Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
2 June 2009
ISSN 0952-1909
*****
Introduction
Despite the state and industrialists attempts to defeat us, our
struggle for labor rights has continued for the last seventeen years.
The reason is that we never broke the law. This proud statement
is by an activist in the central Indian labor movement Chhattisgarh
Mukti Morcha (Chhattisgarh Liberation Front, CMM hence forth)
that organized around five thousand contract workers in the Bhilai
industrial belt in the 1990s. Till now, the movement has been
struggling for the recognition of the participants entitlements as
workers. The industrialists used the loopholes in government regulations to reject the workers demands. The state did not recognize
the workers entitlements either, till the situation became politically
volatile, and their cases were taken over by the industrial courts.
With the enactment of the neo-liberalization measures, worker
entitlements in India have become sketchier, and the movement is
losing its battle. The quote in the beginning points at the movements irony: being informal workers, the movement participants
were not covered by the labor laws that cover the formal workers.
Nevertheless, being a part of the industrial workforce, their strategies were limited and defined by the same labor laws. Through this
contentious and ironic history of seventeen years, how did the
workers interact with the power holders? What do those interactions say about the relationship between state, capital and labor in
post-colonial India?
2009 The Author. Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,
UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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Disruptive
Scuffle
Picketing
Physical Attack
Gherao (holding hostage)
Wild-cat strike
Band (total blockade)
Rail blockade
Road blockade
Squatting
Non-disruptive
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Context
The leadership of newly-independent India, in the 1950s, was faced
with the big question of how to create an economy that was productive as well as employment-generating. Implicit was the faith in
a modernizing economy that produced and consumed, rather than
regulated needs following the Gandhian principles (Chakravarty
1987: 718). India adopted the modernizing, commodity -centered
approach, where more goods were preferred to less and a higher
level of capital stock per worker was considered helpful in improving the standard of living (Chakravarty 1987: 8). The scientism of
the modernizing idea was also more compatible with the ideological
priorities involved in postcolonial nation building (Chakravarty
1987: 8). The initial answer was the mixed economy model, where
the nationalistic aspirations for self reliance, informed by the Soviet
model, co-existed with the promotion of indigenous private capital.
Consequently, the Indian nation-state entered into varying relationships with indigenous capitalists and workers, who were also
the citizens of the newly constituted nation. Indian labor unions
militantly participated in the anti-colonial national liberation
struggles, and evidence shows there was a call for the co-option of
labor following independence and widespread debates among the
left wing trade unions regarding support to the new state engaged
in planning with Soviet co-operation (see Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru 2004; Communist Party of India documents 195060).
What variables mediated the relationships between nation-state,
capital, and class? What forms did working-class resistance take?
Labor movement scholarship, despite the diverse and often
contradicting perspectives encompassed, agrees that labor has an
institutionalized history in the twentieth century. T.H. Marshall
captured this in the concept of the social element of citizenship,
ranging from the right to economic welfare and security to the right
to participate fully in the civilized society, the institutions closely
connected with it being the educational system and the social
services (1950: 8). The incorporation of the citizen-workers into
state projects, known as statization of working class organizations (Panitch 1981: 22), led to the collapse of internationalism
(Carr 1945). Hence, labor movements have been accused of reformism (Calhoun 1988 for instance). Explaining the reformism of
the working class, Adam Przeworski argued that capitalist democracy became the socially organized mechanism by workers could
express their claims to the product of their labor. While as immediate producers, they had no institutionalized claim to the product,
as citizens they processed such claims through the institutions of
bourgeois democracy, fundamentally through the electoral institu 2009 The Author. Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 22 No. 2 June 2009
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Thus the steel plant, together with the iron-ore, limestone and
dolomite mines for raw materials, thermal power station and coal
fields, was a dream fulfilled for the teleological project of modernization. Since its launching, Bhilai has become the center of industrial undertakings extending to the nearby regions of Rajnandgaon
and Raipur. These include around120 small industrial units that
depend on Bhilai Steel Plant for byproducts, and big enterprises
like the Associated Cement Company, the Simplex Engineering and
Foundry works, and the Beekay Engineering Corporation, that are
owned by indigenous capitalists. Unlike BSP, the smaller companies are privately owned, mainly by members of the Baniya community, a powerful constituent of the indigenous capitalist class in
India. The Chhattisgarhiya (natives of Chhattisgarh) have memories
of many of the industrialists rising from lower beginnings with a
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from states like West Bengal and Kerala, casual, contract and civil
laborers consist predominantly of natives (including both tribal and
non-tribal people) of Chhattisgarh. The region has witnessed the
outmigration of local laborers to destinations like Punjab, Haryana,
Delhi, and Mumbai, to work as laborers on construction sites.
Though the steel plant is approximately four miles from the industrial area, the township associated with the steel plant and the
industrial area represent two parallel, yet interdependent worlds.
The steel township has catered to and produced three generations
of workers belonging to the aristocracy of labor (Parry 2004: 220),
sending the cream of the youth to the prestigious Indian Institute
of Technology and eventually abroad. The industrial area on the
other hand is speckled with the historic industrial labor camps,3
many of them started initially in the 1950s to temporarily house the
laborers engaged in the construction of the steel plant. They have
stayed on to become almost permanent mud housing clusters,
where the informal employees in the local industrial units and their
families live. Though a little apart from the region, the indigenous
capitalist class stays in a posh residential neighborhood called
Nehru Nagar that also happens to be outside the planned steel city
of Bhilai. Thus Bhilai seems to be divided into the planned city
where everything is accounted for, and the unplanned that boasts
of the filthy rich and the filthy poor. The poor has infiltrated the
planned and the unplanned neighborhoods of the rich people
working as domestic help, gardeners, street vendors, mini-door
drivers, and rickshaw pullers and as everything that befits the
informal economy.
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Public Repertoire
The CMMs repertoire against the state consisted of meetings,
rallies, petitioning, demonstrations etc. The author refers to those
tactics as the public repertoire, since they were enacted for a wider
audience, compared to the factory gate maneuvers. The leaders
used fierce rhetoric against the state, but the actions were cautious
and contained. The CMM always issued prior notices before any
public repertoire, as required by the district administration. The
CMM used this opportunity to issue threats of intense action that
were never carried out, and what followed were routine nondisruptive practices. Discipline in public demonstrations was a
rule and anything beyond that was outside the realm of the
possible, natural, or imaginable (Gordon 1996: 16).
The main public tactics used were celebration of martyr days with
the co-operation of the district administration, peaceful demonstrations with prior notice and threats of disruption never followed by
action. The CMM started celebrating the July 1 martyr day commemorating the victims of the 1992 police shooting in Bhilai. All
martyr days followed the same routine: A rally from the cement
company road intersection to the railway station where the police
shooting happened followed by offering worship at the railway
platform near the site of shooting, followed by a public meeting. The
CMM always took permission from the authorities before conducting the event, and the police force that was usually present during
the event co-operated with the organizers. The following is the
description of one such martyr day in 1996:21
Bhilai Nagar: Today noon, a huge rally started from the industrial belt with
red-green flag and CMM banner and reached the gate of the power house railway
station. Morcha workers entered the station platform with the widows of the martyrs
and offered flowers at the place of martyrdom. The District Superintendent of Police
and a huge police force including women ensured normalcy at the station. Soldiers
[possibly the Central Industrial Security Force] carrying guns were also seen. After
the offerings, the activists crossed the railway line to go to the public meeting site at
the Great Eastern [national highway] road intersection. At that time the railway
traffic was stopped for almost one and a half hours. The Howrah-Ahmadabad
express was stranded at Bhilai-3 station from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. The police did not
interfere with the incident and hence the program moved very peacefully.
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From the activists account, it is evident that the gherao was simply
intended to be a threat. If the intention was to carry out the secret
plan to reach Bhopal, one hundred and fifty miles away, and
engage in a disruptive tactics, the activists would have been discrete about the journey. At least they would not have engaged in
slogan shouting in a general compartment, thus drawing attention.
Thus they were voluntarily equipped for the eventuality of the police
arrest.
One reason why the state extended its co-operation to the CMM
sponsored events was that the provincial state government was
reprimanded by oppositional political parties and national political
leaders for the police shooting. After the police shooting, there was
public outcry against the chief minister and his ministerial
cabinet for tackling the agitation using force. Questions were
raised regarding the contract labor system in the legislative
assembly. In the 1993 assembly elections that followed, a new
ministry came to power that governed till 2003. The new chief
minister though did not get involved in the court proceedings,
offered compensation to the victims of the police shooting. He even
made a statement that The contribution of Niyogi to the workers
can never be forgotten. To win, the workers should follow the path
outlined by Niyogi.33 CMM leaders regularly met with the Durg
district administration to decide on the compensation offer and
even to discuss of a venue to place the statue of Niyogi.34 All police
cases against the CMM activists, not including murder or murder
attempts and attack of sarkar or police, were withdrawn. Thus the
state was accommodative of the CMM and the latter was
co-operative.
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The CMM leadership consistently framed its opposition to industrialists and the state as a defense of the institution of the nationstate against its corrupt operators. In 1991, when the struggle in
Bhilai was in the initial stage, Niyogi went to the national capital,
Delhi, with CMM activists, and submitted a petition to the president of India with fifty thousand signatures of workers in Chhattisgarh, discussing the plight of the Chhattisgarhiya people. He also
met with the prime minister and national political leaders and let
them know that the workers wanted facilities within the system.
CMM activists conducted protest demonstrations in front of the
labor and industrial departments of the central government, as well
as visited the national monuments. The meeting was central in
clarifying the stand of the CMM as supportive of industrialization
for nation-building, while opposing the anti-labor regulation
activities of the industrialists in the Bhilai region.
The idea that the state is good, while its operators were bad and
it was the obligation of the CMM to protect the institution of the state,
underlined the CMM repertoire. CMM used to have advertisements
in newspapers requesting the public to donate books to the Martyr
Niyogi Book Bank. Most of the advertisements depicted a first
person appeal of a child, whose father had been expelled, to support
his or her education. One such advertisement read:35
My name is Uttara. I study in sixth standard in the government school in Bhilai. My
father was thrown out of work on January 24, 1992. He used to work for many years
as boiler-operator in the factory of Kedia. His mistake was to join Niyogis red-green
flag union and ask for the right wages. The court decided on December 10, 1995 that
my father and all his friends should be taken back to work and given their right.
Even after that the case is still dragging in the high court. The court is not able to
deliver justice, nor is the government (sarkar) doing anything. I want to pursue my
studies, and become a judge so that I can give work to workers like my father and
the rightful price for their work. And I also want to punish those who break the law.
Will you be on my side in fulfilling my dreams?
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workers. Many also point at the role of non-governmental organizations that now have replaced political organizations in negotiating for
the disenfranchised. This paper suggests something different. It
hints at the desperation and helplessness faced by the workers,
when all state channels fail. Yet they use a non-violent tactics
towards the state. It is likely that the continuing desperation might
lead to the appropriation of an alternate repertoire that uses violent
tactics. In the case of central India, this is increasingly possible due
to the increasing prevalence of anti-state radical movements by
naxalites. There is a younger generation that is dissatisfied with
conventional politics of the deprived and may be ready to rise up in
arms. Future research should throw evidence on the alternative
politics that is accessible to the disenfranchised in the societies,
where the promises of citizenship are withering away.
Conclusion
This article studied the repertoire used by CMM, a central Indian
labor organization of contract workers, in its interactions with the
state and industrialists. The sources of evidence were news paper
archives, interviews and ethnographic observations. This article
found that the CMM used a mix repertoire, consisting of disruptive
and non-disruptive tactics. The disruptive repertoire, ranging
from relatively legitimate wild-cat strikes (illegal stoppage of work)
to extreme physical attacks, against the industrialists and nondisruptive repertoire, ranging from disciplined participation in
court-cases to mass martyr day celebrations, against the state. The
repertoire point at the two distinct capacities in which the movement was acting, as a radical trade union against the industrialists
and a social movement in relation to the state.
The finding suggests that the CMM participants perceived the
state as holding genuine power, and their relation to it as citizens,
and industrialists, despite their being indigenous capitalists, as
adversaries. This repertoire was not pre-given, it emerged out of
interactions. Being organized informal labor, CMM did not set off
differently from formal labor, but their tactics were shaped by
the responses of the state and the industrialists. They started
using disruptive tactics against industrialists and contained tactics
against the state as a result of the interactions. However, the
disruption did not mean violence. Though they considered the
industrialists as rivals, they believed in the modernization program
of the nation-state, and hence held the industrialization process in
high regard. On the other hand, the industrialists used the national
interests to maximize their interests at the cost of the workers.
This profit maximization exasperated due to the onset of neo 2009 The Author. Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Journal of Historical Sociology Vol. 22 No. 2 June 2009
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Navbharat, December 12, 1995.
Navbharat, December 13, 1995.
Deshbandhu, October 20, 1996.
Dainik Bhaskar, November 31, 1996.
Deshbandhu, July 2, 1996.
Deshbandhu, July 6, 1996.
Dainik Bhaskar, July 2, 1998.
Deshbandhu, June 23, 1996.
Deshbandhu, July 2, 1996.
Deshbandhu, July 10, 1996.
Deshbandhu, September 1, 1996.
Dainik Bhaskar, September 1, 1996.
Dainik Bhaskar, October 6, 1999.
Dainik Bhaskar, October 11, 1999.
Navbharat, April 21, 1997.
Deshbandhu, April 29, 1997.
Navbharat, October 10, 1995.
Navbharat, October 17, 1995.
Deshbandhu, June 30, 1996.
Deshbandhu, May 19, 1992.
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