Many of the great works of sociology were written at a time when industrialisation was new and machinery was assuming great importance. Thinkers like Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim associated a number of social features with industry, such as urbanisation, the loss of face-to-face relationships that were found in rural areas where people worked on their own farms or for a landlord they knew, and their substitution by anonymous professional relationships in modern factories and workplaces. Industrialisation involve a detailed division of labour. People often do not see the end result of their work because they are producing only one small part of a product. The work is often repetitive and exhausting. Yet, even this is better than having no work at all, i.e., being unemployed. Marx called this situation alienation, when people do not enjoy work, and see it as something they have to do only in order to survive, and even that survival depends on whether the technology has room for any human labour.
In Maruti Udyog Ltd. identify the processes that keep the costs low for the company but the workers are very tense because of the supplies fail to arrive on time their production target gets delayed.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Outsourcing and just-in-time
Option (1) Nightout and flexi time — Incorrect. Both terms come from the IT sector, not from Maruti’s factory. A ‘night out’ is when an employee stays overnight in the office to meet a project deadline; ‘flexi-time’ in theory lets an employee choose his or her working hours, but in practice means working as long as the task needs. Neither keeps a car maker’s costs low.
Option (2) Night out and just in time — Incorrect. Just-in-time is one half of Maruti’s method, but ‘night out’ is the IT worker’s overnight stay in the office. The other half of the Maruti process is outsourcing.
Option (3) Outsourcing and just-in-time — Correct. Maruti has outsourced all services like cleaning and security, as well as the manufacture of parts, to other firms. The parts suppliers sit around the factory and send the parts every two hours, just-in-time, so the company does not hold large stocks. This keeps costs low, but the workers are tense: if the supplies are late, their production targets get delayed, and when the supplies come they have to run to keep up.
Option (4) Outsourcing and flexitime — Incorrect. Outsourcing is right, but flexi-time is an IT-sector practice of stretching working hours. The worry in the question, supplies arriving late, comes from the just-in-time supply of parts.
Note: The passage is taken from the section ‘Images of Industrial Society’ of the chapter ‘Change and Development in Industrial Society’ of NCERT, reproduced by NTA. Read the opening sections of every chapter with care; NTA lifts whole passages from them.
NCERT (2025-26): “5.4 How is work carried out? … The more mechanised an industry gets, the fewer people are employed, but they too have to work at the pace of the machine. In Maruti Udyog Ltd., two cars roll off the assembly line every minute. Workers get only 45 minutes rest in the entire day - two tea breaks of 7.5 minutes each and one lunch break of half an hour. Most of them are exhausted by the age of 40 and take voluntary retirement. While production has gone up, the number of permanent jobs in the factory has gone down. The firm has outsourced all services like cleaning, and security, as well as the manufacture of parts. The parts suppliers are located around the factory and send the parts every two hours or just-in-time. Outsourcing and just-in-time keeps costs low for the company, but the workers are very tense, because if the supplies fail to arrive, their production targets get delayed, and when they do arrive they have to run to keep up. No wonder they get exhausted.” |