India: the agony of telecoms

D. Subramaniam’s large work (it is nearly 700 tightly packed pages) is fascinating in more than one way. It required around twenty years of approach. Carried by a concise and brilliant style, it constitutes a demanding but essential read. It offers both an insight into the economic fabric of India, an assessment of managed economy policies in the subcontinent, a highlighting of the particularities of the telecommunications industry in this country between 1949 and 2005 and last but not least, an analysis of the evolution of the workforce, in the workplace and in its other worlds of life.

The specificities of the market in India: a socialist model ?

Since independence, the Indian economy has been made around tense and difficult compromises. The public sector was allocated growing sectors of activity between 1956 and 1976, but the private sector always employed more people than the latter. Furthermore, what we call the organized sector (companies with more than ten or twenty permanent employees) has only ever mobilized a very small minority of the workforce, around 10% (currently in decrease). The telecommunications industry is part of the organized sector but it also involves subcontractors in small businesses. The way in which political leaders, members of the high bureaucracy, public sector managers distributed the tasks of economic construction, how and why they did not achieve their objectives, all this is remarkably treated and analyzed.

The problem of India’s managed economy is particularly well highlighted. The author shows how priorities were established (the manufacture of telephones and telephone exchanges not being part of the latter for a long period), and how the designers of the public sector sought to adapt the latter to the needs of society . It brings out the notion of “ caring management style » as a central characteristic of this public sector, at least as far as relations with employees are concerned. Indian public sector employees, at least the permanent ones, have experienced significantly improved working conditions compared to the private sector, real freedom of association (very far from being a rule in the private sector) and numerous advantages. annexes, from housing to the loan cooperative through the hospital and free transport. In the case of theITI (Indian Telephone Industries) which is explained here, this set of advantages and good treatment was combined with a form of non-aggressive management, which did not ignore the productivist objectives (at certain times, they were even obsessive) but which did not seek only exceptionally the confrontation. This is very different from the Soviet system where managers had great power and promoted intense exploitation of the workforce. There “ limited liability » of public sector directors allows D. Subramaniam to question the very relevant notion of “ bureaucratic regime of production “. The entire public sector is affected by these social policies and benevolent management which is also, in certain respects (notably the short duration of senior management assignments), curiously weak. One of the controversies that emerges is that of the socialist or socializing character of this type of state enterprise. There are many social advances. They are insular and limited. More fundamentally, there is a concern for self-sufficiency, associated with import substitution protectionism. It is both the linchpin of the system and one of its greatest weaknesses. If there is Indian socialism, it is confined to certain sectors. Its most concrete realization is a monopoly situation.

India’s lag in telecommunications

The particularities of the telecommunications industry are brilliantly exposed. First, there were hardly any such industries in India at independence. Then the manufacture of these objects was considered a form of luxury for the upper classes. Finally, the production branch found itself continually under the control of a principal, the Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones, then the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), which imposed their standards in terms of equipment and, what was often more serious, of price.

L’ITI had virtually no chance of doing better than balancing its accounts. There was never any question of her making investments independently. The technical development of production is analyzed in great detail and absolutely remarkable. We understand why, despite strong investments in research and a quality workforce, Indians fromITI were unable to move to an era of mass efficiency in telecommunications. This text is, in India, the only branch monograph of this quality. It is apparently the only one that details the case of public sector undertakings, apart from Parry’s studies of the Bhilai Steel Plant. The author explains how the manufacturer went from simple and robust systems to increasingly complicated systems, always lagging behind overall developments and great difficulty adapting its production to the environment. He explains why the material produced had so many rejects and defective materials, so famous in India in the 1980s.

The slow agony of an industry

With regard to the workforce, we see a panorama unfold, historical and factual, of very great readability and of such major importance. Trade unionism is part of company relations but it is also approached for its own sake as a social phenomenon. The story is relatively simple. From a core of employees, a small movement of trade unionists focused on the company arose, but the organization gained momentum, as has very often happened in India, by calling on an external leader. renowned. One of the particularities of this unionism is to be absorbed by negotiation. It has often been overwhelmed by strikes, the 1981 conflict over parity between different public sector companies being a notable exception. Trade unionism finally coalesced behind a loan cooperative-holiday committee which soon became its main activity.

Workers are only really analyzed at the level of the Bangalore company, which is by far the largest. We see a complex universe unfolding, into which professional qualifications are gradually penetrating. The passages on workshop work are rarities in the context of studies of this type. They give a lively character to the work. The regional and caste origins of the workers are well analyzed, although the author seems to have sometimes had difficulty addressing this dimension. The conflicts linked to languages, in particular the rivalry between the Tamils ​​and the Kannadigas (Bangalore is the capital of Karnataka), are on the other hand very well highlighted.

The transition of the Indian economy to a form of neoliberal openness, between 1985 and 1991, resulted in a real tragedy at the level of the national telecommunications company. The products produced proved to be uncompetitive in an open market. The principal (DoT) has put an end to the majority of its orders, without however granting autonomy to the company. In these circumstances all that was left was to lay off staff, which was done (retirements and layoff plans) throughout the 1990s and 2000s.ITI is currently dying and the author evokes the poignant nature of these large empty workshops, witnesses of an aborted industrial dream.

The book’s framework of understanding draws on business sociology, economics and a good deal of social and historical anthropology. This cocktail is of rare richness and we invite the reader to use it without moderation. The bibliographic references, which notably draw on Indian, Anglo-Saxon and French research, are of extreme interest.