Working in the Mill No More

In this book, sociologist Jan Breman and photographer Parthiv Shah continue their remarkable documentation and analyses of the working class in India that started with Down and Out, Labouring Under Global Capitalism (OUP, 2000). Working in the Mill No More carries more than 200 powerful images that narrate the story of the rise and decline of Ahmedabad’s 120,000 textile mill workers. Describing the patterns of early recruitment and employment in the textile industry, and its intrinsic link to the nationalist movement, the narrative goes on to the creation of the Textile Labour Association, and finally the closure of the mills from the early 1980s onwards. The photographs vividly portray how the mill workers, once a proud and hard working lot that constituted one of the most organized industrial labour forces in the country, were thrown out to the informal sector as a result of massive retrenchment. They also highlight the lawlessness that characterized the now defunct textile industry including the non-compliance with standard labour rights, the greed and highhandedness of mill owners, and emphasize the plight of workers mauled by the onset of global capitalism. Pictures of rioting and arson testify to the divisions among the ex-mill workers along caste and religious lines that added to disadvantageous employment conditions and intensified community cleavages and violence. These moving photographs and the intense narrative supporting them will interest sociologists, historians, labour economists, and social anthropologists as also activists, journalists, and general readers.