Class Mobility, Identity, and Modernization in Diksha Basu's The Windfall: A Socio-Cultural Analysis

Abstract

This study will discuss how the novel The Windfall (Diksha Basu, 2018) portrays the competing pressures of modernity, bracketed mobility, "identity politics," and the modernization of urban spaces in contemporary India. They have generated considerable interest in terms of class mobility, identity, and modernization, and can be examined individually or on a macro level. Sociologists, however, have been interested in the fast-emerging middle class in India. To move forward and fill the gap, the study employs an integrated socio-cultural approach, utilizing the theory of symbolic capital developed by Bourdieu, the theory of cultural identity advanced by Hall, and Modernization Theory as articulated by Castells and Inglehart. In this theme, present study uses a qualitative, contextual reading of Basu novel, to give close encounter reading of text to realize how even mundane activities such as conspicuous consumption, everyday relations in neighborhoods, and random family chats are employed as a theater in a display to dramatize precarious and tenuous processes of turning financial capital into symbolic legitimacy. The findings confirm that The Windfall is a case of new money, which not only constructs prospects but also raises issues such as status recognition, divided selfhood, and social contradictions in cities. The study enables literary criticism to recognize that the novel cannot be considered solely a light social comedy. The study makes a significant contribution to the postcolonial urban landscape literature and the current research on South Asian fiction, highlighting the genre's enhanced capacity to represent the psychology of India's middle stratum, which remains largely unaddressed in macro-sociological discourse. This study also offers new directions of investigation into how literary pieces can reveal nuances of belonging, identity, and status in modernizing communities.