"Rural & Urban Dynamics and Emergent Forms of Labor in India and China"

A two-day workshop on the theme of "Rural-Urban Dynamics and Emergent Forms of Labor in India and China" was co-organized by CeMIS and Centre for Modern East Asian Studies (CeMEAS) and the CETREN Transregional Research Network in Gӧttingen from February 22-23, 2016. The workshop participants addressed the primary themes through innovative research methodologies and inter-disciplinary perspectives. While broadly addressing the sweeping economic transformations currently ongoing in both India and China, the workshop offered productive and dynamic insights into the transitional processes at multiple scales. Such scales varied from the intricacies of state welfare programs, macro-level changes in forms of production and national provisions for labour rights to the everyday lived experiences of informal workers and the precariousness of new urban migrants.

The workshop participants strongly counterpoised the stark experiences of marginalization, poverty and lack of social mobility for vast populations in both nation-states to the celebratory view of the ?Asian Age? of capital in India and China. Growth and development in both nations were shown to be often exclusionary and remained under the purview of certain dominant classes and status groups. However, as Prof. Gaochao He in his keynote address reminded the audience, new political aspirations and practices amongst the socially underprivileged groups have come to the forefront in challenging traditional forms of social control and exclusion. Many of these political practices often remain inchoate, not fully spelt out and certainly divergent from older models of political mobilization. Yet, the pressure of these political forms of dissent and organization suggest pervasive changes in the socio-cultural landscape of both India and China.

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