Industrial Ownership and Contractualisation in India’s Organised Manufacturing Sector

Abstract

Contractualisation in the organised manufacturing sector is the most critical phenomenon in India’s labour market in the post- economic reforms era. Even as it grew fast in the post-reforms period, its genesis lies in the political economic contours of industrial policies since Independence. It is deeply integrated with size and ownership factors that define the industrial structure. While the policy shift of the early 1990s stimulated India’s economic growth and replaced regular jobs of organised manufacturing sector by contract labour, size distribution of firms and structure of industrial sector have remained static by and large. The policies of economic reforms have consolidated the existing ownership pattern and enlarged the share of large capital-intensive firms in total firms. This paper attempts to show that concentration of private ownership and large firms in the industrial sector underlie faster contractualisation after the economic reforms.