Breaking down the question

The question asks for an argued judgement — have the new economic policy (NEP) of 1991 and the ensuing reforms weakened labour class movements? The instruction to explain your views with examples means the examiner wants a defended thesis illustrated with concrete developments, not a neutral survey.

The analytical task is to connect a shift in political economy to a shift in collective action. The NEP — liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation — restructured the labour market and the balance of power between capital and labour. The sociological question is how this restructuring has affected the capacity of workers to organise, mobilise and press demands through unions and movements.

A strong answer avoids a flat yes or no. It argues that the reforms have indeed weakened the classical, organised-sector trade union movement in significant ways, while simultaneously producing new terrains and forms of labour mobilisation. The balanced position — decline of the old form, emergence of new forms — is more sociologically defensible than a one-sided verdict, and demonstrates command of the changing structure of the Indian working class.

How to approach it

Adopt a clear thesis and defend it in two movements. A strong response will:

  • Explain the mechanisms through which reforms weaken labour: informalisation and casualisation, capital mobility, the retreat of the state, technological displacement and union fragmentation.
  • Give examples — declining strike activity in organised industry, the spread of contract labour, the decline of the textile and public-sector union strongholds.
  • Present the counter-movement: nationwide general strikes by central trade unions, the organisation of informal and unorganised workers, and new sectoral mobilisations.
  • Ground the analysis in E. A. Ramaswamy on trade unionism and Sharit Bhowmik on informal-sector labour, and reach an argued conclusion.

Model answer

The new economic policy of 1991 marked a decisive turn in India's political economy, and with it the ground on which labour movements stood began to shift. My view is that the reforms have substantially weakened the classical trade union movement rooted in the organised sector, but that they have not extinguished labour mobilisation so much as displaced and transformed it. Both propositions must be argued.

Consider first the weakening. Several mechanisms are at work. The most important is informalisation and casualisation. Under competitive pressure, firms increasingly rely on contract, casual and temporary workers rather than permanent employees. Contract labour is dispersed, insecure and easily replaced, and therefore extraordinarily difficult to unionise; the permanent workforce that formed the backbone of the old unions has shrunk. Sharit Bhowmik's studies of the informal sector show how the vast majority of Indian workers now labour outside the protective and organisational reach of classical unionism.

The second mechanism is the changed balance of power between capital and labour. Liberalisation gave capital mobility and the credible threat of exit — the ability to relocate, outsource or automate — which disciplines labour and blunts the strike weapon, since a struck plant can be bypassed. Third, the state, once a sympathetic arbiter and a major employer, has retreated: privatisation and disinvestment eroded the public-sector union strongholds, and labour reforms have tilted towards flexibility for employers. Fourth, technological change and restructuring displaced workers in traditional bastions. The decline of the great textile centres, symbolised by the collapse that followed the long Bombay textile strike, foreshadowed the fate of concentrated industrial unionism.

To these structural forces is added the chronic fragmentation of the union movement. Indian unions have long been divided along party-political lines, and this multiplicity — well documented by E. A. Ramaswamy — weakens bargaining power and coordination. Falling union density and declining strike frequency in the organised sector are the visible symptoms of these combined pressures.

Yet the thesis of simple decline is incomplete, and this is the counter-movement. First, the central trade unions have responded to reforms not with silence but with some of the largest coordinated general strikes in world history, uniting across federations against privatisation, price rises and labour-law changes — evidence that organised labour retains the capacity for spectacular collective action even as its everyday strength wanes. Second, and more significant sociologically, the very informal workers who elude classical unionism have begun to organise in new ways: associations of construction workers, domestic workers, street vendors, head-loaders and home-based workers, often supported by NGOs and drawing on the model of the Self-Employed Women's Association, have created novel forms of collective representation suited to dispersed, unprotected labour. Third, new sectors — information technology, retail, the platform and gig economy — are generating fresh, if nascent, forms of worker assertion.

The picture, then, is not the death of labour movements but their metamorphosis. The classical model — a permanent workforce in large factories, organised in party-linked unions, wielding the strike within a protective state — has been eroded by the reforms. But labour has not simply been demobilised; the locus of mobilisation has shifted towards the informal sector, towards broad political coalitions expressed in general strikes, and towards new organisational forms beyond the factory gate.

My argued conclusion is therefore twofold. The new economic policy has indeed weakened labour movements in their traditional, workplace-centred, organised-sector form, by fragmenting the workforce, empowering capital and withdrawing the state. But it has simultaneously called into being new terrains of struggle among the informal majority. Whether these new forms can attain the cohesion and bargaining power of the old is the open question on which the future of Indian labour depends. What is clear is that reform reconfigured, rather than abolished, the collective agency of the working class.

Examiner's perspective

Examiners reward a candidate who takes a position and defends it with mechanisms and examples, as the instruction demands. A flat assertion in either direction, unsupported, stays in the lower band; so does a description of the NEP with no serious link to collective action.

The distinction that lifts an answer is the two-sided argument — genuine weakening of the classical form alongside the emergence of new forms — because it shows that the student understands labour movements as responsive to the structure of the labour market rather than as fixed entities. Explaining informalisation as the key solvent of old unionism, and citing Bhowmik and Ramaswamy, signals command of the field; noting the great general strikes and the organisation of informal workers shows currency. The strongest scripts close with an argued verdict that reform reconfigured rather than destroyed labour agency. Weak answers narrate the reforms; strong answers analyse how a changed political economy reshapes the possibilities of working-class action.