Lean Manufacturing, Straitened Labour: An oral history of the struggles of Maruti workers – Beragampengetahuan

Anjali Deshpande and Nandita Haksar has written this new book on struggles of Maruti workers.

Faiz Ullah reviews the book at TheIndiaForum:

Anjali Deshpande and Nandita Haksar’s new book, Japanese Management, Indian Resistance: The Struggles of Maruti Suzuki Workers, is the latest addition to the growing corpus of work around the Maruti management-labour conflict. The book, best described as a work of oral history, comes at a crucial time where the larger labour movement finds itself defending its hard-won rights against yet another round of neoliberal onslaught in the form of sweeping reforms.

Deshpande and Haksar talk to several Maruti workers a decade after their struggle ground to an abrupt end and put together a raw and immediate account of how it shaped their individual and collective lives. The book allows one to hear workers’ articulation of their experiences of industrial work; relationships with fellow workers, family, and employers; their view of the State and its various institutions; and the fast-changing world around them.

It will be hard for anyone who cares about social and economic justice to read the testimonies of the Maruti workers and not feel that instead of reforms there is an urgent need for democratic regulation. In terms of its approach and concerns, the book reminded one of Studs Terkel’s 1974 Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do and Ruth Milkman’s 1997 Farewell to the Factory: Auto Workers in the Late Twentieth Century.

This entry was posted on August 18, 2023 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Book Review, Indian Economy/Financial Markets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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