Critique of Anthropology 32(4) 435–457 ! The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0308275X12456652 coa.sagepub.com Article Questioning success: Dispossession and the criminal entrepreneur in urban India Andrew Sanchez Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany Abstract Conceptual divisions between the formal and informal sector are a marked feature of studies of Indian neoliberal dispossession, which juxtapose the experiences of an inse- cure informal workforce with their counterparts in an increasingly privileged and hege- monic formal sector. I suggest that dispossession be conceptually extended to areas of formal, urban India that experience economic liberalisation as a loss of job security and engage with the ideology of the enterprising individual in critical ways. Amid the cas- ualisation of industrial labour and assumptions of endemic corruption, workers in one of India’s largest private corporations argue that the success of the neoliberal entre- preneur relies upon the use of criminality and corruption. In this environment, entre- preneurs are regarded in a politically critical manner, inviting a re-examination of the extent to which the ideology of the enterprising individual has been internalised in India’s urban centres. Keywords Casualisation, corruption, dispossession, entrepreneurship, industry, organised crime, neoliberalism I know a man in India whose life is fascinating. His name is Rajiv, and when we met in 2006 he was in his late twenties and employed in one of India’s largest industrial companies. Like his father before him, he constructed heavy goods vehicles on the assembly line of the Tata Motors plant in Jamshedpur; an industrial city of 1 million residents which is also the site of the Tata Steel works. Rajiv’s home town was founded in 1907 by the private sector Tata Iron and Steel Corresponding author: Andrew Sanchez, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Advokatenweg 36, 06114 Halle (Saale), Germany. Email: andrewsanchez@hotmail.co.uk