CONFLICTING LOYALTIES

Industrialization is be¬lieved to be an agent of econo-mic development and modern¬ization and to bring in pat¬terns of universalistic values. Sociologists like Kerr and his associates who believe in this thesis consider industrial¬ism as ‘a leveller of cultural and ideological differences bet¬ween societies’. Some other sociologists like Moore, Bendix, Feldman and Hoselitz are also somewhat in agreement with this logic, although they have ‘disagreements over the con¬vergence of societies towards a common structural form’ at the final stage. The present study seeks to examine the thesis stated above by raising some questions: Has a hundred years of industrialization in India and exposure of the worker to an independent labour movement led to an emergence of a labour force with attitudes, behaviour, a common life situation and common life chances which are firmly rooted in industrial employment? Is the industrial worker in India deeply com¬mitted to an industrial job or does he remain a tradition-bound villager at heart? That is to say, has an integrated industrial man with an indus¬trial way of life ‘in totality’, with a universalistic set of values, emerged in the Indian context or not?