Bag and baggage

As the ubiquitous cloth bag carried by toiling Indians, the jhola is deemed an inexpensive accessory in this country.

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But when the same jhola is christened “Indian souvenir bag” and listed for sale on one of the United States of America’s premium shopping websites, it becomes a designer accessory worth over Rs 4,000. If this is causing Bengalis headed to the bajaar with a jhola in hand to do a double-take, they would not be the only ones. For what is being seen and sold as a luxury good abroad has often been an object of derision in India — both bag and its bearer, the ‘jholawala’, as Jean Drèze put it in his book, have pejorative connotations that are used to rubbish the views of naive socialists who refuse to recognise the hard truths of policy-making.