Classes of Labour in comparative perspective

Classes of Labour is a monumental piece of work that will no doubt set the scene for scholarly debate on the nature of work and life in India for a long time to come. While this monograph draws on some previously published work, it contains a great deal of ethnography and analysis that will be new to the reader, even to those of us already familiar with Parry’s writings on the classes of labour in and around the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP). The explicit framing of class around the process of structuration, the location of Bhilai within the Nehruvian development project, the implications for substantive citizenships, and the comparative angle of the conclusion are but a few of the newly expanded themes in the book. Moreover, while certainly lengthy — close to 700 pages — Classes of Labour is an extremely accessible and jargon-free monograph that does not necessarily need to be read cover to cover. Each chapter stands on its own and excellent end-of-chapter summaries highlight the specific contribution each chapter makes to the overall argument of the book. I second all the appreciations of the book that have been expressed to date, and will not reiterate them here, apart from stating that both the depth and breadth of the material covered are truly exceptional, and the quality of the ethnography and analysis unparalleled. Here, I would like to make one main and two smaller reflections on the book based on my reading of it in light of my own empirical research on labouring classes in Tamil Nadu. My main aim is to identify ways in which future scholarship can build on Classes of Labour and explore further avenues for the study of labour and class across India. My first reflection is that Classes of Labour is the first study in over 20 years that seeks to present a novel guide map to ‘read’ the landscape of labour in India. Since the earlier works of Breman, Holmström and Harriss of the 1970s and 1980s, all carefully reviewed in chapter 2, no scholars have attempted to map the Indian economy and society in as comprehensive a way as Parry does in this monograph. We are presented with a new map to help us make sense not only of how people in India are slotted into labour markets, but also of how their specific insertion is shaping their social lives more broadly — from their experiences of childhood, marital lives, and places of residence, to their outlooks on the future, the nature of their citizenship,


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and even their propensity to suicide. Organised around the processes of class structuration and inspired by both Weber and Giddens, this book provides us with a novel analytical framework to reconceptualise the Indian world of work. The landscape of labour that emerges in the book clearly replaces the earlier image of a mountain slope, marked by gradations of labouring classes, with that of a more closed-off citadel of naukri (held by the government employees of the steel plant) against which all other kam (work in private firms and the informal economy) looks like a rather bare plain. Or, in Parry's own words: 'there is still much to be said for the citadel, and that a class analysis of the landscape of labour in Bhilai is more revealing … than an analysis in terms of a multiplicity of strata ' (2020: 56). The evidence for this is convincing. In the case of Bhilai at least, there exists a clear labour elite with benefits and rewards that the majority outside of the permanent BSP labour force can only dream of. Comparisons with other sites, undertaken in the last chapter of the book, reveal a remarkably similar picture across steel manufacturing towns in terms of a clear class boundary between a permanent labour force and all the rest, even though that boundary might be drawn in slightly different places in different sites.
Parry's analysis does raise an important question of comparison, one which Breman too picks up on in his review of Classes of Labour (2021). Breman does not consider Parry's class analysis applicable to, for example, Ahmedabad, where he argues 'labour is not split up in a two-class dichotomy but spreads out over a wider range of employment-cum-livelihood modalities ' (2021: 143). Here, graded inequality, shaped by the class-caste nexus, prevails, marked by different classes of labour that each have their own boundaries, life and work experiences, and limits to mobility. Here, the main naukri-kam fault line seems less salient. So, what explains their differences? In my view, both authors provide ample and convincing evidence of the specific contexts they describe, but they rather under-emphasise the very specificity -and to some extent even exceptionality -of those contexts. What does the landscape of industrial labour -and indeed this particular class divide -look like in India's many cities, towns and villages where no BSP, RSP or DSP can be found at all. In the vast majority of working sites across India, the economy is not only largely informal but also highly dispersed, fragmented and made up of numerous small-scale ventures that offer various degrees of pay, job security and opportunity for collective organising. How then can we apply the above class analysis to places where the landscape of labour is not organised around a domineering (state) enterprise that structures the surrounding economic environment, and where class divisions are not created by interventions from the Nehruvian state in the shape of a major state-owned and run enterprise? Furthermore, what form does the process of class structuration take in the many places of work where a labour elite of the sort documented in Bhilai is largely absent? What are the 'salient fault lines,' to stay with Parry's language, that set different groups of workers apart from one another in such places? Do smaller industrial centres, towns and villages also have a singular fault line, such as the one between naukri and kam, or do we end up with smaller and more graded distinctions between social classes of labour? And, what role do caste, ethnicity and gender play in the shaping of those fault lines? This is not to reject either Parry or Breman's maps -which I think are absolutely apt for the contexts studied -but to set an agenda for future research on classes of labour and processes of class structuration in places that less resemble the large industrial centres mentioned above. How are classes formed and how do they transform into social classes in such sites? Parry himself acknowledges that the processes identified in Bhilai may not easily transfer onto the maps of labour elsewhere and that class structuration is likely to unfold differently according to context. Indeed, class structuration, he writes in his reply to Breman, 'is a continuous process that is never complete and class boundaries are never finally crystallized. When they approach that state, however, the labour elite emerges as a distinct class cut off from other segments of the manual workforce. When to the contrary structuration is weak, the barriers are low and the fault line between them may not appear that much more significant than other breaks on the labour hierarchy, which will look more ladder-like than dichotomous ' (2021: 156).
Multiple breaks and a ladder-like hierarchy might well be the outcome in the vast majority of India's work environments. Tiruppur, India's leading garment manufacturing and export centre in Tamil Nadu, is a place that I am most familiar with. Tiruppur city and its wider region are dotted with a multitude of private enterprises -both large and small -in which very few workers have anything resembling the perks of the permanent BSP worker. Some are certainly more regularly employed and with more benefits than others, but the multiple fault lines are rarely overlapping. The best earning tailors, for example, may well be employed in the least secure jobs and lack any social benefits. Those enjoying more regular work in large private firms, by contrast, are likely to take home a much smaller pay cheque than the tailors who follow contractors from one subcontracting unit to another. How do we apply the above class analysis to such work environments? Do we only have one labour class there -an underclass resembling Parry's description of the lower rungs of the private and informal economy? Or do we resort to the picture of a slope with gradations of security, permanency, etc. Or does the most salient class divide fall in a different place, perhaps between company managers and its manual labour force? Or, do we need to rethink our class analysis here altogether? The scope for future scholarship remains wide open, to say the least.
My second reflection regards Parry's analysis of informal labour in Bhilai, unpacked in great detail across chapters 8 and 9, which zoom in on the private sector and the informal economy that surround the steel plant. Here, Parry sketches a picture of gradually less secure, less well rewarded and more taxing work, without any state benefits or any form of union representation. One individual caught my attention. His name is Kedarnath, who hails from an ex-untouchable caste in rural Bihar. Having worked in various jobs across India, he landed in Bhilai in 1984 where -after ups and downs -he finally established himself as a rather successful construction contractor. By 2003, he employed about 50-60 workers on 6 different sites, and later even obtained large construction contracts in his own right. He owned a pick-up truck, cement mixers, invested in land, and bought a house in a middle-class residential neighbourhood (2020: 366). We don't learn very much more about his personal life, but I wonder whether today -by Parry's own definition -Kedarnath could be called middle-class and I also wonder in what ways he would differ from members of the permanent BSP workforce in terms of social class position? Of course, one can see that his contracts and earnings are probably far less secure than those of a regular BSP worker, but his income may well exceed the latter's monthly take-home pay by a phenomenal amount. Kedarnath's life trajectory also reveals a remarkable example of upward mobility, even though it is of course highly gendered, and could no doubt more easily be reversed. His story nonetheless raises the question of what routes other than that of naukri exist towards the world of the middle-class? What alternative pathways -outside of regular BSP employment -may propel one into the social middle class, with its recognisable life experiences and consumption patterns? Could enterprise and self-employment at the fringes of the steel plant economy possibly be one of them?
My final reflection relates to something that was quite new to me in Classes of Labour. It regards the political implications of the above class analysis, particularly in terms of citizenship. Class, Parry argues, 'undermines the equal claims of citizens' (2020: 59). While the state is supposed to be the guarantor of the rights of all its citizens, what we see in Bhilai is that through its policies and legislation, the state has paradoxically created a class division that provides substantive citizenship to only a small and shrinking minority. For the many, meaningful citizenship (beyond the formal right to vote) remains a largely unachievable goal. Parry's point, that this divide between citizen and denizen is of the state's own making, and that this is what contributes to the undoing of Nehru's vision for democracy in India, cannot be overstated. In his own words, it is not caste but class that 'robs Indian democracy of its reconstructive energy ' (2020: 34). Whereas in Western countries miners and steelworkers typically acted as the militant vanguard of the working classes, pulling up the rights of less privileged sections of the labour force below them, in Bhilai the labour elite pursued its own interests leaving those below it to fend for themselves and their rights.
This insight can usefully be applied beyond Bhilai as few workers across India avail of substantive citizenship rights. Parry asks at the end of the first chapter -what is wrong with Nehru's vision and what possibilities does it still have? The answer to this question appears to remain open. Did the vision -the idea of expanding democracy and citizenship through flagship projects of inclusion -fade because of its impossible implementation? As Parry shows, one weakness of the vision is that it could never be extended to more than just a few million working class people across India during its heydays, and that even the size of this small group of beneficiaries started shrinking quite drastically from the 1970s. Or, was the vision itself misguided, in that from the outset it tied rights, entitlements and citizenship to state employment rather than seeking to guarantee such rights for all irrespective of employment status? Perhaps the recent Right to Food, Right to Work, and Unorganised Workers' Social Security Acts are trying to steer neoliberal India into a direction of guaranteeing at least some basic citizenship rights for all. The verdict on their success is obviously still out, but further comparative work on the citizenship implications of class formation could be highly insightful.
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