The “Caddie Question”: Why the Golf Caddies of Bangalore Reject Formal Employment

Introduction

When Krishna dropped out of school and started carrying the bags of wealthy members at the Karnataka Golf Association (KGA), he made a few rupees, merely pennies, which he passed off to his mother. More than two decades later, now in his late thirties, Krishna still works at the club, and while he makes more money than he did originally, the conditions of his labor remain the same. Like others who labor in the informal sector, he lacks guaranteed wages, benefits, and protections consistent with employment in the formal sector (Bangasser 2000; Breman 1996; Chen 2012).

KGA officials consider Krishna a “contract” or “casual” laborer, essentially “free to come and go as he likes.” There is no contract, however, and the club is far from casual in its relationship with him. It regulates the base wage he can command from members—350 rupees a round, approximately $5, in his case. Likewise, it demands that he sign an attendance register upon entry; he also keeps in his pocket a club-issued I.D. card bearing a number assigned to him. On the golf course, he has to wear a red bib, or uniform, as a “senior” caddy. He also reports to caddy masters, caddies-turned-staff employees, who police his behavior. In addition to carrying a member’s bag, Krishna is expected to clean a member’s golf clubs after every stroke; wash dirt off the ball; repair divots and rake sand bunkers; and offer helpful advice to a member approaching a shot on the fairway or a putt on the green. If Krishna falls short in these tasks, caddy masters can recommend demotion or suspension. Sometimes, he is called to attend unpaid training sessions organized by a club subcommittee dedicated to caddy management.

This can be a precarious living, too. If the club is closed because of bad weather, Krishna is out of money; the same goes if he is sick. If he encounters a rude or abusive member, he has little recourse, and often says nothing.

The club, by comparison, is stable, heavily subsidized by the government, and flush with money. The 125-acre golf course, built by the Army at no cost in the mid-1980s, sits on a former public reservoir, initially leased by the government at a rate of one rupee an acre from 1980 to 2010 (KGA 2017). Absent any new lease agreement, which has yet to be signed, the club “voluntarily” pays approximately $450-500 an acre per year (KGA 2016), in a part of the city where an acre of land goes for $3-5 million or more, according to real estate developers and land brokers I informally surveyed. Meanwhile, fixed assets, funds, and admission fees total $15 million (ibid.). The club also pays no income tax, given its registration as a “charity” under the Mysore Societies Registration Act. ¹

“Why can’t they give some money to the caddies?” Krishna once remarked. “If you work for a corporation you have some security, but not here. Why?” Krishna worries about his children, especially. They go to nominally private English-language schools that offer low-quality instruction and limited resources—they cannot read, write, or speak English effectively, he complains, and struggle to add or subtract. Resigned to his fate, and theirs, he told me: “When an elephant eats, food spills, and it’s eaten by thousands of ants. Here, it’s the same. Members give out crumbs, and off that we live.”

Despite a desire for stability, however, Krishna does not want regular employment, which would provide him with guaranteed wages, club contributions to a Provident Fund, or pension plan, along with other protections against abuse. The prospect of working with members that he does not have a hand in picking and the obligation to report to the club five or six days a week for a minimum of eight hours a day is simply not appealing. If Krishna was able to gather unity among the caddies, he would instead press club officials to cede all decisions over when they work, with whom, and at what rates, as opposed to where things currently stand. His peers, some 300 or so other caddies at the KGA, feel the same way, as do caddies at the Bangalore Golf Club (BGC), across town, and the Eagleton Golf Resort, 25 miles south along the Mysore Highway.

These kinds of deliberations among golf caddies in Bangalore open up a critical space for rethinking the interests of informal workers, generally. At present, labor scholars and activists emphasize regular or formal employment as a natural ambition for informal workers, while analyzing the various challenges and obstacles to securing it (Breman 1996; Harriss-White and Gooptu 2001). Few, if any, accounts consider that workers may want to strengthen their rights to independent control of the labor process, as do Krishna and his peers, rather than accept a more formal arrangement with prospective employers or some state institution (Agarwala 2013).

This study clarifies what motivates precarious workers in the informal sector with an investigation into the working conditions at the KGA, BGC, and Eagleton. Following a review of the literature and statement of methods, I weigh the claims of club officials who insist that the caddies are not employees against the discourse of managerial control reflected in minutes to meetings, annual reports, and other documents. In fact, it is nearly impossible to enact strict disciplinary measures over caddies that the clubs do not employ on a regular basis. What results, as I show, is frustration on the part of members, who cannot always be sure that a decent caddy is assigned to them, on the one hand, and anxiety among caddies who can never be sure when they will be subject to unreasonable demands, on the other. The status quo that emerges, while tenuous, nevertheless gives members and caddies enough freedom to work out their own arrangements.

The ties that bind caddies and members together are not always ideal—what most members pay caddies in wages and tips is insufficient to lift most of them out of poverty. But these ties, and the possibility of developing more of them, are what lie at the heart of caddies’ rejection of regular employment. In the end, low-wage formal employment, with often difficult to access benefits, appears to them as less financially benefifical and even more restrictive than what they presently experience.

Literature Review

By the 1980s, the Indian government had given up on the promise of regular employment for the majority of Indians (Chibber 2003; Corbridge and Harris 2003; Gupta 2009; Kohli 2012). The government was already bowing to pressure from business leaders at home and abroad who called for a more flexible, less regulated workforce useful in an increasingly globalized economy (Agarwala 2009; Barnes 2011; McCallum 2013). Laws were subsequently rewritten to permit factories and other large employers in the public and private sector to retrench formal employees and to hire contract workers, while refusing them benefits, job security, or minimum wages. Informal workers, likewise, were stripped of minimal rights, leaving them no legal standing to issue grievances or complaints regarding the conditions of their labor.

Today, according to India’s National Sample Survey data, as much as 93 percent of the working population labors in the informal sector, characterized by barely subsistence wages, unregulated conditions, and limited, or no, protections against exploitation or abuse (Agarwala 2009; Breman 1996; Harriss-White 2004). Much of this informal sector labor, moreover, remains tied to agriculture. As of 2001, there were 233 million agricultural workers, or 58.5 percent of all workers, contributing one-fourth of the country’s total economic growth (Agarwala 2009). These same workers are increasingly under threat of displacement, though, with farmers losing land to corporations, while they and their workers fail to find jobs in the high-tech firms that reconstitute the landscape (Levien 2011). Expelled from imploding village economies, migrants rush to the cities to seek out more stable opportunities that rarely materialize, on account of a weak manufacturing sector (Krishna 2013; Panagariya 2008; Sanyal and Bhattacharya 2009). Few ever return to the villages for good. Most, instead, join extended family in overpopulated slums, cycling through various odd jobs that offer little in wages and no contract or security, and establishing whatever community that will hold (Davis 2007; Mitra 2003; Weinstein 2014).

In this political and economic climate, unions have effectively given themselves over to defending the interests of those already protected by collective bargaining agreements in the formal sector (Bhattacherjee 2001). Only a slim minority of workers, in fact, by some estimates between seven and eight percent of the working population, enjoy benefits, protections, and minimum wages or better, and less than half of these workers are unionized (Harriss-White and Gooptu 2001; Hill 2009; McCallum 2012). Capital within India is on the move, leaving recalcitrant workers behind, if need be; when capital stays put, it finds ingenious ways to avoid adhering to laws designed to protect employees, for instance, laying off workers prior to their achieving permanent status, hiring workers on fixed rather than long-term contracts, or outright fudging the books to indicate fewer employees than might actually be the case (RoyChowdhury 2008).

The management of labor at the golf clubs presented in this study mirror these larger shifts in the political economy of India. The BGC originally led the way in setting down policies that undermined caddy autonomy but still functioned within the letter of the law. It seemed as if there was no obvious contradiction, for example, in calling the caddies “free-lance professional porters,” as committee members did at the BGC at a meeting in October of 1979, and then, in the next sentence, admitting that the “club regulates their work conditions” (BGC 1983). The BGC, and later the KGA, were able to have it both ways. They could call the caddies “contract” laborers, which, in the way the clubs mean it, refers only to the informal and unwritten contracts caddies have with members who hire them on a round, and yet still treat them as employees subject to arbitrarily enforced rules or regulations. Eagleton, though it operates as a private club independent of government subsidy, adopted the same position on caddy management at its founding, in 1997.

The reasons for refusing the caddies employment are consistent with labor practices elsewhere in the country, and around the world. There are financial savings, in terms of wages and additional taxes, but also savings on health care costs. It is also a political calculation (McCallum 2012; RoyChowdhury 2008). Like most institutions in the country, public or private, the clubs fear a protracted labor dispute, which would adversely affect golf operations. As club officials understand it, only employees so named can strike with the intent to leverage employers for higher wages, more benefits, and better working conditions. If the caddies are not officially declared employees, or so these officials claim, then the possibility of a strike can be forestalled indefinitely.

A number of studies show various workers pressing would-be employers, or, in some cases, the state, to bring workers like these caddies under existing labor law (Agarwala 2013; Chun 2009; Cross 1998; Fine 2006; Milkman 2006). But the caddies in this study would appear to take a different approach. When they find the clubs treat them as if they are employees, their immediate response is not to think that they are employees, and seek out a formal contract and related wages, benefits, and protections of employees. They do not want regular employment, as they think this would undercut what little autonomy they already enjoy when deciding which members to caddy for, on what days, and at what times. If anything, they want greater autonomy, not less, which is what they imagine low-wage formal employment would offer them.

Methods

This paper is part of a larger research project that analyzes the social mobility prospects among a group of mainly poor and lower-caste golf caddies who work at the KGA, BGC, and Eagleton—club names are real, but member and caddy names referenced throughout are pseudonyms. The KGA was founded by BGC members motivated to build a 125-acre international standard golf course as a supplement to the 100-year-old 64-acre course at the BGC. Neither club is expensive to join—a one-time fee of 30,000 rupees, or approximately $450, in the case of the KGA, and a few thousand rupees less at the BGC ² —but the waiting list for both is so long that it can take up to 20 years or more to be called for an interview. Whereas the KGA and BGC receive generous government subsidies, which partly accounts for why memberships are inexpensive, Eagleton, which opened in 1997, is a private venture, with the golf course as one of several amenities inside a 550-acre gated community. There is no managing committee elected by a general body, either, as there is at the other two clubs, but rather a board of directors. Annual golf memberships start at 60,000 rupees, or a little less than $1,000 (Eagleton 2017).

Fieldwork commenced in early 2007 and continued through the summer of 2016. In the beginning, I hired a golf caddy at the BGC to teach me the game at a public driving range in the center of the city. Members I met at the driving range invited me to the clubs for meals and drinks, where they introduced me to their friends and acquaintances. In August 2007, after months at the driving range and dinner and drinks at the BGC and KGA, I purchased a six-month “short-term” membership at the KGA at a cost of 50,000 rupees, paid in US currency, or $1,500 at the time. This gave me right of entry to the club—up until then I relied on members to sign me in. The BGC did not have a comparable short-term membership option available, but on the strength of relationships with club officials I was permitted to sign in without a member present and play for a fee of 500 rupees, or $8, a round. Eagleton did not have restrictions on who could play the course. As a nonmember, I paid 800 rupees, approximately $20, for green fees. Caddy wages and tips were extra, between 200 and 300 rupees ($3–$5), depending on the club and rank of caddy I selected, per round.

Through March 2008, I played golf at the KGA and BGC two to three times a week. I played golf less frequently at Eagleton—given the distance and travel time, usually one to two hours there and back, I only managed to visit Eagleton once a week, at most, in these six months. On the golf courses, I made observations and carried out informal interviews with members and caddies as we walked the fairways. Participant observation on the courses led to sit-down audio-recorded interviews lasting 45 minutes to two hours, either right after a round or at a later date. These interviews were held in multiple venues within and beyond the space of the clubs, in homes, offices, bars, and restaurants. In sum, I conducted 25 interviews with 19 BGC members; 66 interviews with 37 KGA members; and 11 interviews with eight Eagleton members.

Formal sit-down interviews with caddies required the assistance of a translator, who helped with questions regarding family histories and social and economic relationships with members—I use quotation marks where English was spoken and when I am confident in the accuracy of translation. In the spring of 2008, I began the first of two rounds of interviews with the caddies. I completed 24 interviews with 18 BGC caddies; 23 interviews with twenty KGA caddies; and 24 interviews with 21 Eagleton caddies. When the membership at the KGA expired and formal interviews and additional surveys were complete, I selected ten caddies across the three clubs to begin extended home and community visits. I also issued a 36-point survey to 114 caddies at the BGC, 105 caddies at the BGC, and 65 caddies at Eagleton (see appendix).

All caddies at these clubs are male, and most treat this work as a career. A majority of caddies surveyed at the BGC and KGA, for instance, had been in the job for longer than 10 years. Eagleton, being a newer course, had fewer caddies that had been with the club this long, but they reported no immediate plans to look for other work. Survey questions yielded additional demographic information, such as age, religion, caste, education, and parents’ educations and occupations. I did not ask about income, but instead picked up this information in casual conversation. In 2007 and 2008, caddies reported earning combined wages and tips fluctuating between 4,000 and 8,000 rupees, or $100–200, a month, depending on rank and club, barely enough to support an individual, let alone entire families, which obligates caddies to seek out additional help from members.

Initially, I asked questions about caste and subcaste, or jati, but the answers I received were either vague or misleading. Caste, as a means of organizing society along the lines of perceived purity, is an immensely complex subject (Bayly 1999; Gupta 2003), and one that I pursue in the larger project, as a whole. For the purpose of this paper, though, it is enough to point out that caste predicted who was a caddy and who was a member: caddies were generally Dalits, former Untouchables, or Shudras, part of a laboring caste, while members were upper caste Brahmins, Vaishyas, and Kshatriyas. Otherwise, as members and caddies both told me, caste did not figure in day-to-day interactions. What mattered, for members, was if a caddy did good work, and for caddies, if a member paid well and treated them with respect.

As a complement to participant observation, interviews, and surveys, I also carried out archival research of club records at the KGA and BGC, comprising memos, annual reports, and minutes to meetings. I ceased archival research in August of 2008, but continued to collect annual reports at both clubs. These reports gathered later in my fieldwork were either provided directly by the clubs or available online at their websites—thousands of copies of annual reports are produced every year and delivered by way of public mailings; some members provided me with personal copies. Eagleton, unlike the KGA and BGC, does not produce annual reports, and does not collect a log of administrative meetings.

Caddy Management by Design

At the turn of the twentieth century, it was a challenge at the BGC to get the caddies to arrive on time. As recorded in the minutes to a meeting in July of 1896, a member suggested hiring them as employees, as this would compel them to be “present always.” But paying 20 caddies three rupees a month, no more than a few dollars at the time, was judged too steep: “The loss thus incurred to the club would not be justified by the advantage gained even if the plan was a success” (BGC 1911). The issue, rebranded the “caddie question,” was raised again in fall 1908, but also voted down. There was no money to pay the caddies a salary (ibid.). The question was asked one more time, in September 1946, when committee members discussed giving “caddies a monthly wage and not as casual labour as and when they came” (BGC 1959). A month later, in October, it was put to the general body to decide whether to support a “basic wage” of 15 and 12 rupees, or less than half an American dollar, as payment to regular and fore caddies, respectively, on the assumption that this would “provide sufficient inducement and that players would be assured of caddies when required” (ibid.). The general body disagreed.

These days, the “caddie question” is no longer broached. As a president of the KGA clarified, “The caddies are like railway porters in the railway stations.” he said. “We can’t control them. There’s no register. They’re not our employees. They come to the club, a member will hire them out for a round and pay them the board rate. If the member wants to pay more, that’s okay, but they don’t have to.” A captain at the BGC, who assumed the same authority as the president at the KGA but under a different title, ³ repeated the line, “The caddies are not our employees.”

Any visitor to these clubs, however, might be confused about the status of the caddies. The most obvious hint at some formal arrangement is the obligation to wear color-coded uniforms, either matching tops and bottoms, as at the BGC and KGA, or bibs, as at Eagleton. The lower the rank, the lower the rate caddies command—these rates adjust over the years, but only at the discretion of club management (see Figure 1). Minutes to meetings cement the image, if not the fact, of employment. In August and October 2003, for example, committee members at the KGA talked about a “caddies welfare fund” based on member contributions that would help caddies with a family crisis (KGA 2004); later, in 2006, a health insurance scheme was outlined (KGA 2008). In 2005, the KGA decided to sell corporate logo space on new caddy uniforms (ibid.). Similar discussions occurred at the BGC. In July 1991, committee members announced that the caddies “need to be disciplined” (BGC 1992). In January 1993, a “bonus” was planned for caddies “who are regular in their attendance and serious about the job” (BGC 1993). In 2002, a “caddy award” was introduced to celebrate caddies who demonstrate “knowledge of the game,” “knowledge of rules,” and “honesty, behavior, and conduct” (BGC 2002).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Caddy fees. ⁴

Annual reports provide additional insights. An annual report at the KGA published in 2003 summarized a series of strategies implemented the previous year. One of the items in a list confirms that a “register with photographs, complete addresses, etc., was opened and is being maintained so as to keep a record in the event of need for further identification.” (I had seen this same register at the KGA and others like it at the BGC and Eagleton: inch-thick rule-lined books with the names and signatures of caddies organized by date and time. The clubs also keep binders holding personal information on all the caddies, including their names, ages, addresses, and education levels, along with a passport-sized photograph.) Another item suggests caddies had been issued “permanent numbers printed prominently on new jackets.” “Caddie appraisal” cards were being used as a “reward system for the achievers and punitive action against offenders.” Security officers employed by an outside contractor were “involved in ensuring discipline by reporting errant caddies to the committee.” Finally, “caddie allotment,” as in the assignment of caddies to members, “has been streamlined” (KGA 2003, 9).

Though there were no comparable records at Eagleton, I noticed similar language in two notices posted at the caddy station in January 2008. The first list presented a series of rules: “1. One caddy per car; 2. Count clubs and balls; 3. There are 14 clubs in a bag; 4. Follow golf rules; 5. Replace divots; 6. Rake the bunkers; 7. Stay with the golfer only; 8. Wash clubs after each shot; 9. Repair pitch marks; 10. Don’t step on the line of the ball while on the green.” The second list focused on dress and demeanor, under the title “Good Habits,” and presented as follows: “1. Shower; 2. Wear shoes, t-shirt, and cap; 3. Know the rules; 4. If you don’t know the rule ask the caddy master; 5. Do not talk personal matters with the members; 6. Don’t ask for more money; 7. Don’t talk when not required; 8. Leave all valuables alone. Thank you.” Notices like these also appear in the caddy stations at the BGC and KGA.

Caddy management is handled by “caddy masters,” one-time caddies earning between 12,000 and 15,000 rupees a month, plus a pension—this salary matches what “senior” or “pro” caddies might make in a “good” month, except these caddy masters make this amount every month, whether or not members show up or if the course is closed due to weather. Caddy masters are appointed based on reputation and usually the good word of a club official familiar with them. The KGA and Eagleton employ one head caddy master and as many as seven or eight assistant caddy masters: while the head caddy masters at these clubs are typically stationed at the starters area to ensure attention to tee times, another is stationed at the caddy station to check in caddies and monitor member assignments, another roams the course in an electric cart, and so on. The BGC, because it is a smaller course approximately half the size of the other two, and so requires fewer caddies, employs a head caddy master and one assistant.

At the KGA and BGC, oversight of caddy masters and caddies falls to members elected to volunteer subcommittees—there are multiple subcommittees at these two clubs, spread across different areas, including bar and catering, entertainment, and finance; at the KGA, the subcommittee in charge of caddies is named the “Driving Range, Golf Testing, Caddies and Pro Shop” subcommittee, while at the BGC it is named the “Tournament and Handicapping” subcommittee. Subcommittees are made up of four to five members, and chaired by one individual who reports back to the larger committee that manages the affairs of the clubs. Eagleton does not incorporate honorary or voluntary committees. The lone caddy master consults with the managing director on matters of caddy management.

All this suggests that the clubs intend to control the caddies as if they are employees. Nevertheless, club officials must weigh the costs and benefits of fully implementing their designs against the fact that the caddies are not employees. If they push too hard, and consistently, say, in their demands that the caddies show up on time and perform every duty to the letter, and suspending or “firing” caddies as they like, there would be no caddies at all—that, or the ones who remained would be in a constant state of resistance. What follows, instead, is the haphazard and sometimes frustrating application of rules and regulations, with predictable results.

Caddy Management in Practice

Though they occur infrequently, caddy shortages have a way of revealing the great distance between how club officials intend to control the caddies and how much they can actually accomplish in practice. I had a chance to witness such an occasion one Monday morning following Diwali celebrations in the fall of 2007, when a majority of caddies were either sitting at home taking a rest or out of the city completely. This was something of a crisis to members there to play a round—members, by the way, who avoid hiring caddies when they play abroad because of prohibitive costs, but refuse to play without one in India, where they are so inexpensive, and so readily available. Two members in my group and half of the approximately 20 members lined up ahead of us at the tee box did not have a caddy, including one irate member, in particular.

“Why are there no caddies?” he barked at Ramaiah, an assistant caddy master on hand. “What is the system here? You need to have a procedure!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” replied Ramaiah. “We will give you a caddy when one turns up.”

Then, one turned up. But instead of assigning the caddy to a group, Ramaiah told him to hang up his uniform on a post and leave. The caddy, perhaps familiar with this routine, circled the parking lot and came back, pleading his case. Ramaiah handed the uniform back to him, and let him pass.

Members did not reflect critically on the system itself when making sense of caddy shortages like the one I observed. They preferred to think that the caddies were lazy and indisciplined, given to gambling, alcohol, and other assorted vices.

“They have come into a lot of money,” one member at the BGC confided, sitting at the Kirloskar Hut, a resting stop for refreshments. It was the summer of 2010. “One out of ten or fifteen are really growing up the social ladder properly. The rest are throwing it all away on all kinds of vices, is what I feel. They should take advantage of this opportunity.” Once, he caught his caddy betting on his game. “He had some bet, which I later came to know was for the caddy fees. I pulled him aside and told him, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I said, ‘You are not in the position [to bet]. The one hundred or one-hundred-and-twenty-five rupees [$1-2] I’m giving you is your meal money.’ I got really angry. ‘Who gave you permission to bet?’ He said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, sorry, sir.’ I told him, ‘I’ll hit you and I won’t even pay you the caddy fee. You came here to do a job. You’re not here to bet.’ Hopefully, he learned a lesson.”

Other members were more sympathetic, but no less infantilizing. In the fall of 2008, a member at the KGA invited me to the Bowring Institute, a British-era club near the BGC. “They don’t have a boss,” he clarified. “The caddies work at their leisure, and by their choice. Some see this as an opportunity and take advantage of it.” Others, he said, had a different way of thinking: “‘When the need arises I come and caddy, pick up a hundred or a couple hundred bucks [sic], and go get drunk.’ There is just no discipline or duty with these guys.”

“So, what’s the answer?” I asked.

“We’ve given them money,” he said. “We know these are good boys, they have bright futures, but we can only help them so much.”

The caddies are not all gamblers, drunks, and thieves, of course, but these perceptions informed the way club officials did their work, regardless. One Sunday afternoon at the KGA I met with Jatinder, a human resource manager at an IT company who had recently assumed the head of the caddies subcommittee. I caught him in between a round of golf with friends and a mandatory caddy training.

“I tell them this is a job,” he said. “If you’re not interested, don’t do it. Go somewhere else. You cannot decide to come one day and not another. There’s an attendance register, which helps”—the same register the club president said did not exist—“and if the guys don’t show up, then action will be taken.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“We have to use a carrot and a stick kind of approach,” he replied. “We’re trying to put a system in place to get, let’s say, unbiased, constructive feedback on the caddies.” This feedback from members would help identify “a caddy of the month,” which would give the caddies an “added incentive.” There would also be a caddy of the year award, he said, which would be combined with an offer of vocational training in automobile mechanics, computers, or pipe fitting, so that the caddies could learn “an alternative skill set.”

There was similar chatter over at the BGC, where I met with Kumar, Jatinder’s counterpart at the club. His preoccupation at the time was “attacking social etiquette.” “We want the caddies to wear their uniform and their shoes, you know, bring a little discipline into them. We’ll also have an etiquette clinic, which I’m going to stress more on, how they should conduct themselves. We’re going to show them more videos and other things, so that they have more enthusiasm.”

Evidently, Jatinder and Kumar were guided by a “carrot” approach. But Naveen, another member who had held this position of authority at the BGC, preferred the “stick.” “With them, might works,” he told me, one afternoon when I sat with him at his office. In his late thirties, Naveen worked as a manager for a family textile business. He was an imposing figure, at six feet tall, 240 pounds, wide across the shoulders and neck and thick in the middle—he looked like a linebacker next to caddies stunted by poverty and malnutrition. By this time, he was a few years removed from the post, but he reflected on his days managing the caddies with nostalgia.

“I ran it out of love and affection,” he said, “one hundred and twenty [rupees; approx. $2-3 ] here, a bottle of beer there, put a hand on two or three guys, that’s by and large how I did it. The only thing I was particular about was no drinking and coming to work. If you drink, you drink, I’m not bothered, but there’s no coming back. I suspended some guys, hit a couple of guys, just to bring some discipline, nothing much.”

Naveen admitted that he “belted” a few caddies, making an example of them. “How you do it is you sit down quietly, then you suddenly get up and bang them. The guy’s totally taken aback. I did it when guys were hanging out and watching, so news would spread that I’m not going to take any junk. I will hit. I’m not going to even think about it.”

The caddy master and other staff persons in charge of caddies at Eagleton also admitted to striking the caddies on occasion. But they were more inclined to adopt a paternalistic attitude with the caddies. The reason for this was simple, as they explained it to me. The caddies were teenagers, one staff person told me, while he and others in charge were in their thirties and forties. “We’re talking about a family here,” he said. “The father is the golfer or the customer. They support us. Each day they are coming, giving money to the company. The mother is management. That’s me and the managing director and the whole staff. The caddies are our children. ‘Don’t do this,’ we say. ‘Don’t do that. Come over here.’”

Ties That Bind: The Caddy–Member Relationship

In the absence of consistent and meaningful caddy management, and without any prospect of well-paying formal employment, caddies instead pursue regular, or “fixed,” members who provide them some semblance of social and economic stability. In order to “catch” a member, as the caddies put it, caddies fulfill the requisite duties of the job, and then some, exhibiting a commitment to quality service similar to other kinds of face-to-face service work (Hochschild 2012; Kang 2010; Sherman 2007). They also display extreme acts of deference and servility—incessant bowing, calling after a member, “Sir, sir, sir,” and lavishing unwarranted praise, practices associated with colonial-era master–servant relations, but which prevail up to the present, and obviously in contexts beyond the domestic sphere. Just as domestic workers in modern India feel no particular loyalty to one family or another without sufficient remuneration (Ray and Qayum 2009), caddies, too, freely trade in one member for another who takes better care of them. Also like domestic workers, though, few caddies find that this exchange of servility for tips and other types of support elevate them and their families much beyond their present circumstances. Rather than upward mobility, successful caddies, and there are a few, only achieve upward servility—their life chances improved, but this only reinforced their dependence on members.

Sitting across from Krishna in a cafe near the KGA, he explained how to “catch” a member. “The first thing you have to do when you take a member’s bag is count the clubs,” he said. “Next thing, count the balls. If anything is missing, they’ll be upset. But do the work properly and next time the member will call, ‘Hey, I want Krishna! Where is Krishna?’ Or he’ll say, ‘Take my number, man. I’m playing Saturday. Please call me Friday.’ He’ll say it like that. If my job is not good, next time he’ll tell the caddy master, ‘I don’t want this caddy. Send me another caddy.’”

Krishna had four “bosses,” or “gods,” as he sometimes called them. “They know my problems,” he said. “I can ask them for help, and they will give support to me. Any problem is there, school fees, book fees for my sons. If anything is there, they will help. I’ll say, ‘Sir, I don’t have money to buy what I need.’ If I want a cold drink, he’ll buy me a cold drink. If I want a lunch he’ll buy me a lunch. I want to make a good impression on these members.”

Impressions mattered. As Mahar, a member at the club, told me, when I asked him how he picks a caddy, “There’s never any golf balls gone, no tees gone, nothing.” He had a good relationship with a caddy named Sampath. “He’s not one of these guys that when I’m hitting a shot, he’s messing around with my golf clubs, either. I tell him, ‘Hey, maintain some decorum. I’ll take care of you, but I need you to be honest with me,’ and that’s it.”

Once set, relationships between caddies and members built on mutual trust and respect rarely ever dissolved—even when members left the city or stopped playing golf, it was not uncommon for them to keep up a correspondence and send across money or help. Akash, a KGA member, and Ganesh, a caddy, for example, met when they were teenagers back in the late nineties. Ganesh quickly became Akash’s preferred caddy whenever he played, and Akash was one of Ganesh’s preferred members, blocking off his schedule when Akash called. They were not equals, and did not act like it. When I joined Akash on a round once, I noticed that Ganesh never called him by his first name, and instead addressed him as, “Sir,” or, playfully, as “Tiger,” after Tiger Woods, who was then the best player in the world. It was clear that Akash was in charge, as when he asked Ganesh to hand him a golf club from the bag he was carrying or gestured to Ganesh to replace a divot or rake a bunker on the edge of the green after a shot had been taken.

Akash had lost his father to cancer in his late teens, he told me. Only a few years on, though, and Ganesh’s own brother died in a motorcycle accident. Akash stepped in to help, paying off some debts Ganesh’s brother had accumulated, and from there, facilitating repayment schedules with some of his debtors, including a dozen or more caddies and caddy masters at the club. In the immediate few months after this death, Akash paid more than his usual tip of 100 or 200 rupees in excess of the board rates. He also employed Ganesh’s wife, Sanjana, as a domestic servant in his home on weekends, which added another 2,000 rupees, or $50, per month to go along with Ganesh’s take of approximately 8,000 rupees, or $200, as a caddy. Not least, Akash paid the private English-language school fees for Ganesh’s children, Kumar and Asha.

“He’ll be all right,” Akash said, speaking about Ganesh. “I’m going to take care of him.” Other caddies I had met did not seem as fortunate, but Akash brushed this aside. “As a caddy becomes better, a junior and then a senior, a member picks him up. Everyone has a boss.”

Ganesh had three “bosses,” in fact, Akash and two more members, a commercial real estate developer and a software executive. Together, these relationships signaled a remarkable change of fortunes for Ganesh, who grew up living under plastic tarpaulin sheets and eating dried worms in a slum opposite the tenth fairway at the club.

“When I came to Bangalore,” Ganesh recalled, “I didn’t even have proper clothes. I had one school uniform and a T-shirt and pants for the home. Akash, he’d give me some clothes almost every month. I started dressing like him. He still gives me some clothes once a year. He tells me what’s right and what’s wrong and I listen. I trust him the most, even more than my parents.”

Anand, a caddy at the BGC, had similar success in cultivating these kinds of relationships with members. “I know their moods,” he said. “When a member’s in a good mood, I’ll tell him my problems. I’ll say, ‘Please, sir, think it over. See if you can help me.’ I don’t ask every member. I ask only a few I am close to. Only those members I approach.”

“Have you ever been turned down?” I asked.

“When they say no, it hurts. I don’t even want to go for another round with them again. Other members help. What I do is I show poverty on my face. I take a school receipt or a medical bill to them. I say, ‘Don’t give me the money. Give it to the school only.’ They have to believe me.”

Anand’s son, Kartik, just a few months old in spring 2008, had been born prematurely, and had been in the hospital for an extra twelve days, at a cost of 3,000 rupees, shy of $100, a night. Anand was able to summon four or five members who pulled together 20,000 rupees in a matter of days. There were also school fees for his two girls, Padmini and Suri. He had enrolled them in a private English school, and the second major installment of fees was due, 18,000 rupees in total. He went back to the same members to ask for help, and they obliged.

I observed different dynamics between caddies and members at Eagleton. Sometimes this bordered on the overly familiar, as I encountered one Sunday afternoon at the club. When playing at Eagleton, members and guests could register a kitchen order with a club assistant, usually a former caddy, who rode around the course on an electric golf cart. On this particular afternoon, my playing partners, an American and an Australian, and I ordered a few beers, and then, by the twelfth hole, our bill arrived. Though we had each asked for three beers, we had been charged for an extra three, along with some other items, a bottle of water and a sandwich. It became clear that the additional beers and food were ordered by the caddies, on the assumption that we would pay for them, which we did. At the other clubs, similar things happened, but always on the sly. At Eagleton, this was done out in the open, without apology, and without reprimand.

Caddies at Eagleton also called members by their first name. I did not mind, actually, but it was a stark contrast to the way KGA and BGC caddies related to members. The caddies at these other clubs, even after months hanging out with them, often in their homes and other spaces outside the clubs, refused to use my first name. The caddies at Eagleton did not have to be asked, or convinced. They called me by my first name, and most other members by their first names, like it was natural.

This behavior was also not surprising. Members and guests, a combination of foreigners working at multinational companies, nonresident Indians, and salaried professionals without the pedigree or patience to wait on membership at the other clubs in the city, played less often, usually only on weekends, and once or twice a month, at that, than members and guests at the other clubs. When they played, they did not ask after the intimate details about home and family, and the caddies did not share these details. The caddies, too, were in the position to keep more of this money for themselves, as they were younger than caddies at the KGA and BGC, without families of their own to support, and living with their parents on one to two acres of farmland. For these reasons, a more traditional customer–service relationship evolved between them and members, whereby a service was rendered, paid for, and both sides went their separate ways, with no lingering commitments after the fact.

“Most of the golfers who come here are customers,” as Narayan confirmed. “We are their workers. This is the relationship.”

“Have you ever developed a closer relationship with a member?” I asked.

“They ask me what I’m doing and I tell them about my education. I ask them about where they come from and what they do. It’s a typical conversation.”

At times, members offer small gifts. During festivals, for instance, some will give more tips than they usually would, but it is a rare thing.

“Do you ever take loans or bigger gifts from members?” I asked Prabaker.

“I’ve never taken any loans from a member,” he said, “but gifts I accept. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”

“But do you ever feel like you have to ask?”

“No,” he responded. “I’ll never ask.”

“What would be wrong with asking for a gift or a loan or something?”

“When there is no need for me, why should I ask?”

Organizing for the Status Quo

No matter the need, and no matter what caddies call members, whether customers, bosses, or gods, all of them resisted attempts at intervening in these relationships. When it happened, collective action was mobilized, and always in favor of sustaining the status quo. In February 2009, for example, the managing director at Eagleton instituted a “token” system, pairing the first caddy to arrive at the club in the morning with the first member, the second caddy with the second member, and so on. He had observed, as had I, that junior caddies were at a disadvantage—this was true at the other two clubs, as well, I noticed. When a carload of members and guests pulled up, senior caddies often pulled rank, jumping to the front of the line and scooping in to take a golf set. The new system was intended to give every caddy a chance at securing a round. It backfired. Even junior caddies did not like it, as they were already building rapport with some members who called on them regularly. Now these relationships were in jeopardy. So, they joined the senior caddies and went on strike.

During the week, when the course was mostly empty, hardly anyone noticed; members without a caddy carried their own bags or used a trolley. Then, the weekend hit, with the usual rush of golfers, all of them complaining about a lack of caddies. That Sunday, approximately 75 caddies met with the caddy master at the southeast gates of the club, in the shadow of a 60-foot collection of statues honoring the sun god, in order to issue their demands. By mid-afternoon, an agreement was reached, and things returned to normal.

“The strike wasn’t for seeking regular employment,” Samraj said, when I followed up with him and other caddies in the summer of 2010. “We should have the freedom to choose members.” Rishi, another caddy, agreed, clarifying what consensus emerged in response to this threat to their autonomy. “Because they didn’t allow us to go with our regular members, we had to go on strike.”

A token system was not an obstacle to the caddies at the KGA, by comparison. They had two issues: low board rates, which had not kept up with rising costs of living, and overbearing caddy masters who impinged on their freedoms to select members. In the summer of 2014, one of them showed me a copy of a letter they had presented to the club president. It read, in part, “This is a request letter from the KGA caddies, because the caddie fees has been not [sic] increased from three years but everything is increasing but our caddies fees has not been increased.” The caddies wanted to see the club double the board rates for senior and professional caddies and more than double the rates for subjunior and junior caddies. The letter also addressed concerns with the caddy masters. “They are be having [sic] very badly with our caddies,” it stated, and went on to specify, “They are scolding very badly about our families & our family members. They doesn’t [sic] have a right to talk like that.” If the caddy masters in question were not removed from their posts, as the letter suggested, the caddies would have no choice but to move to the “next level.”

Within a week, after the threat of a walkout, board rates for junior and subjunior caddies were raised to 200 rupees, or $3, rates for seniors to 250, or $3.50, and for professionals to 350, or $5. These concessions were less than what the letter had specified, but the caddies saw it as a win. Some caddies, though, endured new forms of harassment from caddy masters, who survived this mobilization unscathed, and newly emboldened, apparently, as they exerted greater pressure on carrying out routine tasks that would have let slip earlier. If caddies neglected to rake bunkers, for example, they were suspended. If asked to take a member on a round, but they refused, they were suspended.

Suresh, a caddy with 16 years of experience, recalled, “The caddy master came and asked me to go for one of the rounds. My regular member was on the way, so I said no. He asked again, but I gave him the same answer, and then he kicked me out.”

“The caddy masters tried to cause a divide,” Krishna confirmed. “Some caddies are their relatives, so they support them.” Krishna kept up a more personal form of resistance, regardless. When a caddy master asked him to sign the register one day, he responded, “What, are you paying me a salary?”

Krishna said this in jest, but I had to ask: Why not put more energy toward achieving full employment, a salary, and other protections?

“There are a lot of issues with a salary,” he said. “Now, I have a little freedom. I leave the kids at school, my wife goes to work, and then I go at nine o’clock some days. If they employ me, then I will probably have to go there at six in the morning.”

“There’d also be a token system, too, right?” I said.

“If they had a token system,” he said, echoing what I had heard among Eagleton caddies, “I definitely won’t stay at the KGA.”

“So, your only demand is the caddy masters should not speak to you?”

“One hundred percent. They control the entire system. If I am going for a round and there’s a shortage of caddies, they’ll come and look at me, ‘O.K., go with this guy,’ and if I tell him I won’t go, he won’t leave me alone. That is the problem—the caddy masters rule over us.”

Krishna had an aversion to being told what to do, and it made sense: he was not an employee, and objected to being treated like one. The actions of caddy masters at the BGC, however, surpassed even traditional norms of managerial control present at the KGA and Eagleton. On occasion, for example, I would see a caddy master follow a member and caddy into the parking lot at the end of a round. The caddy master, who had not lifted a finger to help the member all day, would assist with lifting the bag into the trunk or backseat of a member’s car and, seconds later, would take a part of the tip intended for the caddy.

Violence, or the threat of it, was also a part of life at the BGC. I remember standing once among a group of caddies leaning on the side of a car in the parking lot when a member and what appeared to be a caddy 14 or 15 years of age were standing at the club entrance. The member was yelling at the caddy for something. One of the caddy masters approached, a big man, six-foot-four, in his late thirties. I was out of earshot, so I was not sure what was said. But all of a sudden, without warning, the caddy master lifted his open right hand and brought it down on the side of the caddy’s head with a loud thud. The caddy, half the size of the caddy master who struck him, faltered and backed away. When he regained his footing, the caddy master hit him again, to the apparent satisfaction of the member standing steps away who did nothing to stop it. The caddies around me laughed, as if what had played out in front of us was some kind of entertainment.

The caddy master was eventually let go for drinking on the job, but there was no change in the way the caddies were treated. When I visited the club on another afternoon years later, I saw a caddy master wielding a stick that he kept at his side. When I asked him about it, he smiled, and said, “We need to keep them in line, no?”

There was a time when the BGC caddies might not have been so compliant. In the early 1990s, a group of them joined the kitchen staff in a strike lasting two months. All of them were kicked out; some were arrested. Most were allowed to return, but not before they disavowed this kind of action. It was an experience with a lasting effect, it seemed. When complaints about board rates and caddy masters came up, and they did, the oldest among the caddies shut it down. Based on past experience, they did not see any point in advocating even for higher minimum board rates, much less a change in caddy masters.

“I don’t pay any attention to that thinking,” a caddy in his fifties said. “I just come, earn some money, and go back home.” Some waited on members to look after them. “We don’t have any power to ask,” another said. “If we ask, they don’t pay any attention to us.”

Discussion

While the caddies at all three clubs arrive at the same commitment to the status quo, they arrive at it by way of different paths. Eagleton caddies, for example, are far bolder in their assertion of independence than the caddies at the KGA and the BGC. Then again, 90 percent of caddies at Eagleton live with families that own farm land in one or more of the approximately 15 villages that surround the club (see appendix). Many assist in the planting and harvesting of crops. The ability to come and go as they like in their work as caddies is crucial to them. Their families depend on it. The fact that the caddies are also young, a majority in their teens and early twenties when I started this research, and live at home without families of their own to support, pointed to another challenge for the club: they did not need this money.

So, when the management at Eagleton wanted to institute a “token” system that would impinge on relationships with members that were already optional, the response was severe and swift. These same caddies were just as ambivalent about formal employment, even though, ironically, they were the only caddies I encountered who had any chance at this arrangement. When I met with the managing director a year after the strike, he expressed willingness to consider it. “I want to employ them,” he said. “I tell them, ‘Okay, Saturday, Sunday, I can guarantee you a round. You’ll get a certain fee. Monday to Friday, when there are no rounds and you’re sitting there, I want you to do maintenance work.’ But they’ve told me, ‘No, boss, we don’t want to be employed.’”

Unlike the caddies at Eagleton, BGC and KGA caddies are not farmers. Twenty-four and 23 percent of caddies at these clubs, respectively, own the homes where they live (see appendix). Most live in rental units. Few of them have any land at all, even back in their native villages. They also experience different economic pressures than the caddies at Eagleton. The money they earn at these clubs is not pocket change to them, as it is for Eagleton caddies. It is a matter of survival. That is especially true for caddies in their thirties and older who support a wife and children, and often parents, too (see appendix). Thus, whereas the caddies at Eagleton approach the imposition of a token system as if they have nothing to lose, the caddies at the KGA offer a letter with the vague threat of taking things to the “next level.” When the club agrees to raise the board rates, the problem is resolved, even though the caddies have outstanding complaints. Part of the challenge, no doubt, is convincing as many as 300 caddies to agree on a strike. But a strike for what? When pitched with a possible scenario of salaried employment and what it would mean that Krishna steps back his criticism. He wants a salary, benefits, and security, but he does not want the responsibilities that go with it.

If the Eagleton caddies are forceful in their defense of the status quo and the KGA caddies are similarly inclined, if less direct in achieving this objective, then the BGC caddies seem almost passive, by comparison. But these caddies also had the most to lose by staging acts of collective resistance of the kind I discovered at the other clubs. They were older than the other caddies, and while I did not collect specific economic data in administering the demographic survey, they also made less money, judging by their board rates; they looked it, too, as they were downtrodden in their dress and overall physical appearance. Many of them, a quarter, were Muslim, and lived in some of the poorest sections of the city, at distances of five or more miles from the club, which, given traffic woes in the city, was a significant drain on time—that so many BGC caddies traveled this far to get to the club was one indication that they struggled to find work closer to home.

As Anand told me, “They can get two truckloads of people to work here as caddies.” Among this large contingent of caddies at the BGC is a sizable number of caddies in their forties, fifties, and sixties, who, poor and destitute, in many cases, would not have a job otherwise. Rafiq, in his forties, put it like this, when I asked him his opinion on formal employment: “Permanent is very permanent. It’s a hard thing. There are caddies who have been caddying for the last thirty, forty years. We get old. We can’t caddy anymore. We’re not getting any help from the club. So, what are you talking about being a permanent employee?” For Rafiq and other BGC caddies, it made little sense to advocate in this direction, when only a handful of caddies would be given the opportunity, and the rest made redundant.

Conclusion

It is generally assumed that full-time regularized employment is the best, if not always obtainable, option available to precarious workers in a globalizing world (Agarwala 2013; Chun 2009; Cross 1998; Fine 2006; Milkman 2006). Even where circumstances mitigate the likelihood of such an outcome, it is still held up as a worthy goal. Yet the assumption that precarious workers prefer these kinds of formal ties often neglects the very conditions in which workers labor. For some workers, like these caddies, advocating for enhanced job security may, in fact, compromise existing freedoms and rights, however limited. Indeed, as things presently stand, in which the caddies are subject to strict regulations inconsistently and arbitrarily enforced, most recognize that regular employment is not in their interest. This is not to say that the caddies themselves are content with the status quo, because many are not. It only confirms that the status quo is preferable to a situation that might further limit their activities and choices.

A majority of the world’s workers find themselves in similar, and in many cases worse, conditions as these caddies, making far less money than they require to sustain themselves and support their families (Bangasser 2000; Chen 2012; Harriss-White and Gooptu 2001). Job-killing technologies mean that fewer and fewer workers around the world will find safe, secure, and meaningful employment, formal or informal. Advocating for formal employment may only risk deepening divisions between workers in an already fractured global labor movement, as some will find stability, while many more will find themselves cut out of the global economy completely. This does not even take into consideration whether workers themselves desire the kind of stability presumably on offer with formal employment—this article, at least, suggests that some may not.

The precarity these caddies experience and the strategies they marshal as they “catch” members willing to help them and their families suggests a different politics of resistance than what some labor scholars and activists typically emphasize. Knowing that they have to serve someone, these caddies prefer to have a say in who it is, for how long, and at what rate. If they want for anything, it is to maintain and even extend this much control over the labor process, and in that, they offer a useful reminder of what ultimately motivates workers everywhere.