Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Glossary
- Map 1: Western India, 1931
- Map 2: Municipal wards and districts of Bombay City, 1931
- 1 Problems and perspectives
- 2 The setting: Bombay City and its hinterland
- 3 The structure and development of the labour market
- 4 Migration and the rural connections of Bombay's workers
- 5 Girangaon: the social organization of the working-class neighbourhoods
- 6 The development of the cotton-textile industry: a historical context
- 7 The workplace: labour and the organization of production in the cotton-textile industry
- 8 Rationalizing work, standardizing labour: the limits of reform in the cotton-textile industry
- 9 Epilogue: workers' politics — class, caste and nation
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge South Asian Studies
4 - Migration and the rural connections of Bombay's workers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Glossary
- Map 1: Western India, 1931
- Map 2: Municipal wards and districts of Bombay City, 1931
- 1 Problems and perspectives
- 2 The setting: Bombay City and its hinterland
- 3 The structure and development of the labour market
- 4 Migration and the rural connections of Bombay's workers
- 5 Girangaon: the social organization of the working-class neighbourhoods
- 6 The development of the cotton-textile industry: a historical context
- 7 The workplace: labour and the organization of production in the cotton-textile industry
- 8 Rationalizing work, standardizing labour: the limits of reform in the cotton-textile industry
- 9 Epilogue: workers' politics — class, caste and nation
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge South Asian Studies
Summary
Rural migration formed the most important source of labour supply to Bombay. The fluctuations of the labour market have commonly been attributed to the migrant character of the workforce and their lack of commitment to the industrial setting. But as the previous chapter demonstrated, this is to confuse the symptoms with the problem itself. The patterns of labour use were conditioned by the structure of the city's economy; they were not simply a function of the attitudes, mentalities or culture of the workforce. Rather, the irregular and uncertain conditions of work in Bombay made it essential for most workers to retain their rural connections. The village remained integral to their social nexus in the city. But the maintenance of their rural connections cannot be understood simply as a transitional phase in the formation of the labour force in the early stages of industrialization. A recent study of the Bombay labour market in the 1970s still found that the city's working population ‘consists overwhelmingly of migrants’. Industrial development in India appears to have strengthened what are normatively described as the pre-industrial characteristics of the workforce. This chapter will investigate the rural connections of Bombay's workers and the interplay of town and country in shaping their social organization.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in IndiaBusiness Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900–1940, pp. 124 - 167Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994
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