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Precarity and Development: Production and Labor Processes in the Informal Economy in India

Bhattacharya, Snehashish; Kesar, Surbhi

Authors

Snehashish Bhattacharya



Abstract

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.

Citation

Bhattacharya, S., & Kesar, S. (2020). Precarity and Development: Production and Labor Processes in the Informal Economy in India. Review of Radical Political Economics, 52(3), 387-408. https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613419884150

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Sep 24, 2019
Online Publication Date Feb 1, 2020
Publication Date Sep 1, 2020
Deposit Date Nov 4, 2022
Publicly Available Date Feb 2, 2120
Journal Review of Radical Political Economics
Print ISSN 0486-6134
Electronic ISSN 1552-8502
Publisher SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 52
Issue 3
Pages 387-408
DOI https://doi.org/10.1177/0486613419884150
Publisher URL https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0486613419884150

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This file is under embargo until Feb 2, 2120 due to copyright reasons.

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