This chapter begins by summarizing the results derived from the empirical analysis. It then assesses the explanatory potential of the framework with regard to other types of political controversies like personal scandals or natural disasters, and discusses the generalizability of the results across space and time. After considering avenues for future research on blame games, the chapter extracts a number of insights from the study of blame games that help to improve our understanding of politics and democracy under pressure.

The long, sporadic prehistory of this book began when Vikas read former Chief Minister of Manipur Radhabinod Koijam's op-ed on the Naga peace process in the Hindu after finishing his undergraduate studies. Writing a few months after the 2001 Census, Koijam drew attention towards, among other things, the discrepancies between different estimates of Nagaland's area and population. An interview of Nagaland's Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio by Sanjoy Hazarika published in the Statesman in December 2005, when Vikas was back in the academe, briefly revived the interest in Nagaland's statistics. In the interview, Rio admitted that his state's headcount was flawed. This study though had to wait until 2011, when Ankush came across a news report on the ‘contraction’ of Nagaland's population between 2001 and 2011.

Our preliminary analysis of the census data suggested that conventional factors could not explain Nagaland's abnormal demographic trajectory. While it became clear that non-demographic factors were key to understanding changes in Nagaland's population and that fieldwork and archival research were indispensable, the scope of the study remained ill-defined until after we visited the state to obtain a first-hand idea of the scale and nature of the statistical ‘mess’. Our conversations through the second half of 2011 coalesced into short-term project proposals at our respective institutions, Institute of Economic Growth and Azim Premji University. Little did we know then that Nagaland's statistics would engage us for the better part of the following decade and take us through the length and breadth of the state.

Studying maps was not part of our original plan. During our visits to Nagaland, we found a great diversity of maps on the walls of government offices and private establishments. Discussions with government officials and civil society leaders complicated the picture further. Finally, after a senior bureaucrat effectively told us that the estimate of the state's area was a state secret, we decided to examine maps and area statistics and realised that they were essential for conducting population censuses and sample surveys.

In September 2000, as activists laid siege to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank summit in Prague, South African Finance Minister Trevor Manual pondered the relevance of protesting against a system that felt so inevitable, ‘I know what they are against but have no sense of what they are for’ (Kingsnorth 2012). The anti-sweatshop movement was in full swing; it was part of anti-capitalist social movements at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century that became known as the ‘global justice movement’ under the banner ‘Another World Is Possible’.

Unlike the perceived indecisiveness of much of the anti-capitalist movement at the time, the anti-sweatshop movement remained steadfast in its demands. Issues such as liveable wages, independent worker organization, and collective bargaining remained at the forefront. The problem was not that workers and activists did not know what to fight for – it was how to get it. Achieving these fundamental rights becomes a seemingly insurmountable hurdle under conditions of globalized hypermobile capital. In the garment and footwear sectors, structural barriers, such as vertical disintegration, subcontracted manufacturing, just-in-time production practices, and end of the 2005 MFA, were said to have compounded the difficulties of establishing workers’ rights. This final prediction, which informed a decade of strategy by workers and activists in responding to the state, transnational capital, and domestic firms, would prove to be wrong.

Dynamics of the global garment sector

Between 1995 and 2013, the number of workers at the jobs related to global value chains increased from 296 million to 453 million, with much of this increase occurring before the 2008 financial crisis, demonstrating the profound ways in which GVCs were transforming the global labour market (ILO 2015). Most occurred in Global South countries, directed for Global North consumption Among these, clothing is one of the world's largest and oldest export industries.

The economic geography of the garment industry has been determined principally by retailers as well as brand-name merchandizers, or ‘buyers’, who, through their ability to select suppliers from around the world, concentrate enormous profits and power away from those who produce the goods (Gereffi 1994, 1999). The functionally and geographically disintegrated garment industry is one of the most exploitative, labour-intensive, and feminized sectors in the world economy (Hale and Wills 2011).

On the morning of 15 April 2014, 43,000 of the 60,000 workers employed in Yue Yuen's Gaobu factories in Guangdong Province downed tools and walked off the job. Within two weeks, the largest strike at a private company in Chinese history had drained Yue Yuen of more than $60 million in lost profits and exacted benefits. What was astonishing about this strike was that it occurred in the footwear sector – a decidedly ‘buyer-driven’ GVC – at facilities that exclusively produce for major buyers Nike and Adidas. Even more, the supplier was able to absorb the costs and workers were able to win some concessions in a historically low-value sector with the buyers unable or unwilling to relocate production to a different supplier.

The rise of Yue Yuen and its strike typifies capital–labour relations of the contemporary Chinese economy. Indeed, growth in Chinese industrial capacity outpaced labour, causing a pronounced power shift, since ‘bosses are short of workers and workers are short of patience’ (Economist 2010) despite reports of a manufacturing downturn in 2012 following a two-year strike wave (Barboza 2012). The export-oriented industrial provinces of Guangdong and Zhejiang in South China have become a hotbed of worker unrest (Silver and Zhang 2009) and since strikes exist in a legal grey area – neither outlawed nor permitted, thus sometimes allowed and other times repressed – it has made China the site of more wildcat strikes than any other country in the world (Friedman 2015). And as labour shortage and worker pressure mounted, employers were forced to accommodate, allowing real wages to rise by 12 per cent per annum since 2001. Workers often succeeded in wresting double-digit salary increases from their employers (Friedman 2014). Indeed, ‘by the end of 2010, Chinese media commentators were [already] declaring that the era of low-wage labour had come to an end’ (Friedman 2012).

Here, I examine the 2014 strike at Yue Yuen in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region of southeast China.4 It contributes to the argument of the book that firms, adapting from assembly-only affairs to integrated monopolistic suppliers, transformed previously asymmetrical power imbalance between global brands (‘buyers’) and producers (‘suppliers’) to a more symbiotic relationship.

Perspective

Urbanization envisaged as a process of transformation of ideas and ideologies is expected to counter social backwardness. Poor cultural practices and strong gender biases are expected to get eroded with modernization following as a concomitant of urbanization. This chapter proposes to focus on how the women workforce participation rate (WFPR), which is considered to be a variable influenced more by cultural factors than economic changes, responds to the shifts in the levels of urbanization. Further, Odisha being one of the backward states in India is expected to be within the realms of gendered division of labour, and hence, as a matter of illustration, this state is considered for an in-depth analysis though the district-level data across India are also included. In this context whether urbanization is able to mitigate the influence of social backwardness is a critical question. Which types of rural transformations are in progress and whether they allow women to participate in the labour market more explicitly is a pertinent question. Similarly, in the urban context, whether economic growth is ushering in opportunities for women to participate in remunerative activities is a key issue. Overall, the chapter looks at urbanization, economic growth, and poverty on the one hand and the changing role of women in this dynamic context on the other.

Among various supply and demand side factors, which impinge on women WFPR, economic growth and urbanization are said to be strong determinants (see Mathur, 1994; Agarwal, 1985; Durand, 1975; Sinha, 1965). Initially, growth is found to have a negative impact on WFPR but at higher levels of growth WFPR tends to increase, thus giving rise to a U-shaped relationship. Cagatay and Ozler (1995) also suggest the possibility of a U-shaped relationship between the long-term development and women's share in the labour force. Even the historical records of developed countries indicate such a relationship between economic development and women's labour force participation rate (LFPR) (Goldin, 1994).

With urbanization and industrialization, female-dominated home-based production is expected to decline as it would be largely replaced by male-dominated factory production (Boserup, 1970). This falling part of the U-shape curve corroborates Boserup's analysis of women's contribution to home-based production.

As Chapter 3 shows, the liberalisation process has shifted the pricing regime on money and on key commodities from set pricing and comprehensive intervention towards a market float. This process has by no means been absolute. The rupee itself, together with the key prices of wheat and electricity, continues to be subjected to intervention that seeks to smooth volatility. The wheat price is influenced by the continuing but much pared-down programme of state procurement. Electricity is still priced in accordance with tariffs set by the state, although these have moved much closer to global prices, both in terms of the rupee price and in terms of much more frequent tariff revision. Regardless of these vestiges of the pre-liberalisation era, however, transformation in the economy has been significant and this transformation extends to the monetary environment – the governance of money and of the prices that give everyday meaning to the usefulness of money.

Applying the analytical framework developed in Chapter 2, this chapter contends that the new economy is characterised by complex and persistent instability. This instability reaches into the everyday transactions entailed in maintaining the consumer basket and thereby imposes very real implications for money. Building on the description of the transformation of the rupee relayed in Chapter 3 with a description of attendant transformation in alternative monetary forms, which were raised in Chapter 5, the chapter presents a conception of frontier money as entailing multiple money forms, each with its own profile of risk and liquidity, that include the transformed open economy rupee as well as an array of alternative money forms.

This analysis is premised on the changing risk profile of the rupee in the postliberalisation environment of the new economy. If state money is not the ‘stable pole’, then it carries risk of volatility in its value relative to subsistence goods, as well as the risk of long-term depreciation. In these conditions, the risk-free status of state money is undermined as the monetary environment becomes more complicated. In these circumstances, state money's distinction from other liquid assets becomes less pronounced: the once clear line is increasingly blurred between state money – as an embodiment of key monetary attributes and thus a unique money instrument – and ordinary commodities and assets which may carry similar profiles of risk and liquidity.

Introduction

Until the late nineteenth century, when the British established control over parts of the Naga Hills1 and Ao Nagas were exposed to Christianity, the Naga society was non-literate. Unlike other parts of the Indian subcontinent that had prior exposure to collection of information by premodern states and could influence early colonial statistical categories and practices to some extent (Peabody 2001; Guha 2003), Nagas were first exposed to statistics only in the late nineteenth century beginning with the record-keeping of the Baptist Church and colonial administration. Yet within a generation, numbers and written documents became key ingredients of political debates in the Naga Hills and began to play an important role in the Naga nationalist discourse.

The Memorandum on the Naga Hills to the Simon Commission (1929), the foundational document of the Naga political history (Timeline 2.1), contains arguments based on government statistics and statistical comparisons. The memorandum notes,

The adjusted 1921 population of the Naga Hills district was 158,801 after accounting for the transfer of the Diger Mauza from Kohima subdivision to North Cachar subdivision in 1923 (NSA, 2:587). Furthermore, according to the 1921 Census, the population of the Naga tribes of Assam, including Nagas outside the Naga Hills district, was 220,619 (Marten 1923: 160). The members of the Naga Club who submitted the memorandum belonged to Angami (including Eastern Angami, that is, Chakhesang), Kacha Naga, Kuki, Sumi, Lotha and Rengma tribes. The population of the speakers of the corresponding ‘vernaculars’ was 121,759 (ibid.: 98). The figure quoted in the memorandum is, however, close to 102,402, the 1901 Census population estimate (Allen 1902: 32; McSwiney 1912: Table II).

Perspective

In what way human behaviour intermingles with changing economic activities and results in better sources of livelihood for making the urbanization process inclusive is a pertinent issue. The disadvantaged section can be conceptualized in a number of ways. The most convenient way of capturing it is to focus on those who suffer from housing poverty. In what way the slum households located at the lowest rungs of urban space do or do not benefit in the process of urbanization can then be analysed with profundity.

Focussing on the survival strategies of the slums we note that migrants, particularly from the rural areas, access information on the urban labour market through various informal channels, and hope to experience upward income mobility by migrating to the urban areas. However, one missing area of research relates to the segmented nature of the urban labour market due to specialization of activities in different areas (zones) within a city. Segmentation along the lines of caste, skill, and education has of course drawn adequate attention of the scholars, but the physical segmentation of the labour market is an issue that has received relatively less attention. By physical segmentation we mean inaccessibility of certain kinds of jobs by certain group of individuals, primarily because of the distance factor within a city: high-income jobs may be available in a particular locality, but their physical distance from the place where one specific group of migrants resides in the city could be so enormous that such jobs may remain inaccessible to them. Even inexpensive (intra-city) transport for commutation need not eliminate these labour market barriers, especially in developing countries. Hence, occupational choice is greatly determined by the narrow spectrum of jobs available within the geographic area where the migrants reside, rather than by what they are capable of pursuing. Contact-based migration tends to provide jobs in neighbourhoods close to their residence: the early settlers help their relatives, friends, members of the same caste groups and co-villagers to migrate to the city by providing information on job and space to settle down, which is often in the same gamut of space and activities that they themselves have access to.

The extraordinary events associated with the global financial crisis of 2007–08 reflect rapid changes in money, banking and finance. Exotic financial instruments, ‘too big to fail’ banks and hasty deregulation feature heavily in debates ensuing from the crisis. Yet behind these somewhat spectacular concerns lie persistent but increasingly visible challenges to how we understand money and the central banking frameworks that attempt to govern money. This chapter introduces the global markets that are the backdrop of shifting currents in domestic money, by exploring the changing relationship between the state and money at the heights of global finance. In this, we find the transformation of money as burgeoning financial markets push at the bounds of central bank control over money, undermining the theoretical structures through which money and finance are understood and governed. Here we see money less in terms of its philosophical connotations and more in its application in financial markets; a perspective which is carried throughout the book's analysis. This exploration of money at the heights of global markets thereby sets the stage for later analysis by exploring the global context in which frontier money is borne through a perspective on money which is both grounded in finance theory and which addresses the increasingly strained relationship between the state and money.

The chapter opens by identifying the crucial role that state money plays in the financial architecture, as a benchmark for risk and liquidity. These benchmarking functions are intimately linked to notions of money as they are expressed in monetary and finance theory – for example, in asset pricing theory, endogenous and exogenous theories of money creation, and theories of monetary policy transmission – and (as we will see in later chapters) are implicit in central bank discourse and development policy. These depictions of state money demonstrate the uniqueness of money in conventional thinking, a uniqueness that, as Keynes explores in his description of money in the General Theory (1936), is tied to the state's sponsorship and control over money in the economy.

Framed in financial terms of risk and liquidity and cast against Keynes’ 1930s description of money, the chapter considers how the forces of globalisation have impacted this uniqueness of state money. This analysis explores money as increasingly fluid and ambiguous, and introduces the new challenges to policy and to theory that this predicament generates.

Societies without states. If prosperous, societies that lack states remain insecure; to be secure, they must be poor. There thus can be no development.

In 2005, the late Neil Kearney, then General Secretary of the International Textile, Garment, and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF), delivered a series of speeches under the banner ‘Life beyond Codes’. Kearney drew attention to the losses the garment workers had experienced over the previous decade, during which real wages had fallen by 25 per cent and working hours had risen by 25 per cent to an average of 60 hours a week. He painted a ‘pretty depressing picture’ of the existing governance regimes (ITGLWF 2007). ‘Ten years of corporate code of conduct application,’ Kearney proclaimed, ‘had brought little change to workplaces, with conditions often worse than they were a decade ago. […] Now the time has come to be looking at “life beyond codes”.’ Neil Kearney's personal evolution, as a banker turned garment sector union leader, is not incongruent in a regime of ‘social models’ where structural antagonisms are blurred, and the emphasis is placed on class cooperation. Nonetheless, Kearney recognized the profound restructuring global capitalism had undergone since the late 1960s and the consequent need for labour to globalize its own strategies in response. For Kearney and the ITGLWF's case, this meant globalizing the ‘social partnership model’.

As outlined in Chapter 1, contemporaneous with the rise of globalization, new initiatives emerged to counter the fragmentation of state-based trade unions and the increased fluidity of capital in an attempt to globalize workers’ rights. Top-down initiatives, often face-saving measures for TNCs, included consumer-led campaigns driven by NGOs, in addition to efforts by supranational bodies such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and World Bank. Global North garment trade unions responded to globalization with two different types of transnational countervailing strategies: the Global Union Federation (GUF)– initiated global framework agreements (GFAs) and the US-led anti-sweatshop strategies.

In Europe, capital and labour confrontation became a compromise and was bound up with a strong state regulatory apparatus. But in North America, more specifically the US but later also Canada, where regulations were comparatively weak, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) was nonetheless successful and overcame many of the same hurdles that mark today's globalized epoch. Two irreconcilable garment worker trade union strategies grew out of Europe's partnerships versus US antagonistic models.

Both European and North American approaches to tackling globalization's consequences in the garment industry fell under the ‘global governance’ regime of the 1990s, but utilized very different tactics.

The Great Transformation: How the desire to increase the purchasing power of private budgets leads to the formation of organized interests.