Technology and Culture

Jonathan Parry's book is a welcome addition to Indian labor historiography, which began with the British official discourse relating Indian poverty to the conservatism of its labor, contrary to Indian nationalists' emphasis on colonial exploitation. The postcolonial period saw a range of studies based on the Marxist notion of labor as a seamless, dynamic, and militant force, posited against Indian landholding and capitalist classes. A by-product of the "Whig historiography of industrialization," this unilinear grand narrative does not account for the fragility of the labor movement in India.

A new genre of works on Indian labor, including culture-centered ones, emphasized the north–south binary and thus failed to replace the earlier grand narrative. In this context, Parry's well-researched work marks a significant shift. His long book is thematically organized in three parts, followed by a concluding chapter and exhaustive references. He begins with Nehru's scheme of foreign-funded steel plants in India, focusing on the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP).

Critiquing the dominant teleological notions of egalitarianism and homogenization of labor, Parry holds that Bhilai steel town typically has two immobile categories of workers, the organized and unorganized sectors, divided by their pay, "values, lifestyle, family norms, and customary practices." Far from evidencing unity as a "class" in a classical Marxist way, Bhilai laborers actually represent two distinct social classes in the Weberian sense of the term.

Much of Parry's analysis centers around "class structuration" issues. The poverty of a large segment of workers separated them from the labor aristocracy. This dichotomy transformed the caste morphology and intercaste relations in neighborhoods. Revisiting the conventional arguments about an [End Page 1201] unchanging Indian society, which refers to the institution of caste especially, Parry argues that BSP, as a melting pot, diluted the differences in its workingclass members' caste, regional ethnicity, and religion. One example is the increasing incidence of second marriages among laborers in Bhilai, mostly intercaste/ethnic, without the caste council's approval. This demonstrates the declining caste-kinship control over marriage.

Parry concludes by revisiting his arguments relating to the "intersection between caste, class, gender, and other forms of distinctions" among workers. He expands his lens to other industrial settings in India and abroad, mainly to compare why BSP suffered much less from communal/ethnic tension and labor troubles than other steel towns of India. He attributes its relative insularity to careful management and concerned trade unionism, a trend also true in the town's private-sector industries.

From an in-depth engagement with relevant theories and methodologies to minute details, the book's coverage is awe inspiring. Parry's work thus outreaches its primary objective of analyzing the "classes of labour" in a major Indian steel town.

His ability to relate the narrative in myriad ways to diverse issues might encourage the reader to expect more. In view of his extensive field work, Parry must have accessed data that could assess the loss of jobs in traditional sectors due to the plant, at the cost of fifty-six villages. More villages were affected by the ensuing urbanization; certain categories of workers (say village blacksmiths and carpenters) adjusted their skills to survive in the new environment of industrial growth. Parry could probably not add more to the book's already very rich contents.

The use of the term "aboriginal" to denote a backward social category and his emphasis on the Hindu-Satnami antagonism might be disquieting to some readers. A missing point is a discussion on the subject of steel-making technology in a region known in India for its traditional iron industry. The BSP incidentally represented the largest introduction of technology in India's iron industry since the abortive Dutch and Swedish attempts in the late precolonial period.

Jonathan Parry has nevertheless produced a pleasantly readable and engaging book, including tables, maps, interesting case studies, and lively photographs, helping to sustain the reader's interest throughout. This good work will inspire future...