“Human Beings Are Too Cheap in India”: Wages and Work Organization as Business Strategies in Bombay's Late Colonial Textile Industry

Pub Date : 2024-11-11 DOI:10.1017/s0020859024000579
Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Aditi Dixit
{"title":"“Human Beings Are Too Cheap in India”: Wages and Work Organization as Business Strategies in Bombay's Late Colonial Textile Industry","authors":"Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Aditi Dixit","doi":"10.1017/s0020859024000579","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the business strategies employed by early twentieth-century Bombay mill owners in work organization and wage differentiation. The traditionally highly segmented and fluctuating domestic textile markets in India were further complicated by colonial free trade policies, making them highly competitive. This prompted Bombay mills to adopt various strategies, including maintaining a flexible workforce, product diversification, tailoring sales strategies to the Indian market, and increasing labour inputs, related to their heavy reliance on short-stapled Indian raw cotton. Using detailed and disaggregated data reported by textile mills in Bombay during the 1920s and 1930s, this article investigates how employers adopted these strategies in tandem with distinct wage-setting systems as management tools to depress the wage bill. By analysing the motivations behind the adoption of or resistance to these tools across different operations within the production process – such as weaving, spinning, reeling, and winding – the article reveals how gendered and social-class stratifications shaped these strategies and led to wage disparities across the industry. Ultimately, these labour-intensive strategies, conditioned by the broader colonial context in which India's textile industry developed, were at the root of the lower productivity of Indian workers, with long-run adverse consequences for India's general industrial development.","PeriodicalId":0,"journal":{"name":"","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0020859024000579","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

This article examines the business strategies employed by early twentieth-century Bombay mill owners in work organization and wage differentiation. The traditionally highly segmented and fluctuating domestic textile markets in India were further complicated by colonial free trade policies, making them highly competitive. This prompted Bombay mills to adopt various strategies, including maintaining a flexible workforce, product diversification, tailoring sales strategies to the Indian market, and increasing labour inputs, related to their heavy reliance on short-stapled Indian raw cotton. Using detailed and disaggregated data reported by textile mills in Bombay during the 1920s and 1930s, this article investigates how employers adopted these strategies in tandem with distinct wage-setting systems as management tools to depress the wage bill. By analysing the motivations behind the adoption of or resistance to these tools across different operations within the production process – such as weaving, spinning, reeling, and winding – the article reveals how gendered and social-class stratifications shaped these strategies and led to wage disparities across the industry. Ultimately, these labour-intensive strategies, conditioned by the broader colonial context in which India's textile industry developed, were at the root of the lower productivity of Indian workers, with long-run adverse consequences for India's general industrial development.
查看原文
分享 分享
微信好友 朋友圈 QQ好友 复制链接
"印度的劳动力太廉价":孟买殖民后期纺织业作为商业策略的工资和工作组织
本文探讨了二十世纪初孟买纺织厂业主在工作组织和工资差异方面采用的商业策略。印度国内纺织品市场历来高度细分且起伏不定,殖民时期的自由贸易政策使其变得更加复杂,竞争激烈。这促使孟买纺织厂采取各种策略,包括保持灵活的劳动力、产品多样化、针对印度市场制定销售策略,以及增加劳动力投入,因为他们严重依赖短绒印度原棉。本文利用孟买纺织厂在 20 世纪 20 年代和 30 年代报告的详细分类数据,研究了雇主如何将这些策略与独特的工资设定制度相结合,作为压低工资总额的管理工具。通过分析纺织、纺纱、缫丝和络纱等生产流程中不同工序采用或抵制这些工具背后的动机,文章揭示了性别和社会阶层的分化如何塑造了这些策略,并导致整个行业的工资差异。归根结底,这些劳动密集型战略受制于印度纺织业发展的广泛殖民背景,是印度工人生产率低下的根源,对印度的总体工业发展造成了长期不利影响。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 去求助
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
现在去查看 取消
×
提示
确定
0
微信
客服QQ
Book学术公众号 扫码关注我们
反馈
×
意见反馈
请填写您的意见或建议
请填写您的手机或邮箱
已复制链接
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
×
扫码分享
扫码分享
Book学术官方微信
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术
文献互助 智能选刊 最新文献 互助须知 联系我们:info@booksci.cn
Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。
Copyright © 2023 Book学术 All rights reserved.
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号 京ICP备2023020795号-1