Lesy 104
Lesy 104
Lesy 104
Indian Society
Wthisecommon
usually think of markets as places where things are bought and sold. In
everyday usage, the word ‘market’ may refer to particular markets
that we may know of, such as the market next to the railway station, the fruit
market, or the wholesale market. Sometimes we refer not to the physical place,
but to the gathering of people – buyers and sellers – who constitute the market.
Thus, for example, a weekly vegetable market may be found in different places
on different days of the week in neighbouring villages or urban neighbourhoods.
In yet another sense, ‘market’ refers to an area or category of trade or business,
such as the market for cars or the market for readymade clothes. A related
sense refers to the demand for a particular product or service, such as the
market for computer professionals.
What all of these meanings have in common is that they refer to a specific
market, whose meaning is readily understandable from the context. But what
does it mean to speak of ‘the market’ in a general way without refering to any
particular place, gathering of people, or field of commercial activity? This usage
includes not only all of the specific senses mentioned above, but also the entire
spectrum of economic activities and institutions. In this very broad sense, then,
‘the market’ is almost equivalent to ‘the economy’. We are used to thinking of
the market as an economic institution, but this chapter will show you that the
market is also a social institution. In its own way, the market is comparable to
more obviously social institutions like caste, tribe or family
discussed in Chapter 3.
2020-21
The Market as a Social Institution
2020-21
Indian Society
2020-21
The Market as a Social Institution
adivasis is purchased by traders who carry it to towns. In the market, the buyers
are mostly adivasis while the sellers are mainly caste Hindus. Adivasis earn cash
from the sale of forest and agricultural produce and from wage labour, which
they spend in the market mainly on low-value trinkets and jewellery, and
consumption items such as manufactured cloth.
According to Alfred Gell (1982), the anthropologist who studied Dhorai, the
market has significance much beyond its economic functions. For example, the
layout of the market symbolises the hierarchical inter-group social relations in
this region. Different social groups are located according to their position in the
caste and social hierarchy as well as in the market system. The wealthy and
high-ranking Rajput jeweller and the middle-ranking local Hindu traders sit in
the central ‘zones’, and the tribal sellers of vegetables and local wares in the
outer circles. The quality of social relations is expressed in the kinds of goods
that are bought and sold, and the way in which transactions are carried out.
For instance, interactions between tribals and non-tribal traders are very different
than those between Hindus of the same community: they express hierarchy
and social distance rather than social equality.
2020-21
Indian Society
2020-21
The Market as a Social Institution
2020-21
Indian Society
2020-21
The Market as a Social Institution
2020-21
Indian Society
2020-21
The Market as a Social Institution
Commodification occurs when things that were earlier not traded in the market
become commodities. For instance, labour or skills become things that can be
bought and sold. According to Marx and other critics of capitalism, the process
of commodification has negative social effects. The commodification of labour
is one example, but there are many other examples in contemporary society.
For instance, there is a controversy about the sale of kidneys by the poor to
cater to rich patients who need kidney transplants. According to many people,
human organs should not become commodities. In earlier times, human beings
themselves were bought and sold as slaves, but today it is considered immoral
to treat people as commodities. But in modern society, almost everyone accepts
the idea that a person’s labour can be bought, or that other services or skills
can be provided in exchange for money. This is a situation that is found only in
capitalist societies, according to Marx.
In contemporary India, we can observe that things or processes that earlier
were not part of market exchange become commodified. For example,
traditionally, marriages were arranged by families, but now there are professional
marriage bureaus and websites that help people to find brides and grooms for
a fee. Another example are the many private institutes that offer courses in
‘personality development’, spoken English, and so on, that teach students (mostly
middle class youth) the cultural and social skills required to succeed in the
ACTIVITY 4.2
Commoditisation or commodification – these are big words that sound very complicated.
But the process they refer to is a familiar one and it is present in our everyday life. Here is a
common example – bottled water.
In cities and towns and even in most villages now it is possible to buy water packed in sealed
plastic bottles of 2 litres, 1 litre or smaller capacity. These bottles are marketed by a wide
variety of companies and there are innumerable brand names. But this is a new phenomenon,
not more than ten or fifteen years old. It is possible that you yourself may remember a time
when bottled water was not around. Ask older people. Your parents’ generation will certainly
remember the initial feeling of novelty when bottled water became widely available. In
your grandparents’ generation, it was unthinkable that anyone could sell drinking water,
charge money for it. But today we take bottled water for granted as a normal, convenient
thing, a commodity that we can buy (or sell).
This is commoditisation/commodification – the process by which something which was not
a commodity is made into a commodity and becomes part of the market economy.
Can you think of other examples of things that have been commodified relatively recently?
Remember, a commodity need not only be a thing or object; it can also be a service. Try
also to think of things that are not commodities today but could become commodities in
the future. What are the reasons why this could happen? Finally, try to think of
things that were commodities in the past but have stopped being commodities
today (i.e., they used to have market or exchange value before but do not have 71
it now). When and why do commodities stop being commodities?
2020-21
Indian Society
72
2020-21
The Market as a Social Institution
2020-21
Indian Society
2020-21
The Market as a Social Institution
2020-21
Indian Society
Under globalisation, not only money and goods, but also people, cultural
products, and images circulate rapidly around the world, enter new circuits of
exchange, and create new markets. Products, services, or elements of culture
When a market becomes a commodity: The Pushkar camel fair BOX 4.4
“Come the month of Kartika …, Thar camel drivers spruce up their ships of the
desert and start the long walk to Pushkar in time for Kartik Purnima … Each year around
200,000 people converge here, bringing with them some 50,000 camels and cattle. The
place becomes an extraordinary swirl of colour, sound and movement, thronged with
musicians, mystics, tourists, traders, animals and devotees. It’s a camel-grooming nirvana,
with an incredible array of cornrows, anklets, embroidery and pom poms.”
“The religious event builds in tandem with the Camel Fair in a wild, magical crescendo
of incense, chanting and processions to dousing day, the last night of the fair, when
thousands of devotees wash away their sins and set candles afloat on the holy water.”
(From the Lonely Planet tourist guidebook for India, 11th edition)
2020-21
The Market as a Social Institution
that were earlier outside of the market system are drawn into it. An example is
the marketing of Indian spirituality and knowledge systems (such as yoga and
ayurveda) in the West. The growing market for international tourism also
suggests how culture itself may become a commodity. An example is the famous
annual fair in Pushkar, Rajasthan, to which pastoralists and traders come from
distant places to buy and sell camels and other livestock. While the Pushkar
fair continues to be a major social and economic event for local people, it is also
marketed internationally as a major tourist attraction. The fair is all the more
attractive to tourists because it comes just before a major Hindu religious festival
of Kartik Poornima, when pilgrims come to bathe in the holy Pushkar lake. Thus,
Hindu pilgrims, camel traders, and foreign tourists mingle at this event, exchanging
not only livestock and money but also cultural symbols and religious merit.
2020-21
Indian Society
Indian agriculture was protected from the world market by support prices and
subsidies. Support prices help to ensure a minimum income for farmers because
they are the prices at which the government agrees to buy agricultural
commodities. Subsidies lower the cost of farming because the government
pays part of the price charged for inputs (such as fertilisers or diesel oil).
Liberalisation is against this kind of government interference in markets, so
support prices and subsidies are reduced or withdrawn. This means that many
farmers are not able to make a decent living from agriculture. Similarly, small
manufacturers have been exposed to global competition as foreign goods and
brands have entered the market, and some have not been able to compete. The
privatisation or closing of public sector industries has led to loss of employment
in some sectors, and to growth of unorganised sector employment at the expense
of the organised sector. This is not good for workers because the organised
sector generally offers better paid and more regular or permanent jobs. (See the
chapters on agrarian change and industry in the other textbook for Class XII,
Social Change and Development in India).
In this chapter we have seen that there are many different kinds of markets in
contemporary India, from the village haat to the virtual stock exchange. These
markets are themselves social institutions, and are connected to other aspects
of the social structure, such as caste and class, in various ways. In addition, we
have learned that exchange has a social and symbolic significance that goes far
beyond its immediate economic purpose. Moreover, the ways in which goods
and services are exchanged or circulate is rapidly changing due to the
liberalisation of the Indian economy and globalisation. There are many different
ways and levels at which goods, services, cultural symbols, money, and so on,
circulate — from the local market in a village or town right up to a global
trading network such as the Nasdaq. In today’s rapidly changing world, it is
important to understand how markets are being constantly transformed, and
the broader social and economic consequences of these changes.
78
2020-21
The Market as a Social Institution
Questions
1. What is meant by the phrase ‘invisible hand’?
5. In what ways did the Indian economy change after the coming of
colonialism?
8. What are some of the processes included under the label ‘globalisation’?
10. In your opinion, will the long term benefits of liberalisation exceed its costs?
Give reasons for your answer.
REFERENCES
Bayly, C.A. 1983 Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars; North Indian Society in the Age of
British Expansion, 1770-1870. Oxford University Press. Delhi.
Durkheim, Emile. 1964 (1933). The Division of Labour in Society. Free Press.
New York.
Gell, Alfred. 1982. ‘The market wheel: symbolic aspects of an Indian tribal market,’
Man (N.S.). 17(3):470-91.
Hardgrove, Anne. 2004. Community and Public Culture; The Marwaris in Calcutta.
Oxford University Press. New Delhi.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1961 (1921). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. E.P. Dutton
and Company. New York.
Mauss, Marcel. 1967. The Gift; Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies.
W.W. Norton & Company. New York.
Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation. Beacon Press. Boston.
Rudner, David. 1994. Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India; The Nattukottai
Chettiars. University of California Press. Berkeley.
79
Stein, Burton and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. ed. 1996. Institutions and Economic
Change in South Asia. Oxford University Press. New Delhi.
2020-21
Indian Society
Notes
80
2020-21