This paper seeks to explore the economic, legal and political aspects of wages in India through the lens of the making of industrial spaces in archives of industrial labour. How did the boundaries between “shopfloor matters” and non-industrial matters contribute to the creation of insiders and outsiders within categories of ...
(Show more)This paper seeks to explore the economic, legal and political aspects of wages in India through the lens of the making of industrial spaces in archives of industrial labour. How did the boundaries between “shopfloor matters” and non-industrial matters contribute to the creation of insiders and outsiders within categories of the “working class” in-the-making? Laws applied to certain sectors, certain enterprises and groups of people who became incorporated into the legal framework. Further divisions occurred through varying definitions of workers, different payment scales, thereby reproducing and intersecting with cultural divisions of caste, class and gender. In other words, in this concept wages are not a one-dimensional line of conflict but rather mark various socio-economic aspects and divisions: its composition (basic wage, dearness allowance and bonus), its functions (subsistence/minimum wage, living wage and fair wage) and its implications in the realm of the industrialization and nation-building project.
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