India's automobile and textile industries in global value networks : an assessment

It is generally well-acknowledged that the global capitalist system has undergone a significant reconfiguration in its spatial organisation of production in almost every sector, particularly in manufacturing and services, over the last few decades. A much-talked about feature of this configuration is the accelerated "trans-nationalisation" of economic activities or the growing salience of, what are variously termed as, global value chains (GVCs), Global Commodity Chains (GCCs) or global production networks (GPNs). This paper maps the patterns of integration of the Indian Textile and Clothing, and Automobile industries with such trans-national networks. It focuses on the assessing the possibilities of social and economic upgrading within these networks. The thrust of the analysis shows that even limited gains of such deepening within such ‘chains’ or ‘network’ are highly uneven and inadequate.