Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

FROM WORK TO WELFARE

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 38; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14672710601072996

1472-6033

Rina Agarwala,

Social Policy and Reform Studies

Abstract The rigidity of early class analysis and the recent demise of any type of class analytics have turned attention away from examining the growing population of informally employed workers as a class. By not examining informal workers as a class "in themselves," we are losing insights into how they are translating their positions into a class "for themselves." As a consequence, the recent literature on globalization and liberalization is increasingly concluding that the decreasing proportion of formally employed workers (and the subsequent rise in informal employment) the world over signifies a decline in all class-based organization. Such arguments have obscured our understanding of the current social dynamics of exploitation and resistance. In an attempt to begin filling this gap, this article recovers class as an important analytical tool with which to examine (1) the current relations of power between the state, employers, and the majority of India's workers, and (2) how the structures of production within which informal workers operate affect their collective action strategies. A reformulated labor movement model is offered to expose the underlying mechanisms through which informal workers translate their location in the class structure as a class "in itself" into a political group as a class "for itself." Insights into how informal workers organize can have profound implications for our understanding of changing state-labor relations as national governments attempt to liberalize their economies and simultaneously rein in their welfare functions. Notes 1. Hart Citation1973. 2. Weeks Citation1975; Mazumdar Citation1976; Sethuraman Citation1976; Bromley and Gerry Citation1979; Moser Citation1978; Peattie Citation1987. 3. Portes, Castells, and Benton Citation1989. 4. NSSO Citation2001. 5. Ahluwalia Citation2002; Gupta Citation2002; NCL Citation2002. 6. Kulshreshtha and Singh Citation1999. 7. NCL Citation2002, Citation1969. 8. Kundu and Sharma Citation2001; NCL Citation2002. 9. Harris and Todaro Citation1970. 10. Luxemburg Citation1951; Lenin Citation1939. 11. Portes and Hoffman Citation2003. 12. The 7 percent figure was first asserted by informal workers' movements attempting to increase their salience and is now cited in numerous scholarly articles and government documents (see Kundu and Sharma Citation2001). The 18 percent figure is calculated by the author using the 55th Round NSS. 13. Portes and Hoffman Citation2003, 45. 14. Punekar Citation1948. 15. Fisher Citation1961; Park Citation1949; Kennedy Citation1958. 16. Mehta Citation1957; Morris Citation1955, Citation1960; Weiner Citation1962. 17. Rudolph and Rudolph Citation1987; Omvedt Citation1993; Bardhan Citation2001. 18. Ray Citation2000; Basu Citation1992; Lind Citation1997; Kamat Citation2002; Katzenstein Citation1989. 19. Chandra CitationForthcoming; Varshney Citation2002; Katzenstein, Kothari, and Mehta Citation2001. 20. For differing views in the effectiveness debate on new mass politics in India, see Frankel and Rao Citation1989; Heller Citation2000; Migdal, Kohli, and Shue Citation1994; Weiner Citation2001. 21. Roberts Citation2002; Sandbrook Citation2006; Cross Citation1998; Fernandez-Kelly and Shefner Citation2006. 22. Other arguments made earlier are: (1) that opportunistic union leaders have made labor organizations into authoritarian spaces that fight for monetary benefits, rather than democratically driven spaces of class ideology (Ramaswamy Citation1988), and (2) that class politics has never been strong in India, because unions mirror the competitive pluralism of Anglo-American interest groups, rather than the Continent's corporatist structures of collective bargaining (Rudolph and Rudolph Citation1987). 23. Berger and Piore Citation1989; Gugler Citation1991; Chowdhury Citation2003; Harriss-White Citation2003; Hyman Citation1992. 24. Marx Citation1906. 25. Geertz Citation1963; Bairoch Citation1973; Harris and Todaro Citation1970; Lewis Citation1954; Marx Citation1906. 26. Herring and Hart Citation1977. 27. Kundu and Sharma Citation2001; Oberai and Chadha Citation2001; Mahadevia Citation1998; Sundaram Citation2001; Unni Citation1999, Citation2000; Kulshreshtha and Singh Citation1999; Joshi Citation2000; TISS and YUVA Citation1998. 28. Carr, Chen, and Jhabvala Citation1996; Sanyal Citation1991; Sharma and Antony Citation2001; Chowdhury Citation2003. 29. The author calculated these figures using the NSS. They include only regular workers (in the case of formal workers) and regular and casual workers (in the case of informal workers). These figures change only marginally when self-em-ployed own-account workers and employers are included (along with regular and casual workers). 30. Bidi is a local Indian cigarette made of a rolled leaf and roasted tobacco. 31. Construction workers comprise 8 percent of India's labor force, and bidi workers comprise 2 percent. Although employment is growing rapidly in both industries, the bidi industry is under strong pressure from domestic and international campaigns against smoking. To reduce costs, most of the bidi production has shifted to rural areas (to avoid municipal taxes and fees). Urban bidi production may be considered a "sunset" industry, while urban construction work is a "sunrise" industry. 32. GOI Citation1929. For an in-depth account of employers' use of informal labor in the textile industry during India's early industrial history, see Chandravarkar Citation1994. 33. Although bidi manufacturing is not mechanized, the workshops in which workers sat to roll the bidis were referred to as "factories." 34. GOI Citation1960. 35. Interview with Ram Ratnagar, 1 July 2003. Similar sentiments were expressed in Girija, Ramakrishnan, and Ramakrishnan Citation1988, 94. 36. GOI Citation1970. 37. GOI Citation1952. 38. Isaac, Franke, and Raghavan Citation1998. 39. Each of the two primary left-wing political parties in India has its own federation of trade unions. The Communist Party of India (CPI)'s federation is called, All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), and the Communist Party of In-dia-Marxist (CPI-M)'s federation is called Center for Indian Trade Unions (CITU). While unions affiliated to right-wing and center parties also existed, their strategies were less revolutionary, and they did not make major gains in the bidi or construction industries. 40. Interview with Sundar Navelkar, 4 August 2003. 41. In 1970, the Minimum Wages Act of 1948 was extended to include the construction industry. In 1972, the Contract Labor Regulation and Abolition Act was passed to hold principal employers and contractors responsible for providing casual labor with minimum wages and decent working conditions; this Act was to be applied directly to construction workers. By the early 1970s, almost all states had passed the 1966 Bidi Act. Samant Citation1998. 42. Vaid Citation1999. 43. GOI Citation1990; Citation1952; Citation1960; Citation1970; Citation1980. 44. The parallels between these recent movements among informal workers and earlier peasant movements and the Employment Guarantee Scheme should be noted. For more, see Herring and Hart Citation1977. 45. Interview, 27 May 2003. 46. I have detailed elsewhere the historical development of the welfare boards, which first began in 1934 for dock workers. The earlier boards, however, were designed for formally employed workers. 47. Interview with Manohar Lal, director general of Labour Welfare Organisation, 2 June 2003. 48. GOI Citation2002; Government, Tamil Nadu Citation2006. 49. GOI Citation2002. 50. Singh Citation2004; Pandhe Citation2002. 51. Interview, 31 March 2003. 52. Interview with Geeta Ramakrishnan, head of TNCWU, 9 July 2004. 53. While the Tamil acronym for this union is TKTPS, I will use the English translation for the sake of clarity. 54. Reporter Citation1999; Manchanda Citation1993; Reporter Citation1994. 55. Interviews with M. Rajaram, labor commissioner, Tamil Nadu (12 June 2004); Ashok Khot, labor secretary, Maharashtra (25 March 2003); and Mohand Dhotre, national welfare commissioner (7 May 2003). 56. Note on the same day, the government also enacted the Building and Other Construction Workers' Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service Act, which catered to the requests of the Builders Association to apply minimal protections on work conditions. 57. Gopinath Citation1997. 58. Similar struggles were pursued by workers in coal and mica mines, docks, railway loading, sugar, and tea plantations. 59. Unlike the construction boards, the Bidi Board is controlled by the Central government, under the Directorate General of Labor Welfare (DGLW) in the Ministry of Labor. In addition to the Bidi Fund, the DGLW overseas four additional welfare funds: Mica Mines Labour Welfare Fund Act (1946), Limestone and Dolomite Mines Labour Welfare Fund Act (1972), Iron Ore, Manganese Ore and Chrome Ore Mines Labour Welfare Fund Act (1976), and Cine Workers Welfare Fund Act (1981). State governments are responsible for implementing these Acts. 60. Interviews with Ram Ratnagar, general secretary of the All India Bidi and Cigar Workers Federation, and Rajangam, general secretary of CITU Bidi Federation for Tamil Nadu. 61. Staff Citation2002. 62. GOI Citation1990. 63. Although the welfare boards were designed to reach all workers (those in and not in an organization), the government has increasingly turned to organizations for assistance in finding and reaching workers. As a result almost all recipients of the board benefits are members of an organization. 64. Jyotsna used the English word "empower," although she does not speak English. 65. Interview, 16 December 2003. 66. Interview, 14 July 2003. Speaker's emphasis.