Examining resistance, accommodation and the pursuit of aspiration in the Indian IT‐BPO space: reflections on two case studies

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is based on case studies of two organisations: an India‐based information technology (IT) services company and a financial services company located in the UK and India. Although they operate in different sectors and have some notable contrasts, both can be seen as typifying aspects of India's new economy. Our article explores the lived experience of working in this economy—a perspective that has been relatively neglected in the extant literature. Drawing on Homi Bhabha's notions of ambivalence and mimicry, and V. S. Naipaul's powerful illustrations of these concepts in his fiction and non‐fiction works, we report on how respondents talked about their aspirations within India's emerging economy, and examine their mobilisation of particular discursive resources as forms of accommodation and resistance to the demands they face at work.