“Examine in detail the impact of new global economy on work organization and family structure in India.” (2004)
The new global economy, which India joined through the 1991 reforms, is built on information technology, services, global value chains and mobile capital. Manuel Castells (The Rise of the Network Society, 1996) argued that it changes the logic of work from fixed hierarchy to flexible networks. Because work and family are closely linked, changes in one have reshaped the other.
Impact on work organisation
- Networked, round-the-clock work: IT, business-process and Global Capability Centres (over 1,750, according to Nasscom) run on global time zones. Carol Upadhya and A. R. Vasavi (2008) found long hours, constant monitoring and project-based insecurity behind the prestige of software jobs.
- Flexibility and contracts: contract workers made up 40.7% of factory workers in 2022-23 (Annual Survey of Industries), and fixed-term employment is now legal under the labour codes.
- Feminisation: women entered call centres, export garments and IT. The labour codes now permit night shifts for women with consent.
- Platform work: delivery and ride-hailing apps turn employment into tasks. NITI Aayog (2022) projected 2.35 crore gig workers by 2029-30.
- Continuity: most work remains informal and home-based. Global chains reach women piece-rate workers at home, so the household itself becomes a workplace.
Impact on family structure
- Nuclear households and dual earners: urban professionals increasingly live in nuclear units with both spouses employed, like the dual-career family of Rhona and Robert Rapoport (1969). Yet A. M. Shah (The Household Dimension of the Family in India, 1973) warned that a nuclear household does not mean a nuclear family; kin ties and support persist.
- The second shift: Arlie Hochschild (The Second Shift, 1989) showed employed women still doing most housework. The Time Use Survey 2024 found Indian women spending about 289 minutes a day on unpaid domestic work, compared with 88 for men.
- Transnational families: the Kerala Migration Survey 2023 estimated 2.2 million emigrants and about ₹2.17 lakh crore in remittances, with women’s share of emigrants rising to 19.1%. Leela Gulati (In the Absence of Their Men, 1993) showed Gulf migrants’ wives managing households and gaining authority.
- Care drain: Hochschild’s global care chains apply to Kerala’s nurses abroad, whose children and parents are cared for by relatives or paid help. Elderly parents left behind face loneliness.
- Marriage and authority: delayed marriage, more self-chosen partners through matrimonial platforms, and greater say for earning daughters and daughters-in-law modify patriarchal authority.
Assessment
- Change is adaptive, not a collapse. Joint-family obligations continue through money transfers, shared property and help with childcare; Eugene Litwak’s “modified extended family” (1960) fits better than Talcott Parsons’ isolated nuclear family.
- Impact is class-bound. The networked professional family differs sharply from the migrant construction worker’s family split between village and city.
- Female labour force participation was only 40.0% in 2025 (PLFS), so the dual-earner model remains limited.
Conclusion
The global economy has made Indian work more flexible, networked and feminised, and families more nuclear in residence, dual-earner and transnational. Yet kinship adapts rather than disappears: it funds migration, shares care and absorbs risk. Families now support global work, often at the cost of women’s time.