“Write short note: Pathological form of division of labour.” (1994)
Émile Durkheim held that a normal division of labour produces organic solidarity. In Book III of The Division of Labour in Society (1893) he admitted that industrial Europe showed crises, class hatred and unhappy work instead. He did not blame specialisation itself. He blamed pathological (abnormal) forms, in which the conditions for solidarity (regulation, spontaneity, coordination) are missing.
- Anomic division of labour
- Meaning: functions become interdependent faster than rules develop to govern their relations. Contacts are too sudden or unstable for norms to settle.
- Durkheim’s evidence: commercial crises and bankruptcies, the conflict of capital and labour, and science fragmented into specialisms that no longer see the whole.
- Present-day illustration: India’s platform economy. Delivery and ride-hailing workers depend on apps whose opaque algorithms set pay and deactivate accounts, with no agreed code between worker and aggregator. The Code on Social Security, 2020, in force since 21 November 2025, is an attempt at the regulation Durkheim called for. It recognises gig workers and requires aggregators to contribute 1–2% of turnover, capped at 5% of payments to workers, to a social security fund.
- Forced division of labour
- Meaning: tasks are allotted by external inequality, such as inheritance, birth or prejudice, and not by natural talent. Rules exist, but they are themselves unjust, so contracts become coerced and resentment grows.
- Durkheim argued that there cannot be rich and poor at birth without unjust contracts. He wanted equality of opportunity and an end to inherited privilege.
- Present-day illustration: caste-bound sanitation work. Sewer and septic-tank cleaning still falls largely on Dalit communities, despite the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. In Dr Balram Singh v. Union of India (October 2023), the Supreme Court raised compensation for sewer deaths to ₹30 lakh. B. R. Ambedkar (Annihilation of Caste, 1936) described caste as a division not only of labour but of labourers, which is forced division of labour in its purest form.
- Poorly coordinated division of labour
- Meaning: functions are arranged so that individuals lack sufficient and continuous activity. Efforts are wasted, the parts are loosely adjusted, and solidarity weakens.
- Present-day illustration: disguised underemployment in agriculture. Farming holds 46.1% of India’s workforce (PLFS 2023-24) but a far smaller share of output. Overlapping schemes that duplicate tasks are its administrative version.
Evaluation
- Merit: Durkheim anticipated labour law, industrial relations and meritocratic reform. His corporatist remedy of occupational associations foreshadows tripartite bargaining.
- Critique: Karl Marx would treat these “abnormal” forms as the normal workings of capitalism. The “normal” form was never observed anywhere, so the label “pathological” is hard to test.
- Anomic and forced forms often combine, as when caste-marked migrants enter unregulated gig work.
Conclusion
The pathological forms are Durkheim’s most practical contribution. They make justice and regulation the conditions of solidarity in a specialised economy, and these conditions are still being fought over in India’s gig economy and sanitation work.