The Spatial Reproduction of Urban Poverty: Labour and Livelihoods in a Slum

Resettlement Colony
Author(s): KAREN COELHO, T VENKAT and R CHANDRIKA
Source: Economic and Political Weekly , DECEMBER 1, 2012, Vol. 47, No. 47/48
(DECEMBER 1, 2012), pp. 53-63
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly

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 The Spatial Reproduction of Urban Poverty
Labour and Livelihoods in a Slum Resettlement Colony

KAREN COELHO, T VENKAT, R CHANDRIKA

How do mass slum resettlement programmes in

expanding megacities contribute to the reproduction of urban poverty in a post-resettlement context through
This urban the mechanisms paperofpoverty
the mechanisms insecureexplores
work andinfragile
of a insecure
livelihoods.the post-resettlement production work and and fragile context reproduction livelihoods. through of
urban poverty? Chennai's premier resettlement colony,
This account takes a spatial frame, featuring a large concen-
Kannagi Nagar, housing slum-dwellers evicted from the
tration of low-skilled informal workers forcibly relocated from
city since 2000 has integrated itself into the industrial,
Chennai's slums to a state-engineered resettlement site on its
commercial and software economies of the information periphery. Kannagi Nagar, Chennai's largest slum resettle-
ment colony, equipped with a barely adequate level of basic
technology corridor on unfavourable terms, swelling the
services, is located on the information technology (it) corridor
supply of unskilled casual workers for local firms. This(earlier known as the Old Mahabalipuram Road or omr), a dy-
article highlights, from the vantage point of workers namic
instretch of new-economy enterprises.1 The siting of the
the resettlement colony, how the restructuring resettlement colony on the omr predates the development of
the it corridor, but this accident of siting allowed policymak-
processes of large formal sector companies within the
ers of the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (tnscb) to justify
"new economy" exploit conditions created by the state's
moving slum-dwellers to the area on the grounds that they
slum clearance policies, to enhance the precariousness
would have easy access to work opportunities on the corridor.
As a place of residence, Kannagi Nagar is characterised not
of work for residents of resettlement sites. It highlights
only by its distance (about 25 km; see Figure 1, p 55) from the
issues of quality of work for casual workers in the formal
centre of the city, but perhaps more importantly by its reputa-
sector and their role in the production, persistence and
tion as a ghetto of poverty, crime and squalor. What can a
study of work patterns in such a context tell us about the
reproduction of working poverty. It thereby illustrates
strategies of capital, the restructuring of labour relations, and
how the restructuring of urban space by new imperatives
the spatial production of poverty in a globalising city?
of urban capital, through the peripheralisation of both
While mass policy-induced displacement of slum-dwellers
industrial establishments and working classes, createsthrough city improvement and urban renewal initiatives has
new socio-spatial configurations of work and poverty.occurred in Indian cities since the early part of this century
(Gooptu 2005), it has now become a standard part of the policies
adopted by globalising cities of India. Although political
dynamics stalled this process in Chennai until the late 1980s
(Raman 2011), Tamil Nadu has now fallen in line with national
orthodoxies of eviction and peripheral relocation of the urban
poor as the pathway to slum-free cities. Resettlement sites,
however, typically become settled not only through state relo-
cation programmes, but also by market processes such as the
steep rise in urban housing costs, which have driven large
numbers of Chennai's working classes to rent or purchase
houses in Kannagi Nagar.2
If the peripheralisation of urban poor populations is an old
mode through which states have addressed problems of in-
The authors would like to thank Padmini Swaminathan, M Vijayabaskar,
migration and rising land values in cities, its contribution to
Raman Mahadevan and Anant Maringanti for thoughtful and valuable
comments on earlier drafts of this paper. producing and perpetuating poverty has been very inade-
Karen Coelho ( karen.coelho@gmail.com ), T Venkat ( venkatt2k@gmailquately explored. It is now well recognised that such displace-
com) are at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. R Chandrika
ments disrupt slum-dwellers' hard-won occupational and liveli-
( vchandrikar@gmail.com ) is an activist based in Chennai and works on
hood security in the city. Yet, scant empirical material exists on
labour issues.
how resettled populations rebuild their work lives in their new

Economic & Political weekly E33S3 December i, 2012 vol xlvii nos 47 & 48 53

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habitats (one example is Vacquier 2010). If distress migration
as an explanation for mass urban poverty in India remains dis-
puted (Kundu and Ray Saraswati 2012), can the persistence of
urban poverty be partly explained by such forced mobilities
within cities? In other words, if the urban working poor fail to
achieve significant upward economic mobility over time, and
even over generations, can this be explained by their inability
to maintain a stable foothold in urban space?
Structuring the Study
This paper reports on a study of work and livelihoods in Kan-
nagi Nagar carried out in 2011-12, slightly over 10 years after
the first groups of slum-dwellers were settled there.3 The study
forms part of a larger initiative entitled Locations and Liveli-
hoods, which examines how spatial factors such as residential
location and distance determine the working options and
strategies of the urban poor. It thereby contributes to
the small but growing body of spatial explorations of urban
poverty, which tease out the differential meanings and material
values that get attached to urban spaces as they become
part of the negotiations between the state, capital and labour
(Ghertner 2011; Gotham 2003; Roy 2002).
In particular, the study sought to explore ruptures and
continuities in the work patterns of relocated workers, their
networks, skill development and career mobility, the opportu-
nities and challenges provided by the new settlement, and
how these dynamics differentially affected groups of relocated
people. The study comprised two components: a survey of
working members in 726 randomly sampled households
(roughly 5% of the i5,ooo-odd tenements), and 60 open-ended
interviews with a sub-sample of the surveyed workers. The
sample was stratified, using allotment data from the tnscb, to
capture variations by year of settlement and area of origin. The
survey, designed to capture the impacts of relocation on em-
ployment and livelihoods, followed a "before/after relocation"
framework in exploring occupational shifts, unemployment, travel
and associated costs, and difficulties in finding/keeping work.
The findings that emerged, however, highlighted changes that
had occurred over the 10 intervening years, and forced us to
de-emphasise the relocation as the only defining event in the
work lives of Kannagi Nagar residents. It pointed instead to work
opportunities arising in the area, and the terms under which
workers were being incorporated into local economies as a low-
wage workforce. Our subsequent qualitative interviews explored
these arrangements and conditions for different occupations,
probing issues such as types of contracts, routes for advance-
ment and mobility, workers' preferences among the available
jobs, market conditions in various occupations, and the implica-
tions of Kannagi Nagar residence for each kind of job. Much of
this paper is shaped by the insights gained from these interviews.
What makes this study particularly interesting is Kannagi
Nagar's location off Chennai's it corridor. Connecting the
southern part of Chennai to industrial estates and it parks in
neighbouring Kanchipuram district, this corridor has, since
around 2005-06, become a hub, sometimes booming, sometimes
crashing, for a range of high-end commercial, financial and
54 December 1, 2012 vol XLVii nos 47 & 48 EDZS3 Economic & Political weekly
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manufacturing, as well as iT-related enterprises, both domestic
and multinational. It has also attracted numerous upscale resi-
dential developments, which have in turn spawned a prolifera-
tion of malls, showrooms and restaurants along its length.
Part of the motivation for this study, then, was to understand
whether and how proximity to the it corridor had an impact on
Kannagi Nagar's workforce. Findings reveal that for several years
after the early waves of resettlement (2000-01, and 2005 post-
tsunami), the corridor offered at best limited opportunities to
Kannagi Nagar's residents, partly due to their lack of local net-
works in a labour market that relied heavily on recommenda-
tions and contacts, and partly due to the strong stigma associ-
ated with their residential address.
However, we found that even 10 years down the road, em-
ployment remained precarious in Kannagi Nagar. This was
emphasised by the eagerness with which people, particularly
women, asked us, during each of our visits, whether we had
work to offer, whether we could find them jobs. At first, we
thought this pointed to a continuing lack of work opportunities in
the area. However, as our study progressed, we found that the
reality was more complex. Much had evidently changed since
the early 2000s; there had been a "settling down". People had
tried different jobs, some had retrained themselves, many had
established new networks. Most informants in our study even
claimed that jobs were abundantly available in the area. Yet
the hunger for work that emerged, particularly among women,
suggests that important conditions and constraints came be-
tween these opportunities and the ability of people, particularly
women, to access or retain these jobs.
The relocation did not impact everybody in the same way.
For domestic workers, new types of mobilities structured their
working lives, in the form of daily commutes to work in their
old neighbourhoods, where they had established crucial net-
works and relationships. For others, particularly young workers,
both educated and uneducated, the large number of manufac-
turing firms in the area opened up opportunities like factory
work, housekeeping, and office/sales assistance. These "com-
pany jobs" became the horizon of aspiration for large cohorts
of Kannagi Nagar's workers.
Kannagi Nagar, 10 years after its founding, was no longer a
bleak wasteland of despair, but a buzzing site of economic
activity. The expansion of city boundaries in 2011, incorporat-
ing the settlement into municipal corporation jurisdictions
(see Figure 1), and improvements in transport facilities had
diminished its "distance" and spatial isolation, altering the
meaning of periphery. Our study noted especially the magnetism
of the emerging landscape of formal-sector establishments
on and around the it corridor, in terms of their promise of
wage labour and economic mobility for workers in a range of
skills and educational levels. The vast majority of these jobs,
however, were casual in nature, part of the increasingly
evident informalisation of the formal sector across the country
(Breman 2010; nceus 2009; Sanyal 2007). India's National
Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector
(nceus) has highlighted the need to pay attention to quality
of work, as opposed to the traditional policy focus on quantity
 Figure 1: Kannag
that is,
reconfi
mulatio
workin
the "ph
about b
a city, a
populat
phy pr
experie
of flux
tion. Flu
through
in Olsen
These v
poverty
albeit l
cariousn
poverty
sector
ever, ou
were em
and advanced economies of Chennai's it corridor. These estab-
of employme
lishments also contained various types of ceilings on upward
that ensures
mobility for Kannagi Nagar's residents. The most significant
work" (nceus
one explored in this paper is that constituted by gender, in the
safety, regula
form of the gendered segmentation of labour processes in fac-
dispute-redres
tory and other formal-sector jobs. But there was also the ceil-
Kannagi Nagar
ing shaped by the ghettoisation of workers into the settlement,
where badly maintained
income infrastructure and living conditions
calcula
icalhardship,
contributed to, and were exacerbated by, the pervasive and
women, the
persistent stigma attached to Kannagi Nagar. Residents them- f
send children
selves had internalised common perceptions of the place as a
importantly
den of thieves and drunkards, and found that they could only i
ingon in
pursue socio-economic a
mobility and dreams of pa
a decent life for
Focusing on
their children by distancing themselves from the place, both
between the
discursively and in real terms (minimising interactions with
light on
their the
neighbours). Given the well-recognised role of local net- w
gate, this anal
works in informal labour markets (see, for example, Mitra 2006),
as employers
this had consequences for their ease in obtaining employment.
working cond
This paper proceeds as follows: after broadly outlining, in
than those
Section 1, patterns of occupation and unemployment by gender, in
domestic work
age and caste in Kannagi Nagar, Section 2 moves to the paper's
sector which
main focus: an exposition of the conditions of employment in
ferentthe formal sector as from
experienced by Kannagi Nagar's workers.
thehigh turn
The aim here is to show how the spatial concentration of a low-
female
skilled workforce incasual
a slum resettlement ghetto enables the
A distinct
systematic exploitation of workers through the expansion of y
employment
poorly paid and insecure "casual" labour categories, even in
advanced capitalist
spatial econom establishments.
firms along p
is 1 Occupations and Their Social Distribution
steadily bei
real estate
There were 1,086 employed persons in the 726 households we la
eithersurveyed,shut do
of which employed men numbered more than twice
west (Maraim
the employed women (784 versus 302), while the number of
again bring
unemployed women (120) was double that of unemployed men in

Economic & Political weekly GEES December i, 2012 vol xlvii nos 47 & 48 55

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REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

(60) . Over predominate

half the in househ
Kannagi N
earning 52% of the sample.
member, less Paintin
tha
and less than 10%
of skill, but as had
it m
requires n
earner households, males
the point of entry, and is
Over 40% short
of period
the of time, it
workfo
tion, butFactoryhad
28% work (discussed
seconi
hsc), services
diplomas or and small vendin
higher le
workers resources (in themse
reported the case of v
as Muslim. account for 143 workers,
Scheduled cast or
category list,the
in representing
sampleprogress(
(sts) and Most Backwar
ers, are occupations that c
70% of training
the or education.
sample, and Dr
less than category
2%, of workers in
offering fuK
caste and class in
of the sample. urban
However, eac
represented
segmentation only 3-6% of
inscribed in
In this and white-collar
section, we jobs
descrtoget
inKannagi workforce,
Nagar which
by is notew
ge
and Nagar is located on the it
caste/community.
among mercial
other establishments,
things, to fi
f
work in accounted
slums for less
and than 5%
low-in
a more Occupational patterns o
disaggregated in
found in structured
official by gender.
survey W
The 16 skilled end of
categories ofthework
occupa
major typesdomestic
of work, which
occupatio en
by skill workers in
levels), the sample,
but also wi
t
they are keeping and cleaner/helpe
carried out: fo
guished ployedhousekeepin
from in factory work we
tutional orpositions (see Section 2).
commercial W
Cleaners ing for
and the largest proport
helpers are
struction and manual
tion and wo
painting (15% ea
specific counting for another 15%,
establishments, w
The skilledof
category occupations
"skilled such a
carpenters,technical trades, or in off
electricians
services" the 5% of men in factory
encompasses in
ers like in skilledgardeners
tailors, segments of pr
Table 1 men working
presents than women
the occu
reveals better
that jobs in terms of the
low-skilled

Table 1 : Figure
Types of2:Occupations
Occupational Distribut
b

Low-skilled Domestic work

Housekeeping
Unskilled manual

and construction

Painting

Cleaners/helpers

Mixed/ Petty services

semi-skilled Factory work

Vocational skills Auto driving

Car driving

Skilled construction work 33(3.0) 33(4.2)

Soft skills Office and sales assistance 68(6.3) 43(5.5) 25(8.3)

In terms of age, Figure 2
ance of low-skilled jobs in
Business, trading

White-collar salaried of the younger workforc

skills. There was a strikin
Total
25 years in occupations li

56 DECEMBER 1, 2012 vol XLVii nos 47 & 48 CEE3 Economic & Political weekly

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 Figure better-paid,
3: and workers repeatedly asserted in our qualitative
Occupation

interviews that they considered white-collar work a superior

option to blue-collar work, at least for the next generation.
Third, the pattern suggests a segmentation effect of residing
in Kannagi Nagar; in other words, that despite significant pro-
portions of educated workers, the character of the settlement
marks it as a market for low-skilled and low-wage workers.
This characterisation was echoed by several of our respond-
ents, who portrayed Kannagi Nagar as a place of poverty, a
dead-end of sorts. One older man, a highly skilled tailor who
was working as a security guard because he could not make an
adequate living in tailoring there, explained: "This is a place
for the labour class, it is a place of poor people" (Kannagi
Nagar worker, henceforth knw, interviewed 16 June 2012).
Figure 4:AnotherOccupationa
said: "There is not much mobility here and that is why
people drop out of work" (knw, interviewed 24 June 2012).
Our survey data yield extremely low levels of earnings by
Kannagi Nagar's workers: according to these figures, 80% of
workers earned less than Rs 6,000 a month; half of these, or
37% of the sample, reported earnings of under Rs 3,000 a
month. At the other end, less than 5% of workers earned more
than Rs 9,000, and about 11% earned between Rs 6,000 and
Rs 9,000. Our qualitative data, however, suggest that earnings
were significantly under-reported in our survey; hence, we
report wage figures, where relevant (see Section 2), from the
qualitative interviews.

Unemployment
Unemployment was, as Table 2 reveals, high in Kannagi Nagar.
construction
By the conventional definition of unemployment (persons not (4%
work (10%), off
employed, but actively seeking employment), 181 persons from
work (11%). the 726 households we studied were unemployed, as against
Figure 3 shows that while there was an expected corre- 1,086 working members, yielding a ratio of 17% of unemployed
spondence between higher-skilled jobs and higher levels of to employed people in the sample. Out of these, 122 persons
education, more than half the workers with secondary educa- had been previously employed and 58 were looking for their
tion (55%), about 35% of those with sslc or hsc certificates, first employment.
and about 12% of those with diplomas or higher levels of edu-
Table 2: Profile of Unemployed Workers
cation were employed in manual and low-skilled work.
Examining occupational categories from the lens of caste No of unemployed persons

(Figure 4) reveals a distinct pattern of clustering of sc workers
at the bottom of the skill hierarchy: over 60% of ses are in low-
skilled work. Yet, the overall picture is mixed, with bcs, mbcs,
and even ocs (referring to higher castes) also represented
quite substantially on the lower rungs of the labour force, sug-
gesting perhaps that workers must take what work they can
get in this situation.
The above patterns, pointing to a concentration of workers
at the lower end of the occupational spectrum, suggest three
possible explanations: First, that office/white-collar jobs are
Of the above, number previously employed 122 39 82 1
Numbersearchingforfirstjob 58 21 37
Numberthat had dropped out of the labour force 165 40 125
In addition to the people who met the strict
employed, there were also an additional 165
and 40 men) who had worked before, but
themselves for work any more (Table 3).
Table 3: Reasons for Not Seeking/Finding Work
Reasons Not Seeking Not Finding
Employment Employment

insufficiently available in the area. This seems unlikely, given

Issues related to Kannagi Naga
the proliferation of commercial, tertiary-sector and it compa-
distance, lack of suitable opportunities)
nies along the corridor. Second, that workers prefer blue-collar Domestic responsibilities, marriage, childcare 0 62 62 0 4 4
jobs over office-based or white-collar work. This was true to Ill-health, accidents, old age

some extent, as earnings in some blue-collar/manual occupations Others

like painting and car driving were often higher than those of, say, NR

office/sales assistants. However, many white-collar jobs were Total

Economic & Political weekly GEE3 December i, 2012 vol xlvii nos 47 & 48 57

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 Together, then, 288 people who had worked before had spectrum of occupations, while the more educated are on the
either lost employment (122 persons) or abandoned working lookout for better kinds of jobs.
(165) for reasons summarised above. While domestic con- Of the 181 unemployed job-seekers, more than half were
straints formed the primary reason for workers dropping out looking for domestic, housekeeping, office- or company-based
of the labour market, problems related to the location and work, driving, it or white-collar work. Jobs sought were thus
nature of Kannagi Nagar were major factors keeping unem- predominantly in wage work categories, which was ironic,
ployed persons from finding work. In both cases, women were given the high levels of unemployment seen in precisely these
more vulnerable, which is evident from the disproportionate categories. This trend was even more pronounced among
share of women in the unemployed category. first-time job-seekers, almost two-thirds of whom were look-
Being employed was a tenuous, shifting and highly contin- ing for wage work. In particular, second to domestic work, it
gent condition, particularly for women, but also for other was company-based work in factories or offices (including
sections of working people in Kannagi Nagar. Our post-survey housekeeping and security) and white-collar jobs that exer-
fieldwork revealed that large numbers of people who had ted the strongest pull, attracting up to 37% of previously em-
been working at the time of the survey had lost jobs or quit ployed and 46% of first-time job-seekers. The next section
working, often, again, temporarily. Given this interchangea- probes more closely into the quality of work in some of these
bility, it is worth analysing as a combined category the two company-based jobs.
categories of people who had lost or left work after moving to
Kannagi Nagar, distinct from the 58 workers (in the strictly 2 Quality of Work'
"unemployed" category) who were first-time aspirants to the The vast majority of workers in Kannagi Nagar, as in most set-
labour force. tlements of the urban poor, were informally employed. This
Examining the occupations that these persons had been concept draws on recent definitions of informal work as
engaged in gives us a glimpse into the portability, absorptive encompassing workers in the formal sector in informal condi-
capacity or, alternately, the locational dynamics, of various kinds tions, as well as those in informal and household sectors
of occupations in Kannagi Nagar. The single largest category (nceus 2009). Since our survey, as originally designed, did not
of work in which unemployed people had been previously delve into the nature of employment in terms of types of con-
engaged (24%) was domestic work; the second was factory work tracts, etc, our study cannot give an exact proportion of work-
(17%), followed by office/sales assistants (11%). In all three cat- ers with formal jobs, that is, those that carried formal security,
egories, women predominated, and of the 49 factory workers benefits and protection. Our subsequent qualitative fieldwork,
who reported unemployment, 40 were women. Occupations in however, probed these aspects, and found that such jobs
which very few or none reported unemployment were paint- formed a negligible minority.
ing, auto driving, trading, vending, skilled construction work We categorised the workers in our sample into four "sectors"
and skilled technical trades. based on levels of informality of the employing establish-
The above points to a distinction between waged work andments, on the premise that this aspect would, in principle,
self-employed occupations. Workers in the former were clearlydetermine the worker's job security, regularity of employment,
the most vulnerable to losing work or being unable to continue conditions of work, wage levels, non-wage benefits, etc. In other
working, while petty commodity producers (pcp), independent words, these categories would indicate aspects of the quality of
and self-employed workers appeared much more able to retainemployment, a concern that has been increasingly highlighted
their occupations. Factors such as change in residential loca- in recent times as crucial to ensuring livelihood security, dig-
tion (and associated issues of distance, travel and timings) nity and the welfare of workers, as well as alleviating poverty
appeared to have a greater impact on occupations based in (Breman 2010; Chen et al 2006; Harriss-White 2010; nceus
fixed establishments (for example, domestic, factory and office2009). Much recent work on informal labour has rightly
work), while occupations that were more flexible in terms of adopted a worker-focused rather than sector-focused approach
location (auto driving, construction, painting, skilled technical to defining informality, partly to capture the informalisation
trades) were less impacted by the move. For these and otherof the formal sector. However, this paper puts the sector back
reasons, male workers appeared to have weathered the shift in focus for the same reasons, particularly to critique the prefer-
better than women. ential status that the formal sector enjoys, both in government
The people looking for their first employment (58 total) policy and in the aspirational landscape of workers.4
were mainly women (68%) and mainly young (63% under 25 The first "sectoral" category we identify is of the self-employed,
years). Over 36% held diplomas or graduate degrees, while anwho are "free agents", effectively owning their means of pro-
additional 16% had school-leaving certificates, and only 20% duction, but enjoying very little job security and no employee
had primary education or less. This educational profile, which benefits. This category comprises primarily vendors, but also
is markedly different from that of employed workers in Kan- own account workers in many skilled occupations, such as car-
nagi Nagar, may reflect the generally higher level of educa- penters, electricians, or tailors. The second category is of indi-
tional attainment among young urban workers than amongvidual households as employers. Workers in this sector possess
their elders. But it may also suggest that workers with low levels rather fragile job security, but have a stable and regular work-
of education are already working, probably in the unskilled place at least over a given tenure, and typically have access to

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 (although benefit
non-wage less than women),
majority in
ever, 24% this
of men were self-e
also the household
some level. Thus, w
househ
The third
wage work catego
rather than entr
tended towards self-employe
unregistered esta
as shops or
younger workerssmal
apparently
casual lishments (formal
work for or inform
s
contractors.
employment: only Thi
7% work
workers, painter
age groups, the patterns are
sample, such
Table 5 compares the as
current
short-term contr
with those they report for the
mal sector", com
again draws attention to the
role in shaping
government work
estaoppor
Kannagi
capacity Nagar. The majorit
(houseke
categories had remained
white-collar) and in t
as long workers
as who
the were self-emp
ult
The boundaries
self-employed; the figures ar
75% in the
airtight; informal sector.
there w S
level ofsectors:
a notably, 22% of pr
single w
household
had moved and
into m
the formal s
self-employed in
workers moving to housekee
contractors from
Table 5: Work Sectors before and aft
are blurred bec
Work Setting Work Settings after Relocation Unemployed Total
ments before and
Self-employed Household Informal Formal Persons
type by before
Relocation Previous Relocation
companies in th
workers migrat
Self-employed 101 8 15 22 24 170
contractors. Th
Household 6 94 3 29 76 208
reflecting the p
employed
Informal 22 at
8 206 38 37the
311
Analysing work
four categories
Formal 28 22 47 126 150 373

(about a third eac

Not working 37 33 61 97 - 228
firms, with only
holds. This contr
Total after 194 165 332 312 267 1,290
national level
relocation (19.3) (16.5) (33.1) (31.1) as
(100) w
the self-employ
Net jobs lost 194-170 165-208 332-311 312-373
informal or created
worker
Figures in parenthese
Table 4: Work Sector
Work Sector Total (%) Gender Age The formal sec
almost half the
Self-employed 214 184 30 31 108 68 6 moved out - 2
household sect
Household 180 57 123 16 96 66 2
sector also appe
Informal 349 315 34 85 172 92 0 significantly n
portions of wo
Formal 340 223 117 83 155 98 4
self-employed c
in each sector (
Total 1,083 779 304 215 531 323 12
the greatest job
household sect
The pattern of distribution
sector acrossabsorbed
these sectors
gendered. The household category accounts for
unemployment
largest concentration of women (41%) in
portion the sample
of une
other large concentration being in the in
working formal
these
Only 10% of women were self-employed
ployed in and only 1
form
the informal sector. Male workers, on the other
Evidently, the h
concentrated in the informal
of sector (40%), and se
formal-sect

Economic & Political weekly E33E3 December i, 2012 vol xlvii nos 47 & 48 59

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REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

suggests, furniture spatially

are factory said, "Women are not allowed
roo to
large restricted of
number area in thenew
unit". entra
has not Companies apparently went to considerable
compensated (in lengths
n to
jobs lost in step labour laws5
this and maintain workers
sector in casual statt
due
company, which employed about six bus-loads of w
The Formal Sector from Kannagi Nagar, terminated its casual workers eve
months and rehired them after two weeks to break the
Given the centrality and complexity of formal-sector employment
in the livelihoods landscape of Kannagi Nagar, this tinuity
section of employment. Many women in our study had
spotlights working conditions in this sector, focusingas casual workers for over 15 years within the same co
parti-
Casual
cularly on its two largest component occupations, factory work workers were paid in cash, and efforts were
times made to erase any record of employment of ind
and housekeeping, both prime examples of the opportunities
locally opened up for workers in Kannai Nagar. workers, for example by demanding that pay envelo
returned to the company. Workers were often paid on
Factory Work sis of daily attendance, with the monthly wage cut f
day
Factory workers constituted 6% of all employed workers, of leave taken.
and
20% of formal-sector workers in our sample. As SectionYet,i companies were also forced to balance their str
of casualising workers against their need to retain expe
showed, factory work (or "company" work) was a preferred
workers. Many small concessions were made in the inter
occupation for younger workers, particularly for women.
However, the category encompasses a diverse range of good workers without having to make them perm
keeping
One company paid workers a wage for one week
jobs, ranging from reasonably secure and well-paid employ-
bi-annual
ment with benefits, to highly casual and insecure work at "termination" break. With increasing comp
less than minimum wages for back-breaking andfor
often
experienced and competent workers, some compani
hazardous work. started raising wages slightly. Yet, the availability of
Often, the two extremes are found within the samepool of low-skilled workers in the resettlement colony ev
company and the distinction typically tends to fall outallowed companies to keep wages low.
along gender lines. As Table 6 shows, a small proportion of Casual work has its own internal hierarchy: at the t
factory workers (20%) Table 6: Composition of Factory Workers casual workers hired and paid directly by the compan
were tailors engaged byGender enjoy slightly better security, wage levels and working
. . . . Male Female Total
in industrial . . . tions than those hired.through
produc- Tanorscontractors.7(177
Next are w
tion, close to a thirdhired
Shopby contractors
floor for workers
fixed contract periods and ap
17(41.
were machine on the
Opera- contractor's payrolls.
Machine And finally, there
operators are w
17(41
tors, and nearly half brought in for temporary or piece-rate jobs, who may n
were generic shop floor workers, appear in theunskilled.
typically contractor'sWhile
records. One woman in our
worked in
women formed 38% of factory workers in the last category
general, they for
were an iron-works company
concentrated in the unskilled segment
iron rods(60%), while
at Re 0.60 only
per rod. She claimed that she could
four of the 21 machine operators350 rods a day
(usually at the
skilled most. "I could make about Rs
workers)
were women. 7,000 a month maximum, but I cannot work that har
The gendered segmentation of factory workearning less
also than Rs 4,000. The advantage of this work
distin-
guished casual from permanent jobs. In mostwe can come and go as we wish, but the wages are poor
manufacturing
interviewed
firms, machine operators comprised a relatively 16 June
privileged cat- 2012).
egory that entered permanent status withMost of the wage
attendant casual factory workers we interviewed we
skilled
structures and benefits. However, the majority at the were
of workers point of entry. According to our respo
most
casual, employed not only in subsidiary or factory acti-
peripheral jobs required no educational qualificatio
vities such as packing, quality checking or many claimed
logistics, that having a 10th standard or sslc cer
but even
hardly
in core production sectors like assembly. Even made
large a difference to the kinds of work they got -
manufac-
all largely
turing companies with several hundred workers manual
spread overwork. Much more important for obt
numerous units maintained a significantly jobs were
higher recommendations
number of or references from persons
to the employer.
casual than formal workers. Very large proportions Educational qualifications were som
of this
casual labour force were female. Several women reported
required the
for promotion to a supervisory position. Dem
educational
existence of a firm ceiling on upward mobility qualifications for unskilled factory jobs a
for women,
to constitute
with permanent positions reserved for male workers.a way
Onefor employers to justify paying diffe
woman working in a large manufacturingwages
firmfor the same kind of work.
commented:
Wages
"After 2-3 years of work, some workers get for casual
confirmed, workers in factory jobs as reported
but
not women". In some industries, women qualitative
are kept confined
interviews ranged from about Rs 3,000 to R
(comparable
to assembly functions and are not allowed to domestic workers' wages, which range
to enter more
Rs 1,500
dynamic segments such as site work. A woman for part-time
working in a work to about Rs 5,500). Of th

60 December 1, 2012 vol XLVii nos 47 & 48 EÜ233 Economic & Political weekly

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 ~ ~ = REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

casual factory difficult for some" (knw interviewed

workers we 24 June 2012). One
interviewe
Rs 3,000 and Rs machine operator told us,
5,000, and only two ear
Benefits were absent in these jobs,
Many companies are moving far away - Sriperambudur, Gumidipoon-
ex
Fund (pf) and Employees' State
di, Maraimalai Nagar. Earlier the area was full of factories, now itInsuran
is
were widely implemented.
only it companies nearby, so it is becoming difficult However,
for machine op-

our sample had erators here. contributions

many were confused or unaware
canteen, security, etc (knw, interviewed 30 June 2012).
from the scheme. One said:
because we are Of
re-hiredthe four machine operators we interviewed
frequently.
bution has not tative round, all were
been paid. male and in permanent
Because of our
struggles,
our numbers."
they will fire
24 June 2012).
While factory work was sought after by younger female
workers in Kannagi Nagar as offering more prestige and prom-
ising more mobility than domestic work or housekeeping, it
emerged in our study as very poor-quality work, with long
hours and hard-working conditions, in many ways worse than
the traditionally stigmatised occupation of domestic work.
One worker who had quit her assembly job said: "We had to
stand for long. We had an hourly target to meet, and we could
only achieve that by working in a standing position" (knw,
interviewed 24 June 2012). Many factory jobs involve nine or
10 -hour working days, with sometimes an hour's travel in each
direction. The rate of movement in and out of these jobs testi-
fied partly to the insecurity of contracts, but more to its unsus-
tainable conditions of labour, particularly for women. Numerous
women we interviewed after the survey had left their factory
jobs due to the hardships involved, their health impacts, or for
relatively minor reasons (such as inconvenient timings), which
suggested that the returns from such work were low in terms
of opportunity costs. A telling example is of a young woman
who, after working for the same company for 10 years, was
earning only Rs 4,300/m, and left the job to take care of her
brother's child, as both parents of the child were working, evi-
dently in better jobs.
Casual workers also lost their jobs because of the instabili-
ties in the industrial economy of the area. At the time of our
research, several manufacturing firms were, according to their
workers, facing decreased demand, undergoing restructuring
or shifting locations. When companies terminated workers, it
was not all casual workers who were at risk of being the first to
be dropped; it was particularly those among them who per-
formed poorly. Evidently, then, workers are kept disciplined by
the fragility of their tenure, where "performance" standards
can be deployed as a means of extracting work under threat
of termination.
Shifts in the location of factories were an important reason
for job loss or change for many workers in Kannagi Nagar. One
female worker declared, "Now that my company has moved to
Navalur, they are taking people from close by there. They have
stopped some of the vans going from here." These shifts
affected even permanent workers, as one worker pointed out:
"Job security is a little uncertain even for permanent workers,
as they have to go wherever they are sent, which may be
pf Only software people can get jobs. Even educated people, dedu
and many machine operators, are going for jobs like housekeeping,
abou
"The nu
in our quali- An
We jobs, earning
have bee
between Rs 8,000 and Rs 14,000,they
with a range of benefits.
are Yet, now s
The same
for workers in our sample, these jobswoman
were hard-won. All these declar
machine
us ifoperators
wehad enteredtry
as helpers or low-end
to un- start o
skilled workers, and had spent between 13 and 18 years work-
ing up to their current positions. Despite their privileged posi-
tion vis-à-vis casual workers, they claimed that their work
was extremely taxing. One man said, "Only those who are
struggling would go for this kind of work, it is very hard, you
work with heavy machinery and there are a lot of hazards.
Many people join and leave very soon, they cannot do it"
(knw, interviewed 16 June 2012). They also claimed that their
work was being undervalued against the new (often younger)
workers who came in with educational qualifications. One
worker reported, "Nowadays they are looking for educated
people. They are paying Rs 30,000 to the new hires, for the
same job that we are doing. The new people learn the job
from us" (knw, interviewed 16 June 2012). After 35 years of
experience as a machine operator in steel-rolling and moul-
ding, this worker earned Rs 14,000/m. He claimed that it was
getting harder for people like him to get these jobs, as
employers did not readily trust workers who came with an
address like Kannagi Nagar.
Housekeeping
If factory work offered somewhat bleak prospects for most of
its Kannagi Nagar subjects, the quality of work in other avail-
able formal-sector occupations were, if anything, worse.
Housekeeping, a term used locally for janitorial services pro-
vided to companies, including cleaning, collecting trash and
serving tea, provides a prime example of the jobs made abun-
dant for women from Kannagi Nagar by the proximity of the it
corridor. Housekeeping services are usually outsourced to
contracting agencies, who hire workers through a range of
arrangements, from informal to formal. There were no perma-
nent jobs in this occupation. About 4% of all workers and 14%
of formal-sector workers in our sample were employed in
housekeeping. Unlike domestic work, which was a predomi-
nantly female occupation, housekeeping employed both men
(25%) and women (75%), and like factory work, it engaged pri-
marily younger workers (75% below 40 years). A third of the
housekeeping workers in our sample had secondary education,
and about 20% had sslc/hsc or post-high school qualifications.
The wages for housekeeping work ranged from Rs 1,000 for
part-time work to Rs 7,000, with an average of Rs 3,330.
Housekeeping offered an expanding avenue for young un-
skilled female workers to escape from low-status domestic

Economic & Political weekly 13222 December i, 2012 vol xlvii nos 47 & 48 6l

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REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

losing jobs due to the expiration of contracts or company

work, as well as an alternative for older people who lacked the
networks and contacts to obtain domestic work, which they
retrenchments, women workers in Kannagi Nagar frequently
quit their jobs voluntarily owing to strenuous conditions, long
often preferred due to its flexible working hours, better working
conditions and non-wage benefits. While housekeeping jobs hours and the consequent health impacts, or impacts on homes
and children. The high rates of job change among women
were relatively easy to obtain locally, they were almost univer-
sally reported to be physically taxing, with long and usually were thus rarely for reasons of income - an important finding
of this study was that work decisions, even at the margins of
inflexible shifts and scant provisions for leave. Several of the
poverty, are informed by several considerations, among which
women interviewed claimed that they had to service many floors
earnings, or even total household income, is only one.
in multistoried buildings, and were often forbidden to use the
elevators. Shifts between factory work and housekeeping were The study also highlighted the fact that over time, slum
common. Like factory work, housekeeping provided limited resettlement colonies take on forms and dynamics very different
opportunities for occupational mobility; the highest post from
a what their builders and managers envision. Those situ-
ated in or near globalising megacities, in particular, tend to
worker could rise to was that of supervisor if he/she had edu-
cational qualifications. In general, then, these jobs were
become part of wider housing markets for working classes and
migrants. The dynamism apparent in Kannagi Nagar 10 years
marked by insecure and tenuous contracts, working conditions
that permitted only able-bodied workers to remain for long on - the people moving in (and out), the proliferation of shops,
markets, tuition centres, ngos and fan clubs inside, and its
durations, high costs in terms of the workers' own household
obligations, and wages that were not appreciably different fromcloser integration with the city outside - was, however,
strongly shaped and limited by its character as a slum resettle-
those obtained by domestic workers. Unsurprisingly, several of
ment colony. This paper has shown how the types of occupa-
the housekeeping workers claimed that they would readily
switch to domestic work, if available. tions and the quality of jobs afforded by these dynamics and
openings are those that perpetuate and reproduce economic
3 Conclusions insecurity and poverty.
Spatial
The informal sector has long been pathologised as the politics play a determining role in this relation.
site of
While
poverty, insecurity and exploitation; only recently have industries move away from (or further down) Chennai's
scholars
highlighted that casual jobs in the formal sector, it steadily
corridor to leverage the comparative advantage of locations,
becoming the norm, are equally culpable. This paper ever larger masses of workers are corralled into the resettle-
explores
ment colony. Thus, the familiar profile of globalisation -
a setting of forced resettlement where the abundant availability
mobile
of formal-sector jobs is undercut by their poor quality, capital set against restricted labour mobility - is found
contri-
buting to precarious and fluctuating employment, and per- form here. Industrial relocations increase the
in a modified
costs forfor
petuating the vicious cycle of "working poverty", especially workers to access their jobs, and depress real wages
due
women. Formal-sector jobs were strongly segmented by to the fall in demand for certain kinds of work. Along
gender,
Chennai's
with women placed at the most vulnerable seams. Apart from it corridor, the consolidation of the it sector and the

rThe Adivasi Edited By Question Edited By

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Ppxi+408Rs695OliverSpringate-Baginski•IndraMunshi•JyothisSathyap lan•MaheshRangar jan•MadhavGadgil•DevNathan,GovindKelkar
ISBN 978-81-250-4716-2 . Oliver EmmaJ Springate-Baginski ^ „ Nagnath • Indra . Munshi Am¡ta • ßaviskar Jyothis
Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd
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62 DECEMBER 1, 2012 VOL XLVII NOS 47 & 48 CEES Economic & Political WEEKLY

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 employment, while simultaneously adopting a range of strate-
outmigration of
stable, gieshigher
to break workers' continuity of employment. in
that Forced relocations increase the
were costs of accessing work for
inacce
range all segments of the workforce,
of unstabl through the loss of networks,
rity or loss ofoffice
continuity of employment, changes in the demand for
ass
The study also
certain skills, and raise the costs of maintaining households in
under-serviced, peripheral resettlement sites. All this allows
segmentation of
butionformal-sector
of companies to hire workers
occup at lower "costs to
relocation. Wom
company" (ctc) by leveraging high job turnover rates to main-
were tain low wages and cut down on social benefits to workers. For
location-spe
own-account and self-employed workers,
disruptive including vendors,
effec
This, competition due to their large concentration with
along in a small zone
has adverse effects on their incomes.
resettlement con
job Kannagi Nagar has been transformed over the
change, pre years,
wage ladder.
through the struggles of its residents for better living condi-Me
stability tions as well as by economic
as growth in the surrounding
large area.
work, Yet, or it remains caught in the in
ghetto effect, inscribedlocinto
or construction. local labour markets as well as the larger urban imaginary
The relocation also created discontinuities in employment(including that of its residents) as a place for the "labour class".
among technically and highly skilled workers. While self-em- Far from being a ghetto of infirm, unproductive, criminalised
ployed or household-employed workers managed to retain poor, it emerges as a vibrant settlement of working-class
their jobs, many in formal establishments could not. For tech- people struggling to rise out of poverty. But their dual dis-
nically skilled workers, such career disruptions constituted advantages as informal workers and as residents of a slum
serious setbacks, especially when their skills were not valuedresettlement site render their climb steep and slippery. Poverty
in the new setting; many were forced into the informal sector.and precarious employment are perpetuated and reproduced
Kannagi Nagar workers were thus doubly victimised by thein Kannagi Nagar through the state's relocation policies,
two-faced labour policies of formal-sector companies, whichthe restructuring of employment relations, and the spatial
valorised skills and experience achieved through continuity of reorganisation of economic activity in the neo-liberal era.

notes any worker who has worked for 480 days be Mitra, Arup (2006): "Labour Marker Mobility of
made permanent. Low Income Households", Economic & Political
i Kannagi Nag
Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB) in Okkium Weekly, 41(21): 2123-30.
Thoraipakkam panchayat on the southern out- NCEUS (2009): The Challenge of Employment in
skirts of Chennai in the late îçços/early 2000s,
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(2010): "
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42-46.
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Infrastructure Development Plan. It currently Slum Dwellers in Chennai under the Economic
(2006): "Informality, Gender and Poverty: A
comprises 15,656 tenements, with another 8,048 and Environmental Insults of 2008-09", paper
Global Picture", Economic & Political Weekly,
under construction (PUCL-TN 2010). presented at the Conference on "The Hidden
41(21): 2123-30.
2 By official estimates, around 40% of allotments Contribution of Older People: Rethinking Age
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ernment of Tamil Nadu: DEAR).
the city and the resettlement site. Many resettled Puducherry (PUCL-TN) (2010): "Report of Fact
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lease space in the city or to build assets, while Class City Making in Delhi" in Ananya Roy and tation in Chennai".
many of the city's working poor looked to Kannagi Aiwha Ong (ed.), Asian Experiments and the Art
Raman, Nithya (2011): "The Board and the Bank:
Nagar for the affordable rental housing that of Being Global (Maiden, MA: Blackwell Pub- Changing Policies towards Slums in Chennai",
was lacking in the city. These transactions, lishing Ltd). Economic & Political Weekly, 46(31): 74-80.
criminalised by state agencies, can thus be Gooptu, Nandini (2005): The Politics of Urban Poor
Roy, Ananya (2002): City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender
seen as constituting alternative pathways of in Early Twentieth- Century India (Cambridge: and the Politics of Poverty (Minnesota: University
economic mobility for the urban poor. Cambridge University Press). of Minnesota Press).
3 The study was carried out by the Madras Insti- Gotham, Kevin F (2003): "Toward an Understand-
tute of Development Studies, with inputs from
Sanyal, Kalyan (2007): Rethinking Capitalist Devel-
ing of Urban Poverty: Urban Poor as Spatial opment: Primitive Accumulation, Governmen-
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Actors", International Journal of Urban and tality and Post-colonial Capitalism (New Delhi:
tre for Development Finance, IFMR.
Regional Research, 27(3): 723-37. Routledge).
4 See Vijayabaskar (2010) for a discussion of the
Harriss-White, Barbara (2010): "Globalization, The Vacquier, Damien (2010): The Impact of Slum
Tamil Nadu government's special efforts to attract
large capital, including multinational manufac- Financial Crisis and Petty Production in India's Resettlement on Urban Integration in Mumbai:
turing firms, to the state; many of these are lo- Socially Regulated Informal Economy", Global The Case of the Chandivli Project", Centre de
cated around the southern and western periph- Labour Journal, 1(1): 152-77. Sciences Humaines, Occasional Paper No 26.
eries of Chennai, including along the IT corridor. Kundu, Amitabh and Lopamudra Ray Saraswati Vijayabaskar, M (2010): "Saving Agricultural Labour
5 For example, the Tamil Nadu Industrial Estab- (2012): "Migration and Exclusionary Urbanisa- from Agriculture: SEZs and Politics of Silence
lishment (Conferment of Permanent Status tion in India", Economic & Political Weekly, in Tamil Nadu", Economic & Political Weekly ,
to Workmen) Act 1981, which stipulates that 47(26 & 27): 219-27. 45(6): 36-43.

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