New technologies of governance, labour and the logistics industries.

Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter

Boarding Gate C10, Suvarnabhumi Airport: midnight approaches at the end of the concourse, beyond the malls and gates collecting passengers for Singapore and Hong Kong. A long line of young Indian men wait to weigh their hand luggage before boarding the Kolkata flight. These are kuruvis, low-level ‘hand-carriers’ employed by shadowy bosses to transport consumer goods like electronics and garments between Thailand and India. Not surprisingly their pre-weighed luggage comes in exactly at the maximum weight allowance. But it is also carefully apportioned according to value, each carrier transporting just enough to stay under the Rs 5 Lakh limit that attracts prosecution for smuggling electronic goods into India. When the laden flight docks in Kolkata, the baggage hall is resplendent with commodities: plasma televisions, hi-fi systems, musical keyboards, not to mention the iPods, mobile phones, digital cameras and computer circuit boards stowed in makeshift bundles of shabby cloth. This is a full-scale logistical operation – a single link in the many networks of formal and informal labour that distribute consumer goods manufactured in China to markets around the globe.

Suhit K. Sen

The Rajarhat story is fundamentally a story of displacement, loss of livelihoods and ecological degradation brought about by West Bengal’s Left Front government in cahoots with a real estate mafia allied to business interests. So what’s new? There is something new about the story of the building of a new township in Rajarhat and that is what this piece will focus on.

Ishita Dey

Though West Bengal was late in catching up with the creation of satellite centres compared to its counterparts in India, it has made its mark in the country’s ‘New Town’ geographies through the creation of Sector V, Salt Lake and Jyoti-Basu Nagar, Rajarhat (formerly known as New Town). These sites are interesting spatially as they connect the city to the airport and vice versa. These cities operate and function today through the lens of productive forces – the labouring lives involved in circulation of capital. An ethnography of labouring accounts across sectors like construction, IT/ITES and street food vendors shows how the urbanisation of goods and services not only thrives on production of space conducive to capitalism but also how these spaces facilitate a certain circulation of capital. What do the stories of labourers reveal about these new spaces?