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This chapter analyzes the transformation of Mekong Southeast Asia from a geo-political territory characterized by interstate wars and conflicts to a more integrated geo-economic region that sets out to embed special economic zones into Asia’s regional division of labor. Economic growth in the region exhibits a plurality of local labor regimes, patterns of economic development interventions and spatial administration. In mainstream development models the social question has been considered, yet local labor regime of precarity reproduce and are contingent upon poverty, thus structuring poverty through labor. In this sense, the social question is not necessarily marginalized by mainstream development planning, but is understood through growth logics, deferring realization of widespread benefits to a seemingly unattainable future of full employment in high-wage manufacturing. The social question in Mekong Southeast Asia is thus delimited by a low value-added growth model that selectively targets particular spaces, populations and economic sectors for development. This approach deepens tensions and scales up contestations from the border economic zone to the region.

The author, a sociologist engaged in anthropological fieldwork in the study of labour came to India as a PhD student, became a regular reader of the Economic Weekly, later the Economic & Political Weekly and graduated to contribute articles to the journal and become a friend of Krishna Raj. Here, he muses on what the journal has meant to him and to its readers down the decades.

Migrant workers, who are often landless labourers, seek succour and refuge in night shelters mandated by the Supreme Court of India.

Land flight from the flood-prone Sindh countryside in Pakistan is becoming increasingly widespread, driven by a feudal agrarian regime which has millions of land-poor peasants bound in debt and servitude and by rising population pressure on agrarian resources. Together these make sharecropping and rural labour extremely unviable sources of livelihood. This article looks at the agrarian crisis and the proletarianisation of the peasantry stuck halfway between the countryside and the city.

More than the increasing pressure on agrarian resources, land flight in Pakistan is caused by the starkly inequitable distribution of land. The land-poor and landless classes in the country, particularly in Sindh and Punjab, are dependent as sharecroppers or farm labourers on landlords. In order to escape from their life in debt bondage, more and more peasants endeavour to find a niche in low-class urban localities. Since they do not possess any skills and assets, they wander around for a livelihood of sorts at the bottom of the informal economy. The mixture of inordinately low wages and the absence of regular employment keep them entrapped in a state of pauperism. When they try to engage in collective action, mostly in industry, both employers and government officials team up to defuse their fight for higher wages and decent employment. Without a fundamental change in the policy of exclusion, and a better deal in economic, political and social terms, a majority of the country’s workforce would continue to remain entrapped in sub-human standards of living. The moot question thus is as to why people would remain loyal to a State unwilling to offer them protection from immiserisation.

Abandoned by their government, the poor of Pakistan have turned to the Taliban and other fundamentalist groups for support and solace. At the same time, a growing pressure for emancipation presses against fundamentalism. Which force will triumph? A report based on travel in rural Sindh.

In the four and a half years of its existence the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector submitted nine reports exploring a variety of conditions in India’s "unorganised" sector. It is not surprising that the analyses and recommendations of these reports have been ignored by the government, for they call attention to the urgent need to address the inequality and non-inclusiveness in India’s growth process. A refl ection on the NCEUS’ reports, in particular the last report of the commission on the challenge of employment.

Written over the last ten years, these essays focus on labor at the bottom of the rural economy, lacking social, economic, and political wherewithal, and their struggles to find a foothold in the urban economy. The author draws on his fieldwork from India, Indonesia, and China. The volume demonstrates that this extremely vulnerable group is largely excluded from a life of dignity, stability, and decent work and the recent policies of globalization have only worsened their prospects of escape from this wretched existence. This book is crucial to the debates about labor and development studies in the current climate of globalization. It raises and answers important questions pertaining to the dynamics of life and work at the lower rungs of society.

In een historisch onderzoek dat een herziening is van de koloniale geschiedschrijving, duikt prof. dr. Jan Breman in een van de zwartste bladzijdes van de Nederlandse geschiedenis. In Koloniaal profijt van onvrije arbeid: het Preanger stelsel van gedwongen koffieteelt op Java, dat meer dan dertig jaar onderzoek omspant, behandelt hij de werking en uitwerking van gedwongen koffieteelt onder de koloniale heerschappij, en de invloed op het maatschappelijk bestel in de hooglanden van West-Java. Hij laat zien hoe de VOC de inheemse landadel inschakelde als goedkope vorm van bestuur. Deze landadel hield de boerenbevolking door middel van uitbuiting en onderdrukking in het gareel. Het Preanger koffieregime werd vanaf 1830 voortgezet in de vorm van het cultuurstelsel. Dwang was inherent aan dit stelsel waarbij de boeren niet alleen verplicht waren om de voorgeschreven arbeidsprestatie te leveren, maar ook om de eenzijdig vastgestelde vergoeding voor de producten zonder protest te aanvaarden. Dat deze opzet succes behaalde beschrijft Multatuli in zijn Max Havelaar. Breman levert met deze studie de feitelijke onderbouwing van de aanklacht door Multatuli, anderhalve eeuw geleden. Hoe komt het dat de werking en uitwerking van het Preanger-stelsel van gedwongen koffieteelt zo lang buiten beeld is gebleven? Breman plaatst scherpe kanttekeningen bij de uitgesproken gunstige oordelen die worden geveld in de koloniale geschiedschrijving. De toon van zelfrechtvaardiging en stilzwijgen over het gebruik van dwangarbeid waarin de koloniale overheid uitblonk, is volgens Breman een opvallend element in de verdediging van de tot nu toe gevoerde politiek. Deze studie kan beschouwd worden als een herziening van de geschiedschrijving én als een sociaalwetenschappelijke verhandeling van Multatuli's werk.

Unfree labour used to be a main feature of a pre-capitalist mode of production which dominated agricultural work and life all over the South Asian subcontinent in the past. Households of landless communities were attached in servitude to substantial landowners in a non-monetised relationship which often lasted from generation to generation. The transformation to agrarian capitalism which already began in the late-colonial era did not liberate the landless communities from their state of dependency and inferiority. The paper discusses the prevalence and spread of neo-bondage as a form of labour attachment in the lower echelons of the informalised economy. Freed from the means of production this large segment of the workforce, at drift in rural or urban localities and equipped with vulnerable social identities, has to sell its labour power in advance in order to make a living. The number of people working in debt should be counted in crores rather than in lakhs. Emancipation of these men, women and children from their state of servitude can only be realised on the basis of decent and dignified terms of employment.

Report from the lower depths of the global employment hierarchy, as the economic crisis multiplies the effects of informalization and agrarian decline on the billion-strong reserve army of labour.

This Omnibus brings together three classic works of the renowned sociologist and anthropologist, Jan Breman. It comprises Of Peasants, Migrants and Paupers (1985), Wage Hunters and Gatherers (1994), and The Labouring Poor in India (2003), reflecting his scholarship over a period of three decades. The introduction, by Sujata Patel, analyses Breman’s research on the nature of capitalism in Gujarat, examines his remarkable contribution to the debate on the theory of the ‘informal sector’, and discusses how his intellectual eclecticism and interdisciplinary methods of fieldwork have opened up a new perspective in the area of sociology of development, labour and migration studies. In addition, in a candid interview with Yolanda van Ede—of the University of Amsterdam—Breman talks, among other things, about his family background, his academic life, and his fieldwork. Of Peasants, Migrants and Paupers delineates the dynamics of the agrarian class structure, the interrelations of caste and class and the surrounding social world. It examines the relations between the Kanbi Patidars, an upwardly mobile caste of landowners and their traditional farm servants, the Dublas. Wage Hunters and Gatherers is concerned with the huge mass of unskilled labour wandering around in search of work in western India. It critically analyses the concept of the informal sector and draws attention to the large segment of unskilled labour. The Labouring Poor in India focuses on rural society in a globalizing India and the urban migration of unskilled and socially underprivileged labour into informal sector of the economy.

One grower trial and two experiment station tests were conducted to evaluate a new nematicide, fosthiazate, for management of Meloidogyne javanica in Florida flue-cured tobacco. Fosthiazate was applied broadcast and incorporated at rates ranging from 21 to 84 g/100 m(2) and compared with 1,3-dichloropropene at 240 and 460 ml/100 m(2) and fenamiphos at 67 g/100 m(2). All fosthiazate treatments increased tobacco yields and reduced root galling. Application of 1,3-D provided the highest tobacco yields and greatest reductions in root galling. The fenamiphos treatment outperformed all fosthiazate treatments in tobacco yield and root gall reduction. Fosthiazate may therefore have limited utility compared with 1,3-D and fenamiphos as a nematicide for tobacco in peninsular Florida.

Evaluation is an essential management tool for the improvement of public health programmes or projects. As malaria morbidity and mortality continue to increase in most countries in Africa, international agencies and malaria control programme managers have identified the strengthening of programme evaluation as an important strategy for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of malaria control programmes. Managers can develop an evaluation strategy only after they have defined programme objectives and planned specific programme activities. Indicators should be directly related to programme objectives and should be selected on the basis of the following criteria: their validity; reliability; ability to detect change within a reasonable time period and as a result of successful programme implementation; ability to be interpreted; and usefulness in guiding programme change. Only those indicators that can be measured with available programme resources should be selected. Managers will also need to identify the sources of indicator data and to determine how often each indicator will be measured. Programme managers should develop criteria or indicators for the following: programme policies and plans; the process of programme implementation; the outcomes of malaria control interventions in disease management and prevention; and programme impact in terms of reductions in malaria-related mortality and morbidity. Key issues related to the management of evaluation activities within a national programme include the need to begin with available resources and build incrementally; to explore options for administering evaluation activities; to select, train and supervise staff who carry out evaluation activities; to develop quality control strategies; and to ensure that data are managed and communicated in ways that support effective programme decision-making. For evaluation to lead to improvements in malaria control programmes it must be clearly defined as a part of the programme management process. Programme managers should lead this developmental process, ensuring that evaluation methods produce the information they need to monitor and improve their programmes at reasonable cost.