A brief, and sharply posed, exchange between Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ranajit Das Gupta on working class consciousness in Bengal, this book posits that this consciousness is not a mechanical outcome of the capitalist mode of production, it is not a thing but a process, that even failure must be taken on board in order to flesh out that process, that not only was the working class present (and therefore conscious) of its own making, but drew from rich pre-capitalistcultural traditions of dissent, rebellion and republicanism.