India working. Essays in society and economy

Barbara Harriss-White, Cambridge University Press, 316 pages, price £16.95

Barbara Harriss-White uses her years of theoretical analysis and practical observation of Indian communities in this book, made up of sets of various essays in which she looks at the corporate (or informal) sector of the economy, in which 88% of Indians work.

Among her conclusions are that the current social structures, in terms of labour, capital, the state, gender, religious plurality and caste, make labour easy to control and hard to organise.

However, there are variety of trade union organisations for casual labourers. The author details union resistance but also the methods that have been used to weaken it.