From the Green Revolution to Industrial Dispersal: Informality and Flexibility in an Industrial District for Silk in Rural South India

This article explores social production relations in the silk economy of a rural town in South India which has experienced a major process of industrialisation in the post-Green Revolution. Being a market for agricultural products in the 1960s, the town has now become the centre of a manufacturing economy specialised in silk saris. The article argues that, since the Green Revolution, the town's silk economy has been organised as an industrial district, in which competitiveness relies on low labour costs and is enhanced by class and caste stratification and segmentation. Focusing on the relations between the economic organisation of the silk economy and the town's social structure, the analysis is carried out by means of the Marshallian concept of industrial district as theorised by Giacomo Becattini. © 2011 European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes.