ಒಗ್ಗೂಡಿದ ಕಾರ್ಮಿಕರ ಹೋರಾಟಕ್ಕೆ ಸೋಲೆಂಬುದಿಲ್ಲ!

Undoubtedly India’s recent 48 hour General Strike in January 2019, when nearly 220 million workers, peasants, agricultural labourers, street vendors etc. struck work will go down in history as a record-breaking one. Interestingly the previous record for largest general strike was also held by India’s working class, when 180 million participated in a General Strike in September 2016, against the disastrous economic policies of the current Modi regime.

The general strike across India on 8-9 January 2019 did bring the entire economy to a virtual standstill; workers in government, banking, transit, manufacturing, transportation, education, agriculture and the informal economy were among those walking out. Every sector of the economy experienced slowdowns and in most cases total shutdowns.

The 48-hour strike was supported by the All India Kisan Sabha (CPI(M)’s Peasant wing), Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch, Bhumi Adhikar Andolan and several other peasant and tribal rights organisations.

Presently India’s population hovers around 1.34 billion people, which means one in six people in the world live in India. Of those 1.34 billion, at a bare minimum more than 1 in 9 took part in this strike, or about one striker for every 50 people in the entire world! Workers throughout India participated, from the largest cities of Mumbai (12 million plus) and Delhi (11 million plus) to the 67 percent of the country that remains rural.

As New Socialist Alternative wrote in its pre-strike statement:“Since the arrival of the disastrous policies of neo-liberalism in 1991, the working class of India have embarked upon a General Strike 17 times”. Here again this was a strike at the disastrous policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – led, National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, which has failed the working people in all spheres.

Development Sloganeering stands exposed!

Modi who rode on the populist slogans of Development, Achche Din (good days), ending corruption, promising 2 crore (20 million) jobs every year etc., has achieved virtually zero after four and half years. His only “achievement” (if it can be said so) is the blatant transfer of wealth from poor to the rich.

Under Modi’s regime, the neo-liberal offensive is going at a breakneck speed. India’s 1 per centers – its super-rich – have been getting richer even faster. India’s top 1% holds close to half of the country’s total wealth. Although named “emerging markets”, 21st-century capitalism is brutally impoverishing the peoples of the underdeveloped economies. Seventy percent of India’s population or more – around 900 million people – languish under poverty with less than $2 per day.

But, the growth of dollar millionaires in India is exponential. From 196,000 in 2013 it rose to 250,000 in 2014 and it is expected that number will rise to 9 lakh (900,000) millionaires by 2023.
It is now more than evident that Demonetisation – the blunder that it was – cost India not only a fall in its growth rate, but, more importantly for the youth and workers, it cost precious jobs. A recent estimate puts that India lost 20 million jobs!

And yet the finance minister, Mr.Jaitley, had the temerity to ask the working class and the trade unions, “Are there any real issues before them or is it a part of the strategy of the Left political organisations to organise a symbolic unrest to ensure that they are not wiped out from the political map of India?”.

The ten Central Trade Unions calling for the strike published a 12 point charter of demands. It stresses the urgency to generate decent employment and stop contractualisation, to establish minimum wages of not less than ₹18,000 per month for all workers, establish compulsory registration, to guarantee the right to organise and the right of collective bargaining, the strict implementation of all labour laws and the need to stop anti-worker labour law amendments.

The leaders of the ten national unions claimed that more than 20 crore (200 Million) people participated in the strike. While there was a “complete bandh” (Total Stoppage) in seven states on January 8, an additional four states observed a similar total bandh on Wednesday the 9^th of January.

The strike was 100 per cent successful in the industrial sectors including manufacturing, government, banking and insurance and the retail trade. Both state and private educational institutions were shut and public transport came to a halt in most states. 

The trade unions over the years have fought and got 44 laws enacted that are genuine pro-labour reforms. The Modi government started the reversal by undoing all the beneficial features by reducing them to four. Particularly what angered the workers was the fixed-term employment notification which adversely affects job security in the country.

Though the two-day strike was in general peaceful, there were incidents of pitched battles in some states such as Rajasthan, West Bengal and even in northern Karnataka. The first day of the strike saw protestors stopping buses and trains, pelting stones and clashing with the police. In Rajasthan, at least 22 police personnel and 50 civilians were wounded in clashes. On the second day, four people were injured in West Bengal.

The ire of the working class of India has to be understood in the context of the desperate situation they “live” in. Nearly two thirds of the population ekes out an existence in sub-human conditions of living, with a majority of them earning less than ½ dollar a day and no social security provisions whatsoever. India has been a time-bomb waiting to explode into a thousand plus bleeding pieces.

India’s jobs crisis: 25 million applicants for 90,000 vacancies!

One million Indians enter the workforce each month, but the number of jobs being created is a fraction of that number. More than 25 million people have applied for 90,000 vacancies in India’s state-owned railways – an imbalance that illustrates the country’s struggle to find jobs for its employable millions.

The desperation for these jobs highlights a long-standing criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s four years in power: that his government has failed to create employment. When he was elected in 2014, Mr Modi promised an economic revival that would create many avenues for employment. Vowing to build up the manufacturing sector, for example, he said that his “Make in India” initiative would create 100 million jobs by 2022.

In February of last year, India’s unemployment rate hovered around 6.1 per cent, the highest in 15 months, according to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, a think tank based in Mumbai. About two-thirds of India’s population of 1.34 billion is under the age of 35, and around one million Indians enter the workforce each month.

Yet government data showed that in India’s eight biggest sectors – manufacturing, construction, trade, transport, IT, education, health care, and hotels and restaurants – just 155,000 new jobs were added in 2015 and 231,000 in 2016. (The figures for 2017 have not yet been published.)

‘Forum against Free Trade Agreement’, a pro-labour Network, wrote: “We believe that over two decades of neo-liberalism pursued through the agenda of trade openness, de-regulation and privatisation has failed the Indian masses. As the striking unions point out – today, there has been a deepening of the crisis of decent jobs. Free trade rules, whether of the multilateral World Trade Organisation (WTO) or the new-age regional free trade agreements (FTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs), all have serious implications for workers and the economy”.

What next?

India, being such a populous country (second only to China) has relative “democratic norms” still in place and mass class action and strikes can keep happening, But the question is, leading to what conclusions? As mentioned earlier, there have been 17 General Strikes since 1991 against the neo-liberal offensive of both the Congress and BJP varieties. The radical layers and the most militant sections among the working people are frustrated that time and again they are being used as cannon fodder to bargain a few chips from this or that coalition of bourgeois political parties.

Though the participation in the two days of strike was tremendous and unprecedented by all counts, the political impact of this working class action, supported by peasants, students and youth, was lost in the volume of calculations and permutations in relation to alternatives to the current hated regime of Modi and BJP. Already off the stage, back-room manoeuvres are being made to cobble-up a coalition or alliance of sorts to bring in the so-called “secular” Congress as the alternative to the communal Modi regime that even resorts to ‘fascistic’ methods. The brand tag of secularism is what the Communist/Stalinist left has historically used to peddle its disastrous strategy of searching for ‘progressive’ supporters among the capitalist representatives.

But this time round, owing to their own ideological disagreements, there is a clear division emerging among the two dominant ‘Communist’ parties. This is particularly so in the CPI(M). One wing – the Yechuhry wing – takes shelter under the false premise of India under Modi being “Fascist”. Hence, it advocates a no-holds barred alliance with all and sundry. The other wing, under Karat, puts forward a slightly different concoction of a “secular-democratic” coalition barring?? Congress against the communal BJP.

The irony is, both these so-called opposing wings are steeped in political opportunism and are betraying the working people who are seething with anger against the whole system of capitalism, which has failed to deliver on any of the fundamental and crucial problems faced by the majority of the population.

Yet, the left led by the CPI(M) and CPI have no clue as to how to take the fight forward. Just as an example, Modi in a desperate attempt to divert the attention of the media and scuttle the positive effect of the two days General Strike, without any warning announced a 10% job and education quota for the economically weaker sections among the ‘forward castes’. And even hurriedly got it passed in both the houses of the parliament, not just from the votes of the BJP but also getting votes from the opposition including the CPI(M).

But the devil is in the detail. It is yet another white lie on all counts from the BJP ‘think tank’ to divert the attention of the struggling masses just 10 or 12 weeks before the elections. Even if, hypothetically, we accept this “reform” as pro-people, there are numerous holes in it. First and foremost is the decline of jobs. Last year alone more than 11 lakh (1.1 million) jobs were lost. Secondly, in the Public/Government sector to which this new law applies, there has been no employment increase in the last two decades at least. With the onset of privatisation and disinvestment since 1991, jobs in the Central Govt. and State governments are shrinking.

Most importantly, this move is to create confusion and disaffection among the struggling people who have begun to see through the divisive communal and casteist machinations of the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). But instead of calling this latest fraudulent move of Modi by its right name, and leading a mass revolt against the regime, the left are engaged in mere sophistry.

Clearly, this move of Modi for what it’s worth is unconstitutional and blatantly sectarian in favouring the relatively well-to-do sections among the socially privileged  castes. The criterion to qualify for these non-available jobs has been fixed to those with an income below ₹800,000 annually ($1= ₹71) or owning less than five acres of land. That is to say anyone among the socially privileged caste elite earning just less than ₹ 66,000 income a month would qualify! Needless to point out that it would be a gross violation of basic human rights when 900 million are fighting for a mere existence.

Instead of seeing the writing on the wall, where there is a crying need for Modi to be ousted, and making preparations to effect it, the left is still scavenging for alliances with the bourgeois parties to put together an alternative Capitalist government. Whereas, in fact, every section of the population, however divided they are under various identities, have begun to converge their militant energies to force fundamental change.

The loud necessity flowing from that is a programme to unite those combative forces to not only throw Modi’s regime into the dustbin of history, but to make Capitalism and Landlordism itself history and usher in a Socialist Alternative that can become a harbinger of Socialist Revolution in the entire sub-continent.

Jagadish G Chandra
New Socialist Alternative.

GENERAL STRIKE 8th JAN 2020

The Future Is Ours!
Once again the toilers of India, through their collective class action in the form of a General Strike, are struggling to push back so-called “reforms”, introduced to serve the interests of both foreign and domestic capitalist bosses.
The world over and throughout the history of capitalism, industrial general strikes have represented a concentrated expression of anger against the bosses’ system. Even if they are originally organised to win economic gains, they can go further and illustrate the power of the working class to bring an economy to a halt. They reveal the dynamic of class struggle which, through a series of cumulative struggles for fundamental changes can lead on to revolutions of a social and economic nature. Nothing moves without the permission of the workers and their organisations. Then, with a clear-sighted leadership, the question is posed of workers taking power out of the hands of the tiny minority in a society of mega-rich capitalists and landlords, and running the society along collective socialist lines.

India today
In this country, the coming general strike of 8th January 2020 is coinciding with the crucial and unprecedented upheavals in the entire landmass of India. We are currently witnessing spontaneous cross-class mobilisations where all the pent-up anger of past years is being expressed. WE have had drastic falls in living standards, attacks on fundamental rights, agrarian and peasant distress – including hundreds of thousands of farmers committing suicide – youth unemployment hitting a 45 year high.
Even after seven decades of India’s independence from the British, the scourge of casteism and social discrimination is perpetuated. It has even reached new and despicable heights, where Dalits and Adivasis and other oppressed sections of society are being forced to live a life of utter indignity. Their hard-won constitutional rights come under attack incessantly. This is, led by some of the filthiest privileged right-wing feudal elements in society who blatantly mock, despise, rape, burn and kill in order to keep the vast majority of the oppressed cowed and fearful of the ruling layer.
The current tumultuous turn of events around the wanton violation of hitherto guaranteed Citizenship Rights has surprised the ruling classes, many even among the right-wing political parties see this as a major challenge to the edifice of India’s “democracy”. The divisive agenda of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), along with the proposed hideous National Register of Citizens (NRC) throughout the country, culminating in the National Population Register, has exposed the sinister plot of the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP) to achieve its long-held objective of a majoritarian “Hindu Rashtra” with vicious repression of all other communities with echoes of the plan of Hitler in pre-war Germany.

Stormy world
This General Strike of 8th January in India is taking place at a time when the entire world is witnessing an upsurge of class struggle in every continent. Two of the most important ones that bear comparison with the current turn of events in India are Chile and Hong Kong. In both these examples, the youth are at the forefront. The capitalist classes have all held Chile up as the model to aspire to, i.e. brutal neo-liberalism with relative stability. The ‘model’ collapsed as millions took to the streets, joined general strikes and confronted the military, forcing the government to retreat.
Hong Kong’s daring youth are fighting a determined struggle against a local proxy government, propped up by the Chinese dictatorship which inaccurately calls itself “communist”. This tremendous movement for democracy is time and again returning. When the behind-the-scenes so-called “red” regime tries to ignore the massive support expressed in recent local elections, the student youth, disregarding the police brutality and the threat of death, have faced up to the challenge in defence of the popular democratic mandate.

The era of fear is over!
The vast majority of India’s population have been forced to suffer abject poverty and been victims of vicious sectarianism, religious strife, and blatant caste discrimination under all the so-called “democratic” and “secular” regimes. But finally, six years of rule by a blatantly majoritarian Hindutva regime, led by the authoritarian Narendra Modi, unabashedly anti-Muslim, anti-non Hindu minorities, anti-Dalit and anti-Adivasi, has made them realise that a fightback is necessary, come what may.
The well-oiled propaganda machinery of the BJP, patronised by the 95-year-old Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) with its nearly 6 million members spread out in 60,000 branches around the country, has for decades been systematically instilling fear among the religious minorities through their communal and violent campaigns of ‘Cultural Nationalism’, ‘Integral Humanism’ and ‘Gandhian Socialism’ (sic!). Hitherto it projected itself as pious and moderate and working for the innocuous-sounding “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” (The World is My Family). But its real intentions were revealed when one of its most ardent members got elected first as Chief Minister of Gujarat and then, in 2014 as Prime Minister of India.

Modi’s record
Given the murderous history of Modi in Gujarat – the massacres of thousands of Muslims during the 1992 destruction of the Babri Mosque and in the aftermath of horrific 2002 Godhra train burning incident – his advent to power as Prime Minister for the second consecutive time in 2019, with his henchman Amit Shah as Home minister, saw the entire parliamentary opposition, including the ‘left’, displaying a sense of powerlessness and suffering political paralysis.
The Modi regime’s economic blunders – the Demonetisation and Goods & Services Tax scandals – went mostly unchallenged. Later, the contemptuous abrogation of all constitutional guarantees in relation to the people of Jammu and Kashmir also passed off with a ‘business as usual’ attitude on the part of the opposition political parties. These scandalous attacks resulted in an enormous build-up of frustration and anger on the part of the majority of the population and particularly among the youth.
But what we have been witnessing in the last three weeks of a mass awakening of the Muslims, student youth and other oppressed minorities, including young women, is that all the frustration and helplessness that was bottled up has been converted into a mass determination to fight back. Like the many millions participating in demonstrations across the country, even at risk to life and limb, have recognised: The era of fear is gone!
As we wrote in our recent statement on the CAA: “The CAA has opened up a Pandora’s box with various nationalities feeling threatened and coming out openly against it, disregarding their political, social or religious affiliations. After a very long time, the people of India – a prison house of nationalities – have found a common cause and a common enemy to fight against.”

The General Strike and the momentous challenge it faces!
Every effort to voice our protest against this authoritarian regime is vital for success. The coming General Strike called by the Central Trade Unions must also echo the ongoing social and political struggle that is being waged by the people in general and by the national minorities in particular. They must not limit themselves to the “business as usual” approach of customary solidarity but actively campaign against the Damocles’ sword that is hanging over the head of all, irrespective of the religion and region they belong to. As many analysts have put it, this has the stench of “partition 2.0” in the making.
The Trade Unions representing the majority of organised workers (who constitute just under 7% of the total workforce) are rightly fighting to defend the economic well-being of their members. But they also have a historical responsibility to extend their organisation to the non-unionised/unorganised proletariat. In fact, the core of the participants in the current anti-CAA mobilisations come from these unorganised sections who feel that their existence as citizens of India is at stake.
It is unfortunate that the leadership of the trade unions are extremely reluctant and wary of the necessity to make common cause with the ongoing and unprecedented protests against Modi’s regime which has failed on all fronts. It would be fundamentally wrong to argue that the issues of mass unemployment, starvation wages, peasant and agrarian distress, rising prices, the privatisation spree of public sector industry and services are all separate from the issue of CAA and NRC which attack the vast majority of the population.

A dual-task!
Currently, the cross-class movement against the CAA and NRC is woefully short of leadership that is capable of going beyond the citizenship issue and posing the question of bringing down this regime of Modi. This would be a sure way of scrapping the CAA and NRC.
Only a conscious left force, backed by the organisation of its class forces spread out in the heavy industry, small scale manufacturing, agricultural fields, banking, railways, the health sector, postal services and other key sectors of the economy, has the wherewithal to bring this crucial point on to the agenda of struggle. It can mount a viable challenge against the utterly communal regime of Modi, and begin to win the confidence and trust of the vast majority of the proletariat, who have been forced to remain non-unionised not by their own volition but by default.
India’s Trade Unions and the left, who have an enormous wealth of experience in conducting valiant battles, should utilise their skills of organisation and struggle to bring the entire country to a halt. This perspective is entirely possible given the hundreds of millions who have joined the General Strikes over the years. Last year’s two days General Strike saw the tremendous participation of 220 million workers in the entire length and breadth of the country.

January 8
This year, India’s ten mass Trade Union Federations are poised to go on a massive General Strike which is most likely to go beyond 300 million participating. The economic and industrial demands listed below have become life and death issues for working people under the reactionary regime of Modi and the BJP, clearly a lackey of big business and the ever-unscrupulous capitalist class. This economic fight against Modi’s regime is as crucial for the mass of the population as that over the citizenship rights that have come under attack.
These struggles are not separate but entirely linked by the need to bring down this hated regime and ensure the gains of all the hard-won battles of the past are safeguarded, including that of the citizenship of all oppressed castes and classes.
In their call for support for the general strike the Trade Unions have put forward a number of important demands:
• A national minimum wage of ₹21,000 per month
• Pensions for all, the scrapping of the national pension scheme (NPS) and restoration of the old pension scheme
• Control over price rises of essential commodities and a universal public distribution system
• The generation of new jobs and filling up of vacant posts
• Regularisation of contract and scheme and workers
• Equal-pay-for-equal-work and strengthening of welfare boards for unorganised sector workers01/08/2020
• Increased budgetary provision for MNREGA and agriculture
• The scrapping of the present codification of labour laws
• Stopping fixed-term employment and privatisation of Public Sector Units
• Stopping 100 per cent Foreign Direct Investment in railways, defence, coal and other sectors and stopping all bank mergers

Alongside the above listed economic demands the fight against the new CAA legislation, with a correct and all-encompassing programme of demands, can develop rapidly into a far-reaching struggle which can shake capitalism and landlordism in India to its roots.

• Scrap the CAA/NRC/NPR!
• Every migrant/refugee should have the right to citizenship.
• Stand against all deportations! Defend constitutional rights and beyond.
• For the freedom to practice any, or no, religion.
• Stand against any oppression of the Muslim population and against Islamophobia.
• Condemn state violence on protesters; for freedom of speech and the right to protest.
• For the right of self-determination for all struggling nationalities.
• For a Socialist Confederation of the Indian sub-continent!