ISSN 2278-3423 Broadsheet on Contemporary Tenth Anniversary Edition Politics State Capital Nexus: Implications for Labour No. 15 Bilingual (English and Telugu) March 2021 Donation : Rs. 25/- CONTENTS Editorial: Re-visiting the Labour Question Padmini Swaminathan and Uma Rani ROLE OF THE INDIAN STATE Labour and Perspectives on the Indian State Achin Chakraborty Whither Rural India? Rajeswari S Raina and Keshab Das Conjugated Oppression: Race, Caste, Tribe, Gender and Class Jens Lerche and Alpa Shah Migration and Informalisation Sumangala Damodaran GLOBAL VA L U E CHAINS: IMPACT ON LABOUR The Labour Question - Global Value Chains M Vijaybaskar Worker Control and Capital Accumulation in Global Supply Chains Mark Anner Organization of Work in E-supply Chains Madhuri Saripalle and Vijaya Chebolu-Subramanian Digital Innovations - Digital Piecework Uma Rani SOCIAL REPRODUCTION AND CAPITAL ACCUMULATION: CARE WORKERS Declining Female Labour and Crisis of Social Reproduction Satyaki Roy Care Work and Strategies of Accumulation Praveena Kodoth The Birthing Precariat: Altruism in the Service of Capital Anindita Majumdar SOCIAL REPRODUCTION AND CAPITAL ACCUMULATION: HEALTH WORKERS Labour Dynamics and Heterogeneity: Health Workforce in India Ramila Bisht and Shaveta Menon ASHA- the bearer of hopes S Ramanathan and Vasudha Chakravarthy Workers in Indian Factory. (iStock Photo: track5) ASHAs: ‘Volunteerism’ Subsidizes the Indian State Vrinda Marwah WORKERS’ STRUGGLE FOR THEIR RIGHTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS Organized Informality: The Politics of Recruitment in Durgapur Sreemoyee Ghosh Losing Strength? Trade Unions and Neo-liberalism Deepita Chakravarty Informal Workers’ Struggles in Tamil Nadu K Kalpana Guest Editors: Padmini Swaminathan, Uma Rani Resident Editors: A Suneetha, MA Moid, and R Srivatsan Published by: Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies, H.No. 1-2-16/11, Block-B, Street No.1,Habsiguda,Hyderabad–500 007 The Indian State, Capital Accumulation and Editorial Labour What is it about the nature of capitalist development in India that has not enabled a structural transformation of the economy and concomitantly of labour? Despite economic growth since 2000, formal employment generation has faltered, and numbers of those informally employed, whether in the formal Revisiting the Labour or informal sector, have risen dramatically, contributing to rising inequality levels. Anthony D’Costa (2016) has characterized the Indian economy as one of ‘compressed Question: Challenges capitalism’ where the process of primitive accumulation is still ongoing even as the country seeks to address global competition for Labour through import of labour-saving technology and enclave-based production. Papers under this theme explore the manner in which the Indian State’s agenda of economic/industrial ‘development’ produces varieties of labour regimes through which labour gets incorporated into capitalist production. Such Introduction labour lacks a clear location in the capitalist exploration, apart from highlighting the production process. And therefore, it is In 2014, Amrita Chhachhi led a Forum Debate heterogeneity of labour, throws light on the argued, that the resolution to the labour in the journal, Development and Change, forms of structural linkage between capital question in the contemporary period lies where she revisited Marx’s formulation of the and labour. Some of the crucial questions largely in state-based provision of piece-meal labour question and in the process sketched raised include: how far is the Indian State social assistance even as the state is fully the contemporary relevance of the two complicit in marginalizing and complicit in furthering the interests of capital. important propositions that Marx espoused, disempowering labour? Is the persistence of namely: one, the role of labour in production, Embedded within and between the two informality due to lack of successful capitalist regimes of accumulation and social opposing positions and approaches to the development or rather an outcome of it? Have reproduction; and two, its emancipatory labour question sketched above by Chhachhi the welfare measures put in place by the State potential as a counter capitalist force (ibid: are several issues and themes that have to address some of these issues muted 899). In the same piece, Chhachhi also alluded formed the basis for revisiting the labour collective action while subsidizing capitalist to the Polanyi-inspired discussions that question in the present volume, production? emphasized and thereby questioned the methodologically and/or conceptually, from a Achin Chakraborty in his paper alludes to emancipatory role of labour given the region-gender-caste-class transformative lens. “the shifting role of the Indian state from transformations in the nature of work. In The papers in this volume have been promoting ‘responsible trade unionism’, addition, the fragmentation and flexibilisation organised under four heads: the Indian State, (meaning, ‘subordination of immediate wage of production systems have not only capital accumulation and labour; global value gains and similar considerations to the undermined the basis for workplace chains and labour; social reproduction and its development of the country’) to curtailing bargaining but have also contributed to a kind links with capital accumulation focusing on workers’ rights and privileges on the one of competition characterized by relocation of care workers and health workers; and finally, hand and extending welfarist entitlements to work to low wage sites and a ‘race to the worker’s struggle for their rights in the its citizens on the other. The capitalistic states bottom’ with regard to both wages and development process. This introduction of 18th century were not burdened with working conditions. The Polanyian literature highlights the nature and range of issues providing welfare benefits for its surplus in particular argues that the erstwhile model covered by the authors, while flagging labour. The post-colonial states have not been of industrial citizenship where social rights questions that organically emanate from these able to structurally absorb the surplus labour were attached to specific labour statuses is no papers that could form the subject matter of into productive processes, and due to lack of longer possible since much of contemporary further research. welfare benefits from the state, they have Advisory board: K.Lalita, Susie Tharu, Veena Shatrugna, Rama Melkote, Aisha Farooqui, Sheela Prasad, Uma Bhrugubanda, Asma Rasheed, Gogu Shyamala, Madhumeeta Sinha, Kaneez Fathima, K.Sajaya. Production: Ashala Srinivas, T.Sreelakshmi. The contents of this broadsheet reflect the data, perspectives and opinions of the individual contributors and guest editors. They do not necessarily represent the unanimous views of Anveshi as an organization or those of its members individually. Nor do they represent a consensus among the editors. Anveshi Broadsheet - March 2021-2 joined the informal sector as workers or self- policies meant for the small-scale industry particular manner in which the manufacturing employed. sector are completely out of sync with ground of production for the global market is realities. organised and the specific way in which Considering that the informal economy is international retailing operates, ensures very home to 92 percent of the workforce in India, In sum, in contrast to much contemporary work often that buying countries and consumers, Raina and Das question the characterisation of on labour that is focused more on capturing who otherwise cry hoarse about the need to be this sector ‘as a problem to be resolved’ and of ‘labour status – regular, temporary, self- ethical, somehow absolve themselves of any its labour as ‘marginal’. Their paper deals employed, daily wage, casual, bonded, unfree, responsibility for the damage that their extensively with the fallout of such a etc’; these papers make explicit the nature of demand for quality but cheap products cause characterisation that has resulted in the state linkage of labour with the capitalist system of to the environment and/or health of workers not only viewing informal labour as unskilled production. The explicit articulation of this in the producing countries. but the informal economy as bereft of linkage enables comprehension of how far we knowledge capable of sustaining itself, have drifted from our erstwhile agenda of Mark Anner’s paper extends the above howsoever meagre. According to these moving towards labour emancipation through argument even more starkly. Anner, who has authors, “[T]he painful questions about the formal legislation and collective action. conducted extensive field work in Bangladesh and India, among other garment exporting nature of the developmental state and its Global Value Chains and Labour interventions that perpetuate marginalisation countries, demonstrates how financial capital of informal work, making invisible the The papers on global value chains, carry pressurises brands to squeeze suppliers, who dynamic relationships between labour, capital forward the above discussion of the in turn squeeze workers resulting in a and knowledge, have to be addressed continuing and widening disjuncture between situation where “this ‘squeezing down’ politically”. capital, and the terms and conditions facilitates a ‘sucking up’ of value from the characterizing labour deployment, most vulnerable workers at the very bottom of Lerche and Shah’s paper deconstructs and emphasizing