Socio-Legal Discussion Group: Assigning Responsibility: The Moral and Political Economy of In/formal Work in India

Drawing on fifteen months of participant observation in an informal workers’ union and a health clinic in Rajasthan, India, my paper addresses how assigning responsibility between the state and employer for hazardous working conditions is negotiated. Specifically, I interrogate how the moral value of responsibility (zimmedari) is mobilised and becomes a subject of tension within the union and among activists seeking recompense and accountability for exploitative conditions of work. I foreground how responsibility is arbitrated through the law and in evidence gathering tools, as well as in contestations around cash transfers and social security benefits. I argue that workers actively navigate the tension between state and employer responsibility by using evidence gathering mechanisms and social security benefits in creative ways to generate solidarity, and in doing so, they also articulate an expansive political vision of responsibility and accountability.