Labour Under Overlapping Modes of Production

Labour is a fundamental category of political economy. Yet it is a much-neglected category in development theory. Unlike the capitalist economy identified with wage labour, nothing a priori may be said about the labour process(es) of a non-capitalist system. India&s;s post-colonial economy continues to be marked by overlapping modes of production. Although obscured outwardly by commerce and a developed network of markets for outputs, these disparate modes work underneath to preclude development of markets for inputs, notably labour. The under-formed labour market is reflected in the structure of livelihoods of a vast majority of households. Objective conditions are such that households are required to generate their critical annual incomes by combining different activities which at the same time represent heterogeneous social forms of labour. This complicates analysis of labour markets and measurement of aggregates in such economic systems.