State and social regulation of informal sector labour in the silk-reeling industry of Ramanagaram, Karnataka
Description
This paper analyzes the relationship between state regulation and social regulation in the silk-reeling cluster of Ramanagaram, a town in Karnataka. Ramanagaram has long been a hub for silk reeling and currently hosts over a thousand home-based reeling and related units, employing a significant share of the local population. The analysis draws on in-depth interviews with a wide range of stakeholders, including reeling unit owners, workers, intermediaries, officials managing state-run markets, and bureaucrats involved in policymaking and implementation. The silk-reeling units are largely part of the informal economy and are typically exempt from systematic enforcement of labor laws governing factory work, primarily because they operate within household premises. Despite this informality at the level of production, the state plays a significant role in the sector, particularly in activities beyond the production site. We argue that in an economic setting where producers frequently rely on family labor alongside hired workers, state policies and their implementation effectively constitute a broader regime of labor regulation. The paper further examines how the socio-economic stratification of production units influences firms’ ability to generate surplus. This perspective helps explain two key outcomes: first, the relative stagnation in technological advancement and the limited expansion of the silk-reeling industry despite rising demand for silk yarn; and second, the increasing concentration of state support toward more powerful or elite entrepreneurs within the sector.
Copyright Date
January 2017
Publication Date
1-1-2017
Keywords
Informal sector, Small-Scale industrial clusters, Liberalisation, State regulation of labour, Social institutions and the economy
Conference
58th Annual Conference of the Indian Society for Labour Economics, 24-26 November, 2016, IIT, Guwahati, Assam
