NEOLIBERALISM, PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION AND PRECARIOUS WORK: A REVIEW OF EVIDENCES FROM INDIA

This paper provides a review of the developments which has been occurring in the labour market in the making of neoliberal India beginning early 1980s.The macroeconomic data shows that the share of wages in the total gross value added has been constantly falling along with increase in the incidence of unemployment and informalisation of the formally employed workforce. Numerous ethnographic studies provide the evidence that there has been no abatement in precarious work in the informal sector of the economy in the post-reforms period compared to the pre-reforms period.

Both, the macroeconomic and ethnographic studies, reach to the conclusion that these developments in India's labour market are not the result of the natural market forces but to a great extent due to the occurrence of primitive accumulation in the economy. The capitalist class has been using primitive accumulation as a tool to extract the surplus by embedding it in the growth process in India's economy.