Chapter Notes

Images of Industrial Society

The study of industrial society began when thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim observed the massive changes brought about by industrialisation. They noted several key features of this new society:

• Urbanisation: A massive shift of people from rural villages to cities for work.
• Loss of Personal Relationships: In rural areas, people often worked on their own farms or for landlords they knew personally. In modern factories, these face-to-face relationships were replaced by anonymous, professional ones.
• Detailed Division of Labour: Work was broken down into small, repetitive tasks. A worker might only produce one small part of a final product and never see the finished item. This kind of work is often exhausting and unfulfilling.

Karl Marx described this lack of satisfaction and connection to one's work as alienation. Alienation is the feeling that work is just something you have to do to survive, not something you enjoy or take pride in. Survival itself becomes uncertain as technology and machines can replace human labour.

Industrialisation in India

India's experience with industrialisation has been unique, differing in many ways from the Western model. There is no single, standard path to becoming an industrial society.

The Specificity of Indian Industrialisation

A major difference lies in the employment structure.

• Developed Countries: The majority of people work in the services sector, followed by industry. Less than 10% are in agriculture.
• India (2018-19): Nearly 43% of people were employed in the primary sector (agriculture and mining). Only 17% were in the secondary (industrial) sector, and 32% were in the tertiary (services) sector.

This creates a serious problem: the sector that employs the most people (agriculture) has seen its contribution to economic growth decline sharply. This means that a large portion of the population is working in a sector that doesn't generate much income for them.

Another key difference is the nature of employment.

• Developed Countries: Most people have regular, salaried jobs in the formal sector.
• India: Over 52% of workers are self-employed, with only about 24% in regular salaried employment and another 24% in casual labour.

The Organised and Unorganised Sectors

Economists divide the economy into two sectors:

• Organised (or Formal) Sector: This includes units that employ ten or more people throughout the year. These companies must be registered with the government, which ensures employees receive proper wages, pensions, and other benefits.
• Unorganised (or Informal) Sector: This sector comprises the vast majority of work in India.

Social Implications of a Small Organised Sector:

1. Limited Social Exposure: Very few people get to work in large firms where they meet people from different regions and backgrounds. Most work happens in small-scale settings where personal relationships (like whether your employer likes you) can determine your job security and pay.
2. Lack of Job Security: Very few Indians have secure jobs with benefits like pensions. Two-thirds of those who do have secure jobs work for the government, which is why government jobs are so highly sought after.
3. Weak Worker Organisation: The unorganised sector makes it difficult for workers to form unions and collectively fight for better wages and safe working conditions. They are often left to the whims of their employer or contractor.

Globalisation, Liberalisation and Changes in Indian Industry

Since the 1990s, the Indian government has followed a policy of liberalisation. This means opening up the economy to private companies, including foreign ones, in sectors that were previously reserved for the government (like telecom and power).

Key Changes due to Liberalisation:

• Foreign Investment: Foreign firms are encouraged to invest, and foreign products are now easily available.
• Acquisitions: Many Indian companies have been bought by large multinational corporations. [!example] The Indian beverage company Parle was bought by Coca-Cola. At the time, Parle's entire annual turnover was ₹250 crores, while Coca-Cola’s advertising budget alone was ₹400 crores. This massive marketing power helped increase Coke's consumption across India.
• Disinvestment: The government is selling its shares in public sector companies. This process, known as disinvestment, often leads to job losses as private owners cut staff to increase profits. For example, after 'Modern Foods' was privatised, 60% of its workers were forced to retire within five years.
• Outsourcing and Contract Labour: Companies are reducing their number of permanent employees and outsourcing work to smaller companies or even home-based workers. This is done to cut costs, as smaller companies compete by keeping wages low and conditions poor. This makes it harder for unions to organise.

To summarise, while India's service sector and urban middle class are growing, very few people have access to secure jobs. Even government employment, a major source of secure jobs, is declining. Liberalisation and privatisation appear to be linked with rising income inequality.

How People Find Jobs

In India, only a small percentage of jobs are found through formal channels like advertisements or employment exchanges.

• Self-Employed Workers: People like plumbers, electricians, architects, and freelance photographers rely heavily on personal contacts and word-of-mouth recommendations.
• Factory Workers: In the past, factory jobs were often secured through contractors or jobbers (known as mistris in Kanpur). These mistris were workers themselves who had the owner's backing and often recruited from their own communities. Today, management and unions play a larger role in recruitment.
• Contract Work: Many factories use badli workers (substitutes for permanent workers on leave) or contract labour. These workers may work for years at the same company without getting the security or status of a permanent employee.
• Casual Labour: The contractor system is very common for hiring casual labour for construction sites or brickyards. A contractor goes to villages, offers a loan (treated as an advance wage), and transports workers to the site. The workers then have to work to pay off this debt. While they are still in debt, they are more free than traditional agricultural labourers, as they are not bound by other social obligations to the contractor and can leave to find another employer.

How is Work Carried Out?

The main goal of a manager is to control workers and get more work out of them. This is typically done in two ways:

1. Extending working hours.
2. Increasing the amount produced in a given time period.

Machinery is a key tool for increasing production, but both Marx and Mahatma Gandhi saw it as a threat to employment, as machines could eventually replace workers.

'Time Slavery' in the IT Sector

Even in the modern, knowledge-based IT sector, work is highly controlled. Software professionals, who are typically middle-class and well-educated, face what is called "time slavery."

• Long Hours: A typical workday is 10-12 hours, and staying overnight to meet a deadline is common. This is partly due to the time difference with clients in places like the U.S.
• Flexi-time Pressure: The management practice of 'flexi-time' sounds flexible, but in reality, it means employees must work as long as it takes to finish a task, often putting in extra hours and days without extra pay.

This intense work culture has social effects, such as shops and restaurants staying open late in IT hubs like Bengaluru and Hyderabad. It has also led to a re-emergence of the joint family, as working parents rely on grandparents for childcare.

Sociologist Harry Braverman argued that the use of machinery actually deskills workers. For example, where an architect once needed to be a skilled draughtsman, a computer now does much of that work.

Working Conditions

The products and services we use are often produced by people working in very poor conditions. Although the government has laws like the Mines Act of 1952 to regulate hours and safety, these are often ignored, especially in smaller mines and quarries where sub-contracting is common.

Dangers in Mining:

• Underground Mines: Workers face dangers from flooding, fire, roof collapses, and toxic gases. Many develop diseases like tuberculosis.
• Overground Mines: Workers are exposed to extreme weather and face injuries from blasting and falling objects.

India has a very high rate of mining accidents compared to other countries.

Many industries rely on migrant workers. For example, fish processing plants often employ young, single women who are housed in crowded rooms. While this work can offer some economic independence, it also leads to loneliness and vulnerability for migrants who are far from their families and communities.

Home-based Work

A significant part of India's economy is home-based work, which includes making products like lace, carpets, and bidis. This work is mainly done by women and children.

• The Process: An agent provides the raw materials and collects the finished product.
• Payment: Workers are paid on a piece-rate basis, meaning they are paid for each item they produce.

Strikes and Unions

When faced with harsh working conditions, workers sometimes resort to collective action.

• A strike is when workers refuse to go to work.
• A lockout is when the management shuts the factory gates to prevent workers from coming in.

Strikes are difficult for workers because they don't receive wages and managers may hire substitute labour.

The Bombay Textile Strike of 1982

One of the most famous strikes in India was the Bombay Textile strike of 1982, led by trade union leader Dr. Datta Samant.

• Participants: Nearly a quarter of a million workers and their families were affected.
• Demands: Workers wanted better wages and the right to form their own union.
• Outcome: The strike lasted for almost two years. Desperate without wages, workers slowly started returning to work. Nearly one lakh workers lost their jobs permanently. Some returned to their villages, while others found work in the powerloom sector in smaller towns.
• Legacy: The mill owners never modernised the mills. Today, they are trying to sell the valuable mill land in Mumbai to real estate developers to build luxury apartments, leading to a conflict over the city's future.