'If the US Sneezes, India Need not Catch a Cold': Representations of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis in Indian Print Media

摘要

This article studies strategies of representation of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, in India's English print media and the construction of this crisis as a 'natural disaster' through an 'outbreak narrative'. This article will demonstrate the similarities in the use of the outbreak narrative between US public health discourse and representations of the global financial crisis. This similarity appears because both conditions face similar problems of representation and visualization. However, there are crucial differences between both representation strategies due to the different ideological contexts within which both discourses arose. Further, it studies the political economy of newspaper reportage about the impact of the crisis in India, through an examination of the ideological context of its construction and the frames through which it was appropriated by different political forces like the UPA government, representatives of capital and representatives of the left. This article argues that there was homogeneity in the appropriation of the outbreak narrative by representatives of the state, capital and left, who each positioned themselves as critiques of American neoliberalism, and saviours of the economy from the impacts of the global financial crisis.