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INFORMAL LABOR, FORMAL POLITICS, AND DIGNIFIED DISCONTENT IN INDIA. Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics. By Rina Agarwala. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xx, 250 pp. (Tables, figures.) C$30.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-107-66308-4.
Rina Agarwala's book is quite a tour de force. Based on scrupulous research, and gracefully and clearly written, it makes an important and original contribution in two distinct fields. In the first place it adds substantially to understanding of the politics of labour in contemporary India, and through this to the wider field of labour studies in the context of neoliberal globalization; secondly, it is a first-rate contribution to comparative research on the politics of the major Indian states. It is theoretically astute, without being burdened by theoretical exegesis, and it is mercifully free from genuflection to contemporary icons of social science. The case that the book makes for the continuing relevance of class analysis is quietly but effectively done. Another of its great qualities is that the working poor speak through the pages of the book. Agarwala gives the reader a strong "feel" for the lives of the people about whom she writes.
In India the term "unorganized labour" is much more widely used than "informal labour," the concept that gained wide currency following the seminal work of the anthropologist Keith Hart in the early 1970s, referring to labour that is engaged in operations that are not legally registered and that is not regulated or protected by labour laws. Workers in such forms of employment have always accounted for most of the labour force in India, though in India, as is the case very widely across the world, the competitive pressures brought by increasing integration into the global economy...