The Politics of India’s Reformed Labor Model

Abstract

This chapter offers a new theoretical framework to understand Indian labor in the contemporary context of strengthening ties between the Indian state and business. Labor in the twenty-first century must be redefined to include formal and informal workers; it must be re-envisioned to include manufacturing, as well as the growth sectors of construction and services; and the relationship of labor exploitation must account for the market, as well as state politics and ideology. Drawing from the arguments of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi, historical sources, and interview data, this chapter exposes how, since the 1980s, the Indian state has used informal labor to organize consent for a powerful political project that undermines labor’s twentieth-century gains, empowers large business, and retains state legitimacy with a mass electorate. In addition to examining these hegemonic forces from above, this chapter details the potential and limits of labor’s budding countermovements emerging from below and nuances the common cries of “jobless growth” in India.