Introduction
Nepalgunj is the largest municipality in western Nepal, memorable not for its beauty but for its main artery road: strewn with rubbish, lined with shops, businesses and half-built concrete buildings, with roads leading off into residential areas on both sides. It falls in the district of Banke, which is one of the five districts in western Nepal where the kamaiya system of bonded labour existed until 2000. Today the population is a mixture of Adivasi groups (Madheshi, Tharu), and Hindu and Muslim communities. Here, in this town with its a slightly Wild West atmosphere, labour migration to faraway places in the Middle East and Malaysia, as well as smuggling and cross-border trade with nearby India, are probably far more important economic activities than industrial labour. Yet, the traveller who makes their way north towards the East-West Mahindra Highway will also encounter a couple of industrial sites along the road, comprising food factories, a cement factory, and brick kilns. One of the most important industries in this ‘industrial corridor’ is a modern food-processing factory that stands out for its clean company compound. It is the site of the Agrawal food-processing company, part of the large Agrawal group that was set up in 1996 by a Marwari industrialistFootnote 1. A portion of the company's 500-strong labour force are now employed as contract labourers and often come from far-western Tharu communities where they were previously indentured as bonded labourers.
This article focuses on how these workers have adapted to the new realities of an insecure capitalist labour market. It examines how the past shapes the uncertain labour experiences of the present, including resistance, and it reflects on the situation of contemporary precarious labour at industrial sites in western Nepal. It describes how former bonded labourers and their descendants have begun working as contract workers in a modern industrial food-processing factory through their connections with kin-related contractors. The article shows how one of the defining features of their new life as contract labour is its chronic precariousness. Undisguised forms of confrontation, such as open disregard for management instructions, are also part of their new reality in this uncertain labour market. Contract labourers are often strongly assertive in the face of managerial authority, and this assertiveness is shaped by a unique past. The article contributes to debates about bonded labour and its transformations in South Asia. It also offers a reflection on the limited impact of the Nepali Maoist Revolution on precarious labour and on the ethnic dimensions of this segment of Nepali society. Finally, it contributes to discussions about industrialization and Adivasi communities in South Asia and beyond.
In the western lowlands of Nepal bonded labour has an especially iconic importance. Over the past five decades, since the implementation of a state-sponsored malaria programme in the 1960s, two main groups—the Pahadi and Tharu—have internally colonized the western lowland region, and their interactions have resulted in a highly unequal society. As a number of scholars have noted (e.g. Rankin Reference Rankin and Skar1999; Guneratne Reference Guneratne2002; Fujikura Reference Fujikura, Ishii, Gellner and Nawa2007), when high-caste Pahadi outsiders began to migrate in large numbers to the lowland region, the local Tharu community experienced land loss and displacement as a result. It was the literate Pahadi settlers who benefited most from these migration processes. In stark contrast, a large number of the illiterate Tharu were forced to become kamaiya (bonded labourers), working on Pahadi agricultural estates in order to make a living. Kamaiya—which means ‘to work hard’—is a term that was made popular in the 1990s when non-governmental organizations and human rights groups began to lobby the government on their behalf, ultimately leading to a ban on the bonded labour system in 2000.
The ethnographic case outlined in this article is based on 10 months of anthropological field research undertaken between September 2013 and October 2014. By tracing the journey of former kamaiya labourers to a modern industrial factory, this article contributes to the literature on the transformation of the kamaiya system of bonded labour after its official abolition in 2000 (Chhetri Reference Chhetri2005; Fujikura Reference Fujikura2001, Reference Fujikura2003, Reference Fujikura, Ishii, Gellner and Nawa2007; Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann2014a and Reference Hoffmannb, Reference Hoffmann2015; Maycock Reference Maycock2015).Footnote 2 While previous publications have highlighted how some of the former bonded labourers became labour unionists (Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann2014a) or turned to militant politics to make their claims heard (Fujikura Reference Fujikura, Ishii, Gellner and Nawa2007; Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann2015, Reference Hoffmann2018), this article looks at how some of the former bonded labourers and their descendants have fared in an industrial setting in the post-kamaiya period. Like their counterparts, whom the author encountered in a brick kiln in Kailali in the immediate aftermath of the Maoist Revolution (Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann2014b), these former bonded labourers found themselves in a situation characterized by a mixture of severe exploitation and assertiveness. However, the underlying origins of their assertive behaviour were different. In the case considered here, it was not the revolutionary past that served as a structural reference point to fuel their recalcitrance. Rather, their open disregard for managerial authority stemmed from their desire to avoid dangerous and difficult work, combined with vengeful sentiments that originate in the historical exploitation of low-caste Tharu by upper-caste employers.
More broadly, the case presented here is also an invitation to assess the impact of the Maoist Revolution on an industrial labour workforce. Elsewhere I have suggested that, over the past few years, for a certain ethnic segment of the workforce in the area's food-processing industry, labour has become more rather than less secure due to the revolutionary context. For this ethnic group a minimum wage has been implemented, and—by contrast with the situation common elsewhere in the region—workers are now represented by leaders from their own social stratum (Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann, Hann and Parry2017). Yet those who previously worked as bonded labourers and have now turned to precarious contract work remain largely excluded from any of the benefits of Maoist activism. It is little wonder then that, despite some flickering nostalgia for their support of the Maoists during the insurgency period and its immediate aftermath, the Maoist Party has largely lost its appeal for many former bonded labourers working at the local industrial sites. In the context of a late post-conflict period such as the one I describe here, people are intentionally seeking a distance from the revolutionary past, and few may want to draw upon Maoism as a rhetorical device to resist industrialization. Rather, I suggest that the memories of the cruelty of bonded labour and the struggle to end that system inform the consciousness underlying the open disregard of managerial instructions in the workers’ current industrial environment.
Finally, the argument presented in this article fits well with more recent anthropological work on the impact of industrialization on Adivasi communities in South Asia. Much of the literature on this theme has focused on how industrialization is often accompanied by historical processes of dispossession such as geographic displacement and the loss of the traditional livelihoods of Adivasis (Mosse Reference Mosse2005, Strümpell Reference Strümpell, Shah and Bates2014). The recent growth of extractive industries in predominantly Adivasi-inhabited areas in Jharkhand, Bihar, and Orissa has prompted scholars to examine related movements of resistance and Maoist insurgency, as well as the Indian state's military response (Padel and Das Reference Padel and Das2010; Shah Reference Shah2010, Reference Shah2011). More relevant for the purpose of this article is a recent discussion on the making and unmaking of an Adivasi working class in the Rourkela Steel Plant in Orissa, India, where Strümpell (Reference Strümpell, Shah and Bates2014) documented how an Adivasi identity was developed in the work environment. His account shows how Adivasis find themselves at the bottom of the industrial hierarchy in harsh working environments, and how this reinforces their sense of belonging to an Adivasi community exploited by higher-caste Odia, instead of forging a new working-class identity that transcends traditional distinctions of caste and tribe. In contrast, as I will explain more in detail throughout this article, the foregrounded ethnography highlights how the industrialization process reinforces a sense among former bonded labourers of belonging to a community, yet prevents a broader Adivasi identity from emerging due to the union politics in the area.
The modern industrial food factory in Banke district
Located about five kilometres north of the municipality of Nepalgunj in Banke district, the Agrawal company is one of the largest industrial complexes in western Nepal. The food factory compound belongs to the Agrawal Group, owned by one of Nepal's largest entrepreneurial families. It is involved in various businesses across Nepal, including construction, cement manufacturing, hydropower, and banking. Like many of Nepal's industrial entrepreneurs, its owner hails from a Marwari family who came to Nepal from Rajasthan, India, several decades ago. The company compound is highly ordered, spacious, and clean compared to the nearby town of Nepalgunj, with its garbage-strewn streets. Indeed, the compound was situated strategically near Nepalgunj in the ‘backward’ rural hinterland, as this location facilitated the import and export of food items to and from India. The company's factories were located close to the rajmarg (highway) that joins the Indian border crossing at Rupedia with Surket, a market centre in the western hills of Nepal. Since its foundation in 1996, Agrawal has enjoyed constant growth and has proven profitable despite the obvious difficulties of running factories during the Maoist insurgency period (1996–2006).
With a workforce of around 500 spread across five different factories—including mills for rice, lentils, wheat, and oil, as well as an herb-processing plant—Agrawal is one of the most powerful industrial employers in the area. Despite frequent claims by local villagers that those working at Agrawal are of Indian origin, the company employs a largely Nepali workforce. The ratio of Nepali to Indian labourers was 3:1 at the time of my fieldwork in 2013–2014, although when the factory first opened its gates in 1994 it was run largely by Indian workers employed on daily-wage contracts. There are two reasons for the change in the composition of the workforce at the compound. First, the company's union, which is affiliated to the United Communist Party of Nepal (UCPN-Maoist Party), has pressured management to make employment more secure, resulting in many workers being offered permanent contracts (see Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann, Hann and Parry2017). Second, after the state's official abolition of the kamaiya system of bonded labour in 2000, former bonded labourers from the Tharu community began working at the factory as contract labourers, gradually replacing the Indian Bihari labour force of daily-wage labourers.
As a result of these changes, the composition of the company's workforce is divided as follows. At the top of the hierarchy are the general management and junior managers, all of high-caste origin, who work together with the human resources staff in the only air-conditioned building within the company compound. Unlike this homogenous group of white-collar workers, the social background of Agrawal's blue-collar workers is diverse, comprising Indians, Madheshis, and Tharus. Generally, it is the Indians who have the best-paid jobs, as they tend to work as skilled machine operators within one of the five factories. Below them in the employment hierarchy are the Madheshis, who work as assistants to the machine operators or in the packing departments. As in other small-scale industries in western Nepal (see Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann2014b), the Tharu workers usually hold unskilled positions; with the exception of one skilled Tharu machine operator, the majority of Tharus work as paledars (loaders). Unlike most of the other company workers, who have either permanent or temporary contracts and are paid a monthly salary, these loaders are hired through Agrawal company contractors and are paid irregularly at piece rates.
The Indian and Tharu workers live in the company's dormitories within the compound, while the Madheshi workers reside in their nearby natal villages. These are usually mixed in terms of caste and religious membership, with Hindus and Muslims living alongside one another. Maoist cadres that I met often complained about the persistence of ‘caste discrimination’ in such villages, but equally important is the fact that many in these villages have migrated overseas to work in countries such as Malaysia or Middle East countries such as Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. For example, in Nayapur, a village where many of Agrawal's workers hail from, an estimated 30 per cent of the adult workforce had relocated temporarily to the Middle East or Malaysia.Footnote 3 This contrasts with the single-caste, ethnic villages of Agrawal's Tharu workers, whose residents are more likely to seek work in India than faraway places like Malaysia and the Middle East. Possessing property is the decisive factor here. Most Tharu villagers do not have land certificates and are thus unable to get loans to finance such long-distance labour sojourns.
During the Maoist ‘People's War’ which took place between 1996 and 2006, the Agrawal company was spared from rebel attacks. This contrasted with the fate of other industries in the region during the insurgency period. For example, a sugar factory in the rural area of Nepalgunj was ‘captured’ by Maoists and subsequently deconstructed and its assets sold off, while a nearby brick factory was firebombed. When asked why the Maoists had not attacked the food-processing plant, the company's management opined that they had been ‘lucky’, but admitted that the company had been subject to extortion by the Maoists throughout the revolutionary period. Though the frequency of such extortions undoubtedly varied, it was nonetheless a widespread phenomenon faced by industrialists throughout this period. Even in the aftermath of the ‘People's War’, this practice continued as armed groups, such as the notoriously violent Bhagat Singh Group, targeted industrialists to finance their activities. However, after the general elections of November 2013, the police detained some of the leaders of these outfits and the practice became less widespread. Nevertheless, due to the existence of these armed groups and the highly volatile context, management remained suspicious of outsiders visiting the compound and employed security guards armed with metal detectors to frisk workers on entry.
Contractors and contract workers
Let us now turn to the contractors and contract workers at the Agrawal food company. Much of my ethnography comes from spending time with the paledar contract workers who load and unload bags of food and with the contractors who organize them. I usually spent time with them at one of the tea stalls outside the factory gates, although I also visited some of the Tharu contractors’ villages in neighbouring Bardiya district. A central feature in the life histories of all the contractors employed by Agrawal was that they had previously worked as paledars at the factory compound and were regarded as trusted employees. This is evident in the life histories of the two largest contractors at Agrawal, which are presented below.
Bishram Chaudhary, a contractor from a kamaiya background
Bishram's life is littered with tales of misfortune. When he was eight his family encountered financial difficulties, despite his eldest brother working in a nearby mill. Being allare (carefree), the elder brother cared little for the rest of the family and Bishram was sent by his father to work as a cattle herder for a Brahman landlord. When, at age ten, he saw the Brahman children going to school, he was inspired to enrol himself. His education was short-lived, however: after only 14 months, he ran out of money. After leaving school, Bishram returned to his job as a cattle herder before working for his second-eldest brother. When he ran short of money once again, he became a kamaiya with a landlord for a period of a year, during which time he met his wife. After finishing his year-long contract (by now he was 20 years old), he left to work in construction in Mussoorie, India. However, his family could not endure the cold winter there and soon returned to Nepal. Bishram briefly worked as a manual labourer on an irrigation project, before a Tharu man he had befriended helped him to get a mill job through a Bihari contractor. Bishram heard about Agrawal and began to work there as a paledar in 2000. After working for a couple of years with a flawless record, the management decided to promote Bishram to a contractor position along with his fellow Tharu worker and friend Tikaram.
Sharuk, an educated contractor
Sharuk is a Yadav from rural Bihar. Despite having been awarded his school-leaving certificate after grade 10, he could not find a job after graduating, and his family's finances were insufficient for him to pursue tertiary education. Instead, he left rural Bihar and worked for a year as a paledar with different contractors in eastern Nepal. This work brought him into contact with the manager of a factory; when the manager was transferred from eastern Nepal to begin a new role, he suggested Sharuk come along and work as a contractor for the newly established Agrawal company. Sharuk accepted this offer, and has been working at the company for the last 14 years. He is a humorous man and exhibits a certain degree of self-deprecation. Laughing, he relates how his workers call him taklu (‘the bald one’) behind his back, referring to his receding hairline.
+++
Each contractor at Agrawal is employed by management to monitor the loading and unloading of food items from trucks in different parts of the factory compound. For example, Bishram and his partner Tikaram were in charge of ensuring that there was sufficient labour to load and unload trucks at the flour mill. Similarly, Sharuk and his brother, who was also his partner, were responsible for managing labour at the lentil mill, while another contractor Narayan and his father were charged with supplying labour to the oil mill. The contractors’ tasks inside the factories varied, but their main duties included: waking up the contract labour force; planning the working day with management, which involved working out how many trucks would arrive on that day; organizing workers to restock food bags to ensure there was enough storage space inside the compound, and finding the labour to load and unload the trucks that came to the compound.
Nearly all of the paledars were Tharu and hailed from the freed kamaiya bastis (neighbourhoods) in Bardiya and Kailali districts. All of them were male—women were not considered physically strong enough by management to engage in the exhausting work of loading the trucks with food bags, which required paledars to carry up to 100 kg on their heads. Although most of the loaders came from poor families, there was some disparity in their class backgrounds. For example, Prabin was a young, tech-savvy Bachelor's student who had been working at Agrawal for two years; at the end of April 2014, he left for Malaysia to work in the construction industry. Then there was Baburam, a 25-year-old man who had studied up to grade 9, always made insightful comments, and came to the factory just to earn extra income for his wife and children. One of the oldest was Hari Prasad Chaudhary who had lost his land in unfortunate circumstances and had worked for a while as an illegal tiger poacher in a nearby Indian national park before coming to Agrawal.
Importantly, some of these older contract workers at Agrawal had also previously worked as kamaiya before the state abolished the system of bonded labour in 2000. In Bishram and Tikaram's working group, whose size varied between 30 and 80 workers depending on the company's demand for loaders, I counted six former bonded labourers. When interviewed, all of them insisted that their life as paledars at Agrawal was significantly better than their previous work as kamaiya. For example, Tilak Chaudhary explained to me that during his time as a kamaiya he worked as a goat herder for which he was paid five sacks of paddy per year as well as a one-off payment of two sets of clothing and one basket of corn. Though his landlord was an absentee pahadi (hill dweller) who spent much of his time in Kathmandu and never scolded or beat him, Tilak insisted that he felt better working freely at Agrawal where he could make a good faida (profit), at least during the season.
Not surprisingly, many of the younger workers judged the work as mehenat (requiring effort) whereas old timers of kamaiya origin regarded the work at Agrawal as maza (fun). By stressing this aspect of their work as paledars, they were not downplaying the physical hardship of the work, but rather were highlighting the pleasure they derived from socializing with the others paledars, many of whom were kin-related. This was because their contractors recruited from Tharu villages through established networks of friends and family.
Chronic precarity
Compared with the company's regular workforce who enjoy various forms of job security, including sick pay, holiday pay, and are paid even when the electricity line is cut, the casual loaders live a very precarious life. Their work schedule is not evenly regulated in eight-hour shifts, but instead depends on the number of trucks coming to the factory on a given day. As a result, shifts can be more than 12 hours’ long during crop-harvesting seasons. Their payment is based on piece rates and when workers are hired, the details of their wages often remain unclear: payment can depend on the ‘goodwill’ of the contractor and the contractor's own financial situation. Hence, to a certain degree, casual workers in Agrawal remain bonded to their contractors through the practice of ‘payment in arrear, much like the contract labour force described by Parry (Reference Parry2014) on Bhilai's construction sites.
However, the withholding of wages is only one side of the bonded labour relationship between casual workers and their contractors at Agrawal; the practice of handing out peshghi (advances) is another. Peshghi is given to workers before they begin working at the factory. This practice of binding labour through advances is well established and has been documented in other settings across South Asia (Breman Reference Breman1996, De Neve Reference De Neve1999, Engelshoven Reference Engelshoven1999, Kapadia Reference Kapadia1995). Compared with these other contexts, the size of the advances offered at Agrawal are small, usually amounting to about NR 4,000 per worker. Given that casual workers earn on average between NR 5,000 and NR 15,000 per month, an advance can be paid off comparatively quickly. Some workers do disappear, leaving contractors having to manage—and complain about—their yearly losses.
Another aspect of the precarious life of the loaders was obvious upon my first visit to the compound when I was shown around their dilapidated living quarters. After spending hours walking to and from trucks carrying rice sacks, the loaders retire to the dirty floor of a building where one room accommodates up to 20 men. I was shocked when I first encountered these conditions and I was not the only one: new arrivals are usually just as surprised when they first experience the hard work in the compound and then the dire living standards in the company dormitories. Only with time do they become accustomed to the working and living conditions in the company compound and begin to accept them, but not without a certain degree of pressure by their relatives in the dormitories to do so.
Paledar work is also considered katarnak (dangerous) compared with other jobs at the industrial estate. In addition to the threat posed by carrying heavy boras (sacks) of food on their heads, no one wears a helmet or gloves. In the oil mill, workers have to pass through a dangerously narrow lane between the grinder machines, at the risk of becoming caught in their gears. During the loading and unloading of trucks, workers run up and down flimsy ladders; there is always a danger of slipping, twisting an ankle, or breaking one. This precise fate befell Kaluram, one of the workers in Bishram's group, during my time at the factory. However, the company's management only gets involved in cases involving larger accidents, so Bishram had to go to a local guruwar (shaman) to receive treatment for his injury. The most serious case I encountered was that of a paledar who was hit on the back by a food bag in the storage room. His back was severely injured, and at times doctors were unsure that he would recover. In his case, the management paid for the man's treatment in a hospital; his family now survives on the income of a relative who has a permanent job in the factory.
The life of a contract worker is also extremely unhealthy. Most men develop a strong taste for alcohol while working at the factory. Drinking is part of the ‘culture’ or ‘custom’ of paledar work. On average, the contract workers drink about two bottles of daru (alcohol) per day, with each bottle costing NR 40. This amounts to approximately NR 2,400 per month, which represents a significant portion of their overall income. In addition, each Saturday (their day off), the contractors organize a small mela (fair) during which workers usually sit in the bushes behind the factory, drink daru, and eat pork or chicken prepared by one of the cooks from the contractor teams inside the company.
Unsurprisingly, paledar work is not unionized. The company does recognize two unions—one affiliated with the UCPN-Maoist Party and the other with the Nepali Congress—but they focus on the rights of permanent workers and providing stable work for temporary workers inside the food factories. Contracted paledars remain non-unionized, despite some efforts by the local Maoist authorities. During a trade fair in February 2014, the Maoist ‘district-labour in charge’ took Bishram, the contractor, to one side and asked him whether the loader groups would like to join his union. Bishram's response was that contracted loaders were only brave when they were drunk and they would shy away from joining the union. Meaningful unionism thus remains absent, as only part of the workforce belongs to a union.
The precariousness of the paledars’ employment is also apparent in the length of time they work at the company compound. Many workers cannot endure the heavy labour and leave after just a few weeks. Yet the alternatives to this work are hardly more attractive: jobs in agriculture are held in even less regard than loader work at the factory, and wages are lower. Many men try to make a living at the labour market at the nearby Tribuwan Chowk (a central square in Nepalgunj), where they hang around in the early hours in the hope of being offered short-term wage work.
Assertive casual workers
In my discussions with Agrawal management about the conditions in their factories, the constant themes were: the difficulty of training the Tharu contract labour force to comply with management rules and regulations, the labourers’ stubbornness, and their independence. For example, at one of my first meetings with the general manager, he had the following complaints:
Look, when one of the Tharu paledars decides to leave, it is very difficult to hold him back. Even if you offer him one lakh [100,000] rupees, he won't listen to you. When they make up their mind, there is nothing in the world that can change them. It's just like that! (Interview with general manager, September 2013)
When I came back to his office a few weeks later, shortly before the start of the Hindu festival of Dashain, he elaborated on his theory about the character of Tharu loaders, illustrated by the following ethnographic vignette:
10th October. I go to the factory at 10 a.m. and I find the general manager in his air-conditioned office in the staff building. However, unlike the past two days, he seems unsettled, and while staring at his laptop his right foot makes nervous movements. Curiously I inquire about the current situation in the factory. He begins by telling me that two days earlier, about a hundred loaders left the factory. In response, he called a crisis meeting with the contractors. He had announced previously that the factory would close over Dashain (12–14 October), yet the Tharu workers had returned to their villages four days early in order to celebrate the festival.
During the crisis meeting, the manager talked with the three contractors. Two of them are from the Tharu community, while one is a Bihari. The contractors complained that the Tharu loaders did not listen to their commands. Against the will of the contractors, the paledars had left the company and returned to their villages, which could be as far away [as] Kailali. This was not the first time this had happened; similar desertions had occurred during previous religious festivals.
While we are sitting and chatting, he suddenly interrupts me and says, ‘Look, you see another three are leaving! Go to the window and look at the gate.’ Curious, I go to his office window and sure enough see three labourers leaving the company with rucksacks on their backs. I ask, ‘If it's such a big problem for you, why don't you just sack them?’ The manager answers ‘Look, we have done this for, like, 20 years. We started off with Biharis. It all worked well; they never left like the Tharu. But then we made a mistake. After the Kamaiya got free, they came to ask for jobs. We let a good dozen of them work here, and they started to fight with the Biharis, not inside the compound but outside. As a result, the Biharis didn't want to work here anymore. I myself went several times to the contractor's house, but he didn't want to work here anymore. Even when we offered more money—no way! So, see, what we did is we hired more Tharu as loaders and unloaders! But they don't follow the rules. They have a simple food habit, and when they think they can leave, they just simply go. We sacked many of them in the past, but then we had a problem. They started to talk badly about us in the villages. Very badly—like, ‘This company is not good and you have to work all the time!’ And as a consequence, the villagers didn't want to work for us anymore! So now we compromised and let them do that—they run away and we try to negotiate. I mean, they have three days off but they simply go away before! They will never learn! And in the very end, we will replace them with machines! We will mechanize the heavy labour here! But, see, now the contractors will go to their houses and try to find them again. They go by bus and try to give them an advance between NR 2,000 and 5,000 to win them back to the factory. Then a few will show up again on Thursday, and then slowly we can start again. Meanwhile the company has to pay the costs for the permanent workers.’
In other words, contract labourers can simply wander away from the factory to attend a festival when it suits them, and management cannot simply fire them because of fears that if the company gets a reputation for toughness, it will not be able to recruit replacements. But taking extended leave was not the only problem management faced when dealing with Tharu paledar contract labourers—violating the hygiene rules and regulations of the food factory was another, as I soon learned:
They often spit on the factory floor. But we have told them that they are not allowed to spit. We have a rule now that punishes every spit with a fine of NR 500. Still they continue to do so! (Interview with management, October 2013)
Paledars also defied managerial rule in other ways. For example, they had a reputation for stopping work when they discovered mice in the factory units and trying to kill them with the iron hooks that were normally used to unload rice bags from the trucks. While such practices were said to be in decline, management always recounted such episodes in our discussions to emphasize how different the paledars were from the rest of the workforce. As the general manager once put it, ‘In this factory the Tharu contract workers still have a lot to learn. It will take them a minimum of 20 years before they adapt to a modern industrial working culture.’
While these acts of disobedience were usually targeted at the general management, the young Tharu loaders also occasionally defied their own contractors. I observed one such instance during the Hindu festival of Holi, while the contractors were celebrating with their workforce in a neighbouring factory. After the contractors gave ceremonial red vermillion powder to their workers, one of the labourers, known as Raj, got into a verbal dispute with the contractor Tikaram over a minor issue. Tikaram, sensing that his authority was being threatened, retaliated by throwing goat meat in Raj's face. In response, Raj took a stone in his hand and threatened to kill Tikaram there and then. Fearing for his life, Tikaram quickly apologized to Raj, making jokes to dispel the tension. Such acts of defiance against one's own sardar (boss) were rare, however, and only occurred when loaders were drunk enough to forget about their subordinate status and confront their employers.
To sum up: at the Agrawal food factory, Tharu contract workers display a strong sense of assertiveness towards their employers. In fact, it appears as if management itself is in a precarious position in terms of the employment and punishment of labour. How has this sense of assertiveness emerged in workplaces such as the Agrawal factory and what are its roots? Has it been influenced by the broader post-conflict context (see Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann2014b) or is the attitude of the labourers related to their past and their previous experiences of bonded labour?
Eigensinn in a factory in western Nepal
Much of the ethnographic data presented here is remarkably similar to that found in histories of labour elsewhere. For example, the German labour historian Alf Lüdtke (Reference Lüdtke1993) documented how industrial workers in the Ruhr often had their own interpretations of factory rules and regulations, which led them to establish their own practices at work, which were often contrary to managerial instructions. He developed the concept of Eigensinn (stubborn self-reliance) to describe such behaviour in order to narrate an everyday history of workers that went beyond the simple dichotomy of their subjugation versus their resistance. At the heart of Lüdtke's historical project was an attempt to reconstruct the workers’ own spaces of autonomy within their workplaces. Similarly, Dilip Subramanian (Reference Subramanian2009) highlighted the autonomy of workers who assembled printed circuit boards in a state-run telephone company in Bangalore, India. In his view, autonomy at work is the result of a specific managerial strategy that grants latitude to workers in order to preserve industrial harmony in the workplace. In much the same way, Agrawal's management allowed the loaders to engage in quasi-autonomous practices, including wandering off from work at times of religious festivals, because it had also developed a strong desire for harmony in the workplace. At Agrawal spaces of autonomy at work could only exist because those in charge allowed it to emerge. Given the region's prior history as a hotbed of Maoist guerrilla warfare, this emphasis on harmony was unsurprising.
It would be a mistake, however, to view workers’ autonomy merely as an outcome of managerial strategy. A further question that needs to be asked is: how did the loaders themselves turn into stubborn, assertive workers? Why did they prefer piece-rate work and openly defy the management rather than aligning themselves with the company's Maoist union? There are a number of possible answers. First and foremost, it is necessary to highlight again that truck loading was considered, above all, to require hard work (mehenat). Undoubtedly, it was difficult to endure this arduous work for prolonged periods of time, and many paledars viewed the visits to their natal villages during religious festivals as opportunities to rest their exhausted bodies. Thus, one reason why they tried to carve out more freedom in their work schedules was the strenuous nature of their work. Other types of work in the factory were far less physically draining and therefore those workers did not need illegal breaks to recover their strength.
Second, in the case of the loaders at the Agrawal company, their heritage of bonded labour played an important part in their emerging sense of autonomy at work. While loaders in the western Tarai had been primarily Bihari up until the end of the abolition of bonded labour, paledar work has since become a ‘closed occupation’ and is largely limited to Tharus from the districts of Bardiya and Kailali. As I mentioned before, some of the paledars had previously worked as kamaiya, while many others were from kamaiya families. As a result, many workers harboured bitterness towards high-caste outsiders such as their kamaiya landlords which has been displaced, more recently, to their company managers. Moreover, the loaders often expressed that in their freed kamaiya neighbourhoods back in their natal villages they felt a sense of unity and security vis-à-vis outsiders. The following short ethnographic vignette from my fieldwork illustrates this merging sentiment of assertiveness and bitterness vis-à-vis outsiders:
October 2013, rural Banke district, Nepal. Sharuk Yadav and some of his contract workers were sitting on a porch in the shade of the high wall topped with barbed-wire that surrounded the Agrawal factory in rural Banke district, western Nepal. The work team was on a break from loading and unloading 100 kg rice bags from a truck inside the factory. The team shared bidis and bottles of water as Sharuk entertained them with jokes about recent events and political issues. Some workers decided to treat themselves and each bought a 200 ml bottle of hard liquor for NR 30 from the nearby tea stall; others bought surti (chewing tobacco), while a few used their time to go fishing in a nearby river.
Suddenly, the relaxed atmosphere was shattered by a fierce tirade of insults. A drunken Tharu contract labour was approaching the team, shouting at Sharuk, demanding that he give him the bus fare to return to his village. Sharuk refused on the grounds that he just hired him a couple of days before and had given him an advance of NR 4, 000 to work for him. ‘Give me back my NR 4,000 and you can go back,’ he responded. Outraged, the worker shouted at him, ‘I'll give you NR 5,000 if you dare come to my village.’ Smarting at the insult, Sharuk picked up his shoes in his hands and threatened to beat the man. A relative of the Tharu worker jumped in, took the worker away, and fell on his knees, blowing kisses in the air, shouting ‘Baba (father), don't do that!’ Then both walked away while Sharuk cursed the worker, calling him a ‘mahajod’ (motherfucker).
This example illustrates that the Tharus’ resistance to authority should be understood in light of the history of the bonded labour system. It was the feeling of security of belonging in a neighbourhood comprising former bonded labourers that allowed the loader to challenge Sharuk, the outside contractor.
Third, recent political developments have also contributed to this emergence of a sense of assertiveness among the paledars. To explain this, it is important to understand that, while there was previously strong support among Tharu workers for the UCPN- Maoist Party and even some identification with Maoist ideology (Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann2014b), by the time of my fieldwork (September 2013–July 2014) the political landscape had changed. By then the paledars appeared disenchanted with both the UCPN-Maoist Party and its splinter wing, the CPN-Maoist party, led by Comrade Kiran. This became evident in a survey that I conducted in the aftermath of the elections, in which few of the loaders voted. Not because, as in Shah's famous example from Jharkhand (Shah Reference Shah2007), they wished the state away, but because most of them lacked the required voter registration cards and, moreover, because a 13-day bhandh (strike) had been organized by the CPN-Maoist Party prior to the elections. Crucially, however, when asked how they would have voted had they had the chance, most loaders stated that they wanted the Tharuhat Autonomous Party to win. The support of poor Tharus for the Tharuhat Autonomy Party is significant and it demonstrates that the Party was not just the vehicle of landlords. However, the reason for this vote swing was predictable. Prior to the elections, the Tharuhat Autonomous Party had promised to advocate for a Tharuhat state, in which Tharus would be included.Footnote 4 Thus, with Tharuhat politicians advocating for a future Tharuhat state, the practice of claiming rights and a sense of regional-ethnic belonging gained currency among the electorate.
Finally, the emerging sense of assertiveness among loaders was also discursively constructed. Drawing on Herzfeld's seminal work on cultural intimacy, Steinmüller uses the notion of ‘communities of complicity’ to point to ‘a space of intimate self-knowledge’ created through the tension between official presentations and vernacular practice in local sociability. Such communities are formed by those ‘who share an awareness of intimate spaces that are marked by embarrassment, irony, and cynicism at their boundaries’ (Steinmüller Reference Steinmüller2010: 548). Such intimacy was readily apparent among Tharu contract labourers. The fact that the Tharus are officially represented in the western lowlands of Nepal as a ‘backward’ group—or, in the words of the manager, ‘a group of jungly people’—has created a tension within their own self-understanding and identity. There was a gnawing sense among the contract labourers that they were ‘backward’ due to their lack of education, but there was also a corresponding reaction to this official representation. Assertiveness at work thus also had its roots in this contradictory discourse: the tension between official representation and local vernacular practice and sociability.
Conclusion
This article has offered a critical analysis of how people who formerly worked as bonded labourers have adapted to the new realities of a precarious capitalist labour market. It demonstrated how former bonded labourers began working as contract labour with the help of their kin-related contractors and ended up in a very insecure position at the bottom of the industrial hierarchy. I argued that their acts of defiance and resistance to labour control by contractors and managers represent a form of—in the words of German social historian Alf Lüdtke (Reference Lüdtke1993)—Eigensinn (stubborn self-reliance) that has its roots in their past experience as bonded labourers, not in the contemporary strength of the Maoist movement. The latter point complements an argument I have made elsewhere (Hoffmann Reference Hoffmann, Hann and Parry2017)—that the Maoist presence made a substantial difference for another category of workers. These workers were employed at the very same food-processing factory, but due to the intervention of Maoist unionists had managed to obtain permanent contracts. They were largely machine operators or packers, but not loaders, and they were Indians or, more often, Madheshis, not Tharu. I showed that the spirit of Eigensinn, which the Tharu have developed, related not only to the harsh working conditions in the factory but also to their stereotyping by management as unruly, ‘premodern’ Adivasis as well as to the broader Maoist labour politics in industrial estates within the wider area.
From the worm's eye view of the ethnographer, this article also illustrated how different ethnic groups experience industrial labour in Nepal. At first glance the story seems familiar. In the industrial area around Nepalgunj, members of an ethnic community end up doing the most back-breaking jobs within the factory and are judged by management to be unruly, ‘premodern’, ‘jungly’ Adivasis. Undoubtedly, this description evokes parallels to the historic descriptions of Chota Nagpur ‘coolies’ by colonial managers in neighbouring India (Gosh Reference Gosh1982, Mohapatra Reference Mohapatra1985). Certainly, the few rare ethnographic descriptions (Strümpell Reference Strümpell, Shah and Bates2014, Shah Reference Shah2006) of the ‘inclusion’ of ethnic labour into industrial work processes suggest a similar picture. Shah, for example, demonstrated how ethnic labour from Jharkhand did the most back-breaking work in a West Bengali brick factory (Shah Reference Shah2006). However, unlike in Strümpell's description of the Rourkela Steel Plant in Odhisa, I argue that a shared ‘Adivasi’ identity that incorporates different ethnic communities has not yet emerged. This, I suggest, is ultimately a product of wider Maoist politics in the post-conflict period, and the subsequent Maoist union activity in the factories of the area, which led to Maoist patronage of the Madheshi community. Hence Agrawal management does not dare to openly criticize the Madheshi workers but rather vents its pent-up frustrations on the Tharu loaders, often in very ambivalent tones (workers are framed as ‘jungly’ yet ‘hard-working’, ‘stubborn’ but ‘strong’). Paradoxically, I suggest then that the ethnic discrimination within the industrial estates is also a product of post-conflict Maoist politics.
At the broader level, the case of former bonded labourers in a modern industrial food-processing factory draws attention to the fact that while ‘frontier capitalism’ is a widely used term, its meaning is not fixed. Rather, I wish to suggest that anthropologists need to examine the ways in which frontier capitalism plays out at the local level, the meanings and ideologies attached to it, and the impact this has on working populations.
