• Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim associated number of social

features with industry, such as

 urbanization.
 Loss of face to face relationship found in rural areas
 Anonymous professional relationship in factories and workplaces.
• Detailed division of labour
• Work in factories repetitive and exhausting, not able to see the end
FEATURES OF product
INDUSTRIALISATION • Alienation- people don’t own product, don’t enjoy the act of work (done
for survival), alienated from self and others.
• Industrialisation leads to greater equality also. Example- caste
distinctions do not matter on trains and buses or in cyber cafes.
• Still older forms of discrimination may exist like domination of upper
caste men in well paying professions like medicine, law or journalism
• Women being paid less than men.
 • The experience of industrialization in India in many ways is
similar to western model. Comparative analysis can be
made between developed and developing countries.

SPECIFICITY OF
INDIAN
INDUSTRIALISATION
 ORGANISED AND UNORGANISED
SECTOR
ORGANISED UNORGANISED
• Registered by government. • Not registered with the government. Small and
• Consists units employing ten or more people scattered units outside the control of government.
throughout the year
• Rules and regulations are followed here- Factories Act, • Rules and regulations are there but not followed.
Minimum Wages Act etc.
• Benefits like Provident Fund, paid leave, medical
benefits. • No such benefits given
• Fixed working hours and fixed salary • Working hours are not fixed and paid less than
• Job security.
minimum.

• Recruitment is transparent and mechanism for • No job security.

complaints and redressal. • No such provision provided.
• Working conditions are favorable • Working conditions are not favorable.
• Can form trade unions • Cannot form trade unions
 • The social implications of small size of the organized sector can be seen
as follows
1. First, it means very few people have the experience of employment in
large firms where they get to meet people from other regions.
 Small scale workplaces characterized by personal relationships and
different aspects of work determined by will of the employer is different
from large organisations with well defined rules with more transparent
SOCIAL recruitment.

IMPLICATIONS OF  Organised sector provides mechanisms for complaints and redressal if

you disagree with immediate superior.
SMALL SIZE OF 2. Second, very few Indians have access to secure government jobs with
ORGANISED SECTOR benefits. Rest are dependent on children in their old age.
 Government employment helps overcome boundaries of caste, religion
and region.
 Thus communal riots never took place in place like Bhilai as it employs
people from all over India who work together.
3. Third, since very few people are members of union, they lack experience
of collectively fighting for proper wages and safe working conditions.
 government has laws to monitor conditions in the unorganized sector,
but in practice they are left to the whims and fancies of the employer or
contractor
 • First modern industries in India- cotton, jute, coal mines, railways.
• Post independence government took over commanding height of the
economy like defense, transport and communication, power, mining
and other projects.
• India adopted mixed economy under which some sectors were
reserved for the government while others under private sector.

INDUSTRIALISATION • Government through licensing policy ensured industries were spread

over different regions.
IN EARLY YEARS OF • Before independence, industries were located in port cities like
Madras, Bombay, Calcutta but later places like Baroda, Bangalore,
INDEPENDENCE Pune, Rajkot became important industrial centres
• Government encouraged small scale industries through special
incentives and assistance.
• Small items like paper and wood products, stationary, glass and
ceramics were reserved for small scale sector.
• Post 1991, large scale industry employed only 28% of the total
workforce engaged in manufacture, while small scale and traditional
industries employed 72%.
 • Since 1990s, the government followed a policy of liberalisation.
• Private companies (foreign firms) are encouraged to invest in sectors earlier
reserved for the government, including telecom, civil aviation, power etc.
• Licenses no linger required to open industries.
• Ease of availability of foreign products
• Indian companies being brought over by multinationals.
• For instance parle drinks was brought by Coca Cola. Coca Cola’s advertisements
GLOBALISATION, cost more than Parle’s annual turnover.

LIBERALISATION AND • This increased the consumption of coke across India, replacing traditional drinks.

CHANGES IN INDSIA
 • Disinvestment is a process in which the government sells its
share in several public sector companies.
• Government workers are scared of disinvestment as it might
result in loss of jobs.
• In Modern Foods, set up by the government to make healthy
bread available at cheap prices was the first company to be
privatized with 60% of the workforce forced to retire in the
DISINVESTMENT first 5 years.
 • More and more companies are reducing the number of permanent
employees and outsourcing work to smaller companies and or even to
homes.
• For MNCs, outsourcing is done across the globe, with developing
countries like India providing cheap labour.
• Because small companies have to compete for orders from big
companies, they keep wages low and working conditions are poor.
• It is difficult for trade unions to organize in smaller firms.
WORLDWIDE • This trend of outsourcing is practiced by almost all companies, even the
government ones.
TRENDS • Due to rise of contract labour, in India very few people have access to
secure jobs.
• Government employment which was the major avenue for the
population is coming down.
• At the same time as secure employment in large industry is declining,
the government is embarking on policy of land acquisition for industries.
• Industries cause major pollution and farmers, especially adivasis
constituting approximately 40% of the displaced are protesting at low
rates of compensation and are forced to become casual labour.
 • In the contemporary context, newspaper advertisements is one of the
ways of finding jobs but only a small percentage of people get jobs
through this or through employment exchange.
• Self employed (plumbers, electricians, carpenters) rely on personal
contacts. Technology has made it possible to cater to wider circle.
• Job recruitment as a factory worker takes a different pattern. In the past
HOW PEOPLE FIND work was given through contractors or jobbers.
JOBS • These jobbers or mistris were themselves workers coming from same
regions and communities as workers but had backing of the owner.
• Today importance of jobber has come down and both management and
union plays a role in recruiting their own people.
• There is contract work system in organized sector.
CONTRACTOR SYSTEM

• Many factories employ badli workers, substitute for permanent

workers on leave.
• Many of such workers have worked for many tears in the same
company but devoid of same status and security. This is called
contract work in the organized sector.
• The contract system is most visible in the hiring of casual laboue for
work on construction sites, brickyards etc.
• Contractor hires people from village, loaning money for transport
which is treated as an advance wage and the workers works
without wages till loan is repaid.
• However workers though in debt are not bound by social
obligations to the contractor and can break the contract and fund
another employer. So more free in an industrial society.
• Sometimes whole family migrates and children help their parents.
 HOW IS WORK CARRIED OUT
TASK OF MANAGER MAKING WORKER PRODUCE MORE

Extend
working Organizing
hours work
Get more
Control out of Speed production
workers workers Increase amount
through scientific
produced within
management or
given time
assembly line
period
production
INCREASING OUTPUT

 Output can be increased by either extending the working hours or

increasing the amount produced.
 Machines help to increase production but also creates danger of
replacing workers. Both Marx and Mahatma Gandhi saw mechanization
as danger to employment.
 Another way of increasing output is by organizing work. For instance
1890s, Frederick Winslow Taylor introduced the system of Scientific
Management also known as Taylorism or industrial engineering.
 Under this system all work was broken down into its smallest repetitive
elements and divided between workers.
 Workers were timed with the help of stopwatches and had to fulfill
certain target daily.
 Production was speeded up with assembly line production- worker sat
along a conveyor belt and assembled only one part of final product.
 In 1980s attempt made to shift from direct to indirect control with
workers motivating and monitoring themselves but old Taylorist
process survive.
 • Workers in textile mills, oldest industries in India often described
themselves as extensions of machines.
• The more mechanized the industry gets, the fewer people are
employed, but they too have to work at the pace of the machine.
• For instance Maruti Udyog Ltd., two cars roll off assembly line
every minute.
• Workers gets only 45 min rest in entire day- two tea breaks of 7.5
min each and half hour lunch break.

MECHANISATION IN • Most of them are exhausted by the age of 40 and take voluntary
retirement.
INDUSTRIES • While production has gone up, number of permanent jobs in
factories has gone down.
• Firm outsources services like cleaning, security and manufacturing
of parts.
• Part suppliers are located around factories and send parts every 2
hours or just-in-time.
• Outsourcing and just-in-time keeps costs low but if supplies fail to
arrive, production targets are delayed.
• Hence the workers are very tense and gets exhausted.
 SERVICE SECTOR

• Software professionals are middle class and well educated.

• Their work is supposed to be self-motivated and creative.
• But this sector is also subject to Taylorist labour process.
• IT sector is marked by 10-12 hours average workday and overnight stay if facing
project deadline
• Long working hours in part is due to time difference between India and client site so
that conference calls take place in evening with working day beginning in US.
• Another reason is that overwork is built into structure of outsourced project.
• Extended working hours are legitimized by practice of flexi-time, in theory giving
freedom to choose working hours but in practice have to work as long as necessary
to finish task at hand.
• Even in absence of real work pressure, they stay late in office either due to peer
pressure or because they want to show their boss that they are working late.
• As a result of these working hours, in places like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurgaon,
where many IT firms are located, shops and restaurants have changed their opening
hours
• Children put in creches if both parents work late.
• Joint family which disappeared with industrialization have re-emerged with
grandparents roped in to care for children.
 • One important debate in sociology is whether industrialization and shift
to services and knowledge based work like IT leads to greater skills in
society.
• ‘Knowledge Economy’ is used to describe the growth of IT in /india.
• But how to compare skills of a farmer who knows how to grow crops
DE-SKILLING based on his understanding of weather, soil and sees with that of the
knowledge of a software professional.
WORKERS • Both are skilled in different ways.
• Harry Braverman argues that the use of machinery actually deskills
workers.
• For instance whereas earlier, architects and engineers had to be skilled
droughtsmen, now the computer does a lot of work for them.
 • The government has passed a number of laws to regulate
working conditions.
• coal mines employ 5.5 lakh workers. The Mines Act, 1952
specifies the maximum number of hours a person can be
made to work in a week, pay overtime and safety rules.
• Big companies may follow these rules but not smaller mines
WORKING and quarries.
• Sub-contracting is widespread. Contractors don’t maintain
CONDITIONS proper register of workers.
• Avoids responsibility for accidents and benefits
• They don’t even cover up the open holes and restore the
area to its earlier condition after the mining has finished.
BAD CONDITIONS IN MINES

• Workers in underground mines face very dangerous

conditions due to:
Flooding
Fire
Collapse of roofs and sides
Emission of gases
Ventilation failures
• Workers develop breathing problems and diseases
like tuberculosis and silicosis.
• Workers work in both hot sun and rain and face
injuries due to mine blasting, falling objects etc.
• Rate of mining accidents in India is very high
compared to other countries.
 • In many industries, the workers are migrants.
• The fish processing plants along the coastline employ mostly
single young women from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala.
• Ten-twelve of them are housed in small rooms
• Young women are seen as submissive workers.
• Many men migrate singly, either unmarried or leaving their
MIGRANT WORKERS families in the village.

IN INDUSTRIES • In 1992, 85% of the 2 lakh Oriya migrants in Surat were single.
• These migrants have little time to socialize and little time and
money they can spend is with other migrant workers.
• From a nation of interfering joint families, the nature of work in
globalized economy is taking people in the direction of loneliness
and vulnerability.
• But for many women, it also represents some independence and
economic autonomy.
HOME BASED WORK

• Homebased work includes manufacture of lace, zari, carpets, bidis etc.

• Work done mainly by women and children
• An agent provides raw material and picks finished products.
• Workers are paid on piece-rate basis i.e. number of products they make.

BIDI INDUSTRY
 Villagers pluck tendu leaves and sell to forest department or private contractors
who sell it to forest department.
 On average 100 bundles (50 leaves each) collected in a day.
 Government auctions leaves to bidi factory owners who give it to contractors.
 Contractor supplies tobacco and leaves to home based workers, mostly women
who roll the bidis, first dampening the leaves, then cutting them, filling tobacco
and tying them with thread.
 Contractor picks up these bidis and sell them to the manufacturer who roasts
them and puts his own brand label.
 Manufacturer then sells them to a distributor who distributes the packed bidis
to wholesalers who in turn sell to young neighbourhood pan shops.
 • Many workers form part of trade unions which in India have to
overcome a number of problems such as regionalism and
casteism.
• In response to harsh working conditions. Sometimes workers
go on strikes.

STRIKES- Workers LOCKOUT- Management

STRIKES AND do not go to work shuts the gate and prevents
UNIONS workers from coming

WHY IS IT DIFFICULT TO CALL STRIKE:

• Managers may try to use substitute workers.
• Workers also find it hard to sustain themselves without
wages.
 • Bombay Textile Strike (1982) led by trade union leader Dr Datta Samant
affected nearly quarter million workers and families.
• Strike lasted nearly 2 years.
• Workers wanted better wages and right to form own union.
• According to Bombay Industrial Relations Act, union had to be approved
and can be done if they gave up the idea of strikes.
• The Congress led Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh was the only approved
STRIKES AND TRADE union and helped break the strike by bringing in other workers.
UNION • Government refused to listen to the demands and 2 years later out of
desperation people started going back to work.
• One lakh workers lost their jobs and went to villages or took casual
labour, others moved to smaller towns to work in powerloom sector.
• Mill owners did not invest in machinery and modernisation.
• They tried to sell the mill land to real estate dealers to build luxury
apartments, leading to battle over who will define future of Bombay- the
workers who built it or mill owners and real estate agents.
MECHANISATION IN • .
INDUSTRIES
 FEATURES OF
INDUSTRIALISATION
 FEATURES OF
INDUSTRIALISATION