Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India

Rina Agarwala is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at The Johns Hopkins University. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Government from Cornell University, an MPP in Political and Economic Development from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University. Agarwala is the co-editor of Whatever Happened to Class? Reflections from South Asia (2008). She has published articles on informal work and gender in the International Labor Journal, Political Science, Research in the Sociology of Work, Theory and Society, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Critical Asian Studies, Social Forces and the Indian Journal of Labour Economics. She has worked on international development and gender issues at the United Nations Development Program in China, the Self-Employed Women's Association in India, and Women's World Banking in New York.

This book examines informal workers' alternative social movements in India.

1. Introduction: informal workers' movements and the state; 2. Struggling with informality; 3. The success of competitive populism; 4. Communism's resistance to change; 5. Why accommodation leads to minimal gains; 6. Conclusion: dignifying discontent.