India, April 16 -- To many observers, Noida's industrial unrest appears to have come as an "out-of-syllabus" surprise. Workers have come out in protest against conditions that have been difficult and onerous, and the immediate trigger of wage hikes in Haryana but not Uttar Pradesh, appear to have lit the match. But this has been a crisis that has been brewing for years.

In 2018, social scientists Amit and Nayanjyoti published a study of production regimes and collective bargaining in Indian manufacturing. - through six months of fieldwork in the Gurgaon-Manesar belt, they found that integration into global production networks brought industrial growth but systematically dismantled collective bargaining. Capital responded to worker milita...