Paper short abstract:

This paper suggests focusing anthropological research in India more on topics that make the South Asian experience compatible with observations from elsewhere. Water - the privatisation and commercialisation of which is currently at stake on a global scale – serves as an example.

Paper long abstract:

This paper argues that one possibility to overcome the limitations of older discourses on India, while at the same time avoiding the current rhetoric that celebrates India as a superpower in-the-making, is to choose issues that link the Indian example to international discourses. It proposes to focus anthropological research less on topics that emerge out of the specifically Indian context (such as, caste, dalits, Bollywood) and concentrate more on such that make the Indian example compatible with observations from elsewhere.

As an example for such a project shall serve, in this paper, the study of water, whose privatisation and commercialisation is currently at stake on a global scale. It will be shown that focusing on such a topic does not at all mean to neglect the above mentioned issues; they can thoroughly be dealt with, just that the "international" critical framework helps to situate them afresh, to put them in a perspective and context - a bit like Indians who go abroad have to situate themselves, with their specific personal and familial histories, in the context of their new homes which are, for them, "international".

Furthermore, the paper argues strongly not to overlook the villages and that peculiar space that comes "between" the village and the city: the suburbs and the sprawling settlements, which are, in lack of a proper designation, sometimes being labelled "semi-urban". At least in South India, where the fieldwork on which this paper is based has been carried out, they appear to be mushrooming; and so far they have hardly been under anthropological scrutiny.