A Genealogy of Labour Regulation in India: The Career of the Employment Contract

When was the employment contract introduced in India? The story of the forging of the Formal Employment Contract in the first decades of the twentieth century, of its tortuous career and eventual dismantling over the next hundred years, may give us a clue to the persistent paradoxes of India’s labouring landscape. My presentation will examine how the employment contract came into being in India, and how it was transformed and destroyed over the last century.