ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a resume of analysis of the intersection between class, caste, gender and other forms of distinction. It shows that the lens by comparing the situation described for Bhilai with configurations reported from various other industrial settings within India and beyond it. The most dynamic informal sector enterprises in Bhilai have often been started, not by entrepreneurial go-getters who emerge from the ranks of the poor, but as the moonlighting businesses of formal sector employees. When the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha waged a campaign on behalf of contract labour that brought Bhilai’s private sector industrial estate to a virtual standstill, the regular Bhilai Steel Plant workforce and its union stood passively by. The regular workforces of Bhilai factories are overwhelmingly male, and the large majority of jobs available to women have involved unskilled ancillary tasks as contract labour in the Plant or on construction sites, re-cycling work or domestic service.
