ABSTRACT
One hot summer evening in 2006, while I was conduct ing ethno graphic research in the Indian steel town of Jamshedpur, I received a some what myster i ous tele phone call from a close research parti cipant. I had come to Jamshedpur to invest ig ate the rela tion ship between trade-union corrup tion and the decline of perman ent indus trial employ ment, and my work brought me into contact with many people like the man I was speak ing with. Known to his friends as Lucky, he was the twenty-one-year-old jobless son of a retired indus trial worker. 1 Like many of his peers, he sought to elevate himself above the ranks of India’s unem ployed by invest ing his father’s early-retire ment settle ment in a variety of busi ness ventures. The tone of Lucky’s call was vague: he asked simply that I meet him that evening in a local bar to discuss a ‘personal problem’.
