Post-colonial structure of the Indian garment industry and its role in maintaining the precarity of women workers

ABSTRACT Neoliberal policies and decentralization of production activities in developing countries have been blamed for the ever-increasing precarity of labor in India since the late twentieth century. Precarious labor, however, had long been a characteristic feature of the Indian garment industry before it actively participated in neoliberal global garment trade in the 1970s and 1980s. This study examines policies that shaped the Indian garment industry in the post-colonial period from 1947 and their effects on production, employment patterns, and women’s work. It employs the Indian Government’s official industry censuses and employment survey reports. Accordingly, the policy of small-scale garment production was backed by benevolent aims of reviving traditional Indian crafts and maximizing employment. However, it yielded a fragmented industrial structure and a pool of precarious labor from a poverty-stricken population. Gender-based social stereotypes further enabled a socio-economically disempowered female workforce. The neoliberal policies that gained ground with the industry’s increasing export orientation exacerbated the precarious working conditions rooted in indigenous policy-making and social mindset. Locating labor precarity and women’s vulnerability within this complex mesh of local and global factors offers an improved framework for testing how neoliberal policies maneuver them to influence production and employment patterns in today’s garment industry.