How is India's burgeoning IT industry reshaping the country? What types of capital is IT attracting and what formations does it take? How are software engineers managed? What are their goals and aspirations? How are they perceived by their foreign clients? In her new book,
Reengineering India: Work, Capital, and Class in an Offshore Economy (Oxford University Press, 2016),
Carol Upadhya tackles these questions and many more. Based on extensive research in Bangalore - the large southern Indian metropolis that has led the IT buzz - the book explores the way capital, work and class are remade within the "new India." Combining deep, rich and detailed accounts of life within "software factories" with a theoretical eclecticism and clear writing style, the book is a truly wonderful anthropological account of an offshore economy.
Carol Upadhya is Professor in the School of Social Sciences, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru, India.