By Eva Cheng
Indian workers have launched a wave of strikes against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the ruling 24-party national coalition. The actions are in protest against the BJP's Hindu fundamentalism and its neo-liberal, pro-business economic program.
Immediately after its narrow re-election in October, the BJP began to "open up" the insurance sector to foreign investors, triggering insurance workers to launch a lightning countrywide strike on October 29. On December 1, more than 200,000 workers from all over India helped shut down the entire insurance sector.
Industrial workers held a national action against the BJP on November 29. Four hundred thousand public sector workers in Rajasthan have crippled government operations since mid-December, their counterparts in Jammu and Kashmir have since taken action of their own.
One hundred thousand power workers in Uttar Pradesh (UP) struck between January 15-26 and were supported by co-ordinated solidarity strikes from all over India on January 24.
One hundred thousand dock workers paralysed all 11 major ports between January 18-23 and 1.5 million public sector workers stopped work on February 2.
Many of these were defensive actions or bread-and-butter struggles. The UP power workers, however, focused consciously on policy issues. They aimed to prevent the Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board (UPSEB) from being split into three and privatised. They refused to budge, despite being lectured by the UP state government to confine their demands to economic matters.
Million-people rally
More action is scheduled including a March 3 protest strike by 14,000 insurance managerial staff and, on March 9, a protest rally before parliament in New Delhi which aims to mobilise a million people.
The latter has been launched by the National Platform of Mass Organisations (NPMO), a coalition of organisations of workers, peasants, agricultural workers, women and professionals affiliated to various left tendencies (including seven central trade unions). The NPMO has further declared its plan to launch an all-India general strike on a date to be announced during the March 9 action.
The March 9 mobilisation will focus on broad and more fundamental political demands, 23 in all.
Demonstrators will call for economic policies which serve the interests of the people, including the right to work, a guaranteed minimum wage, the abolition of child labour, more public investment in agricultural infrastructure, land reform and greater taxation of the rich.
They will demand the reversal of various neo-liberal policies and measures to "communalise" the Indian society, in opposition to Hindu fundamentalists' plans to rewrite India's constitution.
They will support greater protection for the rights of women, the dalits (the lowest, "untouchable" caste) and tribal peoples, and will demand a halt to India's nuclear weapons programme.
An NPMO declaration in late January stresses its members' "serious concern at the fast deteriorating situation since the BJP-led government has come into power [in 1998]".
Mixed success
Struggles so far have met with mixed success. The UP power strike, for example, failed to achieve its central demands. The UPSEB will be split into three parts as scheduled, although the UP state government has given its "assurance" that the privatisation plan will be reviewed in a year.
However, strikers will be paid in full for the period they were on strike, 2000 sacked workers will be reinstated and 7000 arrested strikers will be released.
The dock workers achieved clearer successes. The minister for surface transport, Rajnath Singh, had agreed to make the port authorities honour commitments on port allowances.
The government's attempt to replace existing five-year wage agreements by ten-yearly ones has been halted. This, together with other unsettled issues, will go to arbitration.
Striking in countries like India is usually no picnic — the ruling class readily resorts to brutal repression to break resistance. The port and dock strikers, for example, were repeatedly attacked by armed personnel, the territorial army, the coast guard and the home guard, on top of being baton-charged many times by the police.
The UP power workers were attacked with similar brutality. They were arrested en masse and their families were terrorised. Their homes were raided and deprived of essential services such as water.
Commenting on this growing wave of mobilisations, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) commented in the February issue of its monthly organ, Liberation: "This wave is an important turning point in the working class movement which has now gone on a counteroffensive against the renewed onslaught of capital in times of globalisation".