Ranabir Samaddar

Kolkata has changed quite a lot in the last few decades. It wants to become Delhi. It must catch up with the flash and glitz found elsewhere. It too must have its high-tech township and must embody a new mode of circulation of money, information, human resources, and power. It does not think that its old organic character is worth retaining. If discarding the old organic character is the necessary sacrifice to make in order to develop, let that be. If road space increases while the space for human interaction decreases, that price Kolkata must pay. Likewise parallel journals have lost their edge, parallel theatre has lost audience, the river line earlier dotted with old storehouses has changed, and tram cars carry only the distant memories of a city criss-crossed with tramlines and streetcars. Old urban resources have wasted in a state of neglect. In this change of guards, something new is happening. As a product of this developmental imagination Rajarhat is coming up beyond Kolkata.

"Projecting Collaborative Futures: Imaginaries for a Micropolitics of Networks", facilitated by Anja Kanngieser and Manuela Zechner undertook a series of mappings with young creative workers as part of the "New Media Workers Across Asia and Europe" during July 2010. The following is a partial documentation of this dialogic mapping method.

The transnational work spaces that have emerged in India as the product of transnational flow of capital, goods and services have remained confined to Information Technology and its related services. The emergence of these workspaces has led to a new category in the English speaking workforce - the knowledge professionals. They are the new workforce- the torchbearers of service oriented jobs in the back offices of various multinational corporations.

Studies on globalization are concerned with the mobility of capital, labour and other resources across various geographical spaces. Proponents of globalization have focused on the shrinking of spaces and the increase of transnational flows of capital and social networks as one of the benefits of opening up economic borders. In other words, the myriad forms of mobility and the emerging social relations ‘from organization of work to formation of citizenship’ are some of the issues that studies on globalization have looked into. Studies on the sociology of mobility indicate the interrelations in the economic world where signs (information, symbols, images, aspire), space, and social subjects are considered to be mobile. For some, global technologies have replaced ‘place’ with ‘space’, and Information and Communication Technology (ICTs) has played a significant role. ICTs enable work units, work relations and workers to be mobile. The role and growth of ICTs has become synonymous with a new kind of development - a development that will ensure service jobs, in other words a jump to a post-industrial informational age. India has been no exception to this growth and expansion of IT - a new addition to the global production systems.