Setting the Backdrop

One of the turning points in India’s recent trajectory has been the liberalization of the Indian economy in response to neoliberal compulsions, which thrives on free-market regime and involves the encounter of the local with the global capital (Ramaswamy 1999; Stiglitz 2004). Briefly, the change has been from an earlier state-controlled and relatively more job-secure environment to a gradual withdrawal of the state-controlled regulationist market, which also ‘absolved the employers the responsibility of providing benefits, which usually came with tenured jobs’ (Sen and Dasgupta 2009 xiii; Corbridge and Harriss 2000). The ensuing change in the process of production – from assembly-line Fordist model to a more flexible post-Fordist regime – has also brought in with it contractual and flexible labour, particularly in the manufacturing sector in the post-1980 globalizing phase. Although it would be rather erroneous to suggest that the pre-reform period was characterized by secure jobs, the recent decades have witnessed a more insecure employment scenario. As per the National Sample Survey estimates, the share of workers in the total organized manufacturing sector was 26.47 per cent in 2010– 11 compared with 15.7 per cent in 2000–01. However, this increase has largely been attributed to the substitution of directly employed workers with contractual workers (Kapoor 2014). 1