Rethinking technological choices and knowledge production in the mines and on the factory floor: Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha's experiences in central India

Abstract

This paper seeks to locate in the experiences of the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, a workers’ collective in Central India, an alternative model of technological transfer. Responding to the proposal of large-scale mechanisation of the iron ore mines in Central India, the workers along with engineers who collaborated with them, evolved a counter proposal of ‘semi-mechanisation’ and in the process showed that the active involvement of workers can indeed prove a driver for technological change, and that workers need not be silent recipients of a ‘received’ technology unsuitable to them. As the users of technology struggle to transform their workspaces and working conditions, they also drive the ‘development’ of new technological choices and spawn innovation. This paper also takes note of the policy implications of a more interactive technological transfer model, and of the replacement in the industrial space of the culture of competition by a counter culture of cooperative creation between workers.