 This is the first book talk of Left Words Talking Red book series. As Vinay mentioned, we plan to host this every month on a second Saturday and we will be talking about Labour Matters today, a concern that underpins most, if not all, of Left Words publications. The May 2023 edition of the Tricontinental dossier on the condition of working lives in India notes that due to the lockdown, at least 120 million workers or 45% of India's non-agricultural workforce lost their jobs. So given the trends towards casualization and subcontracting that has marked employment over the last several decades, employers were under no moral or legal obligation to pay their workers. Many of whom did not even receive their back pages. The 2023 Oxfam report notes that a number of hungry Indians increased to 350 million in 2022 from 190 million in 2018. Simultaneously, from March 2020 to March 2022, the harshest period of the pandemic, we saw the profits of India's big businesses that doubled as did the wealth of the country's billionaires. The Oxfam report says that this new India is evidently about the survival of the richest. It is in this context that we have Archana Agarwal and Ram Prakash join us today with their books. Both books come from very different disciplinary vantage points. As you will find in this conversation, they also have very distinct writing practices. And yet it is fabulous to see how they come together in their own distinct styles. We could just start with you Archana and I'd love to hear from you about how you came to write this book. But in particular, also this informal research group that you begin the book with, that you tell us about perspectives as this group that you started work with and tell us something about this collective process of writing. So, over to you. First of all, I would like to thank Leftward not only for giving home to my book, but also for producing such a fabulous book. I mean, it looks beautiful. Now my journey has been, as Devi mentioned, a little unusual in the sense that the destination of the journey was not supposed to be this book. It was a little unplanned. And yes, it's been collective. In fact, it's been collective even till date. As part of the economics discipline, my interest lay essentially in looking at how the economic power policies impact the lives and livelihoods of people. So that was my departure point in many, many ways. So it's only as part of that that in early 2000s, sometime in mid 2000s, I founded this informal research group with students and like-minded teachers and it was called Perspectives. So as part of this group, what we would do is that we would basically go and try and do surveys and interviews with farmers, with workers, and try and understand how economic policy and laws impacting them. Now the group folded up around 2014, but I was compelled to keep going and do these visits sometimes by myself, sometimes with people, essentially to try and understand how the labour processes in the manufacturing sector are panning out. It was only in 2020 when lockdown impacted all of us. So that's when the actual process of writing began, because there's also been a gap in the existing literature in the sense that either there is economic analysis devoid of the people who economic policies are impacting or the human interest stories, which don't really have analysis with them so much. So partly it was also to bridge that gap. In a similar way, we have Bram Prakash, whose book for me at least made me sit up with this whole very distinct writing style. There was this experiment with the writing style, I think that one encounters when you first pick up the book. The author, you encounter the author in the first person, in the third person. Sometimes as a narrator, sometimes as a person who's bearing witness. And then there's also this fantastic kind of tapestry of Ambedkar, of Judith Butler, of Toni Morrison, of Father Stan Swamy. So this is a very rich quilt that you've woven, Bram Prakash. So could you tell us a little bit about your journey to the book? When you do the academic writing, then I was also feeling some kinds of disconnect that I was not able to connect with the people I also come from, a street theatre background, where this whole idea was to like, you know, how to connect because I was not able to practice my street theatre with some kind of different regions. And then this writing mode was giving me some kind of a space where I could have articulated my anger, my passion, my all different kinds of concerns that I can talk about. So what I will say that like, you know, still I'm not sure about the language that I'm using because I was never trained in writing language. The school that I attended in Bihar, we never had that kind of grammar, either for like, you know, Hindi language or English language. And therefore, I think the writing that you are seeing out as readers are going to see is a completely distinctive because it is not coming from some kinds of grammar or some kinds of like, no, so it is some kinds of resonance that I'm trying to bring it here. And here I'm going to, you know, kind of go back to Archana's forward of the book and borrow from Amit Bahaduri, who writes that the book pursues a subaltern economics, a narration by people directly affected, buttressed with and the book is buttressed with data for wider relevance. And, you know, we are constantly thrown terms like global supply chain, living wages, market wages, economic insecurity, and so on, many of which Brahma also alludes to in a different language in his book. But I was wondering if Archana and Archana could give us some of these an overview of the book to begin with so that the audience and the reader is also aware of what has gone into the book. But also share some of some account of these lived experiences of these terms, right? So we fed some of this policy discourse, but then what is the lived experience of some of these terms that your book literally captures? So what I've done is that I've taken two segments of India's manufacturing sector, I've taken the government industry and the automobile industry. So essentially, because both are part of the sector, both are part of manufacturing, but yet one is at the lower end and one is at the higher end. So the reason why I'm looking at manufacturing is also because the development stories historically have largely been about the importance of manufacturing. So I wanted to see how how manufacturing and the work processes and manufacturing are panning out. So what I've done is in the interviews with the workers, as I mentioned earlier, spanning over a number of years. So I tried to understand their working conditions, their living conditions, the impact of the policies, impact of the laws, et cetera. And I tried to look at where they live. I've of course focused on NCR. So in fact, it's very interesting because you know, I'm focusing on so the main cluster of government manufacturing in NCR is Udyog. We are in Gurgaon and for automobiles, it's Manesar and Gurgaon. Now, this is also the area where you have absolutely posh farmhouses. But behind those farmhouses, it one doesn't even realize that there's such a huge cluster of almost slumps in Kapasheeda, Dhundaheeda, which is where most of the government workers live. So to just give you an idea, so for the government workers, most of them are still completely attached to the land, the migrant workers, and they're attached to the lands that they have in their villages. In fact, it's the villages which are subsidizing their living and working in the city, not the other way around, as one would imagine. So those are the kind of things I'm trying to look at. Then I'm also looking at, apart from the work conditions, I'm also trying to examine the legal landscape in which these industries operate, where I'm trying to understand why there is a rollback of protections which workers in general enjoy. And then finally, there is also an attempt to try and understand what could be an alternative growth trajectory for the country as a whole, where manufacturing can play an important role and where the benefits of the growth can also translate and transform into bettering the lives of these workers. So the first thing I'm going to be reading are these accounts of government workers which have stayed with me. This is beginning of my chapter three, where this wasn't as early as 2014, it's 10 years back, but the situation is more or less the same and the story has stayed with me. So let me start. It was a summer of 2014. I was on a bus with a group of young students headed to Karpashera where we hoped to meet some apparel industry workers. We were going on a Sunday because it was a weekly holiday for most workers. Halfway through the journey, which was more than half enough on the starting point of the bus at ISBT Kashmir Gate, we realized that some of our co-passengers were government workers. I heard my young friends queeling in delight when they realized that these workers produced garments for Abercrombie and Pitch and high-end casual wear brand. I was tutored about the details and nuances of his brand. Amongst those on the bus was Ramesh, a 35-year-old worker. He and the other workers were returning from Chor Bazaar, which is a well-known flea market in Old Delhi. They had used their holiday to travel more than 30 kilometers to the flea market to buy second-hand clothes for their children. The irony of the situation was not lost on us. Having spent their lives draping the world in some of the most famous brands, these workers could only afford old t-shirts worth Rs. 35 for their children. So these stories have stayed with me. There are many, many such stories. And what I've tried to understand with this book is that, I mean, it's not that these workers are not getting minimum wages. They are getting minimum wages. They're not like, well, they're not really marginalized as one imagines the marginalized workers are. But despite working in the manufacturing sector, why is it that while working even for 20 years in the government industry, the worker cannot buy a new shirt? Are the workers still living in poverty, virtually at the poverty levels? Or in the manufacturing sector, where there is a small proportion of workers who are very highly paid? Why is it that increasingly, most workers are getting jobs which are more insecure, temporary, contractual, more precarious? What was recurring while reading the book, but also from what you just shared, the accounts that you just shared was the question of not just the work, please, right? But what happens after the workplace? So it's not just the question of exploitation at the work site, but everything else that is necessary to all the other infrastructures that go into making life happen, right? For example, food, clothing, and so on, your children's futures. And so I felt like here, while Archana's book adopts an economic lens, which is infused with these lived experiences, Bram Prakash shifts to a different register and brings in the body. So the body that Archana was referring to in terms of body, nitchor jata, that she referred to, the worker at the automobile factory who spent exhausted, depleted at the end of the day. And Bram Prakash brings this body into focus and talks about, well, not just the harsh sweatshirt work conditions, but also beyond that, right? The various registers at which Bram Prakash is engaged with the question of the body. And specifically, I'm going to quote Bram here, and where he says that the epic tragedies and violence have to have an epic writing response. They cannot be captured by stating facts and information alone. And so can you tell us about these different bodies and sites that your book engages with? So one way of reading this book is that it is a book of essays where you have, like, no disparated essays, but I think other way of reading the book is also book is a consolidated kind of, like, no, some kinds of criticism or some kinds of trying to attempt some kinds of connections through two keywords. And that would be cut element and resistance. Because when I was writing earlier, then I given this title, like, no subtitle, equal like no cut element of life and freedom in contemporary India. And then I realized that, you know, I'm also talking about resistance and why we should not talk about resistance that is happening in a very, like, I will say severe in the background of severe cut element. So it has eight chapters. And so first chapters discuss about, it takes the breeding as a metaphor, but breeding just not about coronavirus. It is not just about pandemic, because when we think about, when we can't breathe and that is the name of the chapter, then it is not just about, like, no usual pandemic situation that I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kinds of breathlessness and therefore living with the cut element, sense of cut element that every day you leave, every day you encounter some kinds of operation and you are facing a different kinds of scenario. And therefore when I'm talking about breeding, then breeding here becomes a sense of metaphor. And then thinking through this metaphor of breeding, I'm talking about the way authoritarianism is taking over all the kinds of, like, no, democratic spaces. And whatever rights and the things that we have achieved in, like, no many years, that is, like, no spaces are getting curtailed. It is not only the body that is getting curtailed, but words are also getting curtailed. The way the speech is, the whole, like, rhetoric that we are witnessing, and that we will see that only it is subbed, like what Kabir would say, subbed, subbed is also getting curtailed. And then I talk about, and I will also read it, except from this chapter, it's called Dance of the Migrant Leverers. So where I'm talking about, like in this chapter I'm talking about what happens when migrants, leverage, deviate from the root. So migrant laborers are supposed to, like, you know, work in the kinds of designed root or designated root. But when, like, is there a possibility when they are not working into that root, like, taking that root, then that becomes a problem for the state. And I see the witness, the migrant laborers problem that we witness during the pandemic raises some kinds of problem, but also generates a lot of possibility for me, a lot of potentials for the politics for me. The chapter starts with a poem by Guru Pandey, and this is a famous poem I know many of you already know. Bhaynu aur bahno. Abhiya alisan imarat ban kar taiyaar hai. Ab aap ehaase jaa sakte hain. Brothers and sisters, now the luxurious building is ready to move in. You may move out. You may leave now. Add you from heaven. The poem poem poem poem poementally captures the irony of the lives of migrant laborers. They lay down their bodies to build the cities. They raise the buildings on their heads and shoulders. They connect the city with bridges and highways by hanging between poles and wires. They give it a spectacular presence. With affection, with perfection, with blood and sweat, they make the cities livable. They make them beautiful, a site to hold, a site to behold, a site to walk and explore the spaces of freedom. But as soon as the houses are ready to move in, they have to move out. They leave the site as one leaves their babies and hearts behind. This deception of labor does not need a detector. It is open and out there. Where will they move now? Perhaps they will move to another site, to another city, to other jobs in other capacities. They may go back to the villages which they call home. They will tell you that they are not going to come back again, but soon they will be back as their earned wages finish in a day. They will be back as hungry homes will run to buy them like hunting dogs. Without money, the poor homes turn into hungry tides. They will be back in the city again, again as an outsider to keep the city moving. It is the movement of the workers that move the surplus for the capital. It is the exploitation of the cheap migrant laborers that is crucial for the capitalist growth. Yet the same movement can emerge as a threat once they deviate from the designated group of the capital. What does it mean? But what will happen when they own it? When are they going to own their own movement? What will happen when they start walking back against the desire of the authority, against the flow of capital, against the performance drive that is driving us to this madness? Long march. Let me underline this paradox. This is not a long march of any communist party to establish the rule of workers. It was the case of a mass exodus, exodus of the sum of the most precarious laborers in the world. The Indian authorities' sudden announcement in lockdown amidst COVID-19 led an unprecedented crisis for migrant workers. The nation suddenly turned into zones of confinement. Overnight, the migrant laborers across Indian cities were out of work. Soon, they were out of their sanity as the owners felt that they could not pay their rents. They were out in the streets like the pretas, walking in the daylight and the dead of the night. They were out in the open, without food, jobs in a place to stay. They were established and homeless, turning into lesser human beings. As there was nothing to lose, millions of migrants began a long walk under the lockdown. The authorities announced it again. A stay safe, be at home, install the Arugia Situ app on your smartphone. The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare would announce every time you made a phone call. A smartphone, a smart city, a smart people, a smart India is the name of the merit we know. It appeared that authorities lived in Yahu land or la la la land. They assumed that everyone had a smartphone. Everyone could download apps. Everyone could open a website and register themselves for help. Everyone had a house to lock themselves up in. Everyone had enough food to sustain themselves for months and days. At the height of the pandemic, the authority gave out a contact number that was out of contact. They would give hospitals names that would not admit patients. They offered support mechanism that did not support. The pandemic has proven that pattern movements do not hold political significance. They make you less, unless some interruption or reversal occurs. The interruptions possibly change the meaning of encounter itself as it happened in the case of migrant laborers who were started walking back like moving pretas. They were carrying eyes on their back and were walking towards their front. Soon they become aspectories for the capital as they dance to and off the patrhythm. The obliged workers become suspects in the eyes of the neoliberal state and their much-appreciated movement soon became a threat for the state. The Indian authorities were not concerned about the migrants getting infected. They were not troubled about them returning to their homes. What literally worried the state was the reversal that could emerge as a new potential for the politics. A march that could turn into people's march, they were afraid that they might appear in the spaces of appearance, another name of politics, any day. The fear was that they would gather anytime on the roads and public places, anytime like the next time. The situation was alarming because the fear was that they might not follow the warnings. It was a serious case of disobedience. Nothing could be more threatening for the neoliberal orders than the defiance of the surplus armies of laborers. Workers are supposed to walk in a safe pattern. In order, they have to be in assembly line without the potential of being part of the assembly, which can turn political. Migrant workers walking to their homes were out of that pattern. This is what worried the Indian elites. This is what disturbed the former BJP and member of the parliament, Balbir Poonj and he said, and he said it seamlessly. How these migrant laborers behave irresponsibly? Why migrants living there? For want of money or food? No, just irresponsible. There is no money jobs waiting for them back home. It is to utilize their force Shruti to catch up with their families or errands back home. The workers are not supposed to go on Shruti, holidays or vacations. These informal workers are not supposed to be irresponsible. They are not supposed to disobey orders. They are not supposed to force their decision on the authorities. While the authorities largely saw this crisis in economic terms for the laborers, the crisis was an existential one besides economics. They were ready to take any risks to go home. They were ready to risk their lives to that extent. We can say that in their extreme vulnerability, they produced a dangerous potentiality. The decision to gather and go home, come what may was so extraordinary. It was the birth of new possibility and thus new politics. Critics said that this was a manmade disaster with misplaced priorities. Some also said that migrant laborers were never on the list of priorities. Ranveer Samadhar in his important study highlights this connection by saying that, the state has over emphasis on lockdown and under emphasis on care, but capitalism too cares. Capitalism has acquired emotional intelligence too. It means it can love, it can cry, it can waste in loving, caring and crying. It can give you more hugs than your mother. It can give you more touch than your lovers. When profit is the aim, care will also sell. The problem is not the care, but capitalism. Capitalism is so careful in caring that he will not interested in even killing the children of beggars. It would rather have them crippled than be invested in the sentimental capitalism. For capitalist workers are more profitable living than dead. Even if their bodies break, the levers could grow. A worker cannot be more modest than figures of Prometheus. The Greek myth credits Prometheus for the creation of humanity from clay. He is the one who was told fire and defied the authorities. He is the one who remains chained to the rock and is punished for his actions. Every day, a giant eagle sent by Zeus feeds on his liver. Every day, the liver grows back at night. It is this repetition through which capitalism survives. That is, keep ripping apart the liver of the workers. Paws, gauze, plunge, great move. Let it grow. Keep repeating it like the dance of the dead. Thank you so much, Ram. Particularly the section that you read out captures those elements of the poetry that you bring into your text. But also the play of words. I mean, the worker who's on the assembly line but is never allowed to be part of the assembly. But also, the poem by Gorik Pandey also reminded me so strongly of how, of the account that Archana read, which was that you make these t-shirts but you're never allowed to be part of that supply chain, isn't it? You have to go buy those secondhand t-shirts. You're never allowed to be part of those, to consume the same products that you're making. And I was also thinking about the question of curtailment that you, again, you mentioned that it's throughout. It's a connecting thread throughout the text. And yet, in Archana's book, she refers to this idea of labor market flexibility, which is constantly thrown around that notion of flexibility. And Archana, I wondered if you wanted to talk a little bit about that while we open up for questions. So labor market flexibility essentially alludes to the view that like any other commodity, the price of labor and the terms of contact should be decided by the market. So should be decided by demand and supply. So like any other commodity, it's demand and supply which would determine what the price of labor would be or what the wages would be. And it is the demand and supply which would decide whether the company's going to hire a permanent worker who will have to stay on even when the demand is not there or will the company hire a temporary or a part-time worker. So this flexibility is something which essentially says that let the markets determine the price as well as the work conditions and there should be no constraints. Constraints whether in terms of unionization by the workers which are asking for higher wages or better working conditions in terms of the time of work, et cetera, no constraints in terms of no legal constraints in terms of a minimum wage or a restriction on hiring or a restriction on firing and retrenchment which the companies would have to stick to. So basically all perceived constraints have to be removed. That is basically what is meant essentially by labor market flexibility. Now the flexibility view to be fair it also argues that while employers are free to hire and fire, the workers are also free to take the employment or not take the employment. But this truth is actually more nominal than substantive because it ignores the fact that there is an unequal position and unequal bargaining bar between the workers and the employers. So workers are not really free to not take the employment and what underlies I think this idea of flexibility is that one is dehumanizing the workers, looking at the workers like economists look at any other company where it is a market which would be the sole determinant of prices which in this case means wages, the work conditions, the time that is extracted from the workers, the intensity with which the workers are required to work, the market would determine whether the workers would be kept on a permanent basis or a temporary basis. So what I argue is that this understanding needs to go and essentially one needs to look at these workers as the forward suggests, as flesh and blood individuals these are actual people and the economic policies impacting them. So unless there is a shift in the understanding where the workers are not regarded as commodities which are disposable it's very difficult to get away from the situation that we are in. I just wanted to conclude this discussion. With Archana's book, I've seen that it resonates with me as committed kind of fieldwork over several years, but also as you mentioned, there's this hat of the teacher that we wear sometimes and pretty much all the time and Archana's book just speaks to that, right? There's so many of these notes that is for the student as well as the specialist reader, right? And that's what I particularly appreciated and enjoyed that it's so accessible, both the specialist reader necessary, but also so open to the student. And then of course, Bram uses this body as a barricade metaphor and then just unsettles all these thought patterns that one just takes for granted and both books as you could have, you would have possibly seen through this discussion, they move beyond the question of work and the workplace to examine life as it stands in contemporary India with all its precarity and endured bodies that we see. And also, but then again, as Bram reminds us consistently in his book, which is that the book is about earnest hope in the face of extreme curtailment, right? So I hope those who have tuned in, thank you so much for joining us. Do continue to join us on these book talk series that we hope to have every month. Pick up the books. Archana's is already available on the website. Bram Prakash is available for pre-order and I hope you'll pick up the books, share them with your friends, contact the authors and spread the word. Thank you so much.