Postcolonial Capitalism in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve

Abstract

This paper discusses Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve, which is a critique of the capitalist development in post-independence India, but more specifically, how the rural hinterland is becoming a sacrifice zone of economic development. The book highlights the destruction of the industrialization process in the agrarian life, where the environmental devastation, soil erosion, the climatic insecurity, and the break of the established ties with the nature exacerbate the agar vulnerability of the rural population. The book shows the restructuring of land, labour, ecology and identity by capitalism through the experiences of Rukmini and her family that is advantageous to the industry and that makes the lives of peasants’ disposable. The coming of the tannery is marked not by modernization and prosperity, but by displacement, loss of livelihood and the destruction of social and ecological stability. The novel reveals the biased logic of development where resources and labour of the rural poor are exploited towards national and economic development, but their pain still goes unnoticed in the mainstream discourse of progress. This paper also demonstrates the ways in which Nectar in a Sieve anticipates the slow and structural violence of capitalism in the postcolonial countryside and disrupts celebratory modernization imperialism by placing the victims of its imperialism on the center stage.