বিদ্যুৎ-তাড়িত উন্নয়ন ও প্রান্তিক মনের বাসনা বিন্যাস

Abstract

The paper emerges from an ethnographic endeavour in a Santal Community living at a suburban hamlet named Barshapur in Rajshahi. In 2013, the village received electricity supply from the Rural Electrification authorities. The ‘developmental change’ 
triggered by the ‘electrification’, brought about a series of stimuli among the inhabitants which was ethnographically pursued by the researchers for the following years. Present paper outlines the multiple forms of desires that were infused by the new technological 
advance of the village, and the social, cultural and economic resonances it caused to a society that was in other terms disenfranchised from the mainstream of development. The authors argue that while electrification extended a technological upheaval for the Santal 
community at Barshapur, it has at the same time constrained their social life in many ways. The newly emerged desires, revolving around consumer goods like television or home appliances, infused a new tension between the promise of modernisation of life and 
traditional norms and values. The tension is further intensified by their economic marginality which cannot keep pace with the escalating desires that the electricity has implanted in their futuristic imagination. Therefore, the Santals find themselves in a moral 
dilemma about the electrification that is a threat and a guarantee at the same time.