Tuesday, June 18, 2013

a tough take on System D

The Hindu reviews a new book (At Work in the Informal Economy of India, by Jan Bremen) that takes a rather different view from the one I take in Stealth of Nations.

I haven't seen the book, but, according to the review's summation, the System D street economy in fact means waged labour on crushingly oppressive terms. The supposedly self-employed include street vendors, who are “easy prey” for the police, sex workers hawked around by their pimps, home-based workers or stallholders permanently in debt to suppliers and agents, and the like.... A “floating army” of the jobless fills the daily-wage markets, which are in effect slave-auctions.

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