Evils of industrialization in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve

Abstract

Kamala Markandaya is an evolutionary and a great preceptor of the environment surrounding her as she thinks ahead to environmental and societal problems that industrialization has brought. Kamala Markandaya in her novel Nectar in a Sieve demonstrates the evils of industrialization by projecting it as the root base of degradation of humanity and interruptions on natural environment. Moreover it fetched unemployment, suffering, miseries, exploitation, scarcity of basic needs and uncertainties in the lives of rural Indian people; symbolically she presents the suffering of Rukmani, the main character of the novel. The construction of the tannery snatched the habitat and livelihood of the poor tenant family and caused the scattering, alienation, scarcity of basic needs and suffering of the family members; Rukmani's daughter was compelled to adapt prostitution; her sons dispersed and disappeared in cities shattering the familial love and leaving the old couple and finally Rukmani helpless and lonely.