This book showcases issues of work and employment in contemporary India through a critical lens, serving as a systematic, scholarly and rigorous resource which provides an alternate view to the glowing metanarrative of the subcontinent’s ongoing economic growth in today’s globalized world.  Critical approaches ensure that divergent and marginalized voices are highlighted, promoting a more measured perspective of entrenched standpoints.  In casting social reality differently, a quest for solutions that reshape current dynamics is triggered. The volume spans five thematic areas, subsuming a range of economic sectors. India is a pre-eminent destination for offshoring, underscoring the relevance of global production networks (Theme 1). Yet, the creation of jobs has not transformed employment patterns in the country but rather accentuated informalization and casualization (Theme 2). Indeed, even India’s ICT-related sectors, perceived as mascots of modernity and vehicles for upward mobility, raise questions about the extent of social upgrading (Theme 3). Nonetheless, these various developments have not been accompanied by collective action – instead, there is growing evidence of diminished pluralistic employment relations strategies (Theme 4). Emergent concerns about work and employment such as gestational surrogacy and expatriate experiences attest to the evolving complexities associated with offshoring (Theme 5).

1. The World of Work in Contemporary India: The Relevance of a Critical Lens  ERNESTO NORONHA AND PREMILLA D’CRUZ. THEME 1: India’s Place in Global Production Networks 2. “White Gold” for Whom? A Study of Institutional Aspects of Work and Wages in Cotton GPNs in India  SUKHPAL SINGH. 3. Why has the Indian Automotive Industry Reproduced “Low Road” Labour Relations? TOM BARNES. 4. “The recession has passed but the effects are still with us”: Employment, Work Organization and Employee Experiences of Work in Post-crisis Indian BPO CHANDRIMA ROY, DORA SCHOLARIOS, PHIL TAYLOR. THEME 2: Rising Informalization and Casualization of Employment 5. Informal Work in the Formal Sector: Conceptualizing the Changing Role of the State in India BABU P. REMESH. 6. Matter in Motion:  Work and Livelihoods in India’s Economy of Waste BARBARA HARRISS-WHITE 7. Reclassifying Economies by the Degree and Intensity of Informalization: The Implications for India COLIN C. WILLIAMS. THEME 3: ICT-related Offshoring – Rewriting the Trajectory of Indian Society? 8. Altering the Social Fabric of the Working Poor? Work and Employment Issues of Support Workers Catering to International ICT-ITES Firms in Mumbai RANDHIR KUMAR AND NIELS BEEREPOOT. 9. Jack of All Trades and Master of None? The Development of IT (Compatible) Qualification Between State, Company and Individual Career Planning NICOLE MAYER-AHUJA AND PATRICK FEUERSTEIN. 10. Partially Empowering but Not Decent? The Contradictions of Online Labour Markets PREMILLA D’CRUZ. THEME 4: Challenges Facing Industrial Relations and Collective Action 11. The Paradoxes of Social Partnership and Union Revival in India VIDU BADIGANNAVAR. 12. Locating Worker Power in a Changing Bargaining Scenario SUPRIYA ROUTH. 13. India at the Crossroads? Economic Restructuring, Deregulation and the Instability of Labour Relations DAVID BEALE. THEME 5: Emerging Issues 14. Gestational Surrogacy in India: New Dynamics of Reproductive Labour AMRITA PANDE. 15. Going Dutch, Remaining Indian: The Work Experiences of IT Expatriates ERNESTO NORONHA  AND SLAWEK MAGALA