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Sex, Bricks and Mortar: Constructing Class in a Central Indian Steel Town*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2014

JONATHAN PARRY
JONATHAN PARRY*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Based on a case study of informal sector construction labour in the central Indian steel town of Bhilai, this paper explores the intersection and the mutually constitutive relationship between social class on the one hand, and gender (and more specifically sexual) relations on the other. It is part of an attempt to document and analyse a process of class differentiation within the manual labour force between aspirant middle class organized sector workers and the unorganized sector ‘labour class’. With some help from the (pre-capitalist) ‘culture’ of their commonly work-shy men-folk, their class situation forces ‘labour class’ women onto construction sites where they are vulnerable to the sexual predation of supervisors, contractors and owners. That some acquiesce reinforces the widespread belief that ‘labour class’ women are sexually available, which in turn provides ‘proof’ to the labour aristocracy that they themselves are a different and better breed, superior in culture and morals. Class inequalities produce a particular configuration of gender relations; gender relations (and in particular sexual relations) produce a powerful ideological justification for class differentiation. This proposition has strong resonances with processes reported from other parts of the world; but in the Indian context and in its specific focus on sex it has not been clearly articulated and its significance for class formation has not been adequately appreciated.

Type
FORUM: Class Matters: New Ethnographic Perspectives on the Politics of Indian Labour
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 5 , September 2014 , pp. 1242 - 1275
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

This paper calls on approximately 30 months’ fieldwork in Bhilai undertaken between 1993 and 2011, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Nuffield Foundation, London School of Economics and the Leverhulme Trust. I am deeply indebted to Ajay T. G. for research assistance. Seminar versions were presented to the Anthropology Departments, London School of Economics and Brunel University, and to the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. For comments on an earlier draft, I am especially grateful to James Carrier, Margaret Dickinson, Chris Fuller, Chris Gregory, Alpa Shah and the two anonymous reviewers for this journal.

References

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33 I employ pseudonyms throughout this paper.

34 The term ‘Bihari’ is applied to anyone from either Uttar Pradesh or Bihar.

35 In reality, there are clearly many women employed in construction in Bihar (see, for example, the reference in Footnote 29 of this paper: Madhok 2005: 69f), though it is possible that many are migrants from other states (including Chhattisgarh).

36 Chhattisgarhis have a long history of labour migration—especially to the tea plantations in Assam, the Bengal jute mills, the mines in Jharkhand, and to the steel and railway towns of Jamshedpur and Kharagpur.

37 Of a sample of 49 of Kedarnath’s labour force at the beginning of 2004, 36 (73 per cent) were local Chhattisgarhis and the rest ‘outsiders’. Eight were Adivasis, eight of Scheduled Caste and, with the exception of one Muslim and one from the ‘General’ category, all of the others belonged to the Other Backward Classes. Of the 18 rejas, two were ‘outsiders’ (from elsewhere in central India). Of the Chhattisgarhi rejas, only two were Satnamis. The rest (including two Adivasis) were of ‘Hindu’ caste.

38 For more on the ‘Hindu’/Satnami divide, see Parry, J. 1999. ‘Two cheers for reservation: The Satnamis and the steel plant’.

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41 From the verb dabana, ‘to suppress’.

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44 A chauk is a crossing or square. Tehsil Chauk is actually in Durg, the district town that runs into Bhilai. I was a fairly frequent visitor there in the mid-1990s, though not since. Durg has two other smaller labour markets. As far as I am aware, BRP Chauk—known after the Bhilai Refractory Plant and located between it and the steel plant—is the only one in Bhilai itself. I only discovered its existence in 2003.

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55 In the wake of the horrific rape and murder case in Delhi that hit the international press at the end of 2012, The Times of India (22 December) reported that according to National Crime Records Bureau statistics for 2011, the Bhilai-Durg urban area had a reported rate of 5.7 rapes per 100,000. That was more than double the rate for Delhi and the highest in India. Whether this reflects the real disparity in actual incidence is, however, doubtful. This is firstly because in Delhi (and elsewhere) rapes are more likely to be under-reported than in an area where the sexual mores are more ‘liberal’. And secondly it is because in Bhilai they are almost certainly over-reported. Spurious charges of rape are routinely registered by parents whose daughters have eloped and by husbands against a wife's lover.

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57 Kurmi is a Cultivator caste that belongs to the Other Backward Class category, though it is one of the most powerful and respected castes in the area.

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