The study of industrial labour in post-colonial India - The informal sector: A concluding review

Though many had expected that industrialisation would lead India to both a modernisation of production and a universal 'freeing' of labour; this has n ot happened. Instead new forms of tying labour are emerging. Simultaneously labour relations are in a process of radical change because, though impove rished labourers may still be tied by debt, tied relations today are very l argely economic in content They are increasingly bereft of the extra-econom ic control and coercion that rural employers used to exert over their labou r forces. For this reason it is argued that, rather than a process of 'depr oletariansation', it is a very slow and uneven process of the self-won eman cipation of labour that is under way. These emancipatory processes are grea tly endangered by policies that seek to deregulate labour, and for this rea son the World Bank's uncritical endorsement of deregulation is found to be deeply flawed.