Capitalist Transition and Gendered Labour: Insights from Hill Economies of Northeast India

Deepak K. Mishra () and Sweta Tripathy ()
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Deepak K. Mishra: Jawaharlal Nehru University, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences
Sweta Tripathy: Jawaharlal Nehru University, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, School of Social Sciences

Chapter 7 in Women and Work in India: Challenges, Opportunities and Perspectives for Policy, 2026, pp 125-163 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter examines the uneven nature of capitalist transition in the North-Eastern Hilly Regions (NEHR) of India from the vantage point of gendered labour. Using gender-differentiated data from the Indian Time-Use Survey (ITUS) 2019, we make three broad observations. Firstly, despite the centrality of capital-wage labour relations under capitalism, a narrow, ‘productivist’ understanding of the labour process is inadequate to understand the processes through which capitalism appropriates value from labour. Secondly, participation in household production and self-employment is occurring simultaneously with wage labour arrangements. Given these linkages, it’s likely that petty commodity production in agriculture and non-agriculture is the dominant path of capitalist transition. Finally, despite the overwhelming power of capital, the economic outcomes are likely to be mediated through complex processes of institutional adaptation, reconfiguration, and hybridisation. It’s likely that patriarchal norms mediate outcomes, even for indigenous communities.

Keywords: North-Eastern Hilly Regions (NEHR); Capitalist transition; Gendered labour; Patriarchal norms; Indigenous communities; Spatiality in time-use patterns (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isbchp:978-981-95-6103-2_7

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-95-6103-2_7

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