review of labour
Neoliberal Subjectivity, Enterprise Culture and
New Workplaces: Organised Retail and
Shopping Malls in India
Nandini Gooptu
With a case study of young workers in organised retail in
shopping malls in Kolkata, this paper aims to illuminate
how emerging labour processes as well as the
organisation and culture of new workplaces in India
today have far-reaching consequences beyond the
economy and is transforming Indian society and politics
in profound ways. With the adoption of market-driven
and business-friendly public policy in India, new
workplaces like shopping malls are playing a decisive
part in crafting suitable workers and citizens, and in
reshaping individual subjectivity, consonant with the
needs of the market and of neoliberal governmentality
for self-governing citizens and self-driven, pliant
workers. The paper shows how young workers seek
personal solutions to structurally or systemically
generated problems in the economy and at the
workplace; emphasise the responsibility, autonomy and
agency of the self-driven, enterprising individual;
disavow formal party politics and political engagement;
negate the significance of the state in public policy; and
allow both the government and employers to abdicate
any responsibility for workers’ and citizens’ well-being.
Nandini Gooptu (nandini.gooptu@qeh.ox.ac.uk) is at the Department of
International Development, University of Oxford, Oxford.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 30, 2009 vol xliv no 22
1  Introduction
A
substantial body of theoretical literature, as well as em-
pirical studies, on the western experience of economic
restructuring and neoliberal transition have highlighted
that the process of entrenchment of a market ethic, competition
and commodification, of the kind now underway in India, has
gone hand in hand with the emergence of an enterprise culture
and new “technologies of governance” and of the “self”, notably
the “enterprising self” (Burchell 1993; Rose 1992; Rose and
Miller 2008, Chapter 7). Neoliberalism, David Harvey states,
is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that pro-
poses that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating indi-
vidual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional
framework characterised by strong private property rights, free
markets, and free trade (Harvey 2005: 2).
Individual entrepreneurialism or enterprise is, however, not
confined to business and the economic sphere. Analysts of
neoliberal governmentality have emphasised the “generalisation
of an ‘enterprise form’ of conduct or mode of activity to all forms
of conduct”, encompassing the government, workplace, leisure,
the family and, most importantly, the individual (Burchell 1993:
275; Rose and Miller 2008: 195). In these analyses, the ideal
neoliberal “enterprising self” is goal-oriented, self-directed,
committed to acquiring skills and competences required for self-
advancement; one who is optimistic, creative, takes initiatives,
embraces opportunities, and seeks autonomy and self-fulfilment.
Paul Heelas argues that the “enterprising self” is the chief figure
in, what he calls, the cast of neoliberal characters, consisting inter
alia the sovereign consumer and the active citizen (Heelas 1991).
The sovereign consumer is not only to pursue individual self-
fulfilment and freedom through choice but also expected to
exercise enterprising conduct by making responsible decisions
in consumption and lifestyle. With the reorientation of the
state and the curtailment of its welfare and social sector func-
tions, the enterprising neoliberal citizen, as an independent
political subject, is supposed to be self-reliant, self-governed and
self-disciplined, prepared to take responsibility for his or her
own well-being and for managing risks and vulnerability
(O’Malley 1996). The generalised acceptance or universalisation
of this norm of the individualised “enterprising self” contributes
to neoliberal subjectivity or sense of self and conforms to the
logic of neoliberal policy and governmentality, in which respon-
sible, self-regulating autonomous individuals govern themselves
45
review of labour
in the context of a reconceptualised state project committed to a
market economy.
In comparison with this wider literature, the social and cul-
tural processes accompanying India’s economic liberalisation
and its impact on individual identity and subjectivity, and on
social and political perceptions and attitudes, have attracted
limited academic attention, with the exception of consumerism
and consumer culture, usually focused on urban middle classes.
There is little analysis of the multiple modalities of moulding of
workers and citizens, in a context where the state is being
re-engineered from an interventionist institution to a regulatory,
pluralist one, primarily as the enabler of the market and of busi-
ness, with a secondary role, increasingly shared with private
entities, in the provision of public goods and services (Chandhoke
2003; Kohli 2006; Rudolph and Rudolph 2001). This paper seeks
to address these issues through an analysis of work and employ-
ment in one of the new workplaces that have emerged in the con-
text of India’s economic liberalisation, viz, organised retail and
shopping malls. The aim is to shed light on the role of emerging
labour processes, organisation of work and new workplace cul-
tures in shaping neoliberal subjectivities.
The workplace is, of course, a key institutional site for the
production of identity and a sense of self. A burgeoning literature
on cultures of work and labour suggests that some of the most
dramatic changes relating to neoliberalism and enterprise culture
have occurred in the realm of work with profound implications
for character and personality (Bauman 1998, 2000, Chapter 4;
Beck 2000; Castells 2000; Rose and Miller 2008; Chapter 7;
Sennett 1998). There are divergent interpretations of the nature
of such change, but debates have occurred over some major
themes. One focus of discussion is the question of transition from
a Fordist regime of relatively stable employment, mainly in
manu­facturing industries, to a post-Fordist milieu of flexible and
contingent work, predominantly in the service sector (Jessop
1993, 2002). However, it is now acknowledged that this pattern
of change affected only a small section of the workforce, even in
advanced industrial economies, and flexibility and insecurity
have been a feature of the work experience of large sections of
the labour force (McDowell 2003). Importantly though, these
workers received protection, in varying degrees, against un­
employment and unstable labour markets through social policies
of the state and government regulation of labour markets and
labour relations – a process referred to as decommodification of
labour. The major shift away from this is the new-found and
unassailable normative acceptance of flexible labour use as a
necessary precondition for economic growth, competitiveness,
investment and business success, thus precluding or minimising
any intervention in the labour market and legitimising the ero-
sion or reconfiguration of social protection to meet the needs of
the market, thereby accelerating the recommodification of labour
(Holden 2003). The consequent heightened insecurity of labour,
coupled with multiple, shifting employments, have fragmented
and atomised the labour force and undermined collective action.
Not only has this reduced the bargaining power of labour, but it
has also led to an increasing “precarisation” of the experience of
work (Bauman 2000: 163), particularly adversely affecting those
46
on the lower rungs of the labour market. In the absence of public
policy measures, the burden of risk from unstable employment
has been privatised and come to be borne by individuals them-
selves, thus exacerbating labour market inequality and exploita-
tion. It has been further argued, with reference to the question of
privatised and individualised responses to risk that employers
and government policy exaggerate the significance of risk as a
tool of control. They tend to deploy a discourse of labour market
uncertainty, risk and vulnerability in employment in order to
restrain dissent, induce workers to exercise self-discipline at
work, and drive them to motivate themselves to improve their
own performance and productivity through intensification of
work (Amoore 2004).
Individualised Responses and Personal Strategies
Most importantly, from the perspective of creation of neoliberal
subjectivities, the developments outlined above have encouraged
individualised responses and personal strategies for coping with
the problems of work and employment (Bauman 1998, 2000;
McCabe 2003; Sennett 1998). Individuals have been forced to
exert themselves strenuously and incessantly, in an active, enter-
prising manner, in order to survive in the employment market.
They have also had to strive to enhance their own employability,
firstly by responding to market stimulus and adapting to market
flexibility, and secondly, by acquiring skills, training and capa­
city as a lifelong project (McQuaid and Lindsay 2005). This
includes the cultivation of enterprising personality traits as well
as the development of “soft skills” of self-presentation and
communication, which are now much valued in the job market,
particularly in the increasingly important, and often increasingly
feminised, service sector. In this context, the concept of embodied
performance and commodification of the workers’ body has been
used to refer to the fact that individual workers’ appearance,
deportment and behaviour have become the objects of control by
employers. The bodily performance of the worker is now a key
feature of business strategy and an important customer relations
instrument, particularly in the interactive service industry
(McDowell 1997). In addition to the importance of labour market
dynamics and labour processes, new types of “engineered” work-
place cultures have emerged, with new innovative approaches to
human resource management, such as non-hierarchical team-
work or various reward and incentive mechanisms. These have
been argued to generate intense competition among employees,
short-term self-interested thinking, “strategic, instrumental
individualism” and “an individualised cultural orientation” (Izzy
2001; McCabe 2003; Sennett 1998). In these various ways, the
worker, faced with the compulsions of an unprotected labour
market and new forms of socialisation at the workplace, comes
to be constituted as a neoliberal subject – individualised and
responsible for his/her own self-presentation, self-government,
self-management and self-advancement.
In a different vein, individual identity and notions of status
and recognition previously linked with lifelong occupations or
vocations, are now argued to have become disengaged from work
due to the absence of permanent jobs, and have affected various
sections of the workforce in very different ways. The personal
may 30, 2009 vol xliv no 22 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

relevance of work is believed to have been redefined in terms of
consumption, satisfaction of lifestyle aspirations and even pleas-
ure, while there has been an erosion of the idea of the work ethic
as socially valuable, according to Bauman (1998, 2000). Rose
argues, “work has been re-construed, not as a constraint upon
freedom and autonomy, but as a realm in which working subjects
can express their autonomy”. This is underpinned by the idea
that, “we can become enterprising, take control of our careers,
transform ourselves into high fliers, achieve excellence and fulfil
ourselves not in spite of work but by means of work” (Rose 1992:
151-52). While these observations about the elision of work and
pleasure apply to workers at the high end of the economy and to
the beneficiaries of new types of lucrative corporate employment,
for those who are at the lower end of the labour market, work is
thought to have become burdensome and devoid of meaning
(Bauman 1998).
Exploration in Indian Context
Taking a cue from these analyses of work and employment, this
paper explores India’s new organised retail sector, based in the
city of Kolkata, and examines whether and how far neoliberal
subjectivities are taking shape in this new context of work. The
scenario recounted so far, based primarily on western experi-
ences, does not map neatly on to the Indian context, not least
because unemployment and insecure employment are by no
means novel features for vast sections of the Indian labour force
in the era of economic liberalisation, and policies of state protec-
tion only ever affected a minority of the workforce. Nevertheless,
the issues of the rise of individualism, personal coping mecha-
nisms against risk and uncertainty, the pursuit of employability,
the prominence of embodied performance, the relation between
work, consumption and personal identity are of central relevance
in addressing the key concern in this paper about the nature and
extent of the creation of neoliberal subjectivities among workers.
Moreover, the extent of normative universalisation of flexible
labour, not just in government policy and employer strategy,
but among workers themselves, requires investigation, as an
important basis for a sea-change in attitudes to work practices
and aspirations. This paper, thus, explores workers’ responses to
challenges and opportunities presented by the dynamics of
emerging labour markets and work organisation and by new
forms of socialisation at the workplace. The discussion here is
mainly focused on workers’ mentalities, perceptions and attitudes,
but the first part of the paper sets the scene with an account of
employment in organised retail, covering the themes of work
opportunity, recruitment, retention and workplace practices.
Organised retail has been chosen for this study as representa-
tive of the new milieu of interactive service sector work now rap-
idly emerging in India. Economic liberalisation and the expan-
sion of the consumer economy have precipitated a significant ex-
pansion of jobs in this sector, including sales, marketing and
product promotion of diverse kinds; customer relations for the
sale of both goods and new types of privatised services such as
healthcare, professional education, insurance and banking;
hospitality, catering and hotels; corporate event organisation;
leisure and entertainment; travel agencies and airlines; and so
Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 30, 2009 vol xliv no 22
review of labour
on. Organised retail is by far the most important of these new
service industries. This study is based in major retail outlets and
shopping malls in three different locations in Kolkata, where over
45 shop employees were interviewed, either singly or in small
groups of two to four. The interviews, lasting up to two hours,
were conducted in the shops during less busy hours of the day,
and covered a large supermarket and outlets selling garments,
shoes, household goods, toys, cosmetics and accessories. Open-
ended questions were asked about workers’ aspirations, career
plans and strategies, their reasons for entering the retail sector,
the problems and prospects of retail employment, their everyday
experience as workers, and their opinions of politics, democracy
and the state. All interviews were conducted in the absence of
employers or managers and anonymity was promised to all
respondents. With the help of mall facilities managers, who are
not employers, around 200 questionnaires were distributed, with
questions on family and educational background and on workers’
views on ideal jobs, future aspirations, political parties and
government, development policies and consumption habits. Over
one-fifth of the questionnaires were returned, in fully or partially
completed form.1 In addition, managers of the local branches of
major retailers, a human resources officer of a major retail chain,
an executive of a training and recruitment agency as well as mall
facilities managers were also interviewed, none of whom con-
sented to being quoted or their identity divulged. All this was
supplemented with non-participant observations in shops.
2 The Organised Retail Sector
India’s shining new retail sector is celebrated as the “sunshine”
industry at the heart of the country’s growing economy. Histori-
cally, retail trading has been a vital and important element of the
Indian economy, second only to agriculture in providing employ-
ment. More recently, though, the key area of retail boom has not
been in traditional “bazaars” or small business, family firms and
shops, but in purpose-built shopping malls with franchise outlets
and chain stores of international and national brands, major de-
partmental stores and large super- and hypermarkets, as well as
multiplex cinemas and food courts. Malls in Kolkata attract daily
up to 10,000 visitors on average and over 1,00,000 a day during
special sale or promotional events. Organised retail is character-
ised by formal labour contracts, often with statutory employment
benefits, as opposed to informal work in shops and small busi-
nesses of “traditional” retail. According to a White Paper pre-
pared by PricewaterhouseCoopers in November 2005, at the be-
hest of the Confederation of Indian Industry (2005) and pre-
sented to the government of India, the retail sector accounted for
10% of India’s GDP and was growing at a pace of 5% annually. The
share of the organised sector in retail trade was only 3% at the
time, but was expected to reach 10% by 2010. Other recent esti-
mates suggest that this share would go up to 20% in 2010, provid-
ing employment to 2.2 million predominantly young people, who
are favoured in retail jobs (cited in, Shabnam and Paul G D 2008).
Although the number of jobs in organised retail is evidently still
very limited, it is well known that turnover is extremely high
and retention is a significant problem. This kind of short-term
employment implies that a far larger number of young people
47
review of labour
have worked in the retail sector than the actual number of jobs
available. Thus the number of people exposed to an experience of
work in retail is far higher than suggested by employment figures.
Alongside Business Processes Outsourcing (BPO) offices, call centres
and the IT sector, these malls have been proclaimed to be the site
of youth empowerment, with employment opportunities primarily
for young people in sales, merchandising, finance and marketing,
at the top of the labour hierarchy, to packers, loaders, cleaning,
security and car-park staff at the bottom. Importantly, unlike IT
and knowledge parks, the retail sector provides employment to
men and women from both working class and lower middle class
backgrounds. I focus on those who work in sales and marketing.
Most major retailers employ workers on the shop floor as sales
assistants on a permanent formal contract, with a short proba-
tion period of about six months, and offer them statutory employ-
ment benefits, including provident fund, pensions and gratuity,
and sometimes offer additional health and accident insurance
benefits. The contracts can, of course, be terminated with a fixed
period of notice, usually one month, on either side, and it appears
to be an endemic trend that workers move from one job to an-
other within the retail sector in search of higher pay, or move out
of this sector altogether after a few years. Similarly employers do
not shy away from dismissing under-performing or surplus staff.
All workers interviewed in this study were direct employees of
retailers, but many mentioned that part-time and contingent
workers2 are also frequently employed for short periods at peak
times or for specific product promotion and sales events, through
contractors and recruitment agencies. Some of the workers inter-
viewed had gained their first foothold in retail through such
fixed-term work, and having thus enhanced their curriculum vitae
by gaining some limited experience, they subsequently succeeded
in moving into direct employment with permanent contracts.
Background of Workers
Typically, workers are basic arts or science graduates, a few have
high school degrees, and some possess qualifications in com-
merce and accountancy. Depending on the location of shops,
recruits would be expected to speak English along with the local
language. In malls with less affluent or less literate customer
catchment areas or in stores selling cheaper products for the less
affluent, the English language requirement is less important.
Desirable characteristics of employees are a well-groomed
appearance, good interpersonal communication skills, a pleasant
personality as well as drive and initiative, while also being of an
accommodative and cooperative nature. I was told about a young
man who turned up in a crumpled shirt for his job interview, and
when asked why, he had responded that immaculate appearance
was difficult to maintain when travelling by crowded public
transport. Despite being considered well qualified and better
than some of the other candidates, this man was not appointed,
since it was felt he was “being too clever” and was likely to stir up
trouble and even set himself up as a “leader” of the much derided
trade union type. Potential workers are carefully vetted to estab-
lish whether they would be willing to make a sufficient personal
investment in the job in question and whether they appear to be
committed to a serious career, which would, in turn, ensure that
48
they would be prepared to work hard and with commitment.
Young people are uniformly favoured and those above 27 or 28
would be rarely employed, except in “back-office” accounts posts.
The young are believed to be malleable, more easily trainable
and expected to have fewer fixed or strong ideas, and thus ex-
pected to be effectively moulded to the needs of the job. From the
employers’ perspective, supply of labour is usually not a problem,
since a large pool of candidates is always waiting for jobs. How-
ever, the financial and organisational cost of training new re-
cruits can be high, and so retention is a major worry. In addition,
employers are concerned to raise efficiency and productivity, in
order to meet sales targets as well as to minimise “shrinkage” or
loss of merchandise from the shop floor.
Training to Workers
Workers are usually provided with thorough training for four to
six weeks. Following the initial formal training sessions, on-the-
job training on the shop floor is also provided by supervisors and
managers, in some cases by peer coaches. In the course of their
formal training, they receive instruction first on retail business,
including basic finances and accounting, calculation of costs,
profits and loss, market conditions, merchandising, techniques of
sales maximisation. These courses are partly designed to impart
an understanding of the contexts within which specific sales tar-
gets are generated and have to be met. In addition, they acquire
“domain” knowledge about the brand in question and the prod-
ucts and services to be sold. Second, they are given an extensive
grounding in retail processes, since retail is driven by a large
number of routinised processes that have to be repeatedly executed
daily, ranging from customer transactions to stock display and
checking, cash counter protocols, opening and closing down tills,
dealing with damaged or returned goods, disposal of outdated
food items, employees’ entry and exit routines in and out of
shops. Third, workers are taught “soft skills” of self-presentation,
grooming, improved comportment, customer care, anticipating
customers’ needs, basic curtsies and polite vocabulary, inter­
personal skills, handling difficult situations, dealing with demand-
ing customers, team-working and team-management, developing
a non-complaining positive attitude, and methods of coping
with stress.
Fourth, workers are given human resource-oriented informa-
tion, to a greater or lesser degree, about the conditions of their
employment, rights and entitlements, job obligations and expec-
tations, the regime of rewards and incentives, as well as career
counselling and information about the prospects of promotion
and upward mobility. Some retailers emphasise this aspect of
training as a significant tool to encourage retention and enhance
workers’ motivation, by highlighting the attractive opportunities
offered by the job and emphasising how a particular job is not
merely a temporary lucrative employment, but should be valued
as a building block in a career. The aim here is to create and
nurture aspirations and stoke ambitions, and thus enhance moti-
vation. The importance of excellence in performance and of hard
work over long hours as well as the need for a single-minded and
selfish focus on career development are drilled into the workers.
These are presented as fundamental, unquestionable requirements
may 30, 2009 vol xliv no 22 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

of a highly competitive and hence uncertain job market, if work-
ers are to build a career in sales, marketing and customer rela-
tions and thus ultimately successfully sustain themselves and
their families. Of course, the Indian job market has, for the most
part, been uncertain and the threat of unemployment has never
been far. However, the discursive construction of this fact has
undergone a change. The challenging and competitive job mar-
ket appears to be presented as a natural corollary or an inevitable
product of a globalised and liberalised economy, and workers are
asked to manage the new challenges in the job market through
their own individual effort, without any mention of government
policy or employers’ responsibility. Moreover, it is suggested that
the problems of labour market uncertainty can be managed
because new opportunities are available, but in order to avail of
those opportunities in a competitive environment, uncomplain-
ing hard work is necessary. The regime of intensive, hard work is
contrasted with what is portrayed as an obsolete form of easy
“9 to 5 jobs”, where a salary could be drawn without much exertion,
in the days when competition was limited with fewer contenders
in the job market, and also when opportunities were limited for
career improvement and upward mobility, thus rendering hard
work redundant. It is emphasised that in the liberalised and more
efficient and competitive economy, it is no longer possible to earn
a slothful living. The message is conveyed that the future is bright
for those who work the hardest, survive well in a competitive and
rapidly changing employment market and can capitalise on
emerging opportunities in new sectors of the economy.
Ethos of Hard Work
Not surprisingly perhaps, workers are willing to work hard – the
harder one works and shows results in sales and other targets,
the more one gets paid; so they have espoused a performance-
oriented approach to employment and remuneration. It appears
that, in contrast to conceptions of the work ethic associated with
social or moral duty or dignity at work, workers here embrace an
ethos of hard work for its utilitarian ability to benefit the individ-
ual by enhancing income, job security and ultimately employ-
ment generation. Hard work, also called “work culture” is much
valued here, because previous generations of workers in various
sectors of the economy are seen to have alienated employers and
investors with an absence of work culture – that is, by asking for
high pay without doing a commensurate amount of work, and
thus causing a detrimental decline in employment. Workers thus
seem to have internalised the perspective of their employers
and they are prepared to work hard without the need for direct
pressure, surveillance or discipline by supervisors or managers.
This lays the foundation for the crafting of the self-governed and
self-disciplined, enterprising neoliberal subject.
To concretise their message of future career development
opportunities, some major retailers offer their employees the op-
portunity to enrol in on-the-job training programmes, which
could lead to their promotion to managerial levels and may also
enable them to work towards higher degree qualifications in sales
and management. Workers are initially employed for shop floor
work and on the basis of their performance, may be promoted
first to supervisory levels, either within a store or by transferring
Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 30, 2009 vol xliv no 22
review of labour
them to another store of the retail chain. They would normally be
required to attend additional training sessions, and go through
formal assessments, before being promoted. Subject to impres-
sive performance at the supervisory level, at the next stage, em-
ployees may be competitively selected to receive further training
to acquire suitable qualifications for management posts, includ-
ing, in some cases, graduate degrees from recognised universities
through distance learning programmes. They are relieved of
their normal duties for their examinations and to attend training
sessions, and employers may cover the fees and cost of further
training. However, only a small handful of employees are likely
to climb this ladder, since the opportunities and management
level vacancies are few and far between. Moreover, such oppor-
tunities for promotion and advanced training for management
level jobs beyond the supervisory level are only provided by a
few major retailers. In most cases, workers have to rely on their
own resources and time to acquire additional training or higher
degrees, and promotion to managerial levels is very rare indeed.
The vast majority of those interviewed and those who returned
questionnaires expressed their desire to acquire further skills for
career development, but many explained that lack of money as
well as time, due to long of hours of work, deterred them.
Salaries and Competition
Basic salaries are very low in retail jobs, between Rs 2,000 and
Rs 7,000 per month, but employers seek to provide various rewards
and incentives to motivate workers, discourage rapid turnover
and improve performance. Good performance is recognised
variously in different stores, such as through the award of badges
and stars or appointment as peer coaches for new and junior
staff, as well as through token increments in emoluments and
shop vouchers or discount coupons for subsidised purchase of
products. More tangibly, sales teams for particular product
ranges or all members of staff of a store are collectively awarded
monetary rewards for meeting targets for sales or for enrolling
store card members, as well as for minimising stock “shrinkage”
or pilferage of goods. In some stores, to receive a reward, all sales
teams are required to meet their own targets, in order to reach
the overall or cumulative target for the store. These target-oriented
and performance-based rewarding methods inevitably lead to
intense peer pressure on every employee to maximise their per-
formance, and also contribute to mutual informal monitoring of
each others’ performance among workers. For certain products,
such as electrical and electronics goods or cosmetic items, workers
have to explain their benefits and qualities to persuade a customer
to purchase them. In such cases, individuals, rather than whole
teams, are sometimes offered rewards for successfully “closing a
sale”. This generates severe competition among colleagues to
meet their personal targets. Either way, an environment is cre-
ated, whether through peer pressure or the compulsion to com-
pete, in which workers feel motivated to work harder and disci-
pline themselves, even without direct surveillance or control by
management and supervisory staff.
Quite apart from rewards and incentives, to help improve
motivation, performance and retention, management and human
resource staff attempt to develop close relationships with workers
49
review of labour
in a paternalistic or guardianship mode, emphasise their caring
role in ensuring workers’ well-being and offer them professional
and personal counselling to cope with pressures at work and be-
yond. If workers appear to be facing difficulties at home that are
affecting their work, members of their family are invited to have
discussions with store and personnel managers. Under-performing
workers are called in for counselling and in some cases, another
member of staff is designated as their “buddy” to help them
through difficult periods. Families of workers, who would nor-
mally not shop at these expensive stores, are, in fact, invited at
least once a year to visit the store to meet management and staff,
to become acquainted with these new and unfamiliar workplaces
and to help understand the nature of work and appreciate the
opportunities provided by these kinds of employment. This is
described as a means of linking the “family at the store” with
the “family at home”. Events of this nature are cast in terms of
activities that embrace or connect with the wider, extended
“family” of the store. Fictive kinship metaphors of this kind are
often invoked by managers to portray a store as a community.
Managers emphasise that they have a casual and friendly rela-
tionship with their staff in contrast to hierarchical workplaces
like old style retail with its “colonial” mode of control, which
appears to suggest that new retail is thought to be consistent with
modern democratic political culture. This is reminiscent of Rose
and Miller’s contention that the organisation of the workplace
“incorporate[s] wider concerns about democracy” and “prevail-
ing conceptions of the nature, rights and obligations of persons”
(Rose and Miller 2008: 175). Managers point out that there are
various forms of regular interaction between them and the staff
that contribute to a close and informal relationship. Regular
“fun-at-work” events, amusements, entertainment, parties, dis-
cos, fashion shows, joke and poetry competitions, talent shows of
dance and music, and plays are organised in-store with staff par-
ticipation, and trips to cinemas, picnics, restaurants and leisure
activities are undertaken, where all members of staff interact
freely. In one store, for instance, on Independence Day, workers’
staged a short play enacting patriotic episodes from the freedom
struggle, in which the fair complexioned store manager was
cast as a white British official, who was assassinated by a worker
playing the role of a well-known Bengali freedom fighter. These
activities that mix work and leisure are also designed to relieve
the stress and pressure of work and to alleviate the monotony of
the routinised process-driven repetitive nature of retail work.
The “engineered” culture of the retail workplace then is ex-
pressed by the management in the idiom of a happy, compassionate,
non-hierarchical family of hard-working, mutually supportive,
highly motivated members. The family nurtures every individual
and enables them to realise their dreams, aspirations and career
goals. Moreover, a regime of incentives is instituted to act as the
tool to promote self-government and self-discipline in the worker.
3 Workers’ Perspectives
How do workers respond to the pressures and pleasures of the
workplace and to the prospects offered by retail employment?
Men and women have both joined retail employment, and de-
spite the large and visible presence of women, retail is not seen as
50
an overtly feminised sphere of soft skills and docility, which
would compromise masculinity and would thus be considered
undesirable by young men, contrary to findings in the west
(McDowell 2000). Although the soft skills of interpersonal com-
munication are valued in retail, these are not associated with
feminine qualities. Instead, they are interpreted in terms of as-
sertive and extrovert public speaking, usually in English as a sta-
tus enhancing language, as well as with smartness and a clever
ability to persuade customers, similar to Bollywood hero-style
winning “dialogue”, according to one male worker. Jobs in organ-
ised retail, as opposed to traditional retail, carry a high status as
one of the new and modern forms of work emerging in India’s
burgeoning economy today. Workers here also see themselves as
sales and marketing personnel rather than simply as servants or
employees, as in the case of “old” retail. Their job titles, such as
customer care assistant or customer sales associate, designate
them as staff of corporate firms, rather than as mere lower level
karmchari (employee) – a term used to refer to workers in tradi-
tional retail or in lower government services, but is never heard
in shopping malls. Moreover, “service” employment, referring to
non-manual work, is highly valued by lower middle class and
upwardly mobile working class and rural families.
Most workers in retail, both men and women, come from such
backgrounds, with at least high school education, but usually
with college degrees, some being first generation graduates. In
the recent past, youth of this class, unless they had significant
higher qualifications, would have been beset by the problem of
“educated” youth unemployment, but retail jobs now avoid both
unemployment and the possibility of a slide down into the ranks
of the poor. Their fathers were, or are still, engaged variously in
lower level government “service” or salaried jobs in private com-
panies and firms, in small business such as tailoring, petty shop
ownership, or in agricultural and farming occupations. Those
coming from farming and rural backgrounds appeared to be
poorer than the others, and often with lower educational qualifi-
cations, but eager to find a route out of rural occupations.
Reasons to Work in Organised Retail
Economic compulsion, the need to earn to support families, lack
of qualifications or experience to compete effectively in increas-
ingly crowded job markets, and the absence of any alternative
work, particularly due to the disappearance of secure job oppor-
tunities in the public sector, were cited as the reason for entering
retail by many, particularly those from poorer backgrounds and
with only school education. While they felt retail work offered
very low remuneration and required long hours of relentless
attention and demanding personality attributes, they also ex-
plained that they were glad to be employed at all and were thus
minded to stay in retail employment for as long as possible. They
would prefer government employment or jobs that provide long-
term security, but as such opportunities were not forthcoming,
they were content with retail. Those coming from somewhat
better off lower middle class families, with graduate degrees and
with fathers in small business or in government or private service,
explained that, although they had no immediate compulsion to
support their families, they joined retail because this had opened
may 30, 2009 vol xliv no 22 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

up new employment opportunities for young people, who would
otherwise have been unemployed and unable to enter the labour
market at all. In order to gain this first foothold into the job
market, even though they were graduates, often with degrees in
commerce or accountancy, they were willing to work in jobs that
did not value their educational qualifications and did not pay
well. They explained that the opening up of job opportunities in
recent years in various interactive services has stimulated young
people to seek employment from an early age, even when they
did not need to support their families. Such early entry into the
labour market was considered beneficial in their long-term career
strategy. It enabled them to earn an independent income to meet
their own needs without relying on the family, as well as to finance
increasingly more expensive and privatised further education
and training, which would help them to ascend the career ladder.
There appears to be a class-differentiated evaluation of the
worth of retail work in shaping future careers, and gender-based
variations in the meaning and efficacy of such work. Sales, mar-
keting and management are seen by many men as a desirable and
promising field of work for their future career, and retail work is
seen as particularly relevant in enabling them to acquire some
valuable skills, “exposure” and experience, early in their working
life. They feel able to access information pertaining to business
and marketing, as well as develop networks of contact, wherever
possible. These, they feel, would compensate for the absence of
family “connections” and “sources”, on whom more affluent
middle class or upper class youth are believed to rely, in order to
enter sales and management jobs. Many men, with or without a
background in small business and shopkeeping, consider busi-
ness as an occupation that contributes to the growth of the
national economy, enhances personal status, provides a degree of
financial well-being and above all gives independence, without
the need to be at the beck and call of others. They aspire to set up
their own business or improve their family business, and hence,
they find retail work particularly useful in providing insight into
“modern” business and the “new” economy. Some even hope,
unrealistically perhaps, to earn and save enough money through
their retail employment to help them capitalise their business in
the future. Those from relatively more well-off backgrounds
seem to be more optimistic about employment prospects or in
their ability to embark on business ventures in the future, while
the less literate or those from poorer, agricultural background
often express worries about the limits to upward mobility in
retail sales and marketing, unless one acquires further qualifica-
tions, contacts or exceptional experience to ascend to manage-
ment levels, not to mention access to capital.
Gender-Based Variations
For women, large numbers of whom, both married and unmar-
ried, have joined retail, their work is seen variously as a source of
autonomy and independence from their family; a method to
avoid dependence on their male siblings or to gain status and
recognition within the natal family by contributing to household
income; a chance to supplement their husband’s income and
enhance their marital lifestyle and consumption habits as well as
to carve out a more secure and less subordinate position within
Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 30, 2009 vol xliv no 22
review of labour
the marital family; an opportunity to learn valuable skills and
gain experience for unmarried women who would be able to earn
their own living later in their married life should their marriage
turn sour, even if they had to give up work after marriage.
No matter what their gender or background however, a major-
ity of workers felt that the job market for their generation, com-
pared to the previous one, was less secure and more competitive,
and they were required to work harder. Most acknowledged that
more employment opportunities were available, but few of these
offered stability or permanence. As a consequence, they have
adopted a proactive, individualistic, enterprising and responsible
approach to building their career, which they feel they have to
advance by dint of their own effort and resourcefulness, without
relying on any external help or societal and public resources and
support, including that of the government. They have used their
initiative to capitalise on job opportunities in retail and most do
their utmost to gain further qualifications by enrolling in early-
morning or late-evening classes or in correspondence courses.
They seek to prepare themselves to adapt to flexible and unstable
labour markets and to minimise the risk of future unemployment
by enhancing their employability by gaining work experience as
well as training and other skills.
Contradictory Sentiments
Young retail workers express contradictory sentiments about
their work, and evaluate their experience in both positive and
negative terms. On the positive side, many argue that this is a
desirable and enjoyable form of work. The wider sociological lit-
erature on work in the west, as mentioned above, has suggested
that the value and meaning of work now is construed through its
capacity to produce pleasure, satisfaction and self-fulfilment, but
this is believed to affect mainly the upper echelons. However, the
evidence here suggests that this construal is, to some extent,
prevalent among lower level workers too. Many refer to a sense of
freedom and openness, for they see their lives as being more lib-
erated and less constrained, less insular or limited than their par-
ents. Those coming from better off backgrounds also expressed
their gratification at the range of lifestyle choices and opportuni-
ties available to them, and exposure to a variety of experiences,
including entertainment and recreation, consumption practices
and habits that the previous generation would not have even
dreamt of. This is a specific understanding of youth empower-
ment, and a notion of freedom, focused on lifestyle concepts,
novel experiences and individual fulfilment. Work here is not
seen as the basis of rights or dignity, but as an instrument to gain
access to a better, freer life and consumption.
There are other elements that workers find appealing and satis-
fying about their jobs: the range and variety of interactions with
customers and colleagues; the challenge and excitement of win-
ning over customers with clever and polished conversation, often
using the polite conventions of speech of upper class society or
corporate offices; architecturally distinctive, western style edifices
as their workplace; a physically comfortable, clean, aesthetically
pleasing, and usually air-conditioned, modern working environment
that is a far cry from traditional retail in markets and bazaars;
smart, westernised corporate clothing and English as the medium
51
review of labour
of communication with their customers whenever possible as
status enhancing features; the fact that they work in what is
now publicly celebrated as a major node of economic growth.
While workers uniformly commented, and some even bemoaned,
that they do not or cannot take part in family or social events
and neighbourhood or community activities due to extremely
long hours of work, yet many enthused about their workplace
colleagues as friends, and about the sense of being a family that
prevails within particular stores or within a mall more generally
among co-workers. Interestingly and tellingly, they seldom
included managers within the ambit of this extended familial
conception or mentioned their guardianship or paternalistic
and caring role. Nevertheless, their sense of bonhomie and
camaraderie seems to owe much to the institutionalised promo-
tion of “fun-at-work” and a “family atmosphere” as part of the
engineered culture of the workplace, which evidently engenders
the perception that working in malls is about “fun and fashion”,
as one person put it. He took his alliteration of fun and fashion
further to claim that these jobs also promise “funda”, a term used
by students and young people to allude to profundity or intellec-
tual weight and depth, thus suggesting retail work experience to
be not only entertaining, but also intellectually rewarding and
engaging. Not only fun, fraternity and mental stimulation, but
also intimate personal relationships of love, courtship and, even
at times, marriage, seem to revolve very largely around malls for
these young people.
Colonisation of Workers’ Lives
This picture of retail work painted by workers might suggest a
happy workforce with their lives focused in the apparently be-
nign space of work. However, it also points to a colonisation of
individual workers’ lives (Izzy 2001) through institutionalised
strategies to enmesh work and pleasure and the corporate de-
ployment of the rhetoric of the family, as well as through such
systemic factors as long working hours. These subsume personal
relations within the compass of work, and preclude the possibil-
ity of community-based activities or wider social engagement.
Importantly though, without coercion and force, through new
forms of work organisation and workplace culture, a new kind of
worker appears to have come into being, equipped with a mind-
set that prioritises and privileges work as the focus of their per-
sonal, mental and moral universe. This experience early in life no
doubt has a long-term impact on the subjectivity of these young
workers, who can be expected to become work-oriented individu-
als, ideally suited to the needs of an economy based on competi-
tion and a market ethic, and catering to the demands of the
private corporate sector for fully committed workers.
Negative Features
Retail work is, however, not seen only, or even primarily, as a
positive experience, but workers present a substantial catalogue
of its negative features. Low pay, long hours, monotony, and
physical exhaustion, notwithstanding the multifarious happiness-
inducing measures deployed by management, are frequently
mentioned. Perhaps, the most important factor that weighs on
workers’ minds is the lack of a career structure or absence of
52
future prospects and promotions. While their basic salary is low,
they are often able to take home a relatively good pay packet if
targets are met. This enhanced remuneration is felt to be suffi-
cient for the moment for young and inexperienced workers, with
limited qualifications. However, all seem to agree that such pay is
not enough to start or sustain a family comfortably, or to make
long-term life plans. Moreover, despite the assurances of employers
about further in-house training and performance based promotion,
these rarely appear to come to fruition for anybody but a very
small and exceptional minority. While some fresh new entrants
reported how they eagerly anticipated a rapid rise through the
ranks, more seasoned workers scoffed at the hollow promises
of management as a cynical ploy to elicit hard work and good
performance from workers by dangling a mythic carrot. In the
absence of what they see as a clear career structure, rapid job
mobility and taking risks to abandon a job to seek better opportu-
nities elsewhere, constitute an important feature of their career
strategy, and their mode of exercising their agency. Workers like
to gather experience in one place and then move on to other jobs,
leveraging their strengths to gain better pay in the short or
medium run. In this way, flexibility and mobility are normalised
and deployed as an essential career strategy. These young people
evidently subscribe to the idea of flexible work as an asset rather
than as a constraint and they espouse an ethos of job mobility,
not because they have directly or consciously bought into, or have
been indoctrinated into, neoliberal dogmas, but because their
context of work leads them to adopt this kind of pragmatic strategy.
Stress and pressures on the shop floor is a recurring theme
raised by workers. In this context, friendship and fellow-feeling,
if not skin-deep, seems to remain confined to the realm of socia-
bility and “fun”, and engender little shop floor cooperation. Work-
ers complain of the tyranny of targets and consequent peer pres-
sure, as well as competition and skulduggery among colleagues
to gain the approval of supervisors and managers, with individ-
ual performance reviews always looming large. They feel they
are always under scrutiny – their performance, behaviour and
appearance, not only by supervisory staff, but also by co-workers,
since every individual worker needs to perform well to achieve
collective or team-based targets. They have to watch their step
and be on their guard at all times. They feel they are always on
display like the goods they sell, pointing to a process of embodi-
ment of work performance and commodification of the body. The
need to meet targets creates two very different types of pres-
sures. When the store is busy and full of customers, they have to
work at a frenetic pace to stock and arrange shelves or to maximise
throughput at the cash counter. When the store is empty and
“footfalls” are low, they are seized with anxiety about the danger
of not meeting targets, or feel compelled to compete with col-
leagues to attend to the few customers who do appear, in order
to demonstrate their proactive disposition, with the next
performance review in mind.
Dismissal and Forced Departure
Although contracts are permanent, the possibility of dismissal at
short notice, even arbitrary dismissal, is ever present for under-
performance, or even for inappropriate behaviour or neglecting
may 30, 2009 vol xliv no 22 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

to dress properly. Even if they are not dismissed outright, some
workers’ complain they are sometimes forced to leave voluntarily
because of the oppressive behaviour of supervisory staff or man-
agers whose wrath they have incurred for some reason, and who
lumber them with the worst and excessive tasks, and find faults
with them. Some workers, including those on probation, felt that
they bore the brunt of such supervisory oppression, when store
managers needed to shed staff to avoid making a loss and thus
failing to meet their profit target, which would, in turn, compro-
mise the financial rewards of all staff, including supervisors
and managers. In such cases, managers and supervisors wanted
them to leave of their own volition, because they did not wish
to fire staff directly in order to avoid tarnishing the store’s sup-
portive image and to avert an adverse impact on the morale of
other members of staff. These workers felt that management
forced the most vulnerable members of staff to bear the cost of
the store’s potential or actual losses by compelling them to
leave, albeit indirectly. Other workers meekly connived at such
oppression because, in the short term, their earnings would be
affected if targets were not met, even though they felt this was
unjust and feared that they too might one day face a similar
predicament. In this context, the claim of management to be
caring, of course, is seen as hollow conceit. One worker said that
employers and managers treat them as so many crows at whom
they would throw grains and whom they then expected to flock
and squabble over the pickings among themselves; if some
were not fierce enough to survive in this fight, they would sooner
or later have to abandon their work or even make an exit from
the job market.
Instinct for Self-preservation
Workers express their discontent with the system, and some even
vent remorse privately for letting down their colleagues. Yet,
they feel they have no choice but to yield to their instinct of self-
preservation and act in self-centred ways that would enable them
to survive in the workplace. Evidently, this system of rewards and
incentives structurally predisposes workers to respond selfishly
with an instrumental, strategic rationality and consolidates an
individualised subjectivity, of the kind that has been criticised in
the sociological literature on work for causing the “corrosion of
character” (Sennett 1998).
Despite their many grievances and a sense of exploitation,
workers exercise restraint and refrain from venting discontent or
complaints at work, for any individual expression of protest
would jeopardise their standing at work, while collective protest
is impossible in a context where each worker, of necessity, fends
for him/herself. When they do feel outraged, usually because
they have themselves been excessively unjustly treated, they simply
choose to leave. A manager described this kind of behaviour as
“mature” and a sensible contrast to the erstwhile political ten-
dency of organised labour, mainly in manufacturing industries
and state employment, to take recourse to collective protest
against dismissals, invoking workers’ rights. Indeed, workers
themselves agree with this perspective. No one evaluated the
negative elements of their work experience through the prism of
rights – either workers’ rights or fundamental or citizenship
Economic & Political Weekly EPW may 30, 2009 vol xliv no 22
review of labour
rights. This is possible partly because the concept of rights at
work is often associated with working class political militancy
and trade unionism, which these workers stoutly reject.
Disdain of Party Politics
They are highly sceptical and even dismissive of political organi-
sation or collective action to define or defend rights or to regulate
workplace relations. They are disinterested in the fact that labour
struggles have been historically concerned with issues of work-
ing hours or arbitrary dismissal. They are either unaware of or
choose to relegate to oblivion the fact that past labour struggles
had sought to mitigate the vagaries of market fluctuations and
alleviate the problems of unemployment by advocating govern-
ment intervention in the labour market, provision of unemploy-
ment benefits and social protection. They also appear to have no
appreciation of the significance of current policy and political
debates on the government acting as the employer of last resort
in India by guaranteeing minimum employment and income in
rural areas. They firmly believe that labour activism, and political
action more generally, fail to bring about improvement in work-
ing conditions. On the contrary, workplace politics, as well as
wider party political meddling and government intervention in
industry and trade are believed to have choked off investment
and constrained the economy in the past, and so ultimately pre-
cipitated a loss of employment opportunities.
“Politics” in all its forms, including democratic party politics,
is anathema to them as either down-right detrimental or simply
irrelevant to their life chances for historically failing to bring
about economic development and suitable employment opportu-
nities. “Politics” is also rejected as a sphere of activity driven by
opportunism and hunger for power. However, they argue that
they do continue to vote, to ensure that politicians are punished
or held in check, and not permitted to visit even worse fate on
common people or turn to authoritarianism, arbitrary rule and
even more unaccountable forms of power. Some argue that as a
mark of rejection of “sham” democratic politics that does nothing
to improve the lives of ordinary people, young people should
keep their heads down, work hard and concentrate on getting
ahead in their own lives. An ethic of hard work and personal
integrity is here posited against party politics, which is seen to
lack ethics, public-spirit and moral vocation and which fails to
deliver public policy. Honest work, personal self-advancement,
and career development in pursuit of a better life for oneself is
here juxtaposed against opportunistic party politics, fuelling a
merely procedural democracy that does not deliver the goods for
the so-called common people. Indeed, a single-minded commit-
ment to hard work devoid of political activity or engagement of
any kind is conceived as a critique of a culture of self-serving
politicians and corruption-ridden politics. Thus, instead of
countenancing collective mobilisation or industrial action, retail
workers prefer to vote with their feet if they feel dissatisfied with
employment practices.
Employers’ high-handedness or onerous and exploitative work-
ing conditions are seen as wrong and many express anger, but
there is no moral outrage about this nor any sense of violation
of rights at the lack of job security or economic vulnerability.
53
review of labour

Workers’ remedy is to beat a solitary retreat and go elsewhere.
In this way, they assume the entire burden of coping with the
risks and uncertainties of the market, and they thus craft them-
selves as self-governing individuals responsible for their own
economic predicament, without acknowledging the structural
factors that cause their vulnerability. Above all, at the normative
level, they allow the government and the state, as well as, em-
ployers to abdicate any responsibility for workers’ and citizens’
economic well-being.
4 Conclusions
The beneficial impact of the retail sector on employment genera-
tion is frequently emphasised by the votaries of organised retail.
However, far more than its job creation capacity, the significance
of retail work lies in its impact on the attitudes and perceptions of
the large number of workers who pass through shopping malls as
the first stepping stone in their career path. With the adoption of
market-driven and business-friendly public policy in India, new
workplaces like organised retail shopping malls are playing a
decisive part in crafting suitable workers and citizens, and in re-
shaping individual subjectivity, consonant with the needs of the
market and neoliberal governmentality for self-governing citizens
and self-driven, pliant workers. Retail jobs attract a large number
of young people who do not simply concentrate on eking out a
meagre living, but rapidly seize the initiative to develop an enter-
prising career strategy in a number of ways. They augment their
future employability by capitalising on the opportunities offered
to gain knowledge of sales, marketing and business, and they
motivate themselves to work hard to maximise their earnings by
responding to the regime of targets and incentives as well as
individual performance based rewards. Workplace organisation
and culture in retail help to socialise the workers from an early
stage into the values of personal initiative, enterprise, hard work,
individual responsibility, and self-discipline. At the same time,
the compulsions of workplace culture stimulate individualism
and a self-centred pursuit of one’s own interests, discourage co-
operation and collective action, including workplace dissent.
They seek personal solutions to structurally or systemically gen-
erated problems in the economy and at the workplace, and they
disavow political activism, renounce any engagement with
formal party politics, and condemn democracy as the self-serving
tool of the corrupt politician. This does not imply a benign
“apolitical” orientation, but rather a particular articulation of
political attitudes that conceives of a minimalist state in labour
policy and more broadly in the sphere of economic regulation,
and negates the significance of the state in public policy. They
emphasise the responsibility, autonomy and agency of the self-
driven, enterprising individual, who is prepared to work within
the constraints of a competitive and unstable market economy
and within the terms set by the dominant private corporate
sector as the providers of employment. Evidently, these workers
have little or no expectation or sense of entitlement vis-a-vis the
state and the political system. They believe in the efficacy of
self-reliance and individualism that have been argued to be key
traits of neoliberalism in the theoretical literature. As this case
of young workers shows, the emerging dynamics of the labour
market as well as the organisation and culture of new types of
workplaces in India today have far-reaching consequences
beyond the economy and is transforming Indian society and
politics in profound ways.

Notes
1 These questionnaires pertain to outlets selling
garments, shoes, household goods, toys, cos­
metics and accessories. A substantial number of
questionnaires were also returned by staff of food
courts, but these have not been included in
this paper.
2 These are employed through “third parties” or
contractors, and are popularly referred to as
“voucher staff” or those not formally entered on a
store’s employment registers, but appointed with
temporary vouchers.
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54 may 30, 2009 vol xliv no 22 EPW Economic & Political Weekly