Possibilities of Transformation: The Informal Sector in India

Abstract

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

Precarity and Development: Production and Labor Processes in the Informal Economy in India

“… 12 This idea of net surplus is similar to that of net accumulation fund developed and elaborated in Kesar and Bhattacharya (2019) and Bhattacharya and Kesar (2018). …”

“…The working population engaged in these non-capitalist spaces for their livelihood are driven by an economic logic of subsistence, thereby ensuring the reproduction of these processes even at precarious levels. It has been argued that much of this population may not be “needed” by capital for its reproduction in any meaningful sense, and can be considered more as a “surplus population” that is not directly functional for the process of capitalist reproduction (Sanyal 2007; Bhattacharya and Kesar 2018). 20 This is unlike the subcontracted “put-out” petty producers and the informal wageworkers who are located within the circuit of capitalist production, and can be considered, in some sense, to be internal to the process of capitalist reproduction.…”

Unpicking Precarity: Informal Work in Eastern India's Coal Mining Tracts

“…Through this discussion of two widespread forms of informal, precarious work in Jharkhand's coal mining tracts -coal peddling and truck loading -this article has sought to contribute to attempts to disaggregate the broad, related categories of precarity and 'classes of labour', and to concretize them in particular economic and social contexts. While other analyses (Bhattacharya and Kesar, 2018;Lerche, 2010;Mezzadri and Lulu, 2018;Pattenden, 2016Pattenden, , 2018 have endeavoured to distinguish structural differences across different types of precarious work and groups of labourers, this article has focused on labourers' own perspectives to illuminate how they perceive, navigate and evaluate different forms of such work vis-à-vis one another. Indeed, whereas most ethnographic studies of precarity and informality observe either a single type of labour or different types of labour carried out by different workers and/or in different contexts, this article's ethnographic comparison of coal peddling and truck loading -undertaken and alternated by the same people -allows for scrutiny of the more nuanced, graded distinctions workers make between different modalities of precarious labour, and the ways in which these influence their livelihood configurations.…”

“…Indeed, contemporary capitalism is essentially so capital‐intensive that it creates fewer (formal) jobs (Shah et al., 2018: 10). Extensive informal economies therefore continue to exist, where ‘surplus populations’ — superfluous to the needs of capital — seek their livelihoods through precarious labour practices such as casual wage labour and petty commodity production, with generally low earnings, no employment security and no welfare benefits (Bhattacharya and Kesar, 2018, 2020; Breman, 2016; Sanyal, 2007). According to recent figures, the proportion of workers in informal employment ranges from 53 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean, to 68 per cent in Asia and the Pacific, to 92 per cent in sub‐Saharan Africa (ILO, 2018).…”

Neo-Dualism: Accumulation, Distress, and Proliferation of a Fissured Informality

“…Thus, our formal-informal and intra-informal dualities are not just quantitative differences (in terms of size of enterprises). For some of such micro-foundations, we have consulted with a very recent empirical literature (Bhattacharya, Bhattacharya, and Sanyal 2013; Basole, Basu, and Bhattacharya 2015; Chakrabarti 2016; Bhattacharya and Kesar 2018) along with some of the analytical and theoretical writings mentioned earlier.…”