Precariats in India: Globalization and Changing Employment Relations

Abstract

The Prime Minister of India recently announced the paradigm shift in the labour laws to boost manufacturing and facilitate the ease of doing business. In the process, the plight of workers was blatantly ignored. However, this was not the first instance of an initiative to reform policies and laws relating to land, labour and capital. These have remained contentious issues since independence and there is clear division between interest of common masses and those of the government as well as of the business sector. With diminishing access to land, capital or permanent employment in the capitalistic globalized world, most of the people are compelled to take up work on contractual basis. Earlier, contract workers were hired to do peripheral non skilled jobs. However, today, more and more people with education and skills are joining the band of 'contract workers' or 'Precariats'. And the situation is becoming worse for those working as contractual workers or Precariats in the changing economic environment, specifically in countries like India, where other social security measures are almost non-existent. This paper looks at the expansion of 'Precariats' in the given social context of globalization, privatization and labour reforms, which is being advanced to expand business to the extent that economic exigencies have surpassed social justice.

Keywords: Precariat, Precariats, Work, Globalization, India, Contract workers, labour, development, contract workers Act, labour laws