Thirty Years of Industrial Labour in South Gujarat: Trends and Significance

Since the 1970s, the industrial landscape of the southernmost districts of Gujarat changed drastically and the number of workers and factories along the Vapi-Ahmedabad corridor increased dramatically after 1990. Gujarat, now, exhibits the all India pattern of growing social and regional inequalities in a most pronounced way. The profoundness of capitalist transformation in Gujarat is evidenced by several developments. The disproportionate share of casual labour; one of the highest incidences of landlessness in India; growing social and economic disparities within and among workers; and the gradual casualisation and feminisation of the local labour force.