• Bollywood in Mumbai, Maharashtra is a workplace for many, not just a place of dreams.

• Workers are part of unions, e.g., junior artists association for dancers, stunt artists, and extras, demanding 8-hour shifts, proper wages, and safe working conditions.

• Products of the industry are marketed via film distributors, cinema hall owners, or sold in shops as music cassettes and videos.

• People in the industry live in the same city but lead very different lives based on income and status.

• Film stars and textile mill owners live in areas like Juhu, while extras and textile workers live in places like Girangaon.

• Lifestyle differences: some dine at five-star hotels eating Japanese sushi, others eat vada pav from local vendors.

• Mumbai residents are divided by residence, diet, and clothing costs, but united by common experiences like watching the same films, cricket matches, facing air pollution, and aspiring for their children’s success.

• Type of work and employment conditions are key to social identity.

• Technological changes and shifts in available work affect social relations in India.

• Social institutions like caste, kinship networks, gender, and region influence work organisation and product marketing.

• Example: more women are in nursing and teaching than in engineering, reflecting social perceptions of women as suited for caring/nurturing roles vs. ‘tough’ masculine jobs.

• Nursing can be physically harder than designing a bridge.

• If more women enter engineering, it could change the profession.

• Example in marketing: Indian coffee packages often show two cups (social occasion), while American ones show one cup (individual activity).

• Sociologists study who produces, who works where, who sells to whom, and how — shaped by social patterns, not just individual choices.

• People’s choices also influence how society functions.

Images of Industrial Society

• Many classic works of sociology were written during the early period of industrialisation when machinery gained great importance.

• Thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim linked industry with features such as urbanisation, loss of face-to-face relationships common in rural areas, and their replacement by anonymous professional relationships in modern workplaces.

• Industrialisation involves a detailed division of labour, where workers often do not see the final product because they contribute only a small part.

• Work in industries can be repetitive and exhausting, but still preferable to unemployment.

• Marx described alienation as the condition where people do not enjoy work, see it merely as a necessity for survival, and survival depends on whether technology allows space for human labour.

• Industrialisation can promote greater equality in some areas, e.g., caste distinctions losing significance in trains, buses, or cyber cafes.

• Older forms of discrimination can still persist in modern factories or workplaces.

• While social inequalities may reduce, economic or income inequality is increasing globally.

• Social inequality and income inequality often overlap, e.g., upper caste men dominating high-paying professions like medicine, law, and journalism.

• Women are often paid less than men for similar work.