In this book, the “valley of historical time” implies, on one side, the loss of social power that organized workers wielded between the 1920s and 1970s, and, on the other, the post-1980s increase in the presence of low-paid, precarious “informal workers” in India. These twin issues, and the prospect of unionization and revolutionary politicization among these informal workers, are crucial and current concerns in the global study of labour-capital relationships and the working class movement. This book makes a thought-provoking interpolation into the discussion on these issues, examining the working-class movement in Delhi, the national capital of India, from the 1950s to the mid-2010s. Its narrative weaves together new empirical details, a (Marxist-Leninist) philosophical reflection, and a remarkable mix of local and national historiographies on this subject.

The book transcends the ambit and limits of what Joshi has represented as “lost worlds” in her study of the workers’ movement in the Kanpur textile industry.Footnote ¹ In Delhi, textile workers organized themselves in labour unions and conducted four notable rounds of strikes between 1955 and 1979. They sought unionization, improved wages, a dearness allowance, a weekly holiday, casual leave, a bonus, and a factory-level workers’ committee. Their struggles were partially successful. These unionized workers, argues Sinha, wielded social power in Delhi in this period. They enjoyed a sympathetic response from the general public, some legislators, and the police. They were termed formal workers, who benefited from protective labour legislation. The textile mills were increasingly shut down in the Karampura area in the 1980s and 1990s. Their owners shifted capital to new profitable ventures and to the outskirts of Delhi. The mill workers now agitated for compensation from their employers, who resorted to lockouts (Chapter Five).

Formal workers slowly gave way to the working people, who eked out a living in the informal sector, with low-paid and insecure jobs. Like “Lal Kanpur” of the 1950s, the gainful and notable days of the 1950s–1970s now survived in the troubled memory of erstwhile organized workers. Any telos of a revolutionary proletariat and proletariat revolution was lost in the new economic and political landscape. Precisely in this moment of pessimistic reflection, Sinha’s account compellingly moves away from the pathos of “lost worlds” or the “valley of historical time” to a promising beginning made by the movement of informal workers in the twenty-first century (Chapters Six and Seven).

Sinha presents a microhistory of the Karawal Nagar Almond processing godowns, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), and the Wazirpur Hot-Rolling factories in Delhi between the mid-2000s and the mid-2010s. Here, informal workers constituted the overwhelming majority of the working class. In Sinha’s account, between 2008 and 2015, informal workers organized themselves and conducted campaigns and strikes for their right to unionize, “minimum wages”, higher piece rates and a claim on almond husk, an eight-hour workday, and breaks in the case of the hot-rolling factories. They insisted on an active role by the Labour Department in enforcing the Factory Act. They resisted repressive measures by the employers’ henchmen and the police. They undertook several forms of agitation and strikes to secure their objective and oppose the breach of written agreements. They successfully registered trade unions for informal sector workers – an extraordinary development (Chapters Six and Seven).

The mobilization, unionization, and agitation of these informal workers in variegated settings took place, Sinha argues, as a result of the effective leadership and their organizational practice. The latter transcended the folly of economism or social-democratic trade unionism that previously characterized the labour politics of formal workers. The economism and social-democratic trade unionism among formal textile workers were responsible for three outcomes: they underpinned their movement for economic gains, collective bargaining, and job security. Concomitantly, contends Sinha, it was wedded to the absence of political education regarding the problem of the bourgeois system and the nature of state power. It remained preoccupied with the defence of advantages available to formal workers and paid little attention to unionization of informal workers either in the organized sector or the unorganized sector. In this sense, it played a role in the decline of the working-class movement and shared responsibility for the “valley of historical time” (Chapter Five).

Sinha suggests that the leadership and organizational practice devised novel modalities to become effective in organizing, mobilizing, and conducting struggles among informal workers. The latter were placed under labour contractors or subcontractors and not covered by the narrow ambit of protective labour legislation, such as the Provident Fund, Employee State Insurance Act, Factory Act, and the Industrial Dispute Act. Under the regime of neoliberal policies, the state’s organs, including the Labour Department, the Police, and legislature, showed more hostility and minimal concern, making it very difficult to organize and mobilize informal workers. These workers, and their unions, concentrated on neighbourhood-based mobilization and unionization drives. It was extremely difficult for them to do the same in the workplace. Sinha repeatedly foregrounds this organizational strategy (Chapters One, 6–8). This resonates with what Chandavarkar noted in his study of textile workers at Girangaon in Bombay during the 1920s–1980s.Footnote ² Sinha shows that other novel organizational strategies included the political education of workers about the nature of state power and the global history of the working-class movement and proletariat revolution; objections to any collaboration with NGOs funded by imperialist forces; and dissociation with bourgeois parties and the corrupt influences of social-democratic parties/unions. They stressed forging unity among different occupational groups trapped within informal employment in the neighbourhood.

They did not valorize any spontaneous or autonomist working class movement. They prepared the groundwork before calling any strike. Their preparatory campaigns included cultural activities, such as the celebration of May Day and the martyrdom of some revolutionaries, library works, street plays, teashop discussions, and crowd funding. This discussion is particularly insightful when compared to several studies that underestimate the significance of preparatory campaigns. However, we must note that Sinha’s account makes no case for social-movement unionism. Indeed, it says little on how these unions and leadership dealt with caste and gender relationships among informal workers. One weakness of Sinha’s study is the inadequate attention it pays to the specific issues faced by women workers. Women and children surface in Sinha’s account as part of family labour and dependants in working-class families who occasionally joined the front line to confront the police in the agitation among almond-processing workers (Chapters Five and Six). The situation among the lowest-paid female almond workers, and of those women who did not see their home-based almond-processing work as their primary work and remained relatively detached from the movement, deserve fresh scrutiny.

A creative tension between structural causation and organizational agency is noticeable in Sinha’s account. It recognizes the role of labour politics, alongside other structural factors such as the crisis of profitability from the 1980s, the logic of capital’s constant search for higher profits, technological inputs, global competition, and the neoliberal shift in state policy, and, in turn, the wearing down of a welfarist pact/compromise between capital, organized labour, and the state (Chapters 2–5).Footnote ³

Sinha suggests that protective labour legislation for “formal workers” in large establishments resulted from three structural factors under the regime of “regulation accumulation”: the policy of import substitution industrialization, indiscriminate protection for domestic industries, and a pact or compromise between capital and labour brokered by the postcolonial state during the 1950s–1970s (Chapters 2-5). His narrative does not take into account the importance of the working-class movement, especially in the 1940s, in shaping this pact and, in turn, the adoption of protective legislation. It is in contradistinction to the widely shared argument made by others.Footnote ⁴ By contrast, Sinha argues that the political failure of labour unions, controlled by bourgeois and social democratic parties, played a role in the disarray of the working-class movement from the 1980s. These labour unions remained preoccupied with defending formal workers and their privileged positions in the labour market (Chapter Five). This assertion seems far-fetched in light of other scenarios. Indeed, the largest group of informal sector workers have been the agrarian labourers and peasants, and any semblance of organization among them has been under the banner of social-democratic parties, including the CPI(M) and the CPI(ML). It must also be mentioned that the largest organization among informal worker has been the SEWA, and it has been operating within the bourgeois paradigm.Footnote ⁵

Sinha’s account consciously avoids the model of duality and polarity between formal and informal workers. It remains distanced from the assertion made by Parry in his study of polarity and conflictual relationship between the formal/organized “labour elites” and informal/unorganized “labouring poor”.Footnote ⁶ Sinha’s assertion regarding the revolutionary potential in the organization and movement of precarious and low-paid informal workers is different from Standing’s thesis of the precariat as the dangerous class in the contemporary age of rentier capitalism.Footnote ⁷ The (Marxist-Leninist) conceptual pedigree in Sinha’s account considers the virtue of workfare, the concept of working class, and social class versus political class, i.e. class in itself versus class for itself. Political class refers to a class able to raise political questions, articulate a vision for governance, and go beyond the frontiers of immediate economic demands (Chapters One and Eight). This is a philosophical perspective that sustains a utopia and resists dystopian scenarios. Strangely, this book ends without any engagement with the conditions and changes underway over the past decade – the vision for New India called Amrit Kaal.

Methodologically, Sinha’s discussion enriches and enlivens its narrative with the help of voluminous oral testimonies and telling photographs. One would have wished for more engagement with the oral testimonies of common workers and their juxtaposition with those of labour leaders. Having these photographs inserted at appropriate places within chapters rather than being relegated to the appendix would have enhanced the narrative import. As it is, this book is a significant interpolation of India’s contemporary political history, working-class history, and a conceptual and philosophical reflection on social transformation.