'Informalisation' of the Workforce

THIS book continues Jan Breman's journey among the dispossessed in south Gujarat. It is about "wage labour in the lower echelons of the non-agrarian economy of south Gujarat towards the end of the 20th century". The picture of the living and working conditions portrayed by Breman is far-more disturbing than that which emerges from several other accounts which focus on the dynamic elements of this region as well as the state. He also draws attention to increased labour mobility and migration in recent years, both drastically understated in official statistics, and analyses the implications of this phenomenon. The vertex of Breman's study are the two villages of Chilkhligam and Gandevigam, from where hetraverses into the neighbouring countryside and towns in the districts of Surat, Valsad and Dang, and further to sites in the neighbouring state of Maharashtra. The expectations of transition from agrarian to industrial labour upheld by theories of dualism were belied, according to Breman, by the continued existence of a large mass of unorganised and unprotected workers about whom little was known. These were by far the largest mass of workers in the landscape of south Gujarat, constituting around two-thirds to three-quarters of the non-agrarian workforce. In revisiting the informal sector concept [Breman 1976], Breman refutes the characterisation of this sector as urban and non-agrarian in which self-employment was the principal mode of employment. His estimates show wage labourers (including those working under putting-out systems) as being twice as predominant as self-employed workers. Exploring the nature of shifts in the occupational structure of halpati labourers between the early 1960s and the late 1980s in histwo original fieldwork villages, Breman finds the following main features: (I) a reduction in agricultural employment and a shift from agrarian to non-agrarian work, mainly as casual labour; (2) increased casualisation of agricultural labour; (3) increased mobility of labour; (4) a reduction in agricultural employment opportunities for women and their presence predominantly in lower paid, unskilled jobs. Three types of labour out-migration are distinguished in the study region: (a) daily commuting; (b) seasonal circulation; (c) semi or permanent settlement elsewhere. The stratification of thejob market, which restricts the lowest social groups to low paid, unskilled and casual jobs, implies that the burden of reproduction of these groups continues to be principally borne by the rural areas and very few halpatis are able to shift permanently to the urban areas. On the other hand, a significant percentage of halpatis and other low caste labourers in the study villages and the region seasonally migrate to brickworks, saltpans, quarries, urban casual labour markets, the destinations having become more diverse in the last few decades. The labourers leave their homes after harvest at the end of the monsoon and return about seven months later, before the onset of the next rainy season. The temporary departure of local labourers to distant destinations is caused not by dearth of local employment opportunities but by the fact that "a growing number of workplaces within the region are occupied by labourers brought in from far away destinations" (p 48). Focusing on the inmigration brings a similar conclusion: the inmigration of labourers is ofteii inatched by outnigration, sometimiies to the very source areas from which migrants have arrived, a point also brought out forcefully by Rensje Teerink in her study of migrant cane cutters in parallel circuits from and to Khandesh and south Gujarat [Teerink 1990]. The mass exodus and influx of cheap labour is an outstanding characteristic of the economy of south Gujarat: