Some remarks

I read your proposal again. Following are certain points I thought could be of interest to
you. Of course, we have spoken about these points before as well but just thought it
would be useful to write them down sometime so that you can refer back to them
anytime you please. Not really necessary to incorporate right away, but certainly
something to ponder over at leisure.

1. Changing nature of work with flexibility of labor & ascendance of knowledge

economy should be situated in broader picture of changing mode of production in
terms of age of globalised finance- thereby underlining the dialectical relation
between the two: as much as technology is facilitator of real time transactions
interconnecting the global financial networks; the ICT industry bubble is a classic
example of complex, interwoven nature of ties between them. MCM will help for a
better articulation of the same.
2. Apart from the higher class-caste background of white collar labor, it is the
‘location’ which is crucial in their class position about work & alienation. Master is
also a slave of the dialectic in the end, nonetheless remaining master.
3. Fat pay has to do with following things: first, all said & done, the ‘islands of
development’ status of the industry, two: close link with metropolitan capital in dual
capacity- as a service (cheap labor in dollar terms) provider as well as receiver of
foreign capital. The second aspect has not been paid much attention to.
4. The aspiration to integrate with metropolitan capital is most visible amongst the
middle class which forms major pool of IT workers. So the ISA’s various locations
one can explore easily- education, family, peer group, management, work ethic, work
content thus subsuming any possibility of subversion & only limiting the expression
of anguish/ alienation from accepted forms of tranquilization like social drinking,
rave parties etc. Even here, the distinction of ‘forms’ is quite notable.
5. The complexity has become manifolds- with advent of IT- the transactions, work
processes; forms of exercising power have become more complex. Thus there is
tendency to declare ‘death of a grand narrative’ when that narrative has assumed the
unimaginable magnitude. There is awareness of this divide between reality & its
cognition, which has not been able to take subversive forms.
6. The favored ideology of ‘meritocracy’ forms a crucial link between management &
labor especially in India which has been operating right through education system.
The so-called team work & other things are followed in practice through setting
individual targets linked to team targets. Thus a definite incentive structure is at
work to facilitate team performance.
7. The tragedy of present times of utter hopelessness finds its expression is that
distinction made by Jameson between parody & pastiche, anxiety & anguish etc. refer
to his essay on ‘post-modernism & consumer society’.
8. When we consider alienation as a symptom through which we can assess the
underlying work process, as I mentioned earlier, the manifestation of alienation itself
affects the work process itself-albeit in a manner which is difficult to pinpoint. But
over the period, the effect becomes visible. As well as the manners of manifesting this
alienation in workplace as well as outside are overdetermined by location of worker
in the mode of production.