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The India–Bangladesh border is the world's fifth longest land border, a focus of political tension in an area with vibrant informal economies. Cross-border communities share culture and language and informal cross-border trade (ICBT) is well-established. This article explores ICBT on the Indian side of the border, examining its actors, power relations and spatial dimensions, and the vulnerabilities of those involved. Debates on the social and cultural roots of ICBT, and the vulnerability of small-scale entrepreneurs to a complicit state, and powerful middlemen in lucrative sectors of ICBT, inform the analysis. The trade is theorized through the lens of jugaad, the Indian term for 'making do' and 'instinctive creativity'. The research draws on case studies of three cross-border sectors, everyday trade in small household goods, the politically sensitive cattle trade, and cross-border medical/healthcare services. The mechanisms of jugaad are seen to some degree in all three case studies, but heavy state regulation gives advantage to controlling middlemen and state officials. Finally, we argue that ICBT is a critical component of the wider political economy in the border regions of West Bengal, and that the forgotten sector of ICBT could, if supported by light-touch regulation, have important poverty-reduction potential in enabling livelihoods for marginalized border communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home-based work is among the largest forms of employment in the informal economy in India and is overwhelmingly represented by women. Employing a social reproduction framework that reframes what is counted as labor, this article asks how women's unpaid work activities are appropriated as labor in subcontracted home-based work. Applying this analytical framework, it becomes clear that domestic work in the home, often completed by women, is needed and exploited in this production process as a result of gendered constructs of care. The contribution considers how unpaid work is directly appropriated by capital as surplus value. The context of informal work is key here because of the irregular and fragmented production process, the space where work occurs, and the use of unpaid family workers. The goal of this research is to offer empirical evidence that broadens analytical perspectives to account for the context of informality in the Global South. HIGHLIGHTS Subcontracted home-based work in India relies on a gendered, fragmented, and precarious labor force. Unpaid caregiving and household work directly contributes to profit-making. Western analytical concepts of the economy need to be reexamined in the context of the postcolonial informal economies. Research tools that measure economic participation need to capture how unpaid activities directly or indirectly contribute to economic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying collective action in the platform economy against the backdrop of the informal economy in India, I make two arguments that show how work organization in the platform economy enables collective action and distinguishes it from the informal sector. First, I argue that platform work organization through algorithmic work allocation, high employer visibility and algorithmic rather than direct managerial control makes collective action possible. In the informal economy, layers of middlemen often obscure the employment relationship by denying workers a clear contender and the opportunity to develop relationships of solidarity. Second, platform workers address their demands to two targets: the platform company and the state. Informal worker unions have no single, identifiable employer and traditionally confine their demands to the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the nuances of the experiences of waiting for state-issued documents and state welfare. Waiting as an everyday experience forms an important aspect of the relationship between socio-economically marginalised groups and the state institutions. In order to examine this relationship, this paper draws upon eight interviews, conducted during December 2017 to February 2018 and in January 2019, among pheriwale. Pheriwale are self-employed traders, in Delhi, India, who collect huge amounts of second-hand/used-clothes and sell them forward to make a living. They largely work in highly precarious informal work environments, lack social security and depend on irregular income. However, as residents of India, they are also regulated through various state measures such as being registered within the national biometric database, as bank account holders and as recipients of public welfare provisions. By focusing on the experiences of pheriwale, findings show that waiting is shaped through intersecting hierarchies of gender, class and caste in the context of India. This article elucidates that a conceptualisation of waiting cannot overlook how the act of waiting for state-issued documents is tied into politics of recognition and redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gig work has been considered 'disruptive' by platforms for its market efficiency, but concerns around precarity of work in the Global North have been raised since the early 2000s. In India, the dominance of informal work makes precarious work the norm, thus begging the question, does gig work disrupt or extend this precarity in new directions? Based on in-depth interviews with gig workers in India, this paper explores the relations between the informal economy and platform-based gig work in India with a focus on the experiences of workers. The paper argues that, much like informal work, gig workers bear a disproportionate risk, with their work regulated by social identities of caste and gender that determine entry and exit from work. The digital mediation of work in the gig economy extends such existing social relations of informal work into gig work, especially as labour remains deregulated by the Indian state. Through this, India points us in the direction of what the future of work may be for workers in a global digitised gig economy where such precarious and insecure work is now increasingly entrenched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The many Muslim women who make up India's burgeoning informal economy, challenge any attempt to reduce them to homemakers whose lives are delimited by culture and religion. An examination of their lives reveals the complex forces that shape their worlds, and illuminates how they variously negotiate landscapes of inequality in contemporary India. Here I focus on the biography of one Muslim widow to illustrate how she labours to live and dream in contemporary India as various social forces intersect to create precarity in her life. While neoliberal priorities and a shrinking social safety-net affect underprivileged women across religious lines, the intersection of gender, class, and religion in Hindu majoritarian India has made it even more challenging for low-income Muslim women like her to make ends meet. However, dominant forces are not totalising, and the biographical method reveals how one woman negotiates precarity, employing various skills as she adapts to changing conditions, juggling multiple jobs to meet expenses, and envisioning a better future. We see not just the deep inequalities that create precarity for some, but also how dreams can be a material force in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper examines India's tryst with welfare/dis-fare with a specific focus on Modi Sarkar's (2014–2019) dirigiste style reforms. In the welfare regime research, Esping-Andersen (1990) classified advanced economies into three ideal-types of liberal, conservative-corporatist and social-democratic welfare states by government-led welfare provisions and levels of decommodification. The classical typology discussions include countries such as India which is classified as informal-insecurity regime due to a large informal economy with no social security for workers. Based on theoretical standpoints of the political economy of welfare states, comparative historical institutionalism and critical junctures this article examines Modifare has expanded formal welfare to its citizens. Design/methodology/approach: The article uses crisp-set analysis to examine the social policy developments under Modi's regime in India. Findings: This paper examines if the centre-right Modi government did bring about a radical departure from UPA I and II lacklustre welfare approach to the more strategic use of welfare reforms as a political weapon on a national scale. It concludes that Modi-fare falls short in being transformatory. Originality/value: The article is an original contribution to the field of comparative welfare regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the 'patchwork adaptability' of low-income residents living in south-eastern Bangalore in India to demonstrate the socially embedded ways that city dwellers patch their water supply gaps. Drawing upon site visits and semi-structured interviews in three neighbourhood enclaves, the discussion highlights how residents cope with difficult and water-insecure contexts despite the municipality's resource governance failures. While we encourage appreciation of the remarkable resilience that low-income populations in Bangalore exhibit, the evidence lays bare the need for more government support to help low-income residents navigate water insecurity in ways that require less time-intensive labour and social networking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sorting waste at-source (or household recycling) helps optimize the efficiency of waste management systems and safeguard the health of waste handlers. Recently, segregation of waste has become an urgent policy imperative that has been written into national waste management policies in India. While urban Indian households have had a long-standing tradition of segregating and selling high-value recyclables to actors in the informal sector, in contemporary policy discourse, women are constructed as recalcitrant urban subjects who need to be disciplined in accordance with the new mandates of waste segregation. This paper locates these processes of subject formation within the changing political economy of waste. Waste sorting is a labor-intensive process, and certain waste management technologies require presorted materials. In addition, presorted recyclables also offer up a source of revenue for waste management service providers. Beyond seeing the need for source segregation simply in abstract environmental and public health interests, this paper argues for contextualizing this imperative within the ongoing processes of privatization and mechanization of waste management systems. These processes dispossess informal waste collectors from their means of subsistence while relying on the unpaid labor of certain women, thus reproducing gender, class, and caste relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, there are 2 billion 'informal' workers, who lack access to social protection while facing profound health risks and socioeconomic exclusions. The informal economy has generated most jobs in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), but few studies have explored informal workers' complex health vulnerabilities, including in the face of climate change. This paper will discuss recent action-research in Indore (India), Harare, and Masvingo (Zimbabwe) with informal workers like vendors, waste-pickers, and urban farmers. We conducted qualitative interviews (N = 110 in India), focus group discussions (N = 207 in Zimbabwe), and a quantitative survey (N = 418 in Zimbabwe). Many informal workers live in informal settlements ('slums'), and we highlight the interrelated health risks at their homes and workplaces. We explore how climate-related threats—including heatwaves, drought, and floods—negatively affect informal workers' health and livelihoods. These challenges often have gender-inequitable impacts. We also analyse workers' individual and collective responses. We propose a comprehensive framework to reveal the drivers of health in the informal economy, and we complement this holistic approach with a new research agenda. Our framework highlights the socioeconomic, environmental, and political determinants of informal workers' health. We argue that informal workers may face difficult trade-offs, due to competing priorities in the face of climate change and other risks. Future interventions will need to recognise informal workers' array of risks and co-develop multifaceted solutions, thereby helping to avoid such impossible choices. We recommend holistic initiatives to foster health and climate resilience, as well as participatory action-research partnerships and qualitative, intersectional data-collection with informal workers. • Climate change is exacerbating many risks to informal workers' health and livelihoods. • WASH access may foster gender equality and decent work, while tackling heat stress. • Policymakers can partner with informal workers to create inclusive, multi-pronged interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of informality in promoting sustainable living is often not part of the discourse on emerging perspectives on sustainable living. This paper brings in the perspective of the so-called 'unorganised sector' that deals with most of the recycling and waste management. This is examined through the political ecology themes of environmental conservation and social justice. For the purpose of this study, waste collectors in and around the National Capital Region (NCR) were interviewed about their work in the informal sector as an important link in the chain of recycling waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has emerged as a crisis that has impacted all spheres of human life. The pandemic has disproportionately impacted the world's poor population in terms of livelihood and survival. India witnessed a massive crisis among migrant workers. In this context, this paper explores the impact of COVID-19 on women migrant workers and their families, analyzing qualitative interviews in two localities in Delhi and in Gurugram in Haryana State. Six themes were developed from the interview data about the impacts on, and experiences of, women migrant workers: loss of livelihood and resulting debt; compromises; captivity and the burden of responsibility; disrupted access; emotional geographies of COVID-19; and insufficient support. The study underlines the dismal state of women migrant workers and their families and argues that urgent policy interventions are required to address the impoverishment they are experiencing. The strengthening of social security measures is of the utmost importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We take off from the recent critiques of precarity as an emerging global phenomenon to argue that the processes of precarity in the Global North and the Global South need to be analytically distinguished to bring forth their specificities. We further argue that such an analysis challenges the idea of development as transition, as is prevalent in much of the literature. We focus on the informal economy in India to show that the notion of precarity conceptually involves three distinct aspects of production and labor processes—"non-capitalist" petty commodity production (PCP), subcontracted PCP, and informal wage-labor. We argue that these dimensions have their own particularities that have distinct implications for the process of capitalist development in India. We contend that reproduction of these informal spaces during a period of high economic growth unsettles the imaginary of development as transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The scholarship on innovation hitherto has prioritized exchange value, scalability and large scale commercialization, overlooking the other significant human centric values discussed in 'value theory'. Consequently, innovations in the informal economy are often undermined due to their inability to generate exchange values. This paper identifies and examines the suitability of the nuanced set of values discussed in value theory for informal sector grassroots innovations. Based on ten years of ethnographic research in different parts of Jammu and Kashmir in India, we find that these innovations generate a diverse set of values, ranging from use value to socially embedded reciprocal exchange value to different forms of relational and non-relational intrinsic values. At a juncture when strengthening alternative innovation approaches occupies a priority, these findings have important bearing on innovation policy scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay compares how digital money is conceptualized by the government with sense-making and practices among women workers in North India. The government promotes and envisions a future with large sections of the population within the fold of 'Digital India'. The policy rhetoric emphasizes capacity building, both in terms of improving infrastructure and training. However, in its positive narratives, the inclusion of peripherals in the government of the digital economy. Further, through focus group discussions and interviews carried out with women working at the intersection of formal and informal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in comparative capitalism has seen an increasing interest in emerging economies and has made attempts at integrating the informal economy as a distinct and significant feature of the institutional configuration and reproduction of contemporary capitalisms. The way this has been achieved, however, is problematic as it has mainly worked with a dualist notion of the formal and informal economies, thereby making it difficult to conceptualise any interlinkages. This article argues that the relation between the formal and informal economies needs to be conceptualised as an interlocking one in order to analyse the constitutive place the informal economy has in the dynamics of formal institutions as well as the overall institutional configuration of emerging capitalisms. A focus on interlockages helps in conceptualising diversity, by bringing the heterogeneity of social relations within the formal and informal economies to the fore. This focus also allows for a more nuanced understanding of the distribution of resources across institutions and actors, and how change is shaped by struggles within specific interlocking configurations. India serves as a useful example in this respect insofar as the centrality of the informal economy to Indian capitalism can be shown to be due to the specific interlockages as opposed to the, probably more eye catching, size of its informal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review article uses India's e-waste economy to examine changes in the circular economy. Today, due to a mix of consumptive economies, urban ecological concerns and its disposal in the informal economy, e-waste governance is a critical issue for the country like it is elsewhere. Drawing on preliminary ethnographic findings in the e-waste sector in Jaipur, this review challenges some of the findings on surplus labour by observing the longstanding domination of caste and kinship structures in the domestic e-waste trade. I argue that we need to study expanding spatialities of e-waste through multi-site ethnographies and a focus on context specificities that would enrich our theorization of waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents original research on relations between middle-class residents and informal-sector workers in Delhi, India. It shows how middle-class associations used their consumption preferences as well as relationships with local authorities to legitimize the work of street hawkers and waste workers. These findings suggest that the toleration of informality can be traced to governance regimes comprised of both state and non-state powerbrokers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• On-demand recycling startups have proliferated in urban India over the past decade. • A host of seemingly disparate policies have together enabled this rise. • Startups rely primarily on aggregation of materials to make a profit in this sector. • Traditional informal actors (kabadiwalas) are likely to be displaced as a result. • To protect livelihoods, collective organizing and state intervention are needed. Over the past decade, urban India has seen the emergence and proliferation of startups that are offering on-demand recycling services using web- and mobile-based platforms. These firms replicate the services of informal workers known as kabadiwalas who have historically made their livelihoods through trade in recyclable materials. Existing analyses of platformization in developed world contexts fail to explain the rise of platformization in India because of the particularity of the relationship between platform firms and the informal economy. This paper contextualizes the rise of platform recycling startups within a generally conducive policy environment focused on improving sanitation, encouraging entrepreneurship, and expanding the use of information technology in India. An examination of business models deployed by these firms reveals how and why the structure of recycling markets does not allow for a 'lean' model typically adopted by platform firms in other sectors. Rather than merely connecting service providers to consumers, these startups rely on aggregating recyclable materials and dispossessing intermediaries such as kabadiwalas in order to generate surplus value in an otherwise saturated market. Relying on an analysis of online content about these new firms, this paper examines the strategies that firms use to legitimize themselves and delegitimize kabadiwalas in an attempt to displace and dispossess them from the market space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on qualitative, unstructured interviews with domestic workers, this article seeks to illuminate the complexity of the specific strategies and negotiations adopted by domestic workers as they contest and challenge the sociocultural markers of hierarchical difference that their employers mobilize as they try to create boundaries and distinctions between themselves and their employees. To understand the dynamics of this boundary work, we apply concepts and insights from James Scott’s work on everyday resistance and hidden transcripts. We argue that while paid domestic work within the home is a social relation of extreme inequality characterized by fundamental domination and dependency between domestic workers and their employers, domestic workers deploy creative and innovative strategies to contest practices and ideologies of inequality and distinction put forth by their employers. In doing so, they provide a contestation, albeit partial and negotiated, of how social boundaries are used by employers to maintain difference and distinction from the workers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The extension of social protection to all has become a central policy objective, both nationally and internationally. A considerable number of middle- and low-income countries have undertaken substantial efforts to extend social protection, while the international community reaffirmed its commitment to the extension of social protection through the adoption of the ILO Recommendation concerning National Floors of Social Protection, No. 202 (2012). This article reviews the legal provisions and the implementation of the Indian Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), legislated in 2005, and does so in the light of the more recent provisions of ILO Recommendation No. 202. Since its introduction ten years ago, MGNREGA has provided a source of income to rural workers, increased wage rates, achieved high female participation rates and created durable assets. India's local governance bodies, Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI), have been empowered and involved in the processes of planning and monitoring. However, despite successes, there have been considerable shortcomings in implementation. This article highlights two central themes: first, the innovative policy framework of the Act, which brings together rights-based entitlements, demand-driven employment, and citizen-centred monitoring. Second, it assesses the accessibility and adequacy of benefits in the implementation of MGNREGA. We conclude that MGNREGA offers potential for South-South learning, both in terms of policy-design and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether working with a broker increases or reduces the payment received for the last client among female sex workers. Building on research on the informal economy and sex work, we formulate a positive embeddedness hypothesis, expecting a positive association, and an exploitation hypothesis, expecting a negative association. We analyze a large survey combined with intensive interview data on female sex workers in Andhra Pradesh, India. These data uniquely distinguish between the amount the sex worker actually received and the amount the client paid. The analyses show that brokers are associated with significantly lower last payment received. Although brokers are associated with a greater number of clients in the past week, this does not result in significantly higher total earnings in the past week. Further analyses suggest that much of the negative relationship with earnings is due to the fact that brokers lead to a lack of control over the amount clients are charged. At the same time, the results fail to show that brokers actually provide services of value. Ultimately, the results support the exploitation hypothesis. We conclude by encouraging the refinement of theories of embeddedness and exploitation and calling for greater research on workers in the informal economy of developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the theoretical and practical problems arising from the effect of the ongoing global crisis on the much neglected informal economy, with specific focus on issues concerning women’s employment and decent work. Recognizing growing informality and its disproportionate impact on women workers, the article discusses the challenges and various coping mechanisms adopted by these vulnerable groups. The current wave of fiscal consolidation and austerity measures pursued in most countries in the form of cutbacks on social sector spending and public expenditures is having devastating consequences on the vast majority of the population. A robust fiscal commitment toward direct job creation programs and increased social protection policies has the ability to enhance resilience. Rejecting the fiscal trajectory and the subsequent austerity measures, the article emphasizes the necessity of a macroeconomic policy framework conducive to the objective of achieving a more equitable outcome in an environment of domestic and global challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses labor movement methods in activism for sex workers by Karnataka Sex Workers Union (KSWU) in Bangalore, India focusing on topics like challenges faced by sex workers in forming unions, occupational health and labor rights, and protection from HIV. Topics include Indian economy, role of international unions like International Union of Sex Workers, symbolic identification with labor movement, working conditions of sex workers, and criminalization of prostitution.

Rapid urbanization in the developing world underscores the policy challenge of urban energy poverty. This article investigates patterns of energy poverty in Patna, the capital of the state of Bihar in India. Informed by the field research, our emphasis is on inadequate lighting among street vendors. A survey of 1000 street vendors in the metropolitan area reveals high levels of energy poverty, with vendors being forced to choose between inadequate lighting and expensive power from diesel generators operated by local entrepreneurs. The survey also shows that vendors consider improved lighting a top priority and believe that improved lighting could expand their business and attract customers. While vendors are generally aware of solar panels, a few are using this technology in the marketplaces. The results reveal the need for new policy interventions that either promote grid access for the informal economy or seek new alternatives, such as solar lighting, to diesel generators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I demonstrate the coexistence of multiple urban governance regimes in Delhi, India. While formal urban governance is geared toward transforming Delhi into a "world-class" city, I present original research that shows how the everyday governance of urban space in three very different areas of Delhi is determined by relations among non-state actors. These regimes foster access to space for street hawkers on an everyday basis while they allow powerful local interest groups to collect rent and influence flows of people and commodities. I argue that, in contrast to formal electoral politics, these governance regimes emerge from a parallel politics of everyday interactions, negotiations, and transgressions. Although the emancipatory potential of these regimes should not be overstated, they do offer street hawkers limited contingency to improve their access to urban space. This article contributes to a growing body of work on urban governance by showing how multiplicities of governance regimes coexist and determine how and by whom urban space is used in a metropolis in the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the strikes of the contract workers, who represent 90% of the whole stuff of the India's biggest privately owned electricity distribution company Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. (Rinfra), which started in 2005 with demands for safe workplace conditions and free rehabilitation in case of work-related accidents. Topics involve the lack of support from the Bombay Electrical Workers Union (BEWU), workplace sabotages, and wage increases and paid leaves since 2006.

Inclusive growth is the new popular slogan animating development initiatives across the globe. Embracing the common rhetoric of rights discourses, the Indian government is investing heavily in novel welfare schemes for empowering poor people on the assumption that granting them access to the official market will put them on track for upward mobility and economic progress. In this article I use a case study of a massive slum relocation scheme in the Indian capital of Delhi to challenge this presumption. Resettlement is promoted as a way to accommodate the poor in the legal city. While it makes available desired commodities, its implementation is a complex process of renegotiating the divide between licit/illicit forms of urban habitation. Importantly, the bureaucratic procedures that create legal entitlements depend on the illicit, informal, and illegal domain that they aim to supplant. Thus, the new official suburbs emerge through the activity of people who flout the rules to meet the government target. Rather than a categorical shift from illegal to legal inhabitants of the city, resettlement re-creates urban citizenship as a form of tolerated encroachment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the rapid expansion of small handloom centres in Western India between 1930 and 1970. It attributes the transformation of these places into larger cities to the role of local weaver-capitalists, who developed new markets for local textiles and introduced significant technological innovations into the industry, and who forged strategies for combatting the growth of labour resistance. The essay also highlights the role of the late colonial and early post-Independence states, which promoted the growth of weavers’ co-operatives and which imposed extensive regulations on larger enterprises. The paper argues that the powerloom centres of Western India sustained a ‘hyper-industrial’ quality, with limited economic or cultural diversification, restricted urban amenities and public services, and the extensive concentration of poor urban migrants in slums. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research uses a fresh perspective to trace the impact of multiple economic, financial and environmental shocks on slum-dwellers in the South Indian city of Chennai from November 2008 to May 2009. It examines the effects of a concatenation of events scaled from the global to the local, consisting of economic shocks (speculation in financial, fuel and food markets) and extremes of rainfall and temperature, on a cross-section of the urban poor (differentiated by age and gender), taking in household dynamics and work status. The paper also traces the rapidity with which these shocks transfer from the global economy to slum settlements. The method involved twelve-month recall over three survey periods during the shocks and their aftermath, a comparison of emic and etic measures of economic well-being and the comparative use of mixed methods. This research is also the first application of qualitative comparative analysis to slum conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the annals of Indian modernity, narratives of tricksters and counterfeiters have a long, popular, and cautionary history. The topographies of deception outlined by colonial and post-colonial police reports established both its history as an aspect of modern industrial life as well as the city as the ‘scene of the crime’. This article explores the meanings that attach to certain contemporary acts of deceiving and faking, and the ways in which they are both produced by being in the city as well as producing certain kinds of relationships. The article focuses on the residents of a Delhi slum and their various acts of producing fake identity cards and a variety of other documents. It offers a discussion about simulation and dissimulation, feigning and duplicity, and passing and pretending as significant contexts for gaining security of livelihood and residence in the city as well as constituting specific senses of community. Faking and counterfeiting, the article suggests, are arenas where the state both constitutes itself and contributes to the making of imagined non-state sensibilities of community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than a century, hand-pulled rickshaws have been a prominent part of Calcutta's cityscape. Under the veil of modernization, progress, and globalization, however, the government of West Bengal State declared that rickshaws cause traffic congestion and constitute an exploitative use of human labor. Yet, despite the government-imposed ban, rickshaws continue to ply the streets of central Calcutta. Based on interviews with rickshaw owners, operators, public officials, and local residents, we examine the cultural politics surrounding rickshaw pulling in Calcutta. This article shows that the rickshaw wallahs (pullers), who operate as part of the informal economy, provide an expansive range of services not limited to transportation. Indeed, the rickshaw wallahs form an integral part of Calcutta's social fabric, having made a place for themselves by facilitating social interaction and challenging hegemonic ideas and practices about who belongs where. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India, which is ‘ground zero’ for climate change, has decided to reduce its carbon intensity, yet an important element of environmental efficiency neglected by India’s climate plan is the very way India designs itself. India’s recent development has focused not on ‘cities’ but on ‘metropolitan regions’ that include suburbs and exurbs. Such low-density growth increases oil consumption for car usage while neglecting the high-density based informal economy that is a source of India’s economic vitality and sustainable innovation. One important contribution of this economy is a vast recycling industry in which discarded materials are reprocessed, reused and returned to the market, effectively saving carbon space. An important way forward would be to integrate the informal sector into planning, by encouraging medium-density growth enabled by comfortable and efficient mass transit, following northern European rather than American planning patterns. Since environmental shifts may be inevitable, pre-emptive political and resource management arrangements must play a central role in India’s climate change adaptation plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, several influential scholars have rigorously worked on the impact of neoliberal globalization on the poor in the cities of the South. But they have yet to provide a comprehensive account of how and why some groups in the margins are seen to successfully negotiate with the new modes of governing populations and increase their visibility as a 'category,' while some groups fail to do so. This paper seeks to bridge this research gap by comparing a successful and a failed mobilization in Calcutta. In both cases, use of the footpath has been central. The paper shows how the success of the hawkers in claiming the footpath is tied to the marginalization of the claims of the pavement dwellers that has (a) homogenized the representation of the footpath as only used by pedestrians and hawkers and (b) led to the elision of the pavement dwellers as a governmental category. The paper argues that by arrogating to themselves an archival function-which is conventionally associated with the governmental state-sections of population like the hawkers can become successful in their negotiations with the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on women entrepreneurs in the informal economy no longer view them merely as a residue from some pre-modern mode of production that is disappearing. Instead, they are either read through a structuralist lens as marginalized populations engaged in low quality work conducted under poor conditions for low pay out of necessity in the absence of alternative means of livelihood, or through a neo-liberal lens as engaged in relatively higher quality endeavours more as a rational choice. The aim of this paper is to evaluate critically these contrasting explanations. To do this, the results of face-to-face interviews with 323 women entrepreneurs operating in the Indian informal economy are analyzed. The finding is that although the structuralist representation is largely appropriate for women engaged in informal waged work, it is not as valid for women informal entrepreneurs working on a self-employed basis where incomes are higher, they receive more credit from informal institutions, union membership is higher, and such work is more likely to be a rational choice. The outcome is a call to recognize the diversity of women's experiences in the informal sector and that not all informal entrepreneurship by women in developing nations is a low-paid, necessity-oriented endeavour carried out as a last resort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic enclaves that are being built across South India would appear to exemplify what Aihwa Ong has called ‘neoliberalism as exception’. Drawing on fieldwork in and around one ‘special economic zone’ in the state of Andhra Pradesh, this article critiques the language of exceptionality by exploring the structural continuities and dynamic interconnections between the zone and what continues to be called the ‘informal economy’. Rather than valorize India’s economic zones as manifestations of a juridical-discursive ‘exception’ in which the state experiments with alternative forms of market-oriented rule or as carceral spaces in which working populations are subjected to innovations in bio-political government this article shows how these zones formalize conditions of precariousness and political subjectivity that already characterize working life in much of South India, incorporating social networks and livelihoods that extend beyond their walls. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a growing scholarly interest in the spatialisation of class relations in post-industrial cities. Gentrified suburbs exclude the poor and re-work notions of public property and urban citizenship to the advantage of the rich. My study moves beyond the sanitised places of the inner city and shows how the cleaning mission affects life in the new spaces of deprivation. I analyse home making in a resettlement colony of Delhi. After being removed from the hubs of the labour market and with little state support, resettled slum dwellers struggle under harsh conditions for survival. Those who can afford this expensive venture embrace home ownership at high personal risks und by exploiting the channels of the informal economy, hoping that possessing a legal dwelling will root them more firmly in the city. In practice, the new status is an often uneasy fusion of a formal and informal status and thus remains essentially precarious in an environment that criminalises informality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first and foremost goal United Nation emulates is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. Slum is almost synonymous with urban poverty and hunger. The word 'Slum' was originally used as the 'back slum' meaning the backyard or 'back room' and later 'back alley'. Other terms which many a times used to portray slum include, 'shanty town', 'favela', 'skid row', 'barrio', 'ghetto', and 'The hood'. Although most of these terms have a unique meaning on its own respect, they are conglomerated into defining the slum. This paper concentrate on the facts of slums in Indian context and the legal aspects associated with it and ultimately initiate some thoughts on improving slums in Urban India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The larger part of the economy in most developing countries is outside the regulative control of the state. When defined in this way, it has two types of expression: first, self-employment (with some wage-work) in unregistered or unincorporated small enterprises; second, unregistered and unregulated activity and workers inside and around large registered organizations such as firms, public sector enterprises, and the state itself. This paper reviews the literature, mainly but not exclusively from India, with three objectives. First, it questions what brings order to such economic activity and how economic and social insecurity is instituted. Second, it examines the counter intuitive proposition that social security rights are de facto, if not de jure, dependent upon work rights. Third, it explores the dynamics of, and responses to, informalization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The industrial relations system in India has been under pressure for decades and new problems are emerging as the country becomes more integrated into the global economy. The main architecture of the system was established prior to Independence and remains mostly unchanged. The system is highly centralized and the state is the main mediator between capital and labour. Unions have historically enjoyed a close relationship with the state through party-based federations, but this has undermined their success developing a robust grassroots constituency and experience in collective bargaining. This essay provides a broad overview of the evolution of the Indian system of industrial relations and the labour market reform debate that has arisen in the context of economic change. The structure of the Indian labour market, the overwhelming size of the informal or 'unorganized' workforce, and its location outside the industrial system is the fundamental challenge facing Indian industrial relations. There is an urgent need to develop a system that embraces all workers especially given India's demographic profile and the expected increase in the number of working age people over the next decade. The experience of women workers and the failure of both the industrial system and the union movement to understand and accommodate their needs is also an important challenge for industrial relations in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the history of the labor movement in India and the parallel development of labor sociology. It assesses the influence of Western models of labor, stressing their weaknesses in diagnosing the peculiarity of the Indian situation. Because of these models, and also because of the narrow concerns of trade unions, until recently labor studies overlooked the overwhelming proportion of the work force¿namely, the informal workers. Despite all the hype about business process outsourcing companies and call centers, it is this sector of the labor force that has increased most rapidly during the past 15 years since the beginning of market liberalization. Although sociological studies are catching up with the transformation of the labor force, there still remain very few contacts between scholars and labor unions or labor activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes findings obtained through ethnographic research conducted in three states in India between 2002 and 2004. On the basis of interviews with more than three hundred labor leaders, government officials, and working women, the author reports on the efforts of informal workers in construction and tobacco manufacturing to organize and improve their conditions of life. Contrary to mobilizations in the formal sector, those workers do not make direct demands on their employers. Instead they appeal to the state to obtain welfare benefits. The study shows that neoliberal reform has surprisingly opened up new channels for informal workers to constitute themselves as a class. This represents an amendment to earlier analyses that focused exclusively on the mobilizing capacity of workers in the formal sector. The author concludes by highlighting the importance of this work for the study of social movements and labor's relationship with the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation of land into a setting for clustering local economies can become an important cornerstone of poverty policy. This transformation has several functional aspects, which in turn have important institutional and political aspects. Underlying both the functional and institutional factors is the role of local government and local democracy. Such a conceptualization puts to center stage several paradoxes: A terrain that seems “slum-like” turns out to be highly productive and employment generating. Complex tenure forms and mixed land use seen as “unplanned” turn out to be pre-requisites for economic development. There are institutional paradoxes that contrast efforts at “transparency” and managerial “best practices”. Here, the messiness of local bureaucracies in municipal government turns out to be critical for poor groups to influence interventions in their favor. Influencing the public process may be more effective in stealth-like ways rather taking a more visible approach. Most fundamentally these issues remind us that the potential of cities to reinforce or reduce poverty moved far beyond projects and programs and the normative frameworks used by planners and administrators. Instead, it is the transformative process of turning land into economic settings that might be at the center stage. This is a stage where poor groups are the central actors who stealth-like draw on complex alliances across ethnic and class lines to shapes cities in their interests. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In recent years, South Asian economies have observed rapid urbanization along with expanding informal economy that poses a serious threat to environmental quality. This study examines the impact of urbanization and informal economy on the ecological footprint of selected South Asian countries. Results indicate that urbanization and informal economy increase the environmental degradation in South Asia and the estimates are statistically significant in the long run. In the short run, urbanization positively affects the ecological footprint in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal except India, while the informal economy also enhances environmental degradation for all the selected countries except Bangladesh. Most surprisingly, the interaction term of urbanization and informal economy has a negative impact on ecological footprint, and the coefficient is statistically significant as well. To combat the environmental issues in South Asia, detailed policy recommendations have been suggested at the end., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

This was a formative study to yield evidence on the conceptual and empirical pathways to improve maternal and child health (MCH) outcomes among informally working mothers while securing livelihoods, and for this, explores how informally working women navigate time sensitive childcare practices such as exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) with their work, and how do the conditions and nature of informal employment shape it. This study was conducted in February–May 2017 using non-probability sampling for cross-sectional semi structured interviews (n = 92) and focus group discussions (n = 56) with working mothers with a child under 2 and 5 years respectively, having regular and stable working history in the informal economy. The study team partnered with Self-Employed Women's Association for site selection and recruitment of study participants across 4 sectors of work in New Delhi, India: home-based work, pheri or barter work, street vending and domestic work. While 65% women report EBF for 6-months, checks with infant feeding recall reveal several disruptions from customary practices and working conditions, and successful EBF only in home-based work, the least paying of all. 59% women reported returning to work under 6-months, leading to early weaning. 90% women were aware of the importance of EBF in the standard language of public health messaging, however, checks with non-standard language queries reveal a drop to 55–80% exhibiting lack of effective knowledge that women could use. The findings emphasise that conditions and nature of informal employment shape MCH outcomes in cities of the global south, where such employment dominates. Furthermore, we use the findings to suggest the following responsive approaches for intervention: delaying mother's return to work, increasing proximity between mother and child, deeper and engaged knowledge of breastfeeding and early child development practices, improving problem solving capacity and agency of the mother, and enabling home and workplace conditions. • Develops intersectionality between informal work and health. • Informal work amongst women shape breastfeeding outcomes. • Exclusive breastfeeding highest in lowest paying sector of work: home-based. • Majority of women returning to work under 6-months, leading to early weaning. • Pathways to create work-based interventions vary by informal work sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Worldwide, over 740 million women make their living in the informal economy and therefore lack formal employment benefits, such as maternity leave, that can improve infant feeding practices. Returning to work is one of the biggest challenges women face to maintaining breastfeeding. This study aimed to explore attitudes and perceptions towards breastfeeding in the informal work environment among male and female informal workers., Methods: The study used a qualitative research design. Purposive and snowball sampling was employed. Focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted among men and women working in different types of informal jobs, in India and South Africa. Data was analysed using a thematic approach and the framework method., Results: Between March and July 2017, 14 FGDs were conducted in South Africa and nine in India. Most women were knowledgeable about the benefits of breastfeeding and reported initiating breastfeeding. However, pressures of family responsibilities and household financial obligations frequently forced mothers to return to work soon after childbirth. Upon return to work many mothers changed their infant feeding practices, adding breastmilk substitutes like formula milk, buffalo milk, and non-nutritive fluids like Rooibos tea. Some mothers expressed breastmilk to feed the infant while working but many mothers raised concerns about expressed breastmilk becoming 'spoilt'. Breastfeeding in the workplace was challenging as the work environment was described as unsafe and unhygienic for breastfeeding. Mothers also described being unable to complete work tasks while caring for an infant. In contrast, the flexibility of informal work allowed some mothers to successfully balance competing priorities of childcare and work. Sociocultural challenges influenced breastfeeding practices. For example, men in both countries expressed mixed views about breastfeeding. Breastfeeding was perceived as beneficial for both mother and child, however it was culturally unacceptable for women to breastfeed in public. This affected working mothers' ability to breastfeed outside the home and contributed to a lack of respect for women who chose to breastfeed in the workplace., Conclusion: Mothers working in the informal sector face multiple challenges to maintaining breastfeeding. Interventions are required to support feeding and childcare if global nutrition and development goals are to be met.