Abstract
This paper provides an account of Professor Radha Kamal Mukerjee, highlighting his significant contributions to research in the area of labour and employment. It focuses on Professor Mukerjee’s inter-disciplinary approach to research and traces the eventful years of his scholarly journey. His seminal work, The Indian Working Class, was first published in 1945 and was mostly based on extensive fieldwork by the author in different parts of India over two decades. The present paper discusses Professor R.K. Mukerjee’s ideas, approaches and agenda on some important aspects of labour as contained in his book and attempts an assessment of the progress vis-à-vis the same over the last 70 years. It concludes that the relevance of his ideas, approaches and agenda remain undiminished even after a long span of 70 years.
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The author is thankful to Dr. Akhil Alha for his assistance in preparing this lecture.
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This article is based on the Radha Kamal Mukerjee Memorial Lecture delivered at the 56th Annual Conference of ISLE, at Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra, Ranchi, 18–20 December 2014.
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Papola, T.S. Radha Kamal Mukerjee and the Indian working class: seventy years in retrospect. Ind. J. Labour Econ. 58, 99–117 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-015-0007-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-015-0007-y