scholarly journals Industrial Labour in Post-Colonial India. II: Employment in the Informal-Sector Economy

1999 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Breman
Keyword(s):  
Informal Sector ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Small Time ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Professional Journals ◽  
Indian Journal

Rural–urban migration, which started long before Independence, has accelerated during the last half century. Only a small minority of that army of migrants has found work in the formal sector of the economy, however. The greater part of the urban population, both long-established and newcomers, are excluded from such employment. How, then, has this gradually increasing mass of people managed to earn a living? The answer is with work of very diverse character which provides very little stability taken over the year, even if continuous and full-time. The categorization of informal-sector employment is largely determined by the image evoked by Hart on launching the concept. Hart's description stressed the colourful cavalcade of petty trades and crafts that can be encountered while walking the streets of Third-World cities, including those of India: hawkers, rag-and-bone men, shoe cleaners, tinkers, tailors, market vendors, bearers and porters, drink sellers, barbers, refuse collectors, beggars, whores and pimps, pickpockets and other small-time crooks. In the 1970s and 1980s in particular, registration of this repertoire of work expanded enormously. A noticeable factor is that publications on the subject did not originate among conventional researchers into labour, who were interested mainly in formal-sector employment. The contents of leading professional journals, such as The Indian Journal of Industrial Relations and The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, show that, for the time being, that one-sided interest did not change.

‘Produce or Perish’. The crisis of the late 1940s and the place of labour in post-colonial India

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 1041-1112
Author(s):  
RAVI AHUJA
Keyword(s):  
Informal Economy ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Industrial Enterprises ◽  
Post War ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractThis article argues that the late 1940s in India should no longer be reduced to the twin events of partition and independence. A generalized political crisis unsettled, for a brief period, the structures of social and economic power, and not just intercommunity relations and the constitution of the state. These years were thus, among other things, a catalytic moment for the definition of ‘labour’ as both a political category and a parameter of post-colonial politics: processes dating back to the First World War, at least, were consolidated, under pressure from this crisis, into a new labour regime that has withstood political pressure for almost seven decades. The article offers an analysis of the almost-forgotten post-war strike movement, which was nevertheless unprecedented in its social and geographical spread. The movement elicited both repressive and reformist responses: the extraordinary level of emergency powers applied to suppress it are, therefore, as much examined as the series of momentous legislative and institutional changes of the late 1940s. In conclusion, the long-term consequences of this cycle of strike–reform–repression for India's post-colonial labour regime are adumbrated. A strongly etatist, potentially authoritarian, regime of industrial relations, it is argued, was checked by an enduring political trade union pluralism. At the same time, divisions within India's working classes were deepened and consolidated as labour law and social legislation sealed off the comparatively small ‘core workforces’ of public sector and large-scale industrial enterprises from the majority of workers in what would soon be called the ‘informal economy’.

scholarly journals Informal Sector in India: Migration and Poverty Implications

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Arup Mitra
Keyword(s):  
Informal Sector ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Urban Migration ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Welfare Losses ◽  
Business Contract ◽  
Informal Sector Employment

For assessing the role of urbanization in reducing poverty this paper based on secondary datatries to examine the nature of relationship among urbanisation, migration and informal sector employment. Findings suggest that the informal sector also tends to attract migrants as the probability to get work opportunities in this sector could be high. Further, rural and urban poverty are inter-connected as rural to urban migration and informal sector employment and other state-specific characteristics are associated, though migration and urbanisation with its spill-over effects reduce both rural and urban poverty. Also,based onthe survey data for unincorporated enterprises, the paper examinesif the unorganized or informal manufacturing, trade and services have the potentiality to grow and contribute to the realization of the inclusive growth objective. The inter-sectoral linkages do not necessarily mean that productivity and wages improve in the informal sector if the units manage to receive business contract from the formal sector enterprises. In fact, a large body of the informal sector is seen to be unconnected to the formal sector and this independent segment is on the rise over time. Finally the paper argues for the introduction of an informal sector policy which may help reduce the welfare losses to labour employed at the lower rungs.

COMPARING GOPINATH MOHANTY WITH MULK RAJ ANANDFROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF RESISTANCE LITERATURE

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (23) ◽  
Author(s):  
Khagendra Sethi ◽  
Tithi Ray
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Resistance Literature ◽  
Political Exclusion

This article aims at a comparative study of GopinathMohanty with Mulk Raj Anand. The article will analyse and examine the works of both the writers from the perspective of Resistance literature. Both of them have significant contribution to Dalit literature. These two writers are non-dalits. But they have comprehensive understanding on the plight of these miserable sections who are on the margin. They have tried their best to fight for their rights. Along with that they have created for them a distinct cultural identity by dismantling their colonial identity. They have raised voice against the ethical issues like bonded labour, economical exploitation, socio-political exclusion, land displacement and sexual harassment which were immanent in dalit’s life in colonial and post-colonial India.

Datta Bhagat’s Routes and Escape Routes and Vijay Tendulkar’s Kanyadaan: Critiquing the Dalit

2021 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2199573
Author(s):  
Joydeep Bhattacharyya
Keyword(s):  
Indian Society ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Large Segment ◽  
Art And Literature

This article seeks to understand Indian theatre’s take on Dalit politics of our time through a critical reading of two post-independence plays—Datta Bhagat’s Routes and Escape Routes and Vijay Tendulkar’s Kanyadaan. Politically, ‘Dalit’ becomes important only after 1947 in post-independence and post-colonial India or more specifically from the 1970s. In the post-Ambedkar phase of Dalit re/configuration, they begin to self-assert through politics, art, and literature, most effectively and convincingly, only with the rise of Dalit Panthers and in the aftermath of the implementation of Mandal Commission’s recommendation for Other Backward Classes (OBC) reservation. The article tries to examine the fresh critique of the Dalit vis-à-vis the upper caste-centric society, undertaken in this crucial context of reconfiguration and from beyond any traditional parameter of understanding, and map, through the plays, the plurality hidden within the perceived monolith of Dalit consciousness. Consequently, Dalit experiences against the backdrop of their struggle are laid bare, and unfamiliar realities come out to upset our comfortable knowledge about this large segment of Indian society.

Economic Reforms in Jamaica

1996 ◽  
Vol 38 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 97-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Danielson
Keyword(s):  
Exchange Rate ◽  
Informal Sector ◽  
Budget Deficit ◽  
Economic Reforms ◽  
The Political ◽  
Rural Poor ◽  
Slow Response ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Paper Briefly ◽  
The Past

AbstractThis paper briefly discusses the economic reforms that have taken place in Jamaica for the past 15 years and argues that the reforms, at least so far, are mixed, particularly with regard to the elimination of poverty. The basic problems are (1) a slow response of exports to large, frequent adjustments in the exchange rate, which prohibits low-wage labor, in the informal sector, from being absorbed into the formal sector; and (2) the large budget deficit, with the associated demands for large cuts in expenditures, which primarily affects the rural poor. It is suggested that the principal reason that reforms have been slow is because of the political price to be paid for unpopular measures in a competitive democracy

Jainism in Danger? Temple entry and the rhetoric of religion and reform in post-colonial India

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
MANISHA SETHI
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Open The Doors ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract A bitter debate broke out in the Digambar Jain community in the middle of the twentieth century following the passage of the Bombay Harijan Temple Entry Act in 1947, which continued until well after the promulgation of the Untouchability (Offences) Act 1955. These laws included Jains in the definition of ‘Hindu’, and thus threw open the doors of Jain temples to formerly Untouchable castes. In the eyes of its Jain opponents, this was a frontal and terrible assault on the integrity and sanctity of the Jain dharma. Those who called themselves reformists, on the other hand, insisted on the closeness between Jainism and Hinduism. Temple entry laws and the public debates over caste became occasions for the Jains not only to examine their distance—or closeness—to Hinduism, but also the relationship between their community and the state, which came to be imagined as predominantly Hindu. This article, by focusing on the Jains and this forgotten episode, hopes to illuminate the civilizational categories underlying state practices and the fraught relationship between nationalism and minorities.

Recasting Language of Work: Beedi Industry in Post-colonial Central India

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-47
Author(s):  
Megha Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Informal Sector ◽  
Central India ◽  
The State ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru

The complexities of studying informal sector labour can be dealt with bringing a wide range of identities and ideas used by the workers, which encompass beyond the socio-economic and political identities. 2 2   This article is based on my MPhil dissertation, ‘Conditions of Informality: Beedi Industry in Colonial and Post 1947 Central India’, submitted to the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2015. This article attempts to capture the diversified identities among the home-based beedi-making women workers and their settlement in Madhya Pradesh based on their oral interviews. Further, it captures how the division of work is sustained and perpetuated through the gendered allocation of work over the years. It also recounts how the state has perpetuated this division as the natural allocation of work in official discourse. Precisely, the article argues that how the worker’s narratives are an essential source to question the way work is explained in official language and the inequalities justified by the state.

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