How large is the workforce that resides in rural areas and commutes to urban areas and vice versa? This note examines this unnoticed issue and compares different aspects of the share of commuting workers in rural and urban workforce based on two National Sample Survey rounds in 2004-05 and 2009-10.

This paper has studied rural employment diversification in India and across major states using NSSO data at household level for the period 1983 and 2009-10. Factors affecting rural employment diversification towards non-farm sector have also been studied. Analysis has shown that the non-farm sector has consistently grown over time and employed nearly one-third of the rural workforce in 2009-10, as compared to merely one-fifth in 1983 at all-India level.

If one were to use correct concepts and measurements, it will be seen that labour in Gujarat has actually significantly benefited from high economic growth and productivity gains. Annual Survey of Industries data show that the state has outperformed many others in the level of employment and wage compensation. A critical comment on “Labour and Employment under Globalisation: The Case of Gujarat” (EPW, 28 May 2011).

The 66th round National Sample Survey Organisation data (2009-10) on the employment situation paints a grim picture of a limited creation of jobs between 2004-05 and 2009-10, widespread withdrawal from the labour force (especially by women) and slow growth of employment in the non-agricultural sector. The shift to education among the youth is a positive development but does not by itself explain the decline of the labour force participation rate.

Examining the Marathi translation of The Communist Manifesto published in 1931 and situating it in the socio-historical context of workers’ movements in Mumbai in the 1920s and 1930s, this paper argues that the so-called subordinated classes engaged with it and created a workers’ public that was in conversation with the elite public sphere. But it holds that the vernacular version had to navigate the structures of language and a social structure in which caste was an important feature to make itself comprehensible to other intellectuals, trade union leaders and workers.

India’s “bypass” approach to urbanisation seeks to decongest its post-colonial metropolises by building new towns for a new economy of knowledge-based activities and businesses driven by global capital on their fringes. The globalised economy, hegemonised by immaterial labour, creates conditions for these new towns to culturally secede from their national or regional location and align themselves with the global cities.