A clash of civilisations

When an emeritus professor writes a book, he offers his readers two possible extreme but easy choices ""that is, either the book has all the insights that the author has accumulated during his prolonged career (in this case more than four decades) or it is a face-saving exercise meant to signal that he is still around.

The reader will be delighted to know that Jan Breman has given robust evidence of the first choice. What is more, he has not acquired the intellectual stagnation that occasionally accompanies the position of emeritus professor; he is still an active professor, and a passionate researcher.

This book has all that is needed to become a classic in the sub-field of Indian labour studies. It seeks to capture the complexity of India's political economy through the story of the rise and fall of India's working class in Ahmedabad "" also known as the Manchester of India.

It documents the conditions in which monopolistic state capitalism uses the desperate sections of its population and how its ruthless policies of retrenchment contribute to the unprecedented horrors of India's ethnic conflict "" which should now be widely known as the 'Modi-isation' of the Indian polity.

The single argument for which this book will stand the test of time is its capacity to demonstrate that the adverse consequences of globalisation are not limited to 'economic poverty or material impoverishment' but could serve as a fertile ground for horrendous ethnic conflict.

The root cause of the macabre riots that engulfed Gujarat does not lie in the provocative Godhra incident or in the intent of India's Hindu fundamentalists.

It lies, says Breman, in the faulty designs of globalisation in India, creating swelling armies of unemployed youths who are desperate to survive by any means, and taking part in a pogrom becomes one of the most lucrative rational ways for them to do so.

So Breman asserts, "The collapse of organised representation has made the army of ex-mill workers, and their male offspring in particular, vulnerable to invitations from communal forces to join them in various kinds of locality-based activities."

India has always been a hotbed for identity politics. This book shows how primordial identity has not only been transformed in other kinds of identities, but the classic formulation that class solidarity has the power to undermine the social ties centred on primordial loyalty is not accurate.

It shares a fact that would disappoint radical students of politics "" that caste and religion play as much of a part in the generation of opportunities as in their obstruction. Interestingly, Breman observes, these loyalties or networks do not result in the formation of neatly structured associations.

But what would have happened had they grown up as neatly structured associations is a question that we need to consider. Could they have prevented Ahmedabad's growing lumpenisation or contained the ethnic conflagration or arrested 'material impoverishment'?

India has long challenged the grand truths of conventional analyses emanating from the well-developed theories of western political economy: this is a site where Marx has been humbled, Hayek failed, and Friedman, of course, is mocked.

This is an arena where Bolshevism did not get enacted, and the concept of revolution - the way it was understood by radicals in the 1920s and 1930s - has to be moderated.

Breman's book offers the specifics of the rather complex story of India's unique political economy, and its facts and figures about exploitation and suffering boldly confirm that widely known reality.

At one point, Breman writes, "Land speculators and slumlords have added to the criminalisation of the local level of politics. While surveying the large range of illegitimate activities it should not be forgotten that informal workers are not only the hunters but also the hunted." The portrait of India's working class that emerges from this book is dark and disturbing.

The accounts in this book will encourage those readers who have doubted the miracle of globalisation and disappoint Nehruvians who always believed that nothing was wrong with the role of the Indian state.

It will provoke Gandhians because it tells how their world-view crashed in its homeland. After reading this, no Indian economist should make the mistake of using the word 'boom' and every Indian finance minister and ex-finance minister, including Dr Manmohan Singh, must read this book to understand the flaws of their policies.

THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF AN INDUSTRIAL WORKING CLASS

Jan Breman
Oxford University Press, 2004