Democracy at Work in an Indian Industrial Cooperative:
The Story of Kerala Dinesh Beedi
by T. M. Thomas Isaac, Richard W. Franke, and Pyaralal Raghavan

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Preface, ix
Note on the spelling of Indian place names, xv

1 Beedi workers and the Kerala Model, 1
    Malabar, Kannur, and KDB
    The benefits of KDB
    KDB and The Kerala Model
    The crisis of the Kerala Model
    KDB and the Kerala Model: past, present, and future

2 The making of the beedi working class, 22
    The growth of the beedi industry in Kannur
    The social background of the beedi workers
    Deteriorating labor conditions
    From caste to class
    Beedi workers in the national independence movement
    Growing industrial tensions
    The general strike of 1937
    The culture of self-study
    From congress socialism to communism
    The war period
    Industrial expansion after independence
    The unions' response to decentralization
    The counteroffensive of the employers and the union crisis

3 Solidarity versus retrenchment: The birth of KDB, 54
    The history of the cooperative movement in Europe and North America
    The background to KDB
    Formation of the Kerala Dinesh Beedi Workers' Cooperative
    Toward a new culture of development action
    From Ganesh to Dinesh
    The politics of consumer choice
    Twenty-five years of growth
    KDB--the standard bearer of improvement in labor conditions
    The cooperative that succeeded

4 From mobilization to efficiency: The role of the central society, 86
    The structure of KDB
    The management of the central cooperative
    Economies in large-scale raw material purchases
    Marketing beedis
    Financial management
    Regulation of output of the primary cooperatives
    Monitoring output quality
    Ensuring uniform labor conditions
    Emerging issues

5 The dynamics of shop floor democracy: Empowerment versus supervision in the beedi primary cooperatives, 118
    Rolling beedis
    The wage system
    The management staff: secretaries, foremen, and maistries
    Worker-staffed, worker-elected director boards
    The functions of trade unions in the primary cooperatives
    Trade union rivalries
    Commitment or supervision?
    Emerging issues

6 Efficiency and profit in the primary societies: KDB's market dilemma, 156
    Production and profit
    Primary society trading profit: the measure of efficiency and the dependent variable
    Political causes of inefficiency
    The infrastructure of efficiency
    Organizational components of efficiency: primary society size and management staff as
    percentage of employees
    Worker characteristics and efficiency
    Female workers and maternity benefits
    Multiple regressions on the variables
    Implications of the statistical analysis
    Emerging issues: women, efficiency, and social justice

7 KDB and the international movement for workers' cooperatives, 182
    The general structural requirements of a workers' cooperative
    Equality and democracy
    KDB, degeneration, and the Kerala Model
    State sponsorship and worker solidarity
    Socialist debates on workers' cooperatives

8 Afterword: Diversification and the ethics of tobacco production, 217
    The ethics of tobacco production
    Declining market for beedis?
    Economic and political aspects of diversification
    1996: New initiatives in diversification

Notes, 225
Bibliography, 233
Index, 249

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