Housing and Unfree Labour: A Village Case Study from Rajasthan, India

Shamsher Singh

Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 2022, vol. 11, issue 2, 187-209

Abstract: The phenomenon of unfree labour relations in the Indian countryside continues to remain a matter of concern. While multiple factors contribute to attachment and unfreedom of labour dependency on employers for housing, it is an understudied issue in the existing literature. Drawing on a detailed field study of an agriculturally advanced village in Sri Ganganagar district of north-western state of Rajasthan, this study discusses the role of housing in labour relations and contracts. It has been argued that when the proximate cause of unfree labour relations in this village is the lack of access to housing and homestead among the local landless Dalit labourers, the nature of overall dependence derives from multiple socio-economic factors rooted in unequal caste and class relations, inequality in land ownership and limited employment opportunities within the capital-intensive local agrarian production system. This article also discusses the nature, mechanisms and types of long-term labour contracts and labour services prevalent in the village and how all these are closely intertwined with caste relations. The study explores labour dependency in relation to labour contracts, wage negotiations, freedom and mobility, and working and living conditions.

Keywords: Unfree labour; rural housing; agrarian relations; caste; class; rural India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/22779760221101335 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:agspub:v:11:y:2022:i:2:p:187-209

DOI: 10.1177/22779760221101335

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy from Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().