Communication and labour

Communication: the telephone, email and the internet have compressed time and space: a message reaches the other side of the world instantly.

India's growth here has been dramatic. In 1947, India had only about 84,000 telephone lines. By 2000 there were about 650,000 public call offices (PCOs), and then mobile phones spread everywhere. Phones serve a very Indian need: staying in touch with family spread across the country and abroad.

But there is a digital divide: unequal access to computers and the internet, between rich and poor, city and village, men and women. The Digital India programme aims to close it.

Labour: globalisation has changed where and how things are made. The book's example is Nike shoes. Production moved from Japan to South Korea, then to Thailand and Indonesia, and on to India, each time chasing cheaper labour.

This reflects a change in how industry is organised:

• Fordism (named after Henry Ford's car factories): mass production of standard goods in one big factory, with a large, permanent workforce.
• Post-Fordism: flexible production spread across many places, with parts made wherever it is cheapest, and workers hired on short contracts.

Post-Fordism makes workers insecure: a factory can close and move abroad at short notice.

Urban youth gained new jobs in BPOs and shopping malls. But overall, jobs grew slowly: in Asia in 2003–04, jobs grew only about 1.6 per cent, while the economy grew over 7 per cent: 'jobless growth'.

A connected world, but often insecure work.