Crafting India's Skill Ecology: Reproductions, Recalibrations, and Reimaginations

Saikat Maitra (Curatore)

Sebastian Schwecke (Curatore)

Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2025

This volume traces how the discourse of skill evolved in colonial and postcolonial India, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present neoliberal era. It introduces the concept of skill ecology to capture the broader political, economic, and social environment within which skills emerge, transform, and acquire meaning. Skill is examined here not merely as a technical attribute but as a historically contingent category, shaped by state policy, capitalist ideologies, and hierarchies of power. Focusing on industrial training from the late colonial period – particularly the 1930s – through Nehruvian state-led industrialisation and into the era of neoliberal reform, the book explores how skilling became a terrain of collaboration and contestation between the state and the capital. It also reveals how social relations influence the legitimacy of skills, determining what forms of labour are seen as ‘skilled’ or ‘unskilled’ and for whom. Combining perspectives from history, political science, and colonial and postcolonial studies, this interdisciplinary work offers fresh insights into the politics of labour and development in South Asia. It will be essential reading for scholars and researchers in modern history, political science, sociology, economics, social policy, and Asian studies.

• Curatore: Saikat Maitra, Sebastian Schwecke
• Editore: Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Collana: Politics and Society in India and the Global South
• Anno: 2025
• Rilegatura: Paperback / softback
• Pagine: 320 p.
• Dimensioni: 234 x 156 mm
• Peso: 630 gr.
• EAN: 9781032995649

Testo in English