Penn College faculty member reviews manuscript focused on workers in India

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. -- Vinay Bahl, associate professor of sociology at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, has been invited by the State University of New York Press to review and evaluate a book manuscript for possible publication. The manuscript deals with informal workers in India and their struggles.Bahl says informal workers comprise the majority of India’s labor force. They are unorganized laborers working in the unlicensed sector or households, as well as workers in the formal sector without any employment and social security benefits provided by employers.The Penn College faculty member has published three books (one co-edited) and numerous articles on subjects that include industrialization, the working class, the caste system, the women’s movement, music, South Asian women’s clothes, and Third World women.Bahl authored a book titled, “The Making of the Indian Working Class: The Case of the Tata Iron and Steel Co., 1880-1946.” The book was published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the History of Technology, and it was featured in the Social Scientist, a New Delhi-based journal.Among her other writings dedicated to India, she wrote a chapter on India’s working class struggle that is included in the book “National Movement in India: A Reader,” published by Oxford University Press USA in 2009.Bahl has taught sociology at Penn College since 1996. She holds a doctorate from the State University of New York at Binghamton. She has served as a visiting scholar to the College de France, Paris, and Amsterdam’s International Institute of Asian Studies.To learn more about sociology and other courses offered by Penn College’s School of Sciences, Humanities & Visual Communications, visit www.pct.edu/shvc.For more on Penn College, a national leader in applied technology education and workforce development, visit www.pct.edu, email admissions@pct.edu or call toll-free 800-367-9222.