Books: Toiling Times


	April 17, 2000

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Toiling Times

Evocative visual descriptions of the Indian worker marred by simplistic analysis

By Devangshu Datta

DOWN AND OUT
TEXT: JAN BREMAN &
ARVIND N.DAS
PHOTOGRAPHS:RAVI
AGARWAL
OXFORD
PRICE: Rs 395
PAGES: 156

Write Night

India Today issue dated April 17, 2000 You can almost smell the sweat and grime on the nameless subjects of Ravi Agarwal's stunning photographs. The images of Stakhanovite toil conjured up by the labourers of the Surat region warp the glossy coffee-table pages with their deliberate incongruity.

Oops, sorry, the images are definitely not of Stakhanovite toil. These people work for private enterprise. Stretch a point and they are indeed labourers under global capitalism, since Surat is a global diamond-cutting centre. Apart from diamond-cutters and goldsmiths, textile workers, bricks-layers, and cane-cutters are covered. One wishes the study had included Alang's ship-breakers.

The accompanying prose is as tortured as the lives of those who encountered the lens. Every page contains meaningless phrases like the "continuum of the workforce", or comments on the "economistically-oriented working classes", a gem that inspires visions of bricklayers diligently boning up on The Economist.

Jan Breman's descriptions of the travails of unorganised labour are valuable. The editorial comments, however, are sometimes half-baked. For example, the authors seem to feel that it is the fault of global buyers that diamond-cutters are paid only an infinitesimal part of their value-addition. Or, the unorganised textile workers of Surat would be better off if they had formal protection like the erstwhile Mumbai-Ahmedabad unions.

The issues are less monochrome. The diamond-cutters would pull rickshaws in the absence of global buyers, it's up to them to negotiate wage gaps down. The formally protected unions of Mumbai-Ahmedabad forced the industry into closure and workers into penury with their strikes, thus giving birth to Surat's sweatshops. Those little details of slant aside, it's a fascinating book and remarkable value for money.

Write Night
The 'alternative Booker' dates Delhi

Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark -- or Midnight's Children without Saleem Sinai? Choose as you will -- but the man who would have been Delhi's most celebrated visitor since a certain William Jefferson Clinton probably isn't coming. Salman Rushdie's absence from the Commonwealth Writer's Prize (CWP) ceremony on April 14 would obviously shave its glamour. The point is the 14-year-old CWP caravan is making its first stop in India and when the "alternative Booker" comes calling, the capital's literati and glitterati -- sometimes you could try telling one from the other -- have reason for excitement. Appropriately, host country writer Shashi Deshpande heads a pan-Commonwealth judging panel.

Like the older, more famous Booker, the CWP considers English language writing across the length and breadth of a complex world that was once simply "the Empire". While the Booker is remote, London-based, the CWP is, well, more familiar. It travels to a new locale every year and follows a pyramidal structure -- regional awards leading up to the eventual winner. There's also a consolation prize of sorts, in the form of a recognition for the best first book. In 1999, Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters was the category winner.

This year, Rushdie returns, in spirit if not in person, to the land where he wrought a writing revolution -- with the best book nomination from Eurasia for Ground Beneath her Feet. Raj Kamal Jha (The Blue Bedspread) is the bearded one's running mate in the debut segment. The dark horse (mare?) may be Shauna Singh Baldwin, the India-born Canadian whose Sikh epic What the Body Remembers is the Caribbean-Canada sectional gold medallist. She should be there for the big event at the Oberoi this coming Friday; but if only Satanic Salman across the Niagara could spring a surprise on judgement day.

- Ashok Malik

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