Limits of Bargaining

"The large-scale violence at the Manesar plant of Maruti Suzuki and at Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India a few years ago, and similar incidents reported elsewhere, are indicative of the fact that the role of labour institutions in India in resolving conflicts between the workers and the management and facilitating collective bargaining to reach an amicable settlement needs close scrutiny. We are of the view that, while thinking about labour market reforms, the growing sense of injustice and discontentment among the industrial labour force needs to be faced with greater sensitivity and caution than what is prevalent in the overall climate of apathy towards the problems of the so-called privileged organised labour.Going beyond the rhetoric, this book takes a hard-headed look at the collective bargaining institutions and the processes in the Indian state of West Bengal (WB) with an analytical approach that combines the macro aspects of the economy of a region with the micro observations on the processes from the field"--