Life in an ageing society is a truly novel experience. For most of our species’ history, a large majority of people were young and life much beyond 60 seemingly a rarity (Thane, 2005). Now, populations around the world are ageing. It might be happening in countries at different speeds and to varying extents, but it is an almost universal phenomenon. In 2000 the median age in Western Europe was 37.7; in 2020 the median age was 42.5. By 2050 it will rise to 47.1 (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2020). Looking at specific Western European countries, this trend becomes even more impressive. In Italy the median age in 2000 was 40.3, in 2020 it was 47.3 and by 2050 it will be 53.6. Spain follows a similar pattern, with a median age of 37.6 in 2000, 44.9 in 2020 and a projection of 53.2 for 2050 (Statsita, 2020). Figure 1.1 shows us by how much the population is expected to age, looking at over 65 year olds in 2010 and 2050 as a share of the total population and comparing that with over 85 year olds in 2010 and 2050.

In the great epic Ramayana of the Indian subcontinent, the story of ‘abduction of Sita’ began when she accidentally crossed the Lakshman rekha, which had been drawn to keep her safe inside the dwelling in the forest. The boundary line that limited the movement of Sita is entrenched in the sociocultural ethos of India so deeply that there have been several feminist interpretations of the mythological boundary line. The portrayal of constrained mobility in the epic through an imaginary boundary line drawn by patriarchal norms still remains pertinent to be discussed in twenty-first-century India in the context of the modern manifestations of constrained gender mobilities.

Mobility or the ‘freedom to move’ has been a theme of intellectual discourse of human geographers, sociologists, and demographers who have examined the concept from different theoretical perspectives. The questions pertained to how mobility determined the employment structures, fertility patterns, career opportunities, and social mobilities of women depending on their subject disciplines. The ability to move freely around social spaces, without any visible or invisible constraints on the basis of caste, gender, and social classes, is a positive freedom which is the foundation of inclusive societies. Mobility is ‘positively coded as progress, freedom or modernity itself and it simultaneously brings the issues of restricted movement, vigilance and control’ (Uteng and Cresswell, 2008: 1).

Mobility plays a key role in the social equilibrium. ‘Mobility’ defined as ‘the ability and freedom to move’ is a necessary aspect of human life. The constraints on movement by individuals, society, or the state curb the ‘positive freedoms’. The instrumental freedoms improve the capabilities of persons and enable them to live more freely. These freedoms are in turn the function of the social arrangements.

I present in this book the mobility aspect, especially of women, which has not received much attention in the development studies discourse so far. The analysis of mobility of women in a given sociocultural context can illuminate the various dimensions of mobility and the underlying gender norms that determine specific behaviour patterns among women in work, social, and public spaces.

Transformational mobility (TM) is at the zenith of autonomy in mobility. Mobility is gendered, that is, women who pursue work outside the household do not necessarily have the permission or decision-making power to move or to freely go to other private and public spaces. The mobility which is associated with work is limited owing to economic necessities. While analysing the significance of work as an activity for women to move outside the household and enhance her ‘capabilities’ by harnessing the ‘opportunities’ and freedoms that work can confer, Sen notes that movements outside the household for work is ‘capability enhancing’. However, I argue that taking ‘women's movement outside the household for work’ as an indicator of having greater freedoms or capabilities for mobilities is problematic in the cultural context of India. My research on informal women workers in fisheries brings to light the ‘limited’ or ‘bounded capabilities’ that constrain women workers in enhancing their potential and expanding freedoms.

Capability approach (CA) has enabled me to examine mobility using a ‘gender lens’ and at the same time not lose the cultural context. Feminist interpretation of mobility as gendered is highly individualistic and relates closely to personal autonomy. But I would rather prefer to interpret mobility as gendered in a relational autonomy context. Women, especially the poor and the marginalized informal workers whom I have interacted with and interviewed, are not ‘atomistic individuals’ detached from social and familial networks. They form an integral part of the social and societal framework. Hence, viewing their autonomy as a purely personal one may not enhance the understanding of mobility itself in the given sociocultural context. Relational autonomy also takes into account the social setting, and such a view will dovetail with CA underpinning the analysis which essentially acknowledges the diversities in terms of gender, caste, and culture in the evaluation of functioning and capabilities. Therefore, my central aim in the book is to unravel the concept of mobility and its various domains as experienced by informal women workers using CA and simultaneously unearth and introduce transformational mobility, which is ‘autonomy in mobility’ which very few women workers experience in everyday lives.

Women are an integral part of the fisheries ecosystem and post-harvest fisheries work. There are strong traditional gender norms that are prevalent among the fisher folk which determine the choice of occupation of women in fisheries. Within the fisheries, there is almost complete segregation of work between males and females which cannot be explained on the basis of the human capital theory. In the case of fisheries in Kerala, the supply of labour by women workers cannot be analysed in the neoclassical framework of demand and supply and as a choice between work and leisure. The occupational segregation in fisheries in Kerala is mainly owing to social and cultural norms that prevent women from having ownership of boats, processing units, or any other technology-based work. Women are mostly engaged in peeling (pre-processing work) and marketing (vending) jobs as can be seen in Table 4.1.

The advantages of new technology in the fisheries have mostly favoured men in terms of advanced mechanized boats, freezing, and storing technologies. The particular livelihood strategies women adopt both reflect and further generate experiences of economic processes that differ from men’s, and the increased commercialization in the fisheries sector have rewarded the masculine norms of work and economy in Kerala fisheries (Hapke and Ayyankeril, 2004). The infusion of technology in fisheries in the early 1970s (Norwegian project) completely marginalized women, and women became increasingly engaged in pre-processing work that involved manual labour in unhygienic conditions. A study on shrimp pre-processing units in Alappuzha district of Kerala has noted the lack of development of infrastructure and basic facilities resulting in unhealthy conditions of work for the majority of women workers (Sathyan, Afsal, and Thomas, 2014). This type of work is considered demeaning, and women from fishing community participate in pre-processing to supplement household incomes since they belong to poor deprived sections.

The caste orientation of fish vending work and the traditional nature of the occupation that is followed by generations have been noted in one of the earliest studies on fish vendors (Gulati, 1984). The participation in the informal work is mainly influenced by gender norms, the stability of incomes of the household, the ability of women to balance her productive and reproductive roles, and other sociocultural factors that warrant in-depth analysis.

During the past two decades, I have traversed between the worlds of policy making and academic research which has been an enriching journey. During these years as a policy maker and a researcher, I realized that, as Marcus Aurelius once said, Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.For the past one decade, there has been much talk about the Kerala model of development and the enviable status enjoyed by women in Kerala society. However, as a native of Kerala observing the rising crimes against women and other social issues, I always felt that the picture being portrayed is not the true story. There are numerous unheard voices of women and I wanted to explore and give voice to the lived experiences of hard-to-reach informal workers in the fishing community whose traditional occupation in fisheries form an integral part of Kerala's coastal economy.

In the emerging and developing economies, globalization has facilitated engagement of women in productive spheres like the global production chains in informal sectors such as fisheries and have contributed substantially to economic growth. But it can be seen that the majority of women still continue to be at the lowest rung of such forms of production and remain as unskilled, low paid, and exploited workers. Why? It is of serious concern that women who constitute almost half of the population in India remain in wretched conditions, even in societies which otherwise rank high in human development like that of the southern state of Kerala. This book has challenged the exalted status conferred on women in the Kerala model of development by using informal work as the frame of reference. It urges policy makers and practitioners alike to evolve mechanisms to prevent marginalization of women in development processes, especially when traditional occupational systems break down with the advent of modernized systems of production.

In the extant literature on development studies, mobility of women in terms of moving outside the household for paid work is considered as an indicator of autonomy of women and is increasingly being propagated as means for empowerment and emancipation of women. This book also questions the feminist narrative of using ‘mobility associated with paid work as autonomy enhancing’ for women.

If subnational political regimes can shape development trajectories, the constituents of such a regime, and the factors enabling this, require explanation. Towards this, in this chapter, we develop a framework to understand the factors and processes contributing to the state's developmental achievements. We emphasise the primary role played by Dravidian mobilisation against upper-caste hegemony and its vision of social justice in shaping this regime (Pandian 2007; Rajadurai and Geetha 2009; Krishnan and Sriramachandran 2018a and 2018b). We highlight the political labour involved in the formation of a historic bloc or a ‘people’ comprising of a range of subaltern groups under a transitive ‘Dravidian’–‘Tamil’–‘non-Brahmin’ identity against this hegemony. We argue that this mobilisation articulated a demand for ‘self-respect’ and ‘social justice’ which has shaped the development trajectory of the state as political regimes sought to respond to this demand. Social justice was to be secured through a process of inclusive modernisation that will undermine the caste-based division of labour. The mobilisation thus demanded, and sought to ensure, equality of opportunity in the expanding modern domain. We draw upon Laclau's (2005) interpretation of populist mobilisation to understand how such demands coalesced to become a ‘Dravidian common-sense’ (Forgacs 2000) in the state, and shaped its subsequent development.

Following Pandian (1994, 2007), Rajadurai and Geetha (1996) and Geetha and Rajadurai (2008), we show how leaders of the Justice party, the political precursor to the Dravidian movement, and subsequently Periyar, founder of the Dravidian movement and the Self-Respect Movement (SRM) distinguished the ‘productive’ ‘non-Brahmin’ castes from those who survived off rentierism and/or through labour that did not contribute to the well-being of the region. Their mobilisation made visible the contours of caste-based social injustice, constituting in turn what we refer to as ‘Dravidian common-sense’ that comprised of securing justice through caste-based reservation, faith in a productivist ethos, need for greater state autonomy and forging an inclusive modernity. Importantly, as Pandian and more recently Sriramachandran (2018) point out, mobilisation was not founded on essentialised identities, but through forging of Dravidian ‘people’ based on an aggregation of disparate subaltern ‘social’ demands. We propose that the Dravidian movement approximates to what Mouffe (2018) calls left populism that effectively created a chain of equivalence between caste oppression and Dravidian-Tamil identity.

In the last chapter we argued how traditional rural labour relations were destabilised and new opportunities opened up for lower castes due to a set of measures informed by Dravidian common-sense. Identity-based mobilisation was not merely about a politics of recognition but also a politics of redistribution that ensured a degree of material improvement in rural Tamil Nadu. In this chapter, we turn to ask: How did such mobilisation shape the material conditions of urban and non-agrarian labour in the state? Given the different institutional embedding of formal and informal labour, we make a distinction between interventions and outcomes in the two labour market segments. Establishing that the condition of labour in both formal and informal segments is relatively better than in other states characterised by industrial dynamism, we map a set of processes that made this possible. The study of Tamil Nadu's interventions in the domain of urban labour, we argue, suggests a solution to an interesting puzzle. A state which embraces economic reforms including the key tenets of labour market flexibility also does relatively better with regard to wages, working conditions and social protection for labour in both organised and unorganised sectors. Tamil Nadu's commitment to liberalisation has been accompanied by a relatively higher degree of social protection of informal workers.

Apart from secondary data and literature, the chapter also relies on detailed interviews with trade union officials, labour bureaucrats, activists and professionals employed in the software sector. We observe that the state has a relatively better share of decent jobs in the labour market, better wages and conditions of work. Importantly, while the state has not been able to counter the process of contractualisation of labour that we witness all over the country, it has nevertheless managed to contain it. The share of wages in organised manufacturing too is higher vis-à-vis other states in India. We explain such relatively better conditions for labour in terms of collective mobilisation and better embedding of the state's political regime in the interests of the lower castes and labouring classes. While Left unions and the DMK-affiliated Labour Progressive Front (LPF) played an important role in mobilisation, political regimes tend to respond to such demands better than in other industrially dynamic states.

An enquiry into the lived experiences of women workers in fisheries illuminates the multiple realities and ‘unfreedoms’ shaped by caste, class, and other aspects of social structure. The lived experiences of women workers form the cornerstone of the analysis in this chapter. There are multiple layers within the social structure that interact and mould the individual actions in a given social and cultural context, which can be unearthed through personal interaction with women workers. While the mobility aspects discussed earlier looked at quantitative data, this chapter will put in perspective the everyday lives and struggles of women workers in informal fisheries work based on the interviews that I had with peeling workers.

Social phenomena are the result of multiple causes and conditions. In cultures where mobility is gendered, there are multiple conditions that can influence the mobility of women in social, community, and work spaces. Kerala is a literate society and is also considered a ‘model of development’ with respect to the status of women. However, the qualitative interviews of women workers have unravelled the mobility and autonomy aspects and put to question the ‘much applauded Kerala model of development’ on empowerment of women.

The ability to move outside the house for paid work improves women's agency and thereby well-being (Sen, 1999). Hence, mobility associated with work is a positive freedom in the sense of exposure to outside world, which improves the agency of women. However, while working outside the household is considered to be emancipatory and empowering for women, it is not necessarily so in the case of demeaning informal work. Peeling work is one such, and the in-depth interviews of peeling workers are illuminating and unravel theories that determine the behaviour of women workers both within and outside the household. The theories that emerge are pointers towards the ‘realities’ that undermine women's behaviour in a given social context, which the quantitative data often fail to capture.