' 'imagination' of the new middle class in post-liberalization India, the creation of new type of gendered consumers is treated as natural and inevitable and as a fulfillment of previously unrealized or repressed possibilities; it is depicted by the advertisers, as a form of self-identification: some ads, in fact, use testimonials from consumers who describe themselves as such. He observes that the internal space of the middle class is hierarchically structured, and is an aspirational space straddling different classes. The middle class wields an ideological power as a unit of identification; though this does not lend it the kind of corporate force typically associated with class identity. Rajagopal maintains that the middle class is a sign of more diffuse and complex kind of power, unifying and fractionating both, with policy makers and intellectuals invoking it as justification and legitimation, elites using it to dissimulate and deny their class power, and the lower classes using it to inflate and enhance their own.

7° Fernandes (2000a; 2000b) analyzes the ways in which images weave together the symbolic fabric of a hegemonic political culture in liberalizing India, in the process transforming the image of the Indian nation form. On the lines of Benedict's Anderson's thesis linking the historical emergence of modem nationalism to print capitalism, Fernandes suggests that the imagination of the nation in the more recent historical past is inextricably bound to capitalist technologies of vision.

71 These include new publications such as glossy supplements to mainstream newspapers and consumer oriented magazines. For instance, the publishers of India Today, one of the leading English news magazines in India, launched a new publication India Today Plus. This is printed in thick and glossy paper-an aesthetic quality which distinguishes it from other popular and news magazines. This magazine mirroring the distinctive era of

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consumption, has already presented a 'buyers guide' to home gyms, cellular phones and cars. It appears engaged in the production of the boundaries of cultural standard for a globalized Indian. See Fernandes 2000a: 620.

· 72 Fernandes (2004) also addresses the question of the structural location of the middle classes. According to her, tbe middle class is not new in a structural sense. It refers to particular segments of the professional middle classes, particularly those associated with new economy jobs such as the services sector and information technology. For instance, while in the pre-liberalization period public-sector banks may have been considered prime jobs, foreign banks or multinational companies would now be choice jobs for urban professionals entering the job market. The 'new middle class' thus, does not refer to upwardly mobile segments of the population who are attempting to enter the middle class. However, the social basis of these segments is not new as they draw from segments of the traditional urban middle classes.

73 Her specific concern is to demonstrate that notions of modernity are articulated through consumerism by creating particular subject positions for women within the family. See Mankekar, 1999: 105.

74 It is notable that the perception of consumer as anchored in the middle class has found its way into journalistic writings and commentaries. A useful and frequently cited essay is Pavan Varma's The great Indian middle class. See Varma, 1998.

75 Deshpande calls this the 'consumer-segment' definition of class. See Deshpande, 2004c: 134.

76 Though, the allusion is to the 'Indian' middle class, Beteille (op.cit.: 84) clarifies that his remarks apply in particular to the new middle class and especially to those in professional, administrative and managerial positions.

77 From among the papers presented at the conference on Consumerism and the emerging middle class: Comparative perspectives from India and China, November 7-9, 2005, New Delhi, the following two explore the formation of the middle class at the site of urban spaces: Shilpa Phadke's paper, The Public Display of Private Sewality: The Contradictions of New Spaces of Consumption, investigates the construction of class and heterosexuality at the site of malls and coffee shops. Bertrand Lefebvre, in the paper, Consumerism and healthcare: Corporate hospitals in Delhi, argues that the consumption of health care is a site for the production of the middle class.

San jay Srivastava's paper Moral consumption: Among the veg. tacos and baby pizzas, Shekhar and Monica make silent, unsatisfactory love, introduces the idea of moral consumption that ties together contemporary discourses on sexuality, middle class.

Patricia Uberoi's paper Aspirational weddings: Indian bridal magazines and the canons of 'decent marriage', suggests that a 'new range of bridal magazines' are a site for the production of upper middle class lifestyles.

78 Achin Vinayak (2002: 227) argues that the new middle class is a strong base for the acceptance of 'economic internationalism' or, the particular kind of globally integrated economy that is being promoted and is given a seemingly neutral term 'globalization'. This order assigns an ever greater value to Western­style consumerist patterns. Further, liberalization-major policy shift with profound long··term consequences is the new economic direction set after 1991-, has 'liberated' the attitudes, values and aspirations of what is sometimes called the 'Great Indian Middle Class'. This broad category is the most important social anchor for the new economic policies which justify and promote Indian integration into the world economy.

Thinking about the new middle class is inextricably linked to questions of politics.

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On the basis of a study of the labour market in Mumbai's private sector, Fernandes (2000b:109) points to a significant contradiction in the position of the new middle class in liberalizing India. On the one hand, the actual labour market experiences of the 'new' upwardly mobile urban middle classes provide important parallels to processes of economic restructuring that have characterized industrial labour. On the other hand, individual strategies and responses of white collar workers demonstrates the effectiveness of these images as individual dissatisfaction has not led to political opposition to India's economic reform policies. Rajagopal, reflecting on the question, 'what kind of political action could the middle classes call their own', advances the view that a variety of disparate forms and goals could be contained and mobilized through the category, lending it immense ideological utility. For a discussion of the 'ideological utility' of the new middle class for the Hindu Right. See Rajagopal, 1994; 2000.

79 Veblen's theory of the leisure class was first published in 1899. In the introductory chapter of the 1970 edition, C. Wright Mills traces the genealogy of Veblen to social science thinking in the grand tradition exemplified in the works of the likes of Hegel, Comte, Marx, Spencer and Weber. In keeping with this tradition, Veblen's concerns are pitched at an epochal level. According to Mills, the attempts of all thinkers in this tradition are, "to grasp the essentials of an entire society and epoch, to delineate the characters of the typical men within it, to determine its main drift". The theorization of the leisure class as a commentary on the epochal characteristics of the contemporary American society is based on an analyses of the local society comprising the very rich in America.

80 The following discussion is based on the introductory chapter of Veblen's book The theory of the leisure class: An economic study of institutions, unless specified otherwise.

81 In the preface, Veblen writes: "It is the purpose of this inquiry to discuss the place and value of the leisure class as an economic factor in modern life, but it has been found impracticable to confine the discussion strictly within the limits so marked out. Some attention is perforce given to the origin and the line of derivation of the institution ...... Corroborative evidence .. .is drawn from remoter sources, as well as whatever articles of theory or inference are borrowed from ethnological science ... " As historical and comparative evidence, then, Veblen's theory draws on a classificatory scheme of cultural stages. These stages are: primitive savagery, barbarism (differentiated into lower and lowest stages) and modern industrial stage. Corresponding to this scheme of classification, Veblen constructs a scheme of leisure manifested in extent of institutionalization of the leisure class in different stages of economic organization as also expressed in the types of employment it engages in. The implications to be drawn from this methodology are that there is a historic logic or pattern underlying the 'development' of the leisure class.

82 To demonstrate the transmutability between 'leisure' and 'goods' suggested in Veblen's formulation, we cite the following extracts from the book (op.cit): a. "In the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure class coincides with the beginning of ownership. This is necessarily the case, for these two institutions result from the same set of economic forces (ibid.: 33). b. "Ownership began and grew into a human institution on grounds unrelated to the subsistence minimum. The dominant incentive was from the outset the invidious distinction attaching to wealth ... " (ibid.: 36) c. " ... the earliest form of ownership is an ownership of women by the able-bodied men of the community" (ibid.: 33). d. "The original reason for the seizure and appropriation of women seems to have been their usefulness as trophies (indicators of) ... the desire of the successful men to put their prowess in evidence by exhibiting some durable result of their exploits." e. "In this way a consistent system of property in goods is gradually installed. And although in the latest stages of the development, the serviceability of goods for consumption has come to be the most obtrusive element of their value, still, wealth has by no means yet lost its utility as an honorific evidence of the owner's prepotence" (ibid.: 34). f. "Wherever the institution of private property is found, even in a slightly developed form, the economic process bears the character of a struggle between men for the possession of goods" (ibid.).

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83 Ritzer (2001: 209) urges interpreters ofVeblen's Theory of the leisure class, to be sensitive to its context. He writes: "Veblen wrote this text one hundred years ago in the Midwest. This was a time before the advent of mass consumption; before mass advertising and mass media; before credit cards and the Mall of America."

84 Frank Conlon's (1996) study-under the conceptual umbrella of 'public culture'- explores the history of restaurants and public dining in Bombay. In Conlon's sketch of 'traditional' India, there is no enduring tradition of restaurants or public dining. The norms of social life discourage the institution of restaurants-commercial establishments for public dining. The practice of dining out did not find a congenial niche within the traditional values of Hindu orthodoxy. Because of questions of purity of food preparation, brahmanical tradition further emphasized that food should be eaten privately-a place screened from public view-because consumption of food in a public place could leave the diner vulnerable to evil influences. Consequently, Conlon maintains, throughout the history of the subcontinent, only travelers-merchants and pilgrims-faced the problem of obtaining food prepared outside the domestic hearth. The Mughal period saw a limited facility for public dining by travelers with the institution of the caravanserai. In the cities, culture cookshops and 'public bakeries' flourished as long as the cities prospered. But, by and large, Indian travelers had to rely upon kinship connections for hospitality. A distinctive feature of late nineteenth century Bombay was dining at clubs.

85 In the main, the focal point of Appadurai's (1985) essay is cookbooks; however, he argues that the dialectic of regional and national logics of new cookbooks echoes in restaurants and public eating establishments.

86 I borrow this term from Appadurai's essay, wherein it appears as 'The social world of the New Indian Cuisine'. lbid.:5.

87 The genealogy of 'ordinary', occupying a place of privilege in de Certeau's project, is traceable to the terrain of philosophical and literary reflection as observed by Luce Giard [ 1998 (1990):255) The model for a rigorous examination of ordinary language-the foundation on which de Certeau builds the theory of everyday practice-is adopted from Wittgenstein's philosophy. The ordinary, thus, is articulated, not just in terms of a place, but also in terms of language so that, the 'common place' is an 'ordinary language.

88 Going by this formulation, the activity of eating-the focus of our research project-is akin to such activities and might be conceptualized as a way of operating or a way of doing

89 Usage' is to be differentiated from 'mode of behaviour' and 'representation'. 'Usage' is the tool with which de Certeau crafts a model of action in a condition of technical dominance of scientific rationality, theoretical dominance of production, societal dominance of systems and cultural dominance of 'products imposed by the economic order'. Ibid.:xii-xiii.

90 Though by contrast with dominant production, everyday production is scattered over areas defined by (dominant) systems of production, as the steady expansion of the latter, does not leave the former a 'place'. Ibid.

91 In developing the field of everyday practice, de Certeau draws on Foucault's Discipline and Punish. Foucault's primary concern is with analyzing the apparatuses exercising power and the mechanisms that have sapped the strength of these institutions and reorganized the functioning of power so that a discursive space is redistributed in order to be a means of a generalized discipline. These 'mechanisms' or miniscule technical procedures, find their way into de Certeau's formulation of practice of everyday life. However, in this case, these mechanisms do not make possible an expansion of the grid of discipline; they, on the contrary, are means that manipulate the mechanisms of discipline and conform to them only in order to evade them. ibid .. xiv.

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92 Quoted from Willis (1990) Common Culture, in Bocock 1992.

93 See Giddens, 1991: 81, footnote.

94 Lifestyles are routinized practices, the routines incorporated into habits of dress, eating, modes of acting and favoured milieux for encountering others. In the latter definition, lifestyles are reflexively open to change in the light of the mobile nature of self-identity. Ibid.: 80-1.

95 Beteille's analysis is based on an examination of strategies of social reproduction of the so-called 'service class' through the socialization of children. See Uberoi's editorial introduction to Beteille's paper in Uberoi, 1994: 390-1.

96 The term is borrowed from Appadurai and Breckenridge, 1996:12.

97 The aims of both our studies run parallel viz. to approach national identity through consumptive practices.

98 Chapter 3 in Tarlo's book.

99 The phrase 'political modernization' is attributed to the Rudolphs (1967:157). In theorizing political development in India, they argue that Gandhi has been one of the most conspicuous modernizers of Indian politics.

100 The purpose of the book is made explicit in the following remark: "If I had only to discuss academic principles, I should clearly not attempt an autobiography. But my purpose being to give an account of various practical applications of these principles ... ". See Gandhi,1982:15.

101 A hallmark of modernity, writes Anthony Giddens (1991: Chapter 2), is the self as reflexively understood by the person in terms of her or his biography. In other words, self reflexivity pertains to the existential question of self-identity; for the latter presumes reflexive awareness. A person with a reasonably stable sense of self-identity has a feeling of biographical continuity which she is able to grasp reflexively and, to a greater or lesser degree, communicate to other people. A person's identity is to be found in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going.

102 The document is a manifest expression of Gandhi's scientific temper. Gandhi (op.cit.: 15)writes: "Far be it from me to claim any degree of perfection for these experiments. I claim for them nothing more than does a scientist who, though he conducts his experiments with the utmost accuracy, forethought and minuteness, never claims any finality about its conclusions, but keeps an open mind regarding them".

103 "The saliency and resonance of these personal solutions enabled them to be translated into public and historical ones". See Rudolphs, op.cit.: 159.

104 What follows is my paraphrasing ofRudolphs' essay on Gandhi, unless specified otherwise.

105 During the false start phase, my research activities involved investigations of the pedagogic aspects of food in NCHMCT (National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology)*; culinary cultures ofGujaratis and Punjabis; and a comparison between eating cultures of Old and New Delhi.

*NCHMCT is set up by the Department of Tourism, Government of India. It is an apex body devising syllabi for hotel management and food craft institutes in India primarily to meet the human resource requirement of the hospitality industry.

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106 A clarification on the use of the suffix 'scape' is in order. Appadurai's framework for exploring disjunctures ensuing in the global economy, examines the relationship among five dimensions of global cultural flows termed as: ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes. Herein the usage of the suffix scape allows one to point to the fluid, irregular shapes of these landscapes, shapes that characterize international capital. See Appadurai, 1997: Chapter 2. I borrow the term from Appadurai, not to suggest fluidity and flow; but to capture an irregular field I encountered as a researcher. In my study, scape is suffixed to research, market, media and consumer.

107 There are two McDonald's restaurants in Connaught Place; Inner Circle and Janpath.

108 I was awarded certificates for successfully completing the BSM course and for participating in the HR Systems Day.

109 I am aware that the McDonald's and Nirula 's staff I interviewed had no choice but to obey the orders of their seniors. My easy access to these personnel is a pointer to the dynamic of hierarchy and power in organizations.