What is your research concerned with?

Public works, such as railways, roads and irrigation canals, occupied a central role in shaping the state’s attempt to establish control over resources, develop new systems of extraction and legitimise its presence in the colonies. These projects employed a large number of casual labourers for construction work during famines, as a means of providing relief to the affected population. The central aim of my research is to examine conditions and nature of work in construction for casual workers under the colonial famine policy of employing labourers on public works, from 1860-1920 in colonial India, a period marked by frequent famines and severe scarcities. As part of fulfilling the overall goal of economic extraction and profit maximisation, I argue that famine periods were used by British colonialism to primarily control labour more directly for public works construction, further contributing to control of the empire and its resources, as well as provide relief to affected population by a ‘benevolent’ state. The famine context thus represents the different degrees to which labour was being precarised by capital. My research speaks to the broader development discourse in the British Empire that aimed at labour casualisation by situating the regional case study of North-Western Provinces within the larger histories of labour mobilisation under colonialism. Therefore, through the lens of casual labour, I assess the colonial state’s capacity as an infrastructure builder and a welfare agent. 

How have you been going about it?

I have been generously supported by the Graduate Institute’s International History Department Teaching Assistantship during my PhD. I had to divide my time efficiently between thesis and teaching work. I defended my Mémoire Préliminaire de Thèse in December 2017, a couple of months earlier, to utilise the breaks for archival research. I started by looking at published government reports in the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Library as well as those available digitally. Next, I spent my summer and winter breaks in my main archives: The British Library in London, the National Archives of India in Delhi and the Regional Archives of Uttar Pradesh in Lucknow. I was able to look extensively at minutes of parliamentary proceedings, official correspondences, pamphlets, personal accounts and biographies. My final leg of archival research consisted of visiting smaller archives in the United Kingdom for photographs and private papers. For this purpose, I was supported by the Europaeum for a visit to Oxford University at the end of my third year. With all my sources completed, I planned my final semesters to focus only on writing the thesis. In the past two years, I have received detailed feedback during conferences and workshops, including the Social History Society, Re:work by Humboldt, the International Labour Process Conference, the Rural History Society, the International Convention of Asia Scholars and the European Labour History Network. I have also been an active member of working groups in Europe based on Labour History (Remuneration and bargaining, and Free/Unfree Labour). Continuous feedback has allowed me not only to frame my thesis chapters, but also to open up my approach to non-specialists and other disciplines. The latter was best achieved during my visit as an exchange scholar to the Department of Anthropology at Yale University; the members of the department there provided me with several avenues to present my working papers and chapters in a friendly setting. For my final year, I have been granted the Swiss Doc.mobility, which will allow me to spend my semesters at Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Dartmouth in the United States. The training and exposure at these prestigious institutions has been made possible with the continuous support of the International History Department.

What led you to focus on this particular set of issues?

I developed an interest in the economic and social history of India during my undergraduate studies. During my Master’s, I developed a strong interest in labour history. I started my project with the intention to study casual and informal labour in Indian history, asking the general question: how did labour and imperial histories intersect under conditions of casual work? My Master’s thesis had focused on the causes of famines in India, so my familiarity with the topic shaped my doctoral research proposal. As I moved forward in my study of casual labour in Indian history, the role of famine conditions in public works construction became increasingly important. My thesis topic also emerged from and challenges a mix of existing literature, mainly on social and labour history of India. There is a large literature on construction of railways as well as famines, but one does not know much about the labourers, their working conditions or the work site itself. I intend to fill this gap with my project. My research traces casual labour historically, showing that the role of the colonial state in attempting to make casual labour the norm has been underplayed. Moving away from cultural explanations that often follow the logic of the colonial sources, my research brings out negotiability of labour institutions, thereby yielding implications for the way Indian labour history has been conceived so far.

KEYWORDS: International History Programmes; International History