Conclusion

Abstract

Abstract This concluding chapter describes the changing patterns of aspirations and seeking of a new identity by the dhobis as they wish to establish that they are respectable and equal citizens of a democracy. The major change is negotiated on the bodies of women, who are the first to be withdrawn from the public space and reinstated within the domestic realm or in jobs that take them out of the dhobi identity. This is in recognition of the exploitable status to which the bodies of lower-caste women have traditionally been assigned. The chapter also describes the way the future of the city is being shaped through corporate interests, the needs of a global market, and the distorted vision of policymakers who fail to recognize the requirements of those at the margins and bottom of society. Their visualization of a modern global city is not informed by the realities of India but by borrowed images from other cities around the world, irrespective of how poorly such images fit in with the local reality.