Paper short abstract:

The paper look at the valorisation process in the value chain as structuring risk and injuries. It investigates how risk is conceived, managed, distributed to facilitate this valorisation; and how workers navigate and re-appropriate notions of ‘risky work’.

Paper long abstract:

The paper develops from a series of reports and ethnographic insights on ‘crush injuries’ and occupational safety and health in auto and auto-component manufacturer factories (especially in the operation of the press shops) in five industrial clusters in northern India - Gurgaon, Manesar, Faridabad, Neemrana, Rudrapur.

The paper will also take another section of workers in the informal sector, the sanitation workers in Delhi-NCR from the predominantly Valmiki Dalit community, who are engaged in manual scavenging and septic tank cleaning, resulting in deaths and risk laden with humiliation and indignity.

With these two ethnographic locales, the paper will seek to situate the endemic nature of injuries and risk in the labour process, and look at the valorisation process in the value chain as structuring these risks. It will also investigate how risk is conceived, managed, distributed to facilitate this valorisation - in government regulations (especially the ESI or Employees State Insurance Act 1946 and its life), clinical expertise (‘safety norms’) and socially (caste and gender dynamics). It will seek to understand how workers navigate these forms of work, re-appropriating notions of risk, power and dignity.