We take off from the recent critiques of precarity as an emerging global phenomenon to argue that the processes of precarity in the Global North and the Global South need to be analytically distinguished to bring forth their specificities. We further argue that such an analysis challenges the idea of development as transition, as is prevalent in much of the literature. We focus on the informal economy in India to show that the notion of precarity conceptually involves three distinct aspects of production and labor processes—“non-capitalist” petty commodity production (PCP), subcontracted PCP, and informal wage-labor. We argue that these dimensions have their own particularities that have distinct implications for the process of capitalist development in India. We contend that reproduction of these informal spaces during a period of high economic growth unsettles the imaginary of development as transition. JEL classifications: O17, J46, B51
We identify a basic dualism between capitalist and noncapitalist spaces within the vast informal sector in India, and show that this dualism has been reproduced and reinforced during the past decade of high economic growth. This calls into question the idea of capitalist transition that informs much of the discourse on economic development. We provide some preliminary arguments about the nature of this dualism and the process of reproduction of the noncapitalist economic space. JEL Classifications: O14, O17, J46
The severe economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global working population can be interpreted as both a fallout from, and a violent assertion of, a larger crisis in the world of work. While this crisis has been attributed to the pre-existing conditions of widespread informality and precarity in the domain of remunerative work, the authors of this article dig deeper to read these conditions and the crisis tendencies as articulations of certain key contradictions that define the world of work in the present conjuncture of global capitalism. The article highlights three specific contradictions: that between capital and labour in the 'interior' space of capital; that between capital and its 'outside'; and those emerging from 'dispersion' of the circuit of capital to its 'outside'. The 'outside' is the economic space that exists within the capitalist social formation but represents the domain of unwaged work carried out in the processes of non-capitalist production and distribution, both within and outside the space of the household. The authors argue that the expanded reproduction of capital has sharpened this triad of contradictions in the present conjuncture in specific ways in the global South and the global North through continuous informalization of work, exclusion of masses of population from the 'interior' domain of capital, and insistent dispersion of the circuit of capital to its 'outside' through various forms of 'non-standard' labour processes and work arrangements. The article provides some illustrations of how these processes have registered and contributed to the crisis situation in the times of the pandemic.
PANDEMIC, CRISIS AND CONDITIONS OF INFORMALITYThe expression 'crisis' is often used in popular discourse and scholarly imaginations to describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the All authors have contributed equally to this work. We thank the editor of this Forum issue and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on various drafts of the article.
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