COIR INDUSTRY IN KERALA 45 of the government are important factors to be considered in this context. Thus, we find that though the leading coir capitalists today are eager to mechanise the industry, they are restrained by the government's ban on the introduction of any more labour displacing machinery. On the other side we find that the relative bargaining power of workers is also influenced by macro-economic factors such as relative surplus population and unemployment. These in turn depend upon structural as well as demographic factors. In the case of Kerala, in the absence of a modern industrial sector that could productively employ the growing population and the low level of labour absorption in the agricultural sector due to the cropping pattern and the existence of a large sector of family farms, the severe demographic pressure and the consequent worsening of land-man ratio resulted in the emergence of a large pauperised rural mass which eked out a subsistence living in tertiary activities or low productivity and labour intensive rural industries. Besides the existence of this surplus population, significant social overheads in welfare expenditure like public health system and the changes in the diet pattern in favour of cheaper sources of carbohydrates like tapioca which sinificantly reduced the reproduction costs of the labour power, have been responsible for the availability of cheap labour till the recent times.9 This has been a "tremendous factor ... in preserving methods of production that are primitive and entail bondage, in retarding tlie use of machinery and in lowering the worker's standard of living55.10 In the 1930's faced with severe competition from their trade rivals and declining profits, some of the European manufacturer-shippers attempted to introduce powerloom weaving in the industry. These experimental efforts proved to be a failure. The increase in productivity consequent upon the application of the then avaiable modern technology was not high enough to price out the rural labour-based cheap production. This was largely the situation till the end of tlie 1950's. It should be remembered that the bargaining power of the workers depends not only on the objective factors but also on their political consciousness and organisation. There can be a situation where despite labour scarcity, extra-economic coercion by the employers can still preserve the lower forms. It is also possible that a high level of poli-ticisation and unionisation of workers can negate the 'cheap' labour. Our analysis reveals that the development of organisational strength of the coir workers, despite the relative excess supply of labour, is an important element that has influenced the course of evolution of the coir industry's structure. It has finally eroded the cheap labour advantage of handloom for capitalist accumulation. However, we find that the leading section of capital is socially constrained from reorganising the production on the basis of machine technology. The government has restrained any further introduction of powerloom weaving fearing violent social unrest. The workers resolutely oppose any move to