In the Kanpur leather industry, casual workers are engaged in various modes of casualisation due to the absence of any formal regulations which offer them the security of tenure and wages. Amidst these precarious work conditions, vulnerable workers find themselves at the crossroads of their identity as workers and citizens. Where the unwillingness and compulsions of the neo-liberal State manifest itself in denying these casual workers any formal rights. It perpetuates the informality to boost industrial output at low input costs. Thus, these casual workers find recluse at the benevolence of the welfare state by claiming their rights as citizens.
Here the welfare policies of the State in the forms of subsidised ration, free medical facilities and school education provide casual workers with a breathing space to contest their predicaments at the workplace through subtle and everyday modes of resistance. This everyday state empowers casual workers and makes them more resilient in the workspace where they adopt practices such as bargaining, sabotaging, and using local networks of caste leaders and local politicians to safeguard their respect and reclaim their identity as citizens. In my research on the Kanpur leather industry, I have gathered insights into these everyday interactions between the casual workers and the State where the former looks upon the welfare provisions to manage their daily basic needs and the latter uses these policies to quell the resentment among the workers and perpetuates informality as its commitment to industrial growth and managing these citizens as potential vote bank. This is what I term as, the Everyday Welfare State.
