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ABSTRACT
Why and how do labour migrant brokers engage with henchmen of bosses, small-time criminals and violent politicians? What significance do labour brokers’ political relations have in the fabric of labour circulation? This article argues for migration brokerage to be examined along a broad continuum of brokerage to explore the local fabric of labour circulation in the Indian construction sector. Considering migration brokerage as part of a broader landscape of brokerage firstly allows look at how migration brokers concretely navigate the worlds of labour and politics to pursue their activities and to further their own agendas. It secondly offers insight into how the everyday relations between migrant brokers and henchmen of bosses shape the lives of migrant labourers in the urban construction sector. Based on a detailed ethnography of the relation between a Dalit labour maistri and a Dalit henchman of a boss in a context of violent criminal political economy, this article explores the roles of Dalit politics in shaping the Dalit fabric of labour circulation and labour broker’s trajectories in South India. It further looks at the ambivalent production and mobilisation of Dalit identities in the making of an ideal Dalit migrant labourer.
Acknowledgement
I wish to thank Jane Weston for the English proof reading of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The BJP is a nationalist Hindu party which had limited influence in Andhra Pradesh when Kiran was running as a candidate in the 1990s.
2 Kamma and Reddy are the two economic and political dominant castes in Andhra Pradesh.
3 Henchmen may also act as local leaders in specific neighbourhoods and combine violence with brokerage activities.
4 For ethical issues, the name of the locality and the names of people quoted in the article have been made anonymous.
5 Goonda loosely refers to the different forms of criminal and muscular activities which could, in some cases, be linked to patronage politics and/or used to control a community in a particular neighbourhood (Michelutti Citation2010, 45).
6 Before the separation between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana region, 11 out of the last 13 Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh were Reddys and Kammas from four districts in Rayalaseema (out of 23 districts).
7 Malas and Madigas are the two main castes of ex-untouchables in Andhra Pradesh. Dalit movement failed to resolve their divisions and Malas had gained the leadership of most of the Dalit organisations.
8 The district of Chittoor covers very different geological and geographical areas – hills, forests, soils – allowing for a diversity of agricultural production – Kothapalle is one of the major areas of tomato production in South India. As the district lies between two major Indian cities, Chennai and Bangalore, the migration streams differ greatly on the basis of spatial and cultural proximity to these cities: Kothapalle is connected to Bangalore.
9 Influential caste-based movement in Andhra Pradesh.
10 The agitation for a separate state of Telangana – a region of Andhra Pradesh where is located the capital Hyderabad – started at the end of the 2000s and pushed many businessmen from Rayalaseema to shift their investments in Bangalore.
11 Data were collected through informal interviews which henchmen and brokers involved, as well as with the MLA, state bureaucrats of the housing departments, some people who had to sell their names and with other local state officials.
12 Those narratives (which vary with the place and the period of the year) provide examples of the ways Dalitness emerge in the relations between labour maistri and labourers.