Q6(a) · UPSC Civil Services Mains 2016 · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks · 2 min read

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"Globalization has pushed the labour into informal organization of work." Substantiate your answer with suitable examples.

Topic: Works and Economic Life. Syllabus: Works and Economic Life: Social organization of work in different types of society; Formal and informal organization of work; Labour and society. Same official PYQ from year-wise 2016 and Works and Economic Life.

Revision summary

Globalisation searches for flexible labour through subcontract and platforms. Informal work: weak contracts and social security, strong task control. Examples: garments, migrant construction, BPO margins, gig apps, care chains. Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Merton, and Oakley explain core/margin, anomie, cost-shifting, and gender. India’s informal majority was old; global value chains intensified it.

Model answer

Introduction

Globalisation is the intensified cross-border movement of capital, goods, images, and some people. Informal organisation of work means weak contracts, little social security, and blurred firms. The statement is well supported for a mass of labour, especially in the Global South, and overstated for a protected core.

Body

Mechanisms that informalise

  • Karl Marx’s world market lets capital search for cheaper, more flexible labour. Subcontract is the organisational form.
  • Max Weber’s bureaucratic core remains in headquarters; the margin is a chain of vendors without files.
  • Trade liberalisation and export zones demand just-in-time labour, often women in garments, which Ann Oakley-type analysis reads as feminised flexibility.
  • Platforms are global in ownership and local in the rider’s body, with algorithm command and no tenure.

Examples

  • Garment and electronics supply chains: a brand in one country, workshops and homeworkers in another, as in Indian Tiruppur or Noida-type clusters.
  • Construction and circular migrants: global real-estate money, informal maistry systems, no union of the classic mill type.
  • IT and BPOs: global clients, formal campuses, and a periphery of contract and night work.
  • Gig delivery and ride-hail: global apps, informal self-employment in law, industrial control in practice.
  • Care chains: nurses and domestic workers abroad; households at home informalise leftover care.

What the statement must not erase

  • Some global firms run highly formal internal labour markets.
  • Emile Durkheim’s occupational groups are weak at the informal margin, producing anomic flexibility.
  • Robert K. Merton’s latent function of “flexibility” is cost-shifting onto workers.
  • The Indian PLFS still shows a large informal majority that predates 1990s liberalisation; globalisation intensified and rebranded it, including in services.
  • Talcott Parsons’s adaptive economy grew; the integrative union lagged, a cultural lag in Ogburn’s sense.

Substantiation, judged

  • Push is real through subcontract, export discipline, and platforms.
  • Not every worker was previously a mill hand. Agrarian and caste labour were already extra-contractual.
  • The new fact is informalisation inside globally linked value chains.

Flow diagram

flowchart TD
  GLOB[Global capital brands apps] --> CHAIN[Subcontract platforms]
  CHAIN --> INF[Informal labour]
  CORE[HQ bureaucracy] --> FORM[Formal core]
  INF --> COST[Risk shifted to workers]

Conclusion

Globalisation has pushed much labour into informal organisation by stretching the firm into chains and apps. Marx and Weber explain core and margin. Garments, migrants, BPOs, gig work, and care chains are the examples. A formal core remains; it does not cancel the push.

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