Revision summary
The old working-class problem was the mill and the union. The informal majority now faces hidden employers and no career. Migration and home-based women’s work broke the factory neighbourhood. Caste and gender structure the worst informal tasks. Organisation must follow the chain, not wait for a mill gate.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
The informal-sector working class in India now faces problems of no employer, no union, and no career, more than the old mill-strike against a visible factory boss. The nature of the problem changed with liberalisation and rural out-migration.
Body
Older working-class problems
- Organised mills and plantations had wages, unions, and a clear opponent. Desai could map industrial class in that frame.
- Informal work always existed. It was not yet the majority story of ‘working class’ in public talk.
Changing problems
- Contract chains hide the principal employer. Social security codes struggle to find a contributor.
- Circular migrants, women home-workers, and app or workshop casuals lack the mill neighbourhood as a solidarity space.
- Skill polarisation: a small formal core, a large unprotected periphery.
- Caste and gender sort tasks: Dalit sanitation, women domestic work, Muslim artisanal clusters.
What remains
- Surplus extraction remains. The form of struggle shifts to street-vendor law, NREGA fallback, and sporadic strikes.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD MILL[Mill union boss] --> OLD[Old working class] INF[Contractor migrant home work] --> NEW[Informal problems] NEW --> SEC[No security no union]
Conclusion
Informal working-class problems changed from factory bargaining to insecurity without a workplace community. The class is larger and harder to organise, not less exploited.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Issues relating to the informal labour market in urban India.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2015 · Q5(d)). View answer →
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Is the working class disappearing?
The mill form shrank. The working class as sellers of labour grew in informal shape.
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Do labour codes solve this?
They can name the worker. Delivery needs a visible employer and organisation.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2022 · Q8(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Discuss the changing nature of industrial working class. -
2024 · Q5(d) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the changing nature of political elites in India. -
2022 · Q2(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Elaborate on changing nature of caste system with suitable illustrations. -
2022 · Q6(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Discuss the changing nature of structure of political elites.
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