CLASS AT THE CROSSROADS: Reframing Disadvantage in Organizing Daily Wage Work in Western India

Abstract

Across Indian cities, daily wagers gather every morning at large intersections or crossroads (nakas) where they seek work for the day from small construction contractors. In the satellite city of Navi Mumbai (New Mumbai), some of these daily wagers are reconstituting themselves into a class of ‘disadvantaged, crossroad workers’. This article provides an ethnographic narration of how class is experienced, constituted and asserted at a street crossroad. Through the space of the naka, daily wagers combine their different experiences of caste, religious and regional disadvantage into a collective identity of crossroad workers. As a collective, they seek and gain recognition as workers by the state, even if their everyday terms of work continue to be largely unprotected by law. While such reframing of disadvantage has long been part of social movements in western India, their contemporary politics is conditioned by workers’ alienation from new town-making projects, where they are seen as temporary labor migrants and must contend with landed, socio-politically dominant groups vying for control over the city. This article contributes to growing scholarship on the resocialization of labour movements, as both work and class organizing change dramatically, particularly in contentious urban spaces like Navi Mumbai.