The Well-Being of the Labor Force in Colonial Bombay : Discourses and Practices

This study draws on extensive archival research to explore the social history of industrial labor in colonial India through the lens of well-being. Focusing on the cotton millworkers in Bombay in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the book moves beyond trade union politics and examines the complex ways in which the broader colonial society considered the subject of worker well-being. As the author shows, worker well-being projects unfolded in the contexts of British Empire, Indian nationalism, extraordinary infant mortality, epidemic diseases, and uneven urban development. Srivastava emphasizes that worker well-being discourses and practices strove to reallocate resources and enhance the productive and reproductive capacities of the nation’s labor power. She demonstrates how the built urban environment, colonial local governance, public health policies, and deeply gendered local and transnational voluntary reform programs affected worker wellbeing practices and shaped working class lives. Acknowledgments 5 About the Book 8 Contents 9 List of Figures 12 List of Tables 13 Chapter 1 Introduction 14 The Platitudes of a Modernist Paradigm 21 Constructing Urban Working-Class Neighborhoods as Sites of Local Politics 24 Managing Population: Social Service and Civic Ethic in Colonial Bombay 26 Wage Work, Motherhood, Mothercraft, and Working-Class Women 27 Organization of the Study 31 Chapter 2 The Political Economy of the Textile Industry and Its Labor 41 The Rise of Bombay City and Its Cotton Mills 43 Labor and Laboring Conditions in Textile Mills 46 Health and Housing of Millworkers 53 Early Responses to Labor Conditions and Factory Reforms 58 Conclusion 69 Chapter 3 Industrial Housing and Sanitation Policies, 1896–1940 80 The Spatial Layout and Municipal Administration of Bombay 85 The City of Bombay Improvement Trust and the Bombay Municipality 91 The Bombay Millowners and the Bombay Development Department 98 “Warehousing” Laborers in “Veritable Death Traps” 105 Conclusion 109 Chapter 4 Social Service, the Civic Ethic, and Worker Well-Being, 1900–1945 119 Nationalism and Social Service 121 A Culture of Poverty 122 The Campaigns to Sanitize Working-Class Neighborhoods 125 Temperance and Workers’ Well-Being 134 Creating Healthy and Harmonious Associational Culture among Millworkers 139 Modes of Managing the Mill-Working Population 148 Conclusion 150 Chapter 5 Welfare Rhetoric and Maternal Bodies: Protective Legislation Debates in Colonial Bombay 163 Balancing Work and Care in the Mills of Bombay 166 The Political-Economic and Discursive Contexts for Maternity Benefits 170 Initial Reactions to the Draft Convention 174 The Nation and Its Mothers: The Campaigns for Maternity Benefits 178 A Persistent Campaign 183 Motherhood and Women Millworkers 188 Conclusion 191 Chapter 6 Childbirth, Childcare, and Working-Class Women 206 Colonial Medicine and Indian Women 209 The Development of Childbirth Institutions in the City of Bombay 213 “Scientifically” Trained Midwives and Maternity Homes for Working-Class Women 215 The Expansion of Medicalized Childbirth in the Interwar Period 221 Preventing Infant Mortality Through Antenatal and Postnatal Care 226 “Appropriate” Care Makes Healthy Babies 229 The Limitations of Mothercraft 235 Conclusion 237 Chapter 7 Epilogue 250 Bibliography 264 Index 279 This study draws on extensive archival research to explore the social history of industrial labour in colonial India through the lens of well-being. Focusing on the cotton millworkers in Bombay in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the book moves beyond trade union politics and examines the complex ways in which the broader colonial society considered the subject of worker well-being. As the author shows, worker well-being projects unfolded in the contexts of British Empire, Indian nationalism, extraordinary infant mortality, epidemic diseases, and uneven urban development. Srivastava emphasizes that worker well-being discourses and practices strove to reallocate resources and enhance the productive and reproductive capacities of the nation's labour power Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Introduction (Priyanka Srivastava)....Pages 1-27 The Political Economy of the Textile Industry and Its Labor (Priyanka Srivastava)....Pages 29-67 Industrial Housing and Sanitation Policies, 1896–1940 (Priyanka Srivastava)....Pages 69-107 Social Service, the Civic Ethic, and Worker Well-Being, 1900–1945 (Priyanka Srivastava)....Pages 109-152 Welfare Rhetoric and Maternal Bodies: Protective Legislation Debates in Colonial Bombay (Priyanka Srivastava)....Pages 153-195 Childbirth, Childcare, and Working-Class Women (Priyanka Srivastava)....Pages 197-240 Epilogue (Priyanka Srivastava)....Pages 241-254 Back Matter ....Pages 255-283