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Through a powerful investigation of Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), this paper aims to study the conditions of the working-class population in an Indian metropolis in present times. The paper borrows from an empirical case study of working-class population in Narela, a peripheral region in Delhi, to assess the relationship among labour, capital and state. With deepening inequality, changing labour market relations and spatial restructuring in cities, it becomes essential to understand this relationship in light of existing scholarships on South Asian cities focussing on everyday state, urban informality, social reproduction and periphery. The spatial reorganisation of Delhi was premised on aesthetic improvisation of the city, which aimed at driving the polluting/hazardous industries and working-class population to the peripheral area of Narela in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Drawing from the lived experiences of the displaced workers and new migrant workers, this study addresses concerns around housing and employment, therefore looking at a larger relationship among labour, state and capital. Explaining the process of peopling and industrialisation of this peripheral region, the paper critically analyses the contributions as well as limitations of Engels’ work in Indian urban studies.

Padmanabhan, N., Globalisation Lived Locally: A Labour Geography Perspective. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016, xvii+231 pp., ₹795, ISBN: 978-01-99463-62-6.

The penetrating debate on Indian labour laws obstructing the flexibility of the labour market has taken centre stage in the last two decades, post the period of liberalisation of the economy. With the purpose of rationalizing and simplifying labour laws to facilitate `ease of doing business’, the Indian government has formulated new labour codes, which is considered the most important step towards reforming labour laws in the past three decades. On the other hand, it is emphatically stressed by the labour unions that the Indian labour market continues to be `flexible’ to the advantage of employers, despite the presence of allegedly `constricting labour laws’ and any further dilution of extant labour law framework will adversely affect the working class. In this context, this paper discusses the implications of the current shift in the labour-law paradigm in India, brought out by the new labour codes. The paper also highlights the need for duly addressing the most recent insecurities in the labour market, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, while moving towards a new framework of labour governance, as envisaged by the labour codes.

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