Bookmark | Print

Home » 2002 » #489 » International News » INDIA: Millions strike against neo-liberalism

BY EVA CHENG

More than 10 million workers across India took part in a general strike on April 16. The action was taken to resist the anti-worker, neo-liberal offensive being waged by the Indian government and to oppose the diktats of the imperialist financial institutions, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Trade union federations with a broad spectrum of political affiliations jointly organised the strike, which brought economic activity in six of India's 28 states — including West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Manipur and Goa — to a virtual halt.

Elsewhere in India, bank, insurance and public sector workers response to the strike call was massive. Workers at India's central bank, the Reserve Bank, joined in, preventing the clearing of cheques. The losses inflicted in the banking sector alone amounted to nearly 1 billion rupees. 

Thousands of strikers rallied in the business district of Bombay while others marched on parliament in New Delhi.

One of the workers' key demands was for the withdrawal of proposed changes to the labour laws, which have been approved by cabinet. The changes enable bosses to sack workers much more easily. Parliament will consider the changes shortly. The striking workers warned of escalating action if their demands are ignored.

The workers were also pressing for a halt to retrenchments and the downsizing or outright privatisation of state firms.

Deindustrialisation

Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist), spoke to Green Left Weekly in early April. The CPI(ML)'s trade union front — the All India Central Council of Trade Unions — co-organised the strike.

Bhattacharya said the April 16 strike sought to counter a fundamental policy of national Indian governments of the last 12 years: to bring India more directly under imperialist domination through privatisation, “liberalisation” and corporate globalisation.

The Bharatiya Janata Party national government, which came to office in 1998, has accelerated the implementation of these policies.

“We now have a ministry of disinvestment. Every year, they set a target [for privatisation]”, Bhattacharya said.

This policy, which seeks to sell even the profit-making strategic state industries, has led to a process of deindustrialisation. Integral to this process, he added, was the dramatic transformation of major Indian companies from production to trading, or become agents of multinational corporations (MNCs).

“There is an increasing phenomenon of industrial sickness and closures [of Indian firms]. At least 500,000 industrial units have fallen, with no plan at all to revive them”, said Bhattacharya.

This re-colonisation of the Indian economy by imperialist capital was still far from advanced in 1997-98 when the Asian economic crisis struck, which explains why India was able to steer through it relatively unscathed.

“But over the last few years, financial integration has taken place in a big way. The Indian currency is now almost fully convertible and is much more susceptible to major fluctuations of the world currencies”, Bhattacharya warned.

Agrarian crisis

The problems confronting Indian agriculture are even more daunting. Its long-term structural crisis, according to Bhattacharya, has now been compounded by the government's neo-liberal push.

While some richer farmers did benefit from the so-called Green Revolution of the 1960s, Bhattacharya emphasised that “for the agricultural labourers, small and poor peasants and marginal farmers, there's been a crisis all along”.

Under the WTO rules, like most Third World countries, India has to allow produce from all over the world entry to its market. It has been seriously disadvantaged by US and European competitors, which are obtaining fat subsidies from their governments.

“Apart from the gap in productivity”, said Bhattacharya, “unequal competition (India has systematically cut its agricultural subsidies and credit) means that there's absolutely no possibility of Indian farmers securing a market share on a global scale”.

Moreover, the flood of MNCs (though not huge in absolute terms), especially in the fields of seeds, pesticides, electricity, fertilisers, diesel fuel and key inputs has substantially increased the dependency of Indian farmers these corporations. It has also greatly pushed up their production costs.

“With subsidised electricity, farmers used to obtain power at one rupee per unit, they now have to pay seven rupees”, Bhattacharya pointed out.

Bhattacharya explained that the worsening terms of trade — inflating input costs and declining sales revenue — has forced many farmers to obtain loans in order to get by, a step which has been the beginning of a downward spiral for them.

“They increasingly can't get loans from banks because banks have dumped their previous designated priority lending to agriculture. The old system of usury — costly credit — has been revived.

“An average farmer's indebtedness is now about 1 million rupees. That's why farmers are committing suicide in big numbers”, said Bhattacharya.

Crop failure is worsening the problems. This is increasing because of the vulnerability that is being created by liberalisation. “Take the cotton grower of Andhra Pradesh. The new kind of cotton which farmers were [forced to] grow is much more vulnerable to diseases. Existing insecticides don't really work on it”, Bhattacharya explained.

Moreover, a new seed variety that the farmers were trapped into using requires more water than was expected and a more expensive kind of fertiliser, he added.

Growing rural destitution has also resulted in many agricultural labourers and poor peasants starving to death. With declining income, many rich farmers have resorted to cutting agricultural labourers' already pathetically low wages.

“Agricultural labourers don't have food security anymore. The public food distribution system in India was never really efficient nor did it have a comprehensive coverage. But even this system has been considerably watered down”, said Bhattacharya.

“As a result, while there's millions of tonnes of grains rotting in government warehouses, you have poor people who can't afford this food and are being condemned to death by starvation.”

The food security of India is becoming increasingly fragile. Apart from the control over agricultural inputs, MNCs also systematically cultivate dependency through the distribution system. Their domination over the food processing industry, for example, has sucked many farmers into their orbit by tempting them into planting cash crops rather than food crops.

“The MNC's demand that farmers produce a slightly different variety from the crop that they have been producing before and for which these companies are the only buyer and there is no domestic market. All this has contributed to a new phase of the agrarian crisis which is much more sweeping and much more comprehensive than ever before”, Bhattacharya told GLW.

Resistance

However, there is also growing popular resistance. Agricultural labourers, who constitute the biggest single contingent of Indian workers and remain the most marginalised, have launched a struggle for a single piece of legislation that is devoted to protecting their welfare. Farmers are also refusing to repay their debts.

“In one district in Punjab alone, for example, people refused to repay millions of rupees. This indicates a mood of defiance among the peasantry”, Bhattacharya noted.

A militant struggle to force the government to purchase grain from farmers is also being hotly waged. The government has been increasingly reluctant to procure grains because of the enormous existing stockpiles. But farmers believe the solution to ending the crisis of starvation that coexists with rotting grain stocks lies in expanding and improving the public food distribution system.

“Through a major rail blockade campaign and other direct actions, farmers have successfully forced the Punjab state government to procure grains [from them]”, the CPI(ML) leader reported. “In these two movements [the debt relief and grain procurement], farmers are participating in their thousands. Many actions took place last year and they are still happening. People are now preparing for another round of agitation.”

The CPI(ML) has developed an influence in these relatively new forms of peasant mobilisation, building on its long-standing involvement in organising agricultural labourers in many basic struggles.

As for the fight back of unionised industrial workers, Bhattacharya said the workers are getting “more militant, more powerful and more comprehensive, [taking] increasing solidarity actions”.

He cited a 40-day public sector workers' strike early this year in Kerala which sparked solidarity strikes among other industrial workers and even agricultural labourers.

A 67-day strike at an aluminium factory in another state last year had been a highly empowering experience for the workers even though their demands were not met. A coal miners' struggle not long ago, Bhattacharya added, sparked heavy involvement from the miners' family members.

“What remains to be done is to give these workers' struggles a still sharper political edge. In the April 16 national strike and the forthcoming May Day actions, the working class actions will hopefully acquire a greater political character.”

From Green Left Weekly, April 24, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page. 

---

---

Tools

• Bookmark This Page
• Print This Page