ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Agra's present and potential employment conditions, to identify the feasibility of shifting towards a higher road growth path for a larger segment of the industry. Employment conditions are a crucial aspect to judge whether Italian experiences are useful in generating ideas for policy formulation in developing countries. A critical achievement of Italian clusters concerns the presence of widely supported and strong associations that provide, more favourable credit conditions, more penetrating marketing options and industry-specific training facilities. Employment conditions under sweatshop strategy effectively pass on overall instability to the Jatav community. Around 50000 out of the estimated total of 60000 production workers in Agra in the winter of 1992–1993 faced the low-road employment conditions so characteristic of a sweatshop strategy. From the labour perspective, the low road is an organizational strategy in which leading actors see labour only as a cost factor, while in a high road leading actors see workers also as an asset.
