ABSTRACT
The data and analysis presented in this book demonstrates that poor and marginalised women workers employed as daily labourers, vendors, small producers and industrial outworkers in the Indian informal economy can achieve social and economic security. In contrast to the ideological divide that has traditionally framed the informal debate, the study shows that the informal economy is not the immutable economic dead-end that neo-Marxists have argued condemns informal workers to a life of poverty and insecurity. Nor is the informal economy the intrinsically dynamic and self-generating panacea for global poverty many neo-liberal scholars believe it to be. My evaluation of the work-life experience of informal workers who are also members of the Self Employed Women’s Association shows that under certain social and institutional conditions, informal economic activities and employment can deliver socio-economic security and well-being to workers and their households. These conditions include the social relations of recognition and respect, and the formation of alternative non-exploitative economic institut ions. Empirical data presented throughout this book shows that it is the collective action of workers advocating public action by the state that most successfully promotes these conditions and facilitates work-life reform.
