PUBLISHED RESEARCH PAPERS FROM CRG
The Calcutta Research Group have Published Nine New Research Papers on International Workshop & Conference in Migration and Forced Migration Studies
2008
Primitive Accumulation and Some Aspects of Work and Life in India in the Early Part of the Twenty First Century
A brief commentary on the persistence of what is called as degraded labour, unorganized labour, un-clarified labour process, whose existence defeats the loud claims of globalization, reforms, filtered growth, all round development of society, wealth of nations etc, the paper shows the broader significance of the existence of labour in terms of accumulation, capital’s logic, and the social separations or divisions (of work and property, labour and wealth, producer and the product etc.), and therefore relations, which capital as an embodiment of accumulation represents. There is a lot of talk at present about the space of gainful manual work shrinking away, almost to a point of vanishing; and that everywhere we find only white collar labour and digitalized work, and therefore, it is irrelevant to discuss quality of work, its degradation etc. Precisely at this point, we also hear talks of abolishing labour protection laws because these laws prevent production; they are stumbling blocks to progress and union power needs to be curbed severely. On the other hand, trade unions acts have suddenly become bones of contention. There is an increasing membership of the trade unions and they have not been de-politicized. Organized trade unions and the new forms of labour organizations around unorganized labour—both are more and more representing the unorganized workers. With labour market flebilisation, the nature of bargaining is also changing. More than ever, suddenly taken direct actions by workers are combining today with old style bargaining. All these show that the preponderant form of work has deep influence over the politics of work also now. It is against this background, that the paper tries to find answers to questions like: Whither India in this early part of the twenty first century? How can we characterize work and life—at least one part of it—from the point of labour? When shall we realize that the eternal fate of labour is to keep on struggling to come out of the representations forced on it by the regime of capital?
Essay by Ranabir Samaddar
Three Studies on Law and The Shifting Spaces of Justice
As the title rightly suggests, this report, fourth in the series of short status reports on social justice in India, deals with the complicacies of legal methods resulting in the shifting spaces of justice in India. The first paper by R.Niruphama talks of the ‘Need for Sentencing Policy in India’. In the absence of a proper sentencing policy, the judgments preceding the sentences are often at the discretion of the judge. With no specification or guideline on sentencing, it is mostly at the discretion of the judge to decide the factors he/she will take into account while giving the judgment. This discretion often gets abused due to application of personal prejudices. It goes on to describe, briefly, the Sentencing Procedure under Criminal Procedure Code, 1973. Uses of vague phrases like ‘circumstances of the crime’ and ‘mental state and age’ often results in confusion in the judgmental proceeding. Indian legal criminal proceeding are often fact specific, which means that the guidelines vary from case to case, and are often not followed by the lower courts. The immediate need of the hour is a proper sentencing policy in India to avoid prejudices and confusions regarding the judgment. The second paper by Saptarshi Mandal, ‘Dalit Life Narratives as Ethnographies of Justice’ tries to situate marginality for the Dalits through three Dalit autobiographies written over last twenty-five years. They are in the nature of experiences of pain transformed into narratives and speak of caste-based oppression and the resultant resistances. The three narratives, ‘Joothan’, ‘Akkarmashi’, and ‘Anasphot’ are manifestations of the shifting of a Dalit narrator between the individual ‘I’ and the collective ‘we’. The last paper ‘The Creation of Social Space for the Articulation of Gender Justice—A Case Study’ by Shritha K. Vasudevan uses case studies of sexual assaults that women face in everyday life in public spaces, like the public bus, to throw light on the fact that such sexual advances have over the years have come to be considered as ‘normal’ behavior by a regular women traveler. Sexual assaults are perceived as a ‘social’ phenomenon and have become a component of a larger patriarchal whole. These violations of human rights of women pose a grave threat to the existence of the democratic state. Not simply reacting to such blatant patriarchy, but other factors like improving economic conditions of women and educating them is the need of the hour. In states where the Rule of Law does not exist, only political movements with women’s rights as their mainstay can bring about changes in the patriarchal practices of society.
Essays by R. Niruphama, Saptarshi Mandal and Shritha K. Vasudevan
Prescribed, Tolerated and Forbidden Forms of Claim Making
Claim-making, amidst state atrocities and apathy, forms the mainstay of this study, third in a row of status reports on social justice in India. Development, as an index of democracy, came into the scenario much later, but marked its presence through both coercive and resistive displays. It is also a study in claim-making by those victimised and the process of consensus building, adopted ruthlessly by the government. Claims and counter-claims made by the victims, protestors and the government agencies tear the political and administrative milieu apart. This study presents these forms of claim making—prescribed, tolerated, forbidden, for us to understand the nuances of democracy. With West Bengal as its case study, it deals with the transformation of the state from a peasant-friendly one to a labour-friendly one and finally to a capital-friendly one. The Left-regime of West Bengal facilitates those who follow prescribed claim making (like dialogues, petitions); tolerates certain claims even though it may dislike them( strikes, public protests, disruption of traffic, vandalism to certain extant), but punishes those who indulge in the forbidden forms of claim making(disruption of governmental actions, resistance to armed force). The forms of claim making it prescribes and permits must conform to the given ways of negotiations and representation. The forms of claim-making are not inherent in a system, but rather are created, transformed and modified as the situation might demand. This collection is a unique study in questions of claim-making in the age of bio-politics and question of the divergent phenomenon of electoral majorities and social majorities in modern democracies.
Essay by Ranabir Samaddar