Deepak K Mishra

Informality and diversity of institutional forms have been marked as distinct features of India’s postcolonial capitalist development. The present paper considers the conditions of reproduction of informal enterprises, specifically focusing on the living and working conditions of artisan labour in the silk-weaving cluster of Sualkuchi in Assam. The study indicates that kinship, gender, and caste act as regulative forces, influencing the form and scale of production, ownership, contract, and exchange relations. The results point to the significance of non-capitalist institutional arrangement in the reproduction of the handloom sector under contemporary capitalism.

Read more about Reproduction of Informal Enterprises in India

State, Community and the Agrarian Transition in Arunachal Pradesh

Vol. 53, Issue No. 41, 13 Oct, 2018

Deepak K Mishra

Following the rapid and uneven integration with the capitalist economy, the local economies and institutional mechanisms of the indigenous communities of Arunachal Pradesh have been transformed in multiple and complex ways. With the commercialisation of agriculture and the gradual emergence of private property rights, the community-based institutions for natural resource management and conflict resolutions are undergoing a multilevel transformation. This is mediated through the interactions among community, market and state institutions. With the expansion of the non-agricultural economy, a powerful class of local elites has attempted to extract rent through a variety of means, often using their membership of local communities and access to state institutions to safeguard their interests, against the backdrop of the ethnic competition between different ethnic groups.