The Ruse of Skill

Abstract

This article uncovers managerialism's footprints within the postindependence developmental imagination in India—specifically its forays into the rural socioeconomic world. It argues that by following this trail of managerialism, we can gain new insights into the intellectual frameworks of rural development and the many ways in which they have historically reproduced and propped up structures of power in the countryside. The article focuses on an experiment conducted in the 1970s that sought to stimulate the productivity of the “rural poor” through the promise of skilling and the conceit of “problem solving.” It situates this experiment in the gradual unfurling of the Green Revolution, which laid bare the contradictions inherent in the question of agrarian productivity. Furthermore, it shows how the issue of rural nonagrarian labor during this period was being taken up by the emerging discipline of “rural management,” which in turn produced its own reformist rationales. This article analyzes the inherent contradictions of these rationales and the developmental discourse they legitimized.