Thirty Years Later
Between August and December 1998 I stayed in south Gujarat in India to carry out the research project 'Men, Women, and Factories: Thirty Years'. It was for the first time since many years that I could stay for a long period in the area of Valsad, the town -also known as Bulsar- from where I conducted my first research almost three decades ago.
By HEIN STREEFKERK
When I arrived in Valsad in 1998 I intended to answer four series of questions. The first pertained to the meaning of 30 years of industrialization for owners and workers. The second topic was the nature of the relations between owners and workers, and how they perceived and appreciated them. The third series of questions were related to the problem of workers' loyalties, support and beliefs. And, fourth, their open or hidden protests.While seeking answers to this questions I, almost inescapably, was drawn into the direction of my first research among owners and workers. I started to explore subjects which I addressed in the early seventies. These themes included the social-economic backgrounds of workers, their remuneration and working conditions; the manner in which workers, managers, owners and officials perceived their work, and each other; and, how owners controlled the production process, how workers responded, union leaders operated, and officials interacted. In other words, I began to operationalize the questions I started with in 1998 along themes I explored earlier. Thus, in many ways my present research covers topics which I addressed in 1971 and 1974, be it that I could investigate them now from a dynamic angle. Almost three decades of industrial development enabled me to approach former themes from a comparative perspective, to ask question about now and then, and to produce social history.
The 1998 research deviates from the fieldwork in the seventies in other respects as well. First, my research experience and academic involvement with India and Gujarat for many years, enabled me to work quicker and to almost daily alternate my research efforts between hierarchically differentiated men and women, between workers and owners, between poor and -very- rich people, between villagers and townspeople, between ritually inferiors and superiors. Being in the second half of my academic career and stage of life also meant that, as a fieldworker, I was far more relaxed, dared to improvise more and did not wish to 'keep things under control'. I could behave and interact more in accordance to local perceptions of time and social priorities. I had what some owners called the 'bearing capacity', which, according to them, is indispensable for running a factory.
Secondly, I did not stay in Valsad town, like I did in the early seventies. I lived for three months in a village at about six kilometers' distance east from the town, where I was surrounded by families of worker-peasants and by factories.
Thirdly, though these factories and workers-peasants are the main focus of the research, they do not represent what happened industrially elsewhere in the southern most part of South Gujarat during the last three decades. One of its major features is the development of the government sponsored industrial estate of Vapi near the small town with the same name at about 25 km's distance south of Valsad. Like Valsad, Vapi is located along the Mumbay-Ahmedabad track of the Western Railways. In the early seventies Vapi estate was still under construction, accommodating only a handful of factories. During the last decades, and after 1990 in particular, the number of factories and workers expanded enormously. At present there are an estimated number of 2000 industrial establishments employing more than 100.000 workers. The majority of these small and large factories produce chemicals because Vapi has been officially earmarked as a 'chemical zone'.
Vapi industrial estate and its migrant workers forced me to leave the village and to travel into southern direction. Or, in other words, to produce in the seventies a representative picture of 'industrial transition of a rural society', a bicycle sufficed as means of transport and taluka boundaries could act is limits of my fieldwork universe. In the late nineties a car is required and administrative boundaries have to be crossed. Even in Valsad region cycling was no longer an efficient and safe means to explore the region and to visit respondents. The expansion of the town itself and the increase in all kinds of buildings outside the municipal area made the local industrial situation less easy to survey. Equally important is that the increased volume of motorized traffic, like scooters, motorbikes, private cars, vans, busses, tractors and rickshaws, and the hazardous behavior of its drivers made cycling along the main roads leading out of Valsad a high-risk exercise. A rickshaw was the most convenient means of transport during my three-month stay in the village; it often usurped the largest share of my daily expenses.
Change was a recurrent subject of conversation raised by the people I met. They introduced them as statements and opinions like, 'at present everything is available in the market, you can buy some many varieties of cheese' and, 'the old charm of Valsad has gone, concrete jungle is coming up now'. Or they complained: 'I am not fit for this society, everybody is after money nowadays, even the postman, there are no ethics any longer' told an industrialist. A factory worker mentioned that 'before we used to walk to the factory, have fun and talk, now everybody goes on bicycle, it is all about money'.
The other way to steer our conversation was to ask me questions like 'don't you agree that tremendous changes have taken place since the last time we have met?' People did so to show their pride about what has occurred since the last decades, to hear my opinion, or to illicit my assent.
It was not difficult to respond to their opinions and questions because much really has changed since the last decades. Earlier I expressed my amazement about the changed Valsad in early nineties, about the drastically altered skyline of the town, 'with many new flats, numerous TV antennas, and eight multi-storied buildings' (Streefkerk 1991). In 1998 the number of high-rise apartment buildings had grown so numerous that I stopped counting them.
These visible changes were largely of the 'modernization' type and that was what my friends were proud of and wanted my comments upon. It is true that I could not disappoint them: For instance, several new and well-equipped private hospitals had been set up, the number of restaurants and shops increased and so did the assortment of consumer articles and luxury goods.
For me, as a fieldworker being 'on the road' almost daily, the most striking changes occurred in the sphere transport and communication. The two-lane National Highway Nr 8 became the symbol of developments in the small corridor of Gujarat's west coast during the last two decades. It connects Mumbai with the industrial belt of Gujarat with the cities Surat, Broach, Vadodara and Ahmedabad, and the prosperous northern states of Punjab and Haryana, and New Delhi. It splits the village of Pirufalia in two parts, one located to the west of the highway and the other part, where I lived, situated east of it.
Day and night Tatas, Ashok Leylands -with the driver's helper squatting half outside the cabin with one foot on the footboard- and smaller Mitsubishis and Tempos, often with a too heavy load tilting dangerously to one side, trucks-cum-trailer stowed with brand-new Maruti cars or Bajaj scooters, and tankers with 'highly inflammable' liquids, roar past at an average speed of fifty, sixty km an hour. The drivers, overtaking recklessly while continuously using their multi-toned horns, use to be behind their wheels much longer than 8 hours per day. Many of them are said to be under influence of drinks or drugs. It is a fact that most of them are HYV infected. According to a research quoted in The Times of India (10-4-98) out of 30.000 investigated truckers driving along the National Highway Nr. 8, 27.000 suffer from this infection. Daily, head-on collisions and other accidents caused by collapsing trucks, mechanical failures or stray buffaloes, bring about a sudden silence and traffic jams that last for hours. The longest pause I witnessed, and enjoyed, lasted for almost one week. It happened during monsoon when a combination of heavy rains, heavy traffic and bad paving lead to a big hole in the surface of the narrow bridge over the Auranga river outside Valsad. For days the stream of trucks had to be redirected through the main streets of Valsad and left these roads completely ravaged.
To meet factory owners in their houses in Valsad I had to drive along this highway for several kilometers in a rickshaw. Certainly at night this was frightening. Fortunately, unlike in the seventies all factory owners owned one or two cars. When I explained my predicament they responded with: 'Don't worry I'll will send my car...'
Improved telephone connections offered even more comfort. Satellites revolutionalized tele-communication during the last decade. According to a former manager of a Vapi factory, the estate could really expand only after 1989. Before 1989 it was difficult to obtain a telephone connection and when available it was a 'headache'. 'In 1989 total Vapi turnover was something like Rs 1100 crores, now it is ten times this amount'.
Despite its regular failures my telephone saved much time and frustration. Before I had to go to people to make appointments, now I could use the telephone. The confusion of the first call is not fatal any more because connections are loud and clear. I did not need to shout to make myself intelligible and answers were no longer puzzling. Furthermore, wasted trips were less because I could check the presence of factory owners before setting off. Even more important, I could phone owners to ask them to clarify parts of our earlier conversations.
The first months after returning home always bring the usual, but nonetheless unsettling discoveries of incomplete information. They are not so troubling any longer.
After arriving in Amsterdam this time, while writing an article, I found that I missed important information about some owners and their factories. Within an hour, after a few telephone calls through which I got what I missed, I could continue writing.
'Long-distance fieldwork' is the biggest gain of better tele-communication. *
Hein Streefkerk
TRANSFORMATION IN BULSAR, SUTHARS, AND THE RELEVANCE OF CASTE
Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XXVI, No 21, May 25, 1991
Dr Hein Streefkerk is affiliated with the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Universiteit van Amsterdam, the Netherlands.