On living in the kal(i)yug: Notes from Nagda, Madhya Pradesh

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Abstract
Nagda in Madhya Pradesh is the site of a large viscose rayon factory employing significant numbers of workers from surrounding villages. Pollution and health and safety issues in and around the factory have been key concerns for several decades and this, combined with the continuous shift system and division of labour, embodies industry as the apparently (negative) antithesis of the rural. This is certainly the perspective of local high-caste village employers who articulate a very negative view of the factory, seeking to project it as part of the degenerate kaliyug which is associated with machinery, the goddess Kali, and a dangerous and unstable modernity. Local village-resident factory workers, however, value the comparatively high industrial wages, shorter working hours, and their liberation from the oppressive expectations of rural 'patronage'. The complex everyday predicaments of living in the kaliyug are explored through a variety of different voices which suggest the inadequacy of trans-local narratives of industrialisation.

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