Bombay 1982–83

strike erupted on the cusp of two transitions. On the one hand, it occurred at a time when textile manufacturing was steadily shifting from the city’s mills to power looms in and around Mumbai. On the other, it heralded a change where urban real estate became one of the most profitable sectors of the economy. Mill owners jumped on the bandwagon to profit from mill land. The mill workers grasped that they were on the cusp of momentous change, even if the full import of the transformations was clearer only after a few years. They intervened to register their stake in the metamorphosis of the city’s political economy and space with a tactic they had honed over the twentieth century: Strike

Bandwagon effect · Boom · Estate · Mill · Politics · Power (physics · Profit (economics · Temporary work · Work (physics · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Indian Economic and Social Development · South Asian Studies and Diaspora