LongEmergency · The Long Emergency: The Postcolonial State, Labour and the Railway Strike of 1974.

The Railway Strike of 1974, the last general strike on the Indian railways involved over two million workers and brought the national economy to a standstill. At once, the strike became a visible and powerful symbol of India in crisis. In June 1975, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of the Congress Party declared the state of Emergency, marking a turning point in India's postcolonial history. Yet the two events have not been placed in one historical frame. The historical processes that congealed to produce a profound break in Indian politics — from democracy to authoritarianism remain largely unexamined. Through a 'long' history of the Emergency, with a central focus on railway labour, this MSCA project will unfold one of the multiple crises of the postcolonial state of which the Emergency was symptomatic — that of nation-building vis-a-vis the labour question. In doing so, it clarifies the place of labour in postcolonial politics, at the same time, as illuminating the character of the developmentalist state in India as a historical formation. More broadly, it includes a comparative perspective and thus illuminates the dynamics of the expansion of postcolonial states’ ambit towards labour welfarism, as well as its recourse to open authoritarianism. The project stands at the interface between – Modern South Asian History, Global Labour History, and the history of crisis and dictatorship in the Third World.