Abstract The complexities of studying informal sector labour can be dealt with bringing a wide range of identities and ideas used by the workers, which encompass beyond the socio-economic and political identities. 2 2 This article is based on my MPhil dissertation, ‘Conditions of Informality: Beedi Industry in Colonial and Post 1947 Central India’, submitted to the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2015. This article attempts to capture the diversified identities among the home-based beedi-making women workers and their settlement in Madhya Pradesh based on their oral interviews. Further, it captures how the division of work is sustained and perpetuated through the gendered allocation of work over the years. It also recounts how the state has perpetuated this division as the natural allocation of work in official discourse. Precisely, the article argues that how the worker’s narratives are an essential source to question the way work is explained in official language and the inequalities justified by the state.

中文翻译：

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重塑工作语言：印度中部后殖民时代的比迪工业

摘要 研究非正规部门劳动力的复杂性可以通过带来工人使用的广泛的身份和思想来处理，这些身份和思想涵盖了社会经济和政治身份之外。2 2 本文基于我于 2015 年提交给贾瓦哈拉尔尼赫鲁大学历史研究中心的硕士论文“非正式的条件：殖民地和 1947 年后印度中部的比迪工业”。本文试图捕捉根据她们的口头采访，在家做比迪的女工和她们在中央邦的定居点。此外，它捕捉到工作分工是如何通过多年来的性别工作分配来维持和延续的。它还叙述了国家如何将这种划分作为官方话语中的自然分配工作延续下去。准确地说，文章认为，工人的叙述如何成为质疑官方语言解释工作方式和国家证明的不平等的重要来源。