Globalisation, Industrial Restructuring and Labour Standards: Where India Meets the Global

Globalisation, Industrial Restructuring and Labour Reforms focuses on the scant attention paid to the workforce and to the conditions at the workplace in contemporary economic discourse in India, and stresses the need for comprehensive labour reforms. Debdas Banerjee argues that despite being a signatory to the ILO conventions and having laws mandating decent labour conditions, India has not been able to implement them because of the minimalist position taken by successive governments. This has resulted in a tendency towards inefficiency and high costs of production, indicating declining labour standards. The book offers a careful summary of the trends in the conditions of work, wages and productivity behaviour in the organized sector in India over the past two decades. Marshalling critical evidence from numerous sectors of the economy, this book demonstrates the vacuity of currently fashionable labour market prescriptions of mainstream economics which treat labour simply as a factor in production and which put emphasis on 'lean' production. The resultant wage squeeze, the author maintains, violates the basic rights of the workers. He emphasizes that labour productivity has increased about threefold in real terms, while the real wages of workers have remained stagnant. According to the author, labour standards and economic development are therefore not mutually contradictory. Making a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate on international labour standards, this book gives due importance to the role of labour in the production system, frequently neglected in neoclassical economics.

Table of Contents:
Introduction The Scale Profit and Wage Distribution Institutions and Organisations Wage-Productivity and Labour Market Flexibility Global `Subject′ and Local ′Object′ Wage Distribution Skills `Mismatch′? Indian Corporate Sector Profitability, Wage Bargaining, and `Limits′ - Contesting Grounds of Cash Labour Standards Globalisation and Labour Standards The `Agenda′ Beyond WTO

Review :
"Examines the problem of industrial restructuring in India within the broader issues of power and inequality in the workplace.  Summarizes trends in conditions of work in the Indian factory sector and analyzes wage, profit, and productivity behavior in India′s organized manufacturing over the last two decades.  Explores what happened to the relative shares of profits and wages, how current levels and changes can be explained, and whether better labor standards are antithetical to the project of industrial restructuring.  Banerjee is Professor of Economics at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata and Fellow in Economics at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta." "Conversant with both orthodox neoclassical and heterodox economic theories, Banjeree explores the contemporary Indian labor market in the context of a world in which goods, raw materials, financial capital, technology, and ideas flow relatively free. . . . The book is replete with statistics on contemporary Indian economic performance, including industry wages, labor productivity, and net value added, presented in both the text and well-organized tables. Banjeree bolsters his analysis with quantitative comparisons with South Korea, Japan, the US, the UK, and other countries, broadening the potential audience beyond those interested in the Indian economy. . . .Highly Recommended."