Dragon Tamers and Elephant Trappers: Lessons from the Comparative Inquiry of Social Technologies of Flexibility in China and India

Abstract

This paper investigates the aspects of legal reforms in China and India in the context of emergent need for flexible labour due to steep economic growth. In particular, the paper examines the nature of precarious nature of labour by exploring the legal framework for worker rights, social security and termination of labourers in both countries. Challenge of labour flexibility is generated due to competing profit making as well as rapidly changing demands for products and services. However, the response by business groups, government and civil society are depending on the contested ‘social and business’ interests. As a result, the subjectivities of the individual and learning is vulnerable to this contested interest. Both the profit motives of trans-national companies in a deconstructed supply-value chain, and the strategy of the nation-states to benchmark with export-oriented market reforms for achieving economic prosperity are examined. In both countries, unorganized sector constitutes a substantial portion. Therefore, new measures for flexibility, intensifies the informalised labour processes. The paper is adopting an economic sociology approach examines the discursive nature of laws to work conditions, and the emergence of the flexible laws for internal and external flexibility. In particular the role and activities of the temp-staffing companies are examined in detail to empirically look at the way flexibility goals are pursued. China and India provide excellent cases of comparison for governance, since the societal (tradition-hierarchy based) and economic aspects (planed economy since 1950s, but recently liberalized and growing very rapidly) are similar, the legal and governance patterns are significantly different. The paper argues that in both China and India, the social networks of employers with bureaucrats to collude, with profit maximization aim for the earlier and the rent seeking aim for the latter, determine the nature of flexibility actually achieved than the letters of law itself. Corruption, being endemic in both countries, critically affects the capacity of both dragon and the elephant in a significant way to ensure a decent working condition for their labourers.