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Factory Workers and the Non-Factory Population in Poona

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Richard D. Lambert
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Early discussions of the process of industrialization in underdeveloped countries were frequently concerned with what was called “impact,” presumably viewing the intrusion of the factory into a non-industrial society as a sort of shock or disruptive influence which tended to break down the older social system. Moreover, the nature of the shock and some of its necessary consequences were generally conceived in the Western model. To be sure, allowances were made for some features of the indigenous society such as the lack of skill and education of the labor force, entrenched stratification systems, the extended family, and, in general, the village nexus. This approach focuses upon the surrounding society in which the factory is an irresistible catalyst and is either concerned with transitional social problems or with long-term changes such as declining fertility, increasing standards of living, and the displacement of traditional social organization. Most of the data for the “impact” approach have been drawn from cases where the greatest contrasts occur–the most rural elements of the population caught up in large extractive industries or repetitive machine operations; they have confounded the effects of rapid, slum-producing urbanization with the factory situation itself; they have dealt with relatively new factories that have not as yet had time to become imbedded in the local institutional framework; and finally, they have selected situations in which the area was eidier exclusively or predominantly industrial.

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Articles
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , November 1958 , pp. 21 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1958

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References

Richard D. Lambert is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the South Asia Regional Studies Department of that University. He is Assistant Editor of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

1 This research was made possible by a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, a Ful-bright Award, several grants from the University of Pennsylvania, and the unstinting assistance of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics in Poona.

2 This excludes the large ordnance plants in nearby Kirkee which are owned and operated by the Ministry of Defense of the Government of India, and the State Transport Workshop in Dapodi which does repairs and some manufacturing for the Bombay State motor transport system.

3 Throughout the paper, the data given for the general Poona population are drawn from the excellent work of N. V. Sovani, D. G. Apte, and R. G. Pendse, Poona: A Rcsurvey, Gokhal e Institute of Politics and Economics (Pub. No. 34), 1956, pp. 275.

4 Under the over-all supervision of Sri C. S. Natu.

5 Those no longer working in a factory at the time of interview were dropped from the sample.

6 While the present paper will confine itself to the social characteristics of the workers, the information collected falls under seven general headings: (i) Social characteristics of the worker; (2) Occupational experience within the present company; (3) Job history prior to employment with present company; (4) Mechanics of labor market, including means of securing employment, assessments of difficulty of finding a new job, unemployment experience; (5) Aspiration levels for respondent and his children; (6) Worker's relationship to union; (7) An attitude scale measuring favorableness toward the management and factory.

7 Sovani, et al., Table 1.17.

8 Adult is defined as 15 years of age and over, which very closely corresponds to the age group in the factory.

9 Since the Poona data are grouped in different class intervals it was not possible to test the difference between medians for statistical significance by the usual method. The Poona medians were calculated from Sovani, et al., Table 1.6.

10 No test of significance was used, but it will be noted that the difference is understated because of the two-year gap in the lower limit of the age class.

11 In one respect our data do not appear to be as full as Sovani's. In both cases an attempt was made t o distinguish between those born in Poona city and those from the surrounding rural areas within the district. In Sovani's survey this distinction lowered the percentage of non-migrants from 52.7 to 30.5 percent. In our data, the drop was only from 30.2 to 30.0 percent. It seems clear that many moves from the district into the city were not reported in our data and we have therefore used Poona District as the native population in the table.

12 The term “family” in both this and the Gokhale Institute study refers to one or more individuals related by blood and living within a single household.

13 The workers are separated in each factory into those permanently employed and those who have a temporary status or a substitute (badli) status. All workers who had been employed at the same job every working day for a year or more, even though the companies still listed them as temporary, were treated as permanent. Only permanent workers are included in tables giving a constant current monthly wage. It will be recalled that these data do not include supervisors or clerks.