Labour Questions in the South: Back to the Drawing Board, Yet Again

For over decades now, since the ascendency of neoliberalism from 1970s onward, the overall thrust has been characterised by a range of adverse processes for indicators typically associated with well-being of workers, be it employment and livelihood generation, wages and labour incomes, forms of contract, etc., to name only a few. In general, the trajectories of transition have generated huge concerns, if not despair, for large swathes of working people. Although the broad trends since the 1970s have been characterised by a degree of unevenness, inter-temporally and spatially, important adverse outcomes such as growing inequalities and declining share of labour incomes, increasing job and remuneration polarisation, accelerated dilution of standard employment relations etc. have been near-universal across countries, including in the advanced ones. There is indeed a large body of incontrovertible evidence and burgeoning literature, documenting and analysing these and other pitfalls pertaining to transformation trajectories in the world of work. Apart from brief introductory remarks, and some concluding observations, this chapter has two substantive sections. First of these flags a couple of major markers central to contemporary neoliberal capitalism and sketches out, conceptually their implications in reconfiguring the material and socio-political prospects for labouring women and men, particularly in the Global South. The subsequent section outlines the core of an analytical framework to comprehend the world of work in general and seeks to bring in sharp relief its implications and linkages for labour questions at the current juncture; in other words, this section underscores the significance and urgency of getting back to the drawing board yet again.