RESUMO
The onslaught of COVID-19 has been catastrophic for India's world of work. While it was a bolt out of the blue, its impacts on employment need to be located in the context of a long-term and ongoing structural crisis of (un) employment and systemic vulnerabilities (and subsequent burgeoning of 'labour reserves') that have tended to worsen during the neo-liberal regime. Using the various EUS and subsequent PLFS rounds for roughly the last two decades, the paper seeks to highlight selected aspects of the vulnerabilities and inequities that have plagued India's world of work. These include participation rates, vulnerable employment, composition of workforce and access to certain aspects of decent work such as social security, paid leaves, and written contract. An important issue that the paper investigates is 'income-vulnerability' of the employed at the present juncture. Further, inequities across gender and social groups have also been assessed as regards these variables using the most recent data.
RESUMO
This paper addresses the contemporary problem of chronic employment from the perspective of the critique of political economy by Karl Marx. It seeks to understand the historical and categorical connections between chronic unemployment and movements to recompose relative surplus population in capitalism. The analysis was conducted through a bibliographical study of the main texts in which Marxpresents the genesis and development of the capitalist society. It also investigated the work of currentanalysts who have delved deeper into the reproduction of this sociality in the context of its structural crisis. The recomposition of relative surplus population is linked to the ways in which capital endeavors to resume accumulation, thereby deepening its structural contradictions as the crisis unfolds...
O artigo aborda a problemática contemporânea do desemprego crônico a partir da crítica da economia política de Karl Marx. Busca apreender os nexos históricos e categoriais entre o desemprego crônico e os movimentos de recomposição da superpopulação relativa no capitalismo. A análise foi realizada através de um estudo bibliográfico dos principais textos onde Marx apresenta o processo de gênese edesenvolvimento da sociedade capitalista. Recorreu também a analistas atuais que aprofundam ainvestigação sobre a reprodução dessa sociabilidade no contexto de sua crise estrutural. A recomposição dasuperpopulação relativa é vinculada às formas pelas quais o capital busca retomar a acumulação, aprofundando suas contradições estruturais no evolver da crise...
