The Caddie Question: Informalizing Formal Labor at Golf Clubs in Bangalore, India

• In Event: 036 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. Changing Employment Structrues and the Impacts on Workers

Abstract

Golf caddies represent only a tiny sliver of India’s informal laborers, which number 415 million, or ninety-three percent of the workforce; the work they perform, moreover, a combination of physical, social, and mental labor, is highly specialized. Yet the particulars of this work and where it is set also provides important lessons on the ways otherwise formal labor is informalized in a developing world context shaped by neoliberal policy making. The caddies are not employees of the golf clubs where they work, even though they are treated the same, obligated to sign registers upon entry, wear uniforms on the courses, and cede authority to caddy masters, or paid managers, who regularly police their behavior and alone determine whether or not they may face punishment or suspension. All the same, the clubs persist in calling them “casual” or “contract” workers. The effect is to diminish organized resistance among them, while relegating each to perform extreme acts of servility and deference in their interactions with members in order to gain tips necessary to support themselves and their families. The present paper combines ethnography and archival research to highlight the unfolding of this process over more than three decades at the Karnataka Golf Association (KGA), a private golf club in a rapidly urbanizing area of Bangalore, otherwise known as India’s “Silicon Valley.”

Author

• Patrick Inglis, Grinnell College