The Making and Unmaking of an Industrial Working Class : Sliding down the Labour Hierarchy in Ahmedabad, India

Based on a survey of over 600 households over the 1999-2002 period, this monograph charts the progressive disenfranchisement of Ahmedabad's textile workers and their families throughout the 1980s and 90s. Challenging the myth of the infinite absorption capacity of the informal sector, the author elaborates on the dimensions of poverty often neglected in studies based on statistics alone. Like the companion photobook title, the monograph also examines the significance of religious fault lines in the community, which exploded into riots in spring 2002. The Ahmedabad crisis, typical of the textile industry in India, can also be found in Asia at large, where entire communities sink below poverty line in the absence of social provisions. Co-published with Oxford University Press, Indi