RESEARCH INTEREST
My current research interests can be grouped under five broad but overlapping categories:
Issues concerning democratic functioning of work organizations and alternatives to large corporations
Small industry and small firm clusters
Understanding globalisation, especially from the point of view of small industry, labour and the third world
Restructuring and Change in Indian Industry
Labour studies and working class movement
Issues Concerning Democratic Functioning of Work Organisations and Alternatives to Large Corporations
This has been an ongoing work including my own PhD thesis, which dealt with ‘due processes’ in organisations and obstacles faced by them.
I have worked with a workers’ cooperative for almost ten years where my primary concern has been democratic functioning. I have supervised a masters’ thesis where we studied one of the largest workers cooperative in the manufacturing sector in the country.
Small Industry and Small Firm Clusters
The objective of this stream of work is to understand the specific problems, unique context and competitive advantages of small-scale industry with special focus on India in general and SMEs in particular. The work spans several stakeholders at various levels: firm level, clusters-wide features, role of local institutions, government as well as policy level issues. I have guided several masters’ theses and one PhD thesis in this area and conducted a DST sponsored research. I have also written two teaching cases commissioned by SIDBI for specific SME issues.
Presently I am involved in a study of the competitive advantages of three clusters - leather cluster of Kanpur, Varanasi silk cluster and Moradabad brassware cluster and an attempt to situate them in the global value chain.
Understanding globalisation, especially from the point of view of small industry, labour and the third world
I have started offering an elective and a one week course in this area and this work intersects with my other research concerns.
I am also working on the voluntary sector in India. I have recently supervised a PhD thesis exploring the issues around the formation and clustering of NGOs in India.
Restructuring and Change in Indian Industry
I have been working on Restructuring and change in Indian industry with three specific concerns - Privatisation and the Performance of Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), Total Quality Management in Organisations, and Information Technology and Organisations. Most of this work has been with my MTech and PhD students and I have also developed cases in this area.
Labour Studies and Working Class Movement
I have been involved with the working class movement in my immediate context for the last fifteen years as a friend and observer. I have been involved with human rights issues, trade unions, and more recently, with alternate forms like cooperatives. As an activist my primary concern has been with democracy and economism; as a researcher I have tried to understand the institutional issues involved in the working class movement, its historicity and the context of its present worldwide crisis. Of late my work has been especially concerned with institutionalisation of labour standards.