List of maps, figures, and tables -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: wealth, wellbeing, and social institutions -- Organized labor and democratic consolidation -- The state and economic development -- Economic reform and labor's response -- Reorganizing industry, disorganizing workers --...

pt. 1. Introduction -- pt. 2. Reforms and electoral democracy -- pt. 3. Reforms, governance and the state. - Mostly revised version of papers presented at the Seminar on the Politics of Economic Reforms in India, held at Hyderabad in April 2002.

Labor regulation and employment relation has been investigated in India in light of the seminal work of Besley and Burgess (2004), considering formal sector manufacturing employment as the explained variable. Empirical findings support, although not very strongly, the institutionalist view,...