My Job at the CEC - Financial Crisis and Narratives on Labour

I received a rough outline of my job description today. Here it goes. This is copy and pasted from the email:

It is argued that India is not hit by the global financial recession the same way as the other countries world over. Industry representatives argue that that there has been a surge in foreign direct investment in the manufacturing sector; there have not been any signs of a slowdown and that the International confidence in Indian manufacturing is very high. According to news reports the government was working with the private sector to increase manufacturing sector's share in the gross domestic product (GDP) to 30 percent over the next few years from the present 17-18 percent.

Yet on the flip side there is a plethora of stories of workers’ resistances, struggles and strikes since the outbreak of the global financial meltdown. Official data reveals that between January and October of 2008, there were 910,276 strikes throughout the country compared with 534,640 over the same period in 2007. Strikes in major companies include Hyundai, Mahindra and Mahindra and MRF. According to newspaper reports, in August 2008, about 100,000 bank officers called a strike to protest a proposed bank merger plan. Another strike call was made by 500,000 coal miners in December. Moreover, workers are being laid off across various sectors including the export oriented sectors such as garments and textiles. There is a large scale retrenchment of contract workers and casual workers who are not organized in any form and while there are spontaneous outbursts they are not documented. There are also labour responses which do not take the form of a protest or strike and remain unrecorded.

Given this Centre for Education and Communication (CEC) intends to document the geography of labour struggles from selected locations, chosen based on relevant parameters. The exercise should result in the creation of a database on labour struggles from different parts of the country. The expected out puts, therefore, include narratives on selected labour struggles and a e-database that provides disaggregated information on the enterprise, trade union and the struggle.

The person responsible for the task should be willing to travel within India and should have the ability to quickly pick up stories, build narratives and analyse the components. We also expect a project completion report at the end.

I do not know exactly what all of this entails for me, and I have no idea as to whether I am the only member of this survey team. I just emailed my contact at CEC, and I asked her basic logistical, financial, and project questions. I will let you know what she says in response. I am so fantastically excited about this.

In a letter I started to a friend I recently recounted how I have only a short time left in the United States before I leave for three months. I told her how I have no bearing on how many new experiences I will have. How I have no dreams that can calculate the number of faces I will get to see, the number of hands I get to shake. I told her I do not know where my list of new experiences will end, but I do know where they will begin. I want to know the earth. The feel, the color, the weight. It seems like a good place to start.

So I will be the crazy white boy in the airport parking lot that finds some section of earth that isn't recognizably asphalt or potting soil and touches the ground. I'll draw my first letter in the Indian sand. I'll let you know what it's like.

Best,

Sam