South Indian Factory Workers: Their Life and their World (Cambridge South Asian Studies)

This book studies workers in four factories in Bangalore - an industrial city of more than one and a half million people in South India - and seeks to answer questions about the situation and thinking of workers in modern capital intensive factories. It is based on case studies of Bangalore workers and their families, on statistical material from management files on workers and from other sources, and on interviews with managers and union officials. Among the principal questions considered are: who are the factory workers and what are their origins, career prospects and living conditions? Are they a privileged elite in a dual economy and what relations are there between them and people outside steady factory employment? How do the workers see their own situation, as individuals and as a class? And how do they think of a 'job' as part of a 'career' and a career as part of their lifetime, in relation to other things that matter to them?