Maansi Parpiani

This book examines how economic transformations shape health and identity. Injuries of Growth: Work and Health in India asks: why has the country’s economic growth not led to health and equality for its population? How have India’s diverse social groups responded to pervasive harm and inequality? The book draws from longterm ethnography in Mumbai, India’s economic capital and home to millions of manufacturing, construction and domestic workers. Their narratives show how the pursuit of economic growth in India, over the last four decades, has dramatically morphed the economy – pushing millions in harmful jobs and demanding that they continue working with sickness and injury. I illustrate how the Indian poor have formed broad working class collectives, cutting across different caste, religious and regional backgrounds, to pursue economic solutions for better health. Through these collectives, they foreground how economic well-being – good wages, job security and safe conditions – is crucial in shaping physical and social well-being. Embedding ‘health’ in the complex interplay between work, class identity and national transformation, the book offers new ways to theorize health in unhealthy times. The book would be relevant to anthropology, labor studies, global health and South Asian Area studies.