New Delhi, June 1 -- Social anthropologist Shankar Ramaswami's 'Souls in the Kalyug' is a rich, multi-layered text that provides a window into workers' lives in India, including some hopeful strands within the destructive churnings of global capitalism.

I first met Shankar Ramaswami more than two decades ago when we were both conducting our Ph.D. fieldwork in the interstices of South Delhi. While my fieldwork in the Muslim locality of Zakir Nagar was completed in a year, Shankar's fieldwork, just a few miles away in the Okhla Industrial Estate, carried on for several years (2002-2006), a considerable length of time even for an ethnographic study.

The depth of this research is apparent in his recently published book, Souls in the Kalyug,...