5 - Girangaon: the social organization of the working-class neighbourhoods

Summary

The patterns of capital investment in Bombay, cause and consequence of the constraints within which the economy had developed, shaped business strategies which geared production to the shifting demands of the market. Its effects were registered in fluctuating levels of employment. The overwhelming majority of the labour force in Bombay experienced irregular and uncertain conditions of work. No clear distinction can be sustained between temporary and permanent workers. Those who were regularly employed at one moment could, for a wide range of more or less arbitrary reasons, easily find themselves without a job the next.

The irregular conditions of work and the low wages which accompanied them shaped the social nexus of the working class. This social nexus was composed of several overlapping sets of connections. Although migrant workers came to Bombay to protect their position in the village economy, these conditions perpetuated their need to maintain their rural connections, as an essential base of material provision and social organization. Ties of caste and kinship, based in the village, provided the social framework within which migration occurred. Yet the social organization of Bombay's workers developed beyond their confines. To find and retain employment, and indeed to obtain moral and material support, workers were drawn into networks of patronage based in the urban neighbourhoods.