“White gold” for whom? A study of institutional aspects of work and wages in cotton GPNs in India

Abstract

Global production networks (GPNs) are the norms in many sectors of developing economies like India. High-value crops like cotton are seen as candidates for exploitation of global market opportunities for these countries through their insertion into GPNs. But the understanding of the implications of this incorporation is extremely limited in terms of research and documentation, especially from waged farm worker perspective. It is argued in the GPN literature that GPNs can be vehicles for achieving primary producer and worker well-being, but it is important to recognize that at the same time, traditional pressures of costs and efficiency in competitive markets and poor institutional governance can also lead to a situation of “a race to the bottom” in labour standards in farms and factories. In this context, this chapter reviews the state of the art in the Indian cotton sector from a GPN perspective. It places the Indian cotton sector in a GPN framework, assesses the organization and functioning of the cotton GPN, through the lens of institutional theory, from a cotton farm worker perspective, based on secondary sources of data, literature and some insights from field studies. It finds that there are many issues in the cotton GPN like poor wages, labour conditions and gender aspects which call for attention, except in situations of sustainability initiatives like Better Cotton (BC), organic cotton or fair trade cotton. But even in such cases, it is the smallholder focus which tends to dominate while waged worker issues are left unattended or, rather, perpetuated by GPN dynamics and strategies.