ABSTRACT
Yashodhara (12th century commentator on Vatsyayana's Kamasutra) This is a story about the marketing of a premium brand of condoms called KamaSutra. 1 KamaSutra was launched at a time when the Indian government had just been forced to adopt a new IMF-imposed regime of economic 'liberalisation'. The 1980s had seen a boom in urban middle-class consumption; by the time of the reforms in 1991, the idea of consumption as a driver of economic growth and all-round social well-being had become a central feature of the new dispensation. The turn towards consumerism in the 1980s coincided with the erosion of the national political near-hegemony of the Congress Party, a party which since Independence in 1947 had managed to serve the interests of its urban middle-class constituents while keeping up a populist rhetoric of democratic socialism.
