Capitalism, Inequality and Labour in India

Breman takes dispossession as his central theme in this ambitious analysis of labour bondage in India's changing political economy.

List of contents

Part I. Labour as Codified in Annals of the State: 1. The country liberated; 2. An end to servitude?; Part II. Constrained in Decrepitude: 3. The commodification of agricultural labour; 4. The class struggle launched and suppressed; 5. The Gandhian road to inclusion; Part III. The Political Economy of Boundless Dispossession: 6. The Agrarian Question posed as the social question; 7. Labour migration: going off and coming back; 8. Indebtedness as labour attachment; Part IV. Conclusion: 9. Capitalism, labour bondage and the social question.

About the author

Jan Breman is Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, and Emeritus Professor at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. He is the author of many publications, including Footloose Labour: Working in India's Informal Economy (1996), for which he was awarded the Edgar Graham Book prize by School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Summary

Jan Breman analyses labour bondage in India's changing political economy from 1962 to 2017. Focusing on what has happened since Independence, he argues that colonial rule changed the country's agrarian economy. Capitalism has led to progressive inequality, lack of welfare and the exclusion of the dispossessed from mainstream society.

Product details

• Authors: Jan Breman, Jan (Universiteit Van Amsterdam) Breman, Breman Jan
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.07.2019
• EAN: 9781108482417
• ISBN: 978-1-108-48241-7
• No. of pages: 298
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / General, India, Economic history, Labour / income economics, Labour Economics, c 2000 to c 2010, c 2000 to c 2009, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, Asian History, Sociology: work & labour, Development economics & emerging economies, c 2010 to c 2020, c 2010 to c 2019, Development economics and emerging economies, Industrialisation & Industrial History, Sociology: work and labour, c 1945 to c 2000 (Post-war period), Industrialisation and industrial history