Economic and Political Weekly May 29, 2004 2243 S ince the liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991, the country has experienced economic prosperity and growth. This prosperity, however, is not yet accessible to the whole of the population. An increasing number of Indians are ex- periencing vulnerability, inequality, and marginalisation [Muricken 1999:1]. By giving preference to neo-liberal policies and pro- moting economic growth, the government has neglected the social aspects of the everyday lives of many Indians. “Permanent and protected jobs in the organised sector are shrinking; hence even those with requisite skills are unable to find proper em- ployment. For these people, work in the informal sector is the only avenue for survival” [Bhowmik 2000:1]. As a consequence, the size of the urban informal economy has increased by a continuously stream of labourers who have migrated from the rural areas in search for a living in the city. The informal economy has often been criticised for its poor employment conditions. As labour and social welfare laws do not cover the informal sector, wages and working conditions often fail to meet minimal requirements, resulting in long working hours, insecure employment, irregular incomes, lack of access to proper healthcare and old age or retirement benefits. Moreover, labourers work in often unhealthy, unsafe, and unprotected working environments. The workers of the informal sector are generally considered the poorest workers in India and most exposed to shocks and stresses threatening their livelihoods [Breman 1996]. For their social welfare they are left to informal arrangements of insurance, mutual help, and family assistance. In recent years, however, pressure on the state and civil society has increased and concern and attention is expressed to extend social security to the informal sector. It is widely recognised, however, that covering these workers under social protection and benefits by the state is a difficult and expensive process. So far, the majority of the unorganised workers of the economy remain uncovered. In this respect, it has been argued that the state should not aim to cover all risks and insecurities of the informal sector, but rather promote self-regulation and enhance the performance of local systems of social security by enhancing workers’ social capital [Conning and Kevane 2002; Dhanani and Islam 2002]. Although the concept of social capital has gained momentum in the late 1990s and became popular among policy-makers and economists, others have criticised the concept and shown its ‘downsides’ [Carney 1999; Portes 1998; Portes and Landolt 1996] or questioned the scope of local forms of social security (an emergent property of social capital) [Nooteboom 2003:47]. The aim of this article is to explore the scope and limitations of social capital and local forms of social security in the informal sector of India by presenting a case study of railway coolies at Dadar station, Mumbai and to show how informal support networks operate in practice. The following example illustrates how important this aid can be. When the Howrah-Mumbai train arrives, the licensed porters start lining up at the edge of the platform. Porter Vasant is lucky to meet a passenger in need of his carrying services. Even before the train stops, Vasant is already doing his best to get the luggage down from the compartment. But somehow, Vasant gets hit by the train, falls down, and is trapped between the running vehicle and the platform. Immediately, Vasant gets help from his fellow porters who stand close to him. When Vasant is freed, the coolies take him to a municipal hospital close to Dadar station for treat- ment. It turns out that he is seriously wounded and needs to stay in the hospital for over a week. Since the day of the accident, Vasant receives support from his fellow porters and their welfare fund (mandal). The porters’ committee selected four men to take turns to assist Vasant in the hospital during a full day. Besides this, fellow porters walk in regularly to check his condition and to bring him food, bedsheets, and news from the platforms. Hospital fees are covered by the mandal as well as the wages of the four selected porters who were not able to earn a living during those days. This fund also paid Vasant a personal income for 15 days. After release, Vasant returned to his village (six hours from Mumbai) to further recover from his injuries. There he received support of relatives and villagers to meet the costs on medication and ordinary daily expenditures. Since he had no sources of income, he took a few loans from close relatives. He was not able to extend his loan from the cooperative credit-society at the station, since he had already used up the maximum amount for his brother’s marriage. Six months after the accident, Vasant came back to the station: physically able to start doing the work again, but financially weakened. According to him, he would have liked staying in the village, but without his job as a porter in Mumbai, there would be no opportunity for his family to make a decent living and to pay back his loans in the village. This case is exemplary for the scope and strength of local networks of social security. The injured porter, formally Railway Porters of Mumbai Social Capital in Practice This article explores the scope and limitations of social capital and local forms of social security in the informal sector through a case study of railway coolies at Dadar station, Mumbai. The complex organisation of the coolies, virtually excluded from state or enterprise social security schemes, is able to generate and reproduce a strong source of social capital, reinforced through kin relations and ties with the villages of origin. However, the conditions under which these systems work and the prerequisites for building and maintaining trust and cooperation are very specific and therefore vulnerable. DENNIS WEITERING, GERBEN NOOTEBOOM