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Exploitation in the Stone Quarries of Assam – Sriram Anath (courtesy FOIL)

Dear all,

Please find below an article I just finished on exploitation in the stone
quarries in Nagaon, which is the main hub for the sector in Assam. The
stones are used to construct roads and buildings across the state, and the
labour conditions are probably the most exploitative in the region. It
should take about 12-15 minutes to read.

I also urge you to see the blog (link given below) because I’ve uploaded
some photos of the same when I visited the quarries with some comrades. It
really provides a picture of the sheer harshness of the working conditions
apart from the extent of exploitation…much better than any write-up ever
could.

Peace,

Sriram

–
Sriram Ananthanarayanan

http://northeastindiadiary.blogspot.com/

***Humanity is all***

*Exploitation in the Stone Quarries of Assam*

*
*

**The idyllic and verdant hills of Nagaon district in Middle Assam mask a
veritable web of labour exploitation in the various stone quarries across
the region. Of vital use for road and other construction projects, the
stones are derived through hard labour in extremely harsh conditions. The
quarries mainly consist of manual crushers with some having machine crushers
and Nagaon is the main centre for stone quarries in the state of Assam,
providing stones for construction to many major cities, towns and
road-building projects in the state.

The exploitation is harsh with extremely hazardous working conditions
comprised of the most informal and unorganised labour. Furthermore a
dangerous network of owners and managers including Surrendered ULFA (SULFA)
folk, relatives of ruling-class political parties like the Congress and AGP,
as well as members of the mercantilist class ensure that the oppressive web
remains firmly in place with any attempts at unionising viciously thwarted
down.

*Unending Exploitation:* Visits to quarries reveal the harshness of the
working conditions on sight. In the blazing mid-day heat workers clear the
ground of trees and bushes for digging, dig out boulders, manually crush
them into smaller stones, and fill large boxes with them. The quarries don’t
have any shady areas for rest or shelter, and even the natural shade of
trees is gone because the foliage has been cleared away to dig for stones.
Infants and toddlers, due to lack of facilities for crèches, are left on the
ground or on the rocks without any care, while slightly older children work
along with the adults. With no facilities for drinking water or a canteen,
workers bring their own lunch and water, walking anywhere between 2-5 km
early in the morning up rather steep hills in order to reach the quarries so
that they might have enough time to fill boxes with stones.

The box is the unit of measurement for their daily wages, and workers
receive around Rs 40 to 45 per box. Usually a single adult fills about one
box a day on average, which results in workers receiving daily wages far
lesser than the prescribed daily minimum wage of around Rs. 75. The wage
payment is not only dangerously low in amount but also illegal in method.
When workers spend their time clearing the area of foliage and digging for
boulders, they get even lesser pay since they don’t have filled boxes to
show. The boxes themselves are large, with a length of 6 feet, breadth of 3
feet and depth of 1 foot and with no real government standard for this
industry, managers can exert further surplus labour value by trying to
enlarge boxes. Payment is not given for half-filled boxes, so workers often
end up working much longer than the prescribed 8-hour working day, often
11-12 hours or more, in order to fill up as many boxes as they can in a
week.

A particular sign of criminality in the sector is the expansive usage of
child-labour that one can witness in every quarry visited. Children as young
as 8 end up crushing stones and filling boxes. Since it’s a matter of
survival for families, quarry work ends up being a family-affair, as the
more hands there are filling the boxes with rocks, the more income the
family derives from the paltry piece-rate wages. The extraction of enormous
surplus labour by managers and owners through the harsh piece-rate system,
the complete lack of workers benefits, and extremely informal, unorganised
nature of work has all members of the family working simply in order to
survive.

The workers mainly hail from the Adivasi, Tiwa, Muslim and Karbi communities
who reside in the various villages around the quarries. Labour is brought in
through an abusive contractual network, each village having a contractor
that the managers hire in order to recruit labour. Harsh material conditions
and lack of choice, apart from a failure on the part of the state in
properly implementing schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee
Act (NREGA) result in workers being forced to work in the quarries.

*Dangerous Nexus and Exploitative Tactics used:* The workers showcased a
genuine fear in trying to resist or demand higher wages, due to the presence
of SULFA folk as managers, and who essentially function as a set of lumpen
thugs in maintaining this exploitative environment. While being interviewed,
they didn’t even want to reveal their names or the names of the quarries
they worked in for this reason. In case a worker gets critically injured or
dies, owners give Rs 2000 or 3000 for a small, traditional funeral and no
compensation for the victim’s family. One of the quarries had a startling
case of such criminality, where a worker had to have his legs amputated
after a boulder fell on him. Soon after the operation, due to continued
medical complications and lack of any medical aid or insurance, the worker
died. The manager of the quarry paid Rs 2000 to the family and the rest of
the medical expenses as well as costs relating to reclaiming the body and
arranging for the funeral had to be borne by the family, a bill which ran up
to Rs. 20,000. Such a disaster can be completely devastating for poor, rural
family.

Discussions with progressive union activists and labour department officials
also reveal the oppressive network of SULFA, ruling-class party folk and
traders who run the quarries. On the other side of this dangerous situation
are the various insurgent groups who extract “taxes” from the quarry owners.
Indeed, while research was being done for this article along with a local
labour activist, I was told to leave my backpack behind lest the two of us
be confused as insurgents coming on an extortion spree since we were
travelling by motorbike to the quarries.

A senior labour department official in Assam, who has witnessed numerous
violations during his many inspections (and who would like to remain
anonymous until his retirement) believes that what is happening in the
quarries consists of the grossest and most criminal labour violations. He
revealed that in reality workers are supposed to get around Rs. 75 per day,
and that one of the main reasons owners feel emboldened to neglect labour
welfare as per law is that even if prosecuted a case can drag on for years
in courts, hardly easy for the working poor to deal with. And in the off
chance that a verdict favouring labour is given, the punishment meted out
for violations of the act is far too mild, usually a nominal fine that is
hardly a financial hit for the owners.

Arup Mahanto, leader of the Grameen Shramik Sanstha, a progressive rural
workers union in Assam which has been trying to organise the workers in the
quarries as well, said that the maximum labour violations occurred in the
stone quarries, even more than the oppressive tea industry. With no water,
crèches, first-aid facilities, sanitation facilities for women (who form the
majority of the workforce), and a complete lack of protective equipment, the
owners find every means to extract the maximum amount of profit from the
labourers. In striking similarity to the tea industry in Assam, Mahanto
further added that managers prefer women workers primarily because they can
be exploited more, noting that any events of verbal, physical or sexual
abuse are completely buried because of the oppressive environment and tight
hold that the owners have over the quarries.

Buddheswar Timung, a local rural activist in Bamuni Karbi village, which is
close to many quarries, said that the lack of unionisation was a huge
problem. Any attempts at organising the workers have met with either
violence or threats of dismissal. Help is not derived from any of the
identity-based insurgent movements in the area as they were only interested
in extorting money from the owners, rather than fighting for labour rights.
He also pointed to the corrupt network that owners and businesses have with
political parties as well as bureaucrats as another critical reason for the
continuing exploitation.

The corrupt nexus between state officials and business owners was mentioned
by numerous people as one of the critical issues. The same labour department
official I interview mentioned numerous cases of high ranking bureaucrats,
including former Assistant Labour Commissioners, as well as many judges
completely in the pockets of the business owners. He said that some of the
maximum corruption occurs with respect to the Workman’s Compensation Act
that guarantees compensation for workers in case of injury or death. The
owner, in what is nothing short of cold criminality, just figures out that
it’s cheaper to bribe both, the labour department official and the judge
rather than pay the worker his due compensation. And in case there are
honest men at the bureaucracy or judiciary, like the labour official I
interviewed, then there is always the fallback option for the business
owners of going to the biggest bastion of corruption to solve their problems
and that’s the political bigwigs whose campaigns are funded by these very
big businesses.

*Finding a way out:* The key problems contributing to this labour
exploitation are not altogether impossible to solve. The wilful dereliction
on the part of the state needs to be corrected. Serious measures need to be
taken by cracking down on businesses that are guilty of these labour abuses
as well as corrupt state officials, and more power needs to be given to the
labour department to seriously bring these businesses to book.

Another critical gap that needs to be filled by the state is the proper
implementation of the NREGA, which guarantees work to one member of all
rural families at prescribed minimum wage rates. One of the main reasons
that families end up in the exploitative quarry industry is lack of a viable
alternative. If rural families had a viable option of being employed under
NREGA, then not only would they be guaranteed minimum wage and certain
workers benefits, but there would not be a glut of labour enabling quarry
owners to exploit and extract surplus labour value. Furthermore, proper
implementation of the NREGA would result in an increase of the crude market
rate for wages, as unless workers get better wages than what they get under
NREGA they would have no incentive to work in the quarries or any other
informal sector for that matter. This was amply evident in Tamil Nadu, which
was fairly successful in implementing the NREGA scheme in many districts in
2006, which then resulted in an increase of wage rates across the board in
the informal sector in certain districts with employers competing with the
well-regulated NREGA for labour. It also becomes easier for workers under
NREGA to organise themselves into unions and other formations, thereby
building class-alliances with workers in the informal sector as well.

There is always the hope that things can change. One of the foremost needs
of the hour is in unionising the workers into a progressive, fighting labour
formation that can not only struggle for better working conditions and
higher wages but also launch campaigns that can break the corrupt nexus
between state officials and business owners. This is where groups like the
Grameen Shramik Sanstha as well as activists like Mahanto and Timung play a
particularly important role. Indeed, even as workers were being interviewed
for this article, Mahanto and Timung, who accompanied me to one of the
quarries spoke to workers and set up a meeting with them to start a local
union in the quarry. While displaying some hesitancy initially, the workers
soon enthusiastically agreed to the meeting upon realising the possibilities
of bettering their situation through unionising. It of course, remains to be
seen whether it will go forward and how. Unionising the workers in the stone
quarries of Assam is not going to be any easy task, and would require grit
and courage. It is a hopeful sign that groups like the Grameen Shramik
Sanstha display both in what is going to be a long road towards struggling
against labour exploitation in this sector.

Dispatch from North East – Sriram Ananth (courtesy FOIL)

Dear all,
As part of some field-work I’m doing for a few months in Northeast India
(mainly in the state of Assam) on labour/gender issues, I thought it would
be useful to send regular dispatches and writeups every 10-12 days or so. I
am emailing this to friends who are not on FOIL as well, and have tried to
make sure there are no individual overlaps. If however, due to some
oversight on my part, you recieve the email twice, please let me know.

The two pieces I have attached today (in the body of the email
itself) include a general smattering of observations in the form of a travel
log and an article on trade union struggles in the Guwahati Oil Refinery.

The first would take about 15 minutes to read, and the second about 10. If
anyone would like the word documents of either please let me know and I can
forward it to you.

Thoughts, critiques, questions, rebukes are of course welcome. Due to
sporadic internet access, I might be a little delayed in responding. Many
thanks.

Much peace and regards,

Sriram

******************************

***************************************************************************************************************

*Northeast Diary – Dispatch 1 (3/10 to 3/20/08)*

After about 10 days of exploration and travel in Assam, mainly in and around
Guwahati and Gossaigaon, my head swirls with all that I’ve learnt and
observed. First of all I feel compelled to briefly touch upon the numerous,
rather offensive stereotypes that folks from other parts of India have about
this region. Stuff I’ve heard since I was a kid. While they sounded
offensive even before I ever came to the region, now they feel particularly
repulsive. And while hardly deserving attention, they still merit a couple
of minutes of censure. Of the top of my head, some of the garbage I’ve heard
either first-hand or second-hand include: “Do they have schools there?”
“What about roads?” “And eating habits, don’t they eat just about anything?”
“Don’t they all hate other Indians?” “I’ve heard that it’s filled with
jungles” “Literacy and education levels must be so low”

Let me be really brief in retorts to each of the above respectively in the
order that they’re shown…

Yes and very good ones;

Yes, as bad or good as you’d find elsewhere in India;

No, what is eaten is called food;

No, and give me a break, it’s not like folks in other regions are oh so
loving to their fellow-humans…need we be reminded of the violence against
Muslims in 1992 Mumbai and 2002 Gujarat or the savagery towards Dalits and
Tribals in most parts of India;

No, although the countryside is much prettier and greener than what you
would find in most other parts of India;

No, actually literacy levels across most of the region are comparable to
Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which have the highest literacy/education levels in
India. In fact Mizoram is I believe the second most literate state in India
after Kerala. Furthermore the per-capita college-going rate is the highest
or second-highest in all of India

Ok, now that this painful exercise is out of the way, I would like to share
some general observations that I found interesting in the few days that I’ve
been here

*Guwahati bus service *– I know that this would seem quite amazing to
believe, but the Guwahati bus service has been the best I’ve been on so far.
Compared to some of the metros, it’s comparable to Mumbai, marginally better
than Chennai, significantly better than Calcutta, and simply streets ahead
of both Bangalore and Delhi. I have never had to wait more than 5 minutes at
a bus stop thus far, and have almost always found a seat. There are times
when I’ve had to wait nearly an hour in other cities and find my rather
large self standing cramped in the midst of sweat and irritability. The
conductors have also been helpful once I tell them that I’m new to the city
and ensure that I get of at the right stop. The experience has also been far
more tolerable than what one faces in other cities. One doesn’t have to deal
with the annoying tardiness in Bangalore, the occasionally bizarre speeds in
Chennai or the macho molesting madness in Delhi (where one can see, as clear
as day, women being leered at and groped)

*Strong presence of Women* – The last sentence on bus services directly
connects to a particularly heartening sight in Assam, and from what I’ve
heard, all over the Northeast. While economic development levels in the
region (due primarily to resource usurpation by the Indian state) are
comparable to some of the poorer North and Central Indian regions, both
visually and from data corroboration, what is astonishingly different about
the Northeast when compared to North India is the significant public
presence of women, cutting across age, class and community. On every bus
ride that I’ve taken within Guwahati and when I travelled to Gossaigaon,
almost always at least 40-60% of the commuters were women, even at night
times (almost impossible to see in Delhi). It was similar to what I’ve seen
in Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai. There was also a discipline shown by men
on buses getting up from women’s reserved seating when women came in, again
something missing in some other cities. Even on the streets, one sees many
women, students, workers, vendors, housewives mulling around the crowd and
travelling on public transportation without any hesitancy or fear.

Another noticeable feature, of course due to this large public presence of
women, is the markedly lesser leering and harassment that women face here,
again in comparison to what I’ve seen in Delhi and even Chennai. Now I’ve no
doubt in my mind that cat-calls, groping and harassment of women very much
exist in Assam and the rest of Northeast India, but so far, each and every
woman I’ve spoken to, who has also been to Delhi, said they feel much safer
here than they ever did in Delhi. Even many of the men I spoke to
highlighted the huge amounts of sexual harassment that their female friends
from the region face in Delhi, when studying or working there, facing the
oppressive brunt of it as much because of their gender as their place of
origin. There’s something in this place that a lot of the other cities and
towns in India can learn from.

*Spunk and paan-stained teeth* – A particular incident stands out in my mind
with respect to the public presence of women that again was uplifting to
witness. On a cramped overnight train ride from Gossaigaon back to Guwahati,
the compartment I was precariously standing in was overflowing with large
gunny sacks filled with vegetables. They belonged to a group of about 6
middle-aged women, all with weathered feet, strong arms, red paan-stained
teeth and wearing worn-out, tattered saris. They sat with the poise and
strength of daily struggle. I asked one of them (who looked like the leader
of the group), where they were heading and through a paan-filled gurgle, she
said that they were going to sell vegetables at the weekly Sunday markets in
Kokhrajar town and Guwahati. They bought veggies from across state lines in
West Bengal (where there’s always a surplus and thus much lower prices) and
sold them at the weekly markets for a small profit. Upon reaching the first
station, Kokhrajar, they proceeded to unload these monstrous sacks, all the
while barking at the men in the train to move aside. The word that comes to
mind is spunk.

Of course my heart took a little dive when I saw the local Sub-Inspector of
the Assam Police at the station receive his weekly bribe as they were
unloading the sacks, but even here the women’s chutzpah was evident. She
handed him a twenty-rupee note, and when he asked for more, she completely
brushed him off. I’m not sure what she said, but she seemed to indicate the
exact bodily orifice that he could shove his baton in or something along
those lines. The khaki-clad lout slunk away, muttering something to himself,
probably looking for the next handout. I believe this weekly exercise is
because it’s illegal to transport produce on passenger trains, and that too
across state lines…but then again this is India and indeed, South Asia…the
people always find a way to survive. Three women got off with half the
veggies as the train trundled on, and the same cycle of events repeated
itself when we reached Guwahati in the wee hours of the morning. I don’t
know what it was that lifted my spirits, whether it was their spunk, their
attitude, their powerful forearms that heaved sacks I would find myself
struggling with or their entrepreneurial spirit in the face of obvious
hardship. Maybe it was a bit of each or just the picture of the hardened
working-class woman, tougher than anyone else.

*Adivasis in Lower Assam: Struggle and strife* – While in Gossaigoan I had
the opportunity to interact quite intimately with an Adivasi student
organisation (All Adivasi Students Association of Assam or AASAA) that
campaigned on behalf of the Adivasi community across the state. Here, as in
the rest of India, the term “student organization” is quite a stretch, with
many of the members and leaders married with children. Student organizations
for the most part are political fronts, not especially concerned with
students per say, but more as power-garnering machines before they go on to
contest elections as part of some political party or the other.

I did learn a lot about the Adivasis in Assam though, who mainly came in the
mid-1840s till the 1920s as indentured labour to work for the British in
Assam’s numerous tea gardens. Many continue to work in the gardens till
date, while others left and started cultivating their own land. The
connection of the Adivasis with the tea gardens is very strong, and there is
another organization called the Assam Tea Tribes Students Association
(ATTSA) active specifically with those working in the tea gardens, however I
haven’t able to meet any members or leaders as yet. The Adivasis do face it
from various angles here, whether it’s political disenfranchisement,
socioeconomic hardships or sectarian violence. And even the little franchise
they are able to access through reservation in educational, job-related and
political seats in other parts of India as a result of their Scheduled Tribe
(ST) status is missing in Assam, as it’s the only state in India to deny
them ST status. In fact ST status remains the central (and often only)
campaign demand for all the Adivasi groups in the state.

The situation of the Adivasis in Assam, as well as the sectarianism and
violence existing between them and the other communities like Bodos and
Muslims, is of course an issue that cannot fit into a paragraph in a field
notes dispatch, so it will be written about at length in a later dispatch.

*Strong local knowledge and Sectarianism* – AASAA did request me to work on
a memorandum with regards to their campaign to get ST status, and two things
stood out as I was discussing the same with them.

One was their acute knowledge of local happenings and goings-on, and this is
true with activists in other communities I met as well. They knew almost
every Member of Parliament (MP) and Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA)
from Assam, and particularly about those who directly represented their
district or sub-district. I have no clue as to who my MP or MLA back home in
Bangalore is. And with Karnataka politics going down the present path, I
would be hard-pressed to name the Chief Minister at any point in time.
However they not only knew names, but their political orientation with
respect to the Adivasi cause, honesty-levels, inside secrets and so on,
mainly I guess because their campaign demanded such intimate knowledge. It
was of course in complete disproportion to their knowledge of national or
international affairs, even with respect to their own cause. For instance
they didn’t know that an All-India Federation of ST organisations existed
whom they could potentially ally with.

The second aspect of that discussion that stood out was their intense
sectarianism. They didn’t feel like even traditionally sympathetic movements
such as the Left or Civil Liberties ones could be trusted as allies or
supporters. Partly, I suppose this sectarianism is forced upon, not just
them, but other communities as well, by the divide and conquer tactics of
the Indian state. However another reason I feel it exists is because, the
leaders *within* the communities want to maintain a hold over their personal
sense of power and not have it diluted in any way through coalescing with
other groups. The sectarianism can also be internecine. While I was their
meeting with various people, 3 Bodos were killed in fighting between rival
Bodo militant groups in a clash for power in the Bodoland Territorial
Council.

*Hegemonic presence of the Armed Indian State* – Thus far I have seen
gun-toting Central security forces in every place I have visited or stayed
at. Whether they’re military, paramilitary or state police forces, their
presence is visible and one of absolute power. Even the lowliest police
constable is armed with an Indian-made INSAS Assault Rifle (apparently as
deadly as an AK-47 or M-16) or at the very least a rapid-fire sten gun.
This, when in many other parts of India, cops barely have a baton when
they’re on patrol. One doesn’t normally get the feeling that the Indian
state is a particularly hegemonic one in many parts of India (mainly because
of its bumbling incompetence), but one can really sense its power here.

I’m tempted to draw comparisons with what I saw of the Israeli occupation in
Palestine. It’s a lot more cut-and-dry over there, while over here there are
multiple layers of occupation as well as complexities arising out of
nationalist movements fighting both with the Indian state and sometimes with
each other as well as a shaky engagement with the federalist experiment.
However one commonality is the hegemonic strength of the military in both
operations, and the horrendous atrocities inflicted upon the occupied
peoples in both Palestine and Northeast India.

And one really doesn’t have to dig deep to find evidence of these
atrocities. As in Palestine, nearly everyone has some connection or the
other to the bloody treatment meted out by occupying security forces…a
friend tortured to death, an uncle maimed, a cousin jailed on false charges,
an aunt shot in the legs…and I’ve been here all of 10 days. There are also
those caught between the armed insurgencies and the military, facing the
brunt of both groups, and risking the wrath of one or the other.

*Workers killing workers* – During an Adivasi bandh or shutdown in
Gossaigaon, I had the opportunity to interact with a Central Reserve Police
Force squad who were breaking for their lunch. Usually during bandhs put
forward by any community, the entire town shuts down, but this tea shop was
made to open temporarily to accommodate the CRPF soldiers. Famished after
trekking through nearby villages, I took the opportunity to have my regular
tea and bun meal and proceeded to chat with the soldiers.

Among the ones I spoke with, I found out that one of them was the son of a
Public Works Department labourer in Hyderabad, another belonged to a tribal
community from Central India, while the subedar (sergeant) came from a small
farming family in Rajasthan. All mentioned the bad pay and work conditions,
stating that they had barely enough to make ends meet. Once they found out
that I was examining labour conditions in the region, the chap from
Hyderabad immediately said that a union in the CRPF would be useful but was
not permitted

It is a particularly Machiavellian work of art by the Indian state that puts
the working class in a uniform, arms him with a deadly weapon and makes him
kill and maim other poor working class people. In terms of their material
conditions, these soldiers have more in common with the people they’re
killing than the political fat cats and money bags whose murderous bidding
they follow.

*Cricket on uneven ground* – After meeting the CRPF squad I roamed around
some more and soon spotted a cricket match ensuing on the banks of a stream
on the outskirts of Gossaigaon. The “ground”, if that is what it can be
called, was basically a patch of bumpy grass mounds with scattered rocks and
a few cows grazing on the side. Nevertheless the game was being played with
gusto. Due to the shutdown, all the kids and youth had no school or work to
go to, so it looked like cricket was going to be the day’s entertainment.

What struck me was the fielding skill of the players. On such a horrendous
surface, they were judging irregular bounce and speeds with amazing
alacrity. It further baffles me to think of the rather appalling fielding
standards of the Indian national cricket team. Now the team is probably the
second-best in the world after Australia, but is seriously hampered when it
comes to the fielding department. I wondered how it was that in a country
where the foundation of young cricketers was built on such uneven, rocky
surfaces (even on full fledged cricket fields in the big cities) could there
be such an appalling paucity of high-quality fielders in the national team.

*On a lighter side* – I think I will end this dispatch with a couple of
interesting hoardings and posters I saw. I have always felt that my own
place of origin in India and the entire South Asian region is a land and
people of delicious insanity, and this just further proves my point.

At 3 establishments near the Paltan Bazaar bus stop in Guwahati I saw the
following next to each other:

“Only Lodging”

“Only Fooding”

“Lodging and Fooding available”

At the tea shop in Gossaigaon, I saw this poster advertising for spoken
English classes. I’m reproducing verbatim:

“Good News! Are you week in English? Want to develope your speaking power?
Are you 10+? No Problem! Join SPOKEN ENGLISH. Learn to speak English in the
easiest way and develope your personality. Admission stars from: 25th Jan
2008″

And finally, trust our national icon, Bollywood to come up with a lovely
truism of a caption for one of it’s films starring huge stars like Saif Ali
Khan and Bipasha Basu. The films name is Race:

RACE

Two Brothers…One will Play to Win…One will Play to Defeat

*********************************************************************************************************************************************

*Two Unions for Two Classes of workers:*

*Trade Union struggles at the Guwahati Refinery*

In an era where workers across the world have been facing an unprecedented
assault at the hands of capital, there is some merit in examining the
labourstruggles at the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) Refinery in
Guwahati, the
largest city in the state of Assam and the entire Northeastern region of
India.

Assam and indeed the rest of Northeast India, because of numerous movements
with nationalist and sub-nationalist aspirations, continue to have much of
its small town and rural population face the brunt of a heavily armed,
hegemonic Indian state. One cannot travel to a single sub-district or
district without seeing even the lowest ranking police constable carrying a
rather deadly INSAS assault rifle (compared to other parts of India where he
might, with luck, carry a baton to imperiously whack a poor pickpocket’s
rear end). And while workers in an urban centre like Guwahati might face
marginally less violence at the hands of armed security forces, they face
the assault of resource usurpation, low development priorities and the
overall oppressive treatment meted out to the region by the central
Government of India. This obviously results in harsher material conditions
for the working poor, even in the formal, more organised sectors.

IOC is a public sector undertaking meant for refining the oil that’s been
discovered and extracted by other undertakings such as Oil India and ONGC.
Workers here would naturally fall under the highly organised sector. At a
larger level, oil represents one of the key resources that fall under the
afore mentioned issue of resource usurpation that the region faces at the
hands of the Indian state, but this article will focus more on the labour
struggles at the plant-level.

The labour stratification here presents an interesting, albeit hardly
uncommon, picture of workers division. As is the case with the majority of
the plants across India cutting across industrial sectors and public-private
lines, workers are divided into permanent employees and non-permanent
workers, who are further divided into contract workers and daily-wage
labourers. Naturally the demands for each group hardly overlap and might
sometimes even clash. In addition there are social and cultural divisions
that result from the creation of a labour aristocracy side by side with a
working poor, all in one plant. Needless to say that this is hardly fertile
ground for fostering strong workers unity and thereby launching union
struggles that can successfully press for rights and demands.

Furthermore in the IOC Refinery (again as is the case in most other
industries) there are two unions for the two classes of workers. It is
important, from the standpoint of understanding labour rights, to examine
how trade unions handle such complex and difficult situations thrust upon
them by capital…whether with ingenuity and honesty, or just mere
capitulation to management and the forces of capital. The IOC Refinery
unions offer one such case in point

At the refinery, there is the Refinery Workers Union (RWU), for permanent
workers, who for the most part consist of English-educated IOC staff members
below the rank of officers or managers. They seem to be very much part of
India’s growing and increasingly prosperous middle class, conceivably with
generational aspirations to move up the socioeconomic ladder, and quite
possibly possessing every opportunity to do so. Indeed, one of the union
members I spoke with, upon knowing that I was from Bangalore, proceeded to
ask me numerous questions about South India, as he and his family were
planning an extended holiday touring the region. The conversation covered
hotels, beaches and tourist hotspots, hardly things that India’s labouring
masses get a chance to even dream about. The union office itself is an
impressive two-floor building, with a drama hall, couple of offices,
kitchen, a children’s park outside, some sports facilities, and a guest room
where they were kind enough to allow me to spend a couple of nights in.

Barely hundred metres away is the dusty, one-room office of the United
Workmen’s Union (UWU), which is the union for all contract workers and
daily-wage labourers. Affiliated to the leftist All India Central Council of
Trade Unions (AICCTU), its membership includes workers who can barely make
ends meet, if at all, on paltry wages with insecure work in often hazardous
conditions. The union has seen multiple struggles on numerous issues
including fighting for higher wages, timely payment, compensation for
victims of injury or death, better health benefits and numerous others. For
entertainment, there is a single carom board usually played on a by-turn
basis by large numbers of members, who crowd around it in the evenings after
work.

Thus the socioeconomic differences between the two classes of workers, and
indeed the infrastructure levels of the two unions are stark and plainly
visible. However an interesting feature is the manner in which the unions
themselves have dealt with the situation of workers division.

Talking to members and leaders alike from both unions, there was the common
feeling that unity among the two unions and mutual support for each others
struggles was important. Instances were even mentioned of one union joining
in the struggles of the other, despite not having any vested demands. Strong
communication links also seemed to be maintained between the two. One of the
crucial reasons for this mutual support seems to be the fact that there is
an overlap of leadership, and even the constitutions of both don’t bar
cross-membership. While the UWU for the contract/daily-wage workers is
affiliated to the AICCTU, the RWU has AICCTU leaders in central roles,
despite not officially affiliating. In speaking with both unions, one heard
fairly honest and forthright descriptions of successes and, more
importantly, failures. It would seem obvious that unions representing
workers from the same plant should naturally support each other, but this is
often hardly the case, with multiple plant-level unions fighting with each
other to gain the support of the workers, thereby severely reducing the
militancy of the working class movement. In addition, there are many sectors
and plants where unions for contract and daily-wage workers barely even
exist. Significant examples of this can be found in the numerous automobile
industry plants in Gurgaon (Haryana), where for the most part only permanent
workers have any form of representation or space for collective bargaining,
while the contract and daily-wage workers are left to languish without any
real association.

Biren Kalita and Janik Barman, both AICCTU leaders and central guiding
forces of the two unions at the IOC Refinery spoke candidly about the
existing contradictions among the workforce and the unions representing
them. Barman said that the main focus was directed more towards the rights
and demands of the contract and daily-wage workers as their situation was
far more precarious and their needs greater, but still required some time
also to be directed towards the permanent workers union as there was the
need to build workers solidarity and two-way support. He further mentioned
that not enough had been done by them with respect to daily-wage workers in
the UWU and women workers in both unions, specifying that patriarchy in the
membership of both unions was a huge hindrance in this.

Keshav Goswami, Secretary of the UWU, spoke at length about past struggles
to bring contract and daily-wage workers onto a unified platform. He
mentioned that in previous years there were as many as nine different unions
for all the contract and daily-wage workers, with the AICCTU-affiliate being
the biggest. This caused serious dilution in negotiations and overall
collective bargaining measures with management. After much perseverance,
three to four of the more progressive unions formed a collective platform
which soon resulted in all the workers coming under it, followed by a
democratic process to decide the federation that the workers wished to
affiliate with. Goswami also mentioned the mutual support among the two
unions, and spoke about future plans in the struggle for workers rights
including, canteen facilities, Provident Fund for contract/daily-wage
workers, skill development and better infrastructure for the union. He
mentioned the need to promote women’s leadership as well as conduct
workshops on workers rights and contract labour law.

While overall, the mutual support between the two unions is heartening to
see, and certainly a creative way to thwart capital’s attempt at workers
division, there are many visible problems as well. For instance, much of
this unity seems to be maintained by the common AICCTU leadership,
progressive leftist leaders like Kalita and Barman, and it remains to be
seen how it will continue should it pass on to future hands through
elections or any fissure in either of the unions.

Another extremely bad indicator seems to be the abominable lack of women in
leadership positions. While research was being done for this write-up, one
didn’t come across a single female leader, office-bearer, committee-member
or even just a member in either union that I could speak to. Women seem to
form around 20-25% of the contract/daily-wage workers (depending on the
season), and I was told that there were some women members in the UWU
committee, but I didn’t see any in all the visits I made to the office. The
RWU has a women’s organisation that primarily comprises of the wives of
permanent staff members, and one does see them occasionally in the RWU
office. However this seems to be primarily a socio-cultural group and not a
political one with a clear goal of combating patriarchy within the unions.
The expressed need to combat patriarchy by some of the leaders does not seem
to have percolated down to the membership based on conversations with
members and workers.

Furthermore, one could notice that the progressive thinking imaginably
coming from a leftist federation like the AICCTU, had not had as much of a
political effect on the members as I’m sure the AICCTU themselves would like
to see happen. Most of the members I spoke with were avowed supporters of
the Asom Gana Parishad, a party which is hardly a bastion for progressive
thinking. Some were also quite open in their dislike for Bangladeshi Muslims
and Biharis whom they felt were taking over Assam through their continued
migration, mostly as poor labourers, into the state.

No doubt combating patriarchy, politicisation of the membership and
maintaining unity are problems that numerous unions across India face. And
while some of these problems might not be as directly connected to the
day-to-day travails of traditional unionism that focuses on acquiring higher
wages, better benefits, safer work environments, and good health care, they
still merit serious examination as they point directly to the manner in
which unions can play a significant role in positive societal (and
political) change. However, one does get the feeling that the overall
direction that the IOC Refinery unions in Guwahati are heading in is
positive and, hopefully, slowly inching towards building a genuinely
progressive workers movement.

Dear All,

Please find below my second dispatch from Northeast India. I have only
written about two issues that stood out in my mine. Below that is an article
on Adivasi Struggles in Assam. Both pieces should take about 10 minutes each
to read. If you would like the word documents, do email me and I can send
them to you.

Also in case you get a chance, do check out the link below. The first
article I sent out on 22/3/08 regarding Union Struggles at the Guwahati
Refinery has been published in a slightly revised manner by India Together.
Please do peruse through the journal as it’s a fine publication to read
development articles on numerous issues of a progressive nature in India.

http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/mar/eco-iocunions.htm

Finally, based on the suggestions of quite a few friends, I’ve started a
small blog (shown below). This would probably be a little more interesting
as I hope to add pictures to the posts. It’s just a personal, rather badly
maintained, space that I’m sharing with friends. Do check it out, and if you
would like to contribute anything, that would be great.

Much peace and regards,

Sriram

–
Sriram Ananthanarayanan

http://northeastindiadiary.blogspot.com/

***Humanity is all***

*Northeast India Diary 2 (23/3/08 – 3/4/08)*

**

*Jhum and the markets of Tuenzang in Nagaland:*  I’m going to continue to
write a little bit about hardened working class women and so it would be a
travesty to not mention the hard labour of women in Nagaland.

I had the opportunity to join a couple of friends on a project they were
conducting on Art and Conflict, which gave me the chance to learn a little
more about work and livelihood in Nagaland. Driving along the undulating
hill roads of the region, my eyes were greeted with what can only be
described as a riot of green starting with the tea gardens in Upper Assam
that border Nagaland to a verdant explosion once we entered the tribal
state. Now, my roots are in Kerala, which I chauvinistically believed to be
the greenest region on the planet but I’m now forced to beat a timid retreat
from that position, particularly as I was told that it was one of the driest
times of the year! However the lush and dense foliage covering the steep
hills pose a particular problem with respect to cultivation for the local
population…a problem overcome only by dint of hard labour. And that is where
once again, I came to witness the awesome strength of the local population,
particularly women.

The cultivation practised in Nagaland and in many other parts of Northeast
India is called *jhum* and is essentially cultivation along hill slopes.
Anyone who has ever done some real hiking would confirm that trekking up a
steep hill slope, even for fairly fit individuals, is hard work. Now imagine
chopping firewood along a tract of hill-land, clearing that tract through
controlled fires for cultivation, cultivating on the land as per a tight
seasonal schedule, and then carrying large bundles of firewood (uphill) back
to your village in the evening for cooking fire. Add to this, household
chores, preparation of meals in the morning and evening, tending to
livestock as well as rearing children and you’ve pretty much got a vague
picture of the sheer volume of hard labour that rural women here (and all
over the world for that matter) are immersed in. I’m not going to fall for
the liberal middle-class trap of romanticising the idyllic village life
while hardly being able to function without a computer, cell phone and a
grocery store round the corner. What I saw with the women in Nagaland was
hard work, the hardest there is, and it required not just strength of
character but actual physical strength as well (both abominably lacking
among upper-class city folk).

I was also told by locals and friends familiar with the area that *jhum *is
usually a cooperative system of production with a village or many villages
cultivating one tract of land and then sharing the produce at the end of the
harvest. The practice of *jhum* is however sadly affected in certain parts
of the region due to the presence of the Indian army and the resulting
conflict, which causes disruption in the cultivation cycle resulting in
harsh insecurities for people depending on the produce to feed themselves.

Cut to the main market in Tuenzang town, and one can see that out here
almost every element of public commerce has women pretty much running the
show. About 90% of the vendors were women, many clad in jeans and t-shirts,
and wearing makeup. They were selling anything from vegetables and tubers to
snails and frogs. To those of you whose quasi-brahminical sensibilities are
a little pricked, I would like to add that in many European and Asian
countries snails and frogs are delicacies in some high flung restaurants
(they just have some hoity-toity name for it that make it sound all exotic
when some upper-class twit eats them with a small silver fork).

Mothers, daughters, relatives, and friends ran small stands together, many
with babies on their laps. Older children would sometimes take the young
infants on their backs and care for them while the women worked at the
stands. Unloading boxes, setting up the stands, arguing with shoppers on
prices…all women, all the time, at the Tuenzang market.

I hope and pray that the strength and public presence of women in this
region continues to grow and show others how, even poor societies
functioning under tremendous pressures from outside forces can function with
remarkably lesser patriarchy and macho male oppression.

*Anti-immigrant sentiments against those who toil:* Thus far I have been
quite struck by many aspects of the region…it’s raw beauty outside the
cities, extremely hardworking people in the face of numerous obstacles,
strength of women and amazing diversity. However I feel compelled to write a
little bit about some very stark anti-immigrant, xenophobic sentiments
(especially in Assam) that I am continually coming to face to face with,
which is starting to feel a little disturbing in a place I’m fast falling
head over heels in love with.

Right at the beginning of my travels here, on the train to Guwahati from
Bangalore, I chatted with an obviously middle-class woman (we spoke in
English), who was returning to Assam after working for a couple of years in
Bangalore. As the conversation started veering towards the issues that the
people face, she seemed to feel that all the problems were singularly
because of Bangladehsi Muslims, whom she felt were taking over the state
with their continued migration, as well as the Biharis, whom she felt were
corrupting the purity of Assamese culture.

I dismissed it as a one-off incident incident, but again and
again, speaking with workers at the Guwahati Oil Refinery, a very
intelligent, proud Assamese intellectual as well as shop keepers and traders
in Uzaan Bazaar, the anti-immigrant (read anti Bihari and Bangladeshi)
sentiment, at times virulent, hit me hard. Of course none of the people
mentioned had any problems at all with me, being an outsider myself, rather
they were extremely friendly and helpful to my English-speaking Bangalorean
self. My head rang out “CLASS”

Let me elaborate…two extremely brutal incidents (among many) came to my
mind regarding this. One happened very recently, when about 60-70 Bihari
migrant labourers were gunned down. The other occured in 1983, and is now
known and as the infamous Nelli massacre when hundreds of Bangladeshis were
killed in a riot. Now I’m not going to speculate who perpetrated these
crimes, as I’ve been getting different accounts from different people, and I
would rather not cast asperions on particular political groups. But what is
clear is that this is a particularly bloody manifestation of the xenophobic
sentiments in Assam, that I can now only assume to be a fairly mainstream
one.

I earlier mentioned the class factor…because in both incidents, it was
poor, working-class people who were killed. The softest targets. They
weren’t the occupationary forces, they weren’t the armed police state…they
were toiling workers.

An Assamese friend told me that if the Bangladeshis were to leave, then the
entire vegetable supply and a good amount of the grain supply to Guwahati
would come to a halt as they are the ones who cultivate on the
*chars*(little island-like tracts of land along the Brahmputra river).
In all the
building and road construction sites that I have had a chance to speak to
workers, a huge chunk of the contract/daily-wage labourers come from Bihar
often working for private companies based in Guwahati.

These are the vegetables and grains eaten by the very people who feel that
Bangladeshis are taking over the country, the roads and buildings used by
the same people who say that these uncivilised Biharis should be thrown out.

The paradigm, lacking in any rationalism or political sensibilities, is
astonishingly similar to the one in the USA with strong streams
of xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments, particularly against migrant
Mexicans and other Latin Americans who work in all the crappiest jobs for
even crappier wages building the roads, manning the stores, repairing the
cars and pruning the gardens used by well-off white folk.

It is sad that in a region like Assam, which boasts of such a proud and
diverse histroy of peoples struggle, one finds a mainstream sentiment akin
to what is found in an imperialist rogue state.

Of course this sentiment is not even minutely unique to Assam. As recently
as a couple of months back, a few North Indians were attacked by goons of
the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena. Even a few days back, in my own neck of the
woods, the longstanding conflict between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over
Cauvery Water threatened to flare up again. All over India, there is
xenophobia and often the degeneration of positive identity-based movements
into hatred for the other.

The entire region of Northeast India, which has been facing the brute end of
the armed Indian state, has a host of rather wonderful identity-based
sentiments and movements for preserving rich cultures and histories against
the onslaught of hegemony. It’s sad to see a few of them go down the route
of sectarianism and xenophobia, but one is hopeful that this is not a trend
that will engulf the region.

*
******************************

**************************************************************************************************
*

*Adivasis in Assam: from the tea gardens to the struggle for ST status*

Across India, Adivasis (also known as indigenous peoples or “first peoples”)
were and continue to be primarily agriculturists and that too subsistence
cultivators who live off the land in tightly knit villages and communities,
with a history, fraught with oppression, that can be traced back many
centuries. In Assam the history of the Adivasis really starts from the 1850s
onwards and is directly connected to the highly exploitive tea industry.
It’s a tragic history with longstanding implications of acute relevance till
date. This article briefly examines that history, the longstanding
disenfranchisement of the Adivasis in Assam and their struggle to gain
Scheduled Tribe (ST) status in the state while highlighting its limitations.

*The bloody brew:* The British “discovered” tea in the early 1820s when the
native tea leaf in Assam, long brewed by the Singpho tribe, was presented to
a certain military man by the name of Bruce. The British East India Company
(maybe realising the possibility of regaining monopoly from China in tea
production) took over Assam in 1826 from the Ahom kings through the Yandaboo
Treaty. Soon in 1837, the first tea garden was established at Chabua in
Dibrugarh District of Upper Assam, and in 1840 the Assam Tea Company started
the production of tea on a commercial basis. The tea industry started
expanding rapidly from the 1850s onwards. Vast tracts of land needed were
cleared for the establishing of new tea plantations, and soon by the turn of
the century, Assam became the leading tea producing region in the world.

Of course, the rapid expansion of the industry and its highly
labour-intensive nature meant that a large source of labourers were
required. The locals generally preferred cultivation and, if at all, would
work in the tea gardens out of temporary necessity. Furthermore the locals
had a rather self-sufficient pre-capitalist economy and even considered tea
garden work as derogatory.

Thus, there was no landless labour class in the region to exploit. The
British tried abolishing certain local agricultural means of production and
imposed heavy taxes on the subsistence farming of local peasants, but it was
ultimately felt that uprooted labour would be far easier to control and
exploit. This is where the import of labour began in the 1840s primarily
from the Adivasi regions of Central and Eastern India. The process was of
course extremely violent and hazardous, obvious from the fact that the first
batch of labourers in 1841, from the Chotanagpur area, all died en-route due
to malnutrition and illness. Recruitment was carried on through highly
abusive contractual networks. Numerous episodes of fraud, forcible
recruitment, kidnapping, and torture have been recorded as frequently
occurring during the recruitment process.  There is even the rumour that the
British orchestrated a famine in the Chotanagpur Santhal Paragana areas by
stopping food supplies from reaching there so that the Adivasis would
presumably jump at the opportunity to work in the tea gardens of Assam.

All the Adivasis in Assam trace their immediate history through this
torturous route of indentured, immigrant labour brought in to work in the
tea gardens. The socioeconomic and political disenfranchisement that they
faced then continues in large part today.

*Continued disenfranchisement:* In Assam, the Adivasis today can broadly be
divided into two communities, the tea garden workers and those who came out
of the tea gardens at the end of their contracts and settled in and around
the area after procuring a little land mostly through government schemes.

The condition of the tea garden workers continues to be abysmal. While
Adivasis form the vast majority of the workers, there are also small
percentages of other tribal communities, as well as Nepalis, Bengalis,
Oriyas and so on. During the initial decades from the 1850s till the 1920s
under the British, the working conditions were akin to slave labour, with
flogging, rape, torture and even the throwing of dead workers in rivers.
While certainly not comparable to earlier times, the working conditions
today are still far from being the well-regulated environment that functions
according to the Plantation Labour Act brought out in 1951 to protect the
interests of workers in plantations. Even a cursory observation of the
plantations today brings to light numerous violations of the Act, including
inadequate or completely non-existent provisions for drinking water,
crèches, schools, proper health facilities, sanitation for women workers
(who form the majority of tea industry labour) and shelter. In addition one
notices the expanded usage of child labour. Upon further investigation and
discussions with workers, one learns that wages paid are much lower than
prescribed minimum wages, no over-time payment is made, and occasional
physical abuse occurs.

The conditions of the Adivasis who came out of the tea plantations and
settled as cultivators around the gardens, is certainly better but not by
much. Those who have land tend to be better off and more self-sufficient,
while the those possessing no or uncultivable land often end up as informal
labour in nearby towns and cities. Education levels, health indicators and
poverty levels for Adivasis are among the worst among all communities in
Assam. Many Adivasi families find it difficult to get their children into
educational institutions and later on in finding proper employment.
Furthermore, while Adivasis, both tea garden and ex-tea garden communities
form nearly 20% of the population, their representation in the legislative
assembly is markedly lesser.

Some of the more prominent Adivasi organisations like the All Adivasi
Students Association of Assam (AASAA) as well as groups active with tea
garden workers like the Assam Tea Tribes Students Association (ATTSA) point
to a particular policy feature that is historically missing here in Assam,
which is the granting of Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the Adivasis. The
granting of this status is something these groups feel would go great
lengths in ameliorating the historically oppressed condition of the Adivasis
in Assam, and it is often the central, if not only, point of many of their
campaigns.

*ST Status and its limited scope:* The struggle for ST status by the
Adivasis in Assam warrants an examination as it is the only state in India
to deny them this basic right by taking away their tribal status after
Independence and instead classifying them as OBC (Other Backward Classes).

With Adivasis having borne enormous historical oppression and exploitation,
the Government of India made special safeguards to protect them from
exploitation and ensure social justice since the inception of Planning in
1951. This policy of “protective discrimination” for oppressed communities
includes reservation of posts in public services, guaranteed political
representation, and seats in educational institutions. And while far from
perfect, this policy has certainly seen positive signs over the decades for
a lot of communities like, for example, the Dalits (falling under Schedule
Caste status) whose education levels, human development indices and levels
of franchise have steadily risen across the country, and particularly in
states like Tamil Nadu, which has historically been far ahead of most other
states in India when it comes to safeguarding the interests of oppressed
communities through a consistent policy of protective policy-making.

For Adivasis too, ST status in many other states of India has given them
greater political representation and resulted in increasing presence in
educational institutions and government jobs. This has resulted in some
positives for the community with some sections slowly climbing up the
socioeconomic ladder. However, despite this improvement, human development
indicators still show Adivasis languishing at the bottom among all
communities in India. It can be safely argued that, while hardly the only
solution, protection through ST status for Adivasis needs to necessarily
continue.

It is under this paradigm that the struggle for ST status by the Adivasis in
Assam gains particular legitimacy. This struggle has faced a brick wall in
the form of either the Assam government or opposition from other
identity-based movements. Among the arguments against the granting of this
status to Adivasis include pointing to the historic migration of the
Adivasis into the state thereby arguing that they’re not tribals of the
region per say. However this is a rather flawed argument to make as every
community in India has a migratory history behind them, whether it’s the
various Dravidian communities in South India, the numerous tribes in
Northeast India, or any other community. Furthermore the migration was as
indentured labour, of a very abusive and forced nature, and the Adivasis
continue to carry the burden of their historical disenfranchisement even in
Assam. Thus to deny the community what has been deemed as a fundamental
right by the Indian Constitution is indeed a continuation of that historical
injustice.

It must be strenuously added however that ST status alone, while important,
will not be some kind of quick-fix panacea to cure all ills. This is evident
in other parts of India, where political power via reservation often ends up
in the hands of the political elite of that section of society, groups like
AASAA, who themselves sometimes form an oppressive ruling class within the
community. There are numerous other issues that the Adivasis face such as
lack of economic franchise, serious labour exploitation and social problems
such as alcoholism that will require strenuous social movements to tackle.

Without serious examination of the vast gamut of issues that form the
oppressive existence that the Adivasis have to contend with, mere political
representation will not wish them away. A worrying feature of a group like
AASAA is the single-point nature of their campaigns, without vigorously
examining deeper issues such as the conditions of Adivasi workers and women,
as well as struggling against internal exploitation. A far clearer analysis
of labour and gender by the numerous Adivasi organisations, looking beyond
just identity, and the building of movements based on that analysis would
serve the community tremendously. The Adivasis have a long history of
valiant struggle behind them, with one of the first rebellions against the
British Empire being the Santhal Rebellion of 1855 as well as a history of
egalitarian living. This legacy of struggle and egalitarianism can certainly
be a guiding force in taking on the oppression that the Adivasis face today
in a truly fruitful manner.

Dear All,

Please find below my third dispatch and an article below that examining
struggles of tea garden workers in Assam. The first should take about 10
minutes to read and the second around 15.

Much peace and regards,

Sriram

*Dispatch 3 from Northeast India (14/4/08)*

*Identity and hegemony:* Identity, with all of its philosophical and
political complexities, is something that I have come face to face with
numerous times in the short while I’ve been here. Whether it be the
awe-inspiring struggles of oppressed identities in resisting both military
and cultural hegemony or its degeneration into sectarianism and xenophobia,
one is made to constantly think about where one is from, and its historical
placing. Adivasi, Boro, Assamese, Naga, Khasi, Bangladeshi Muslim, Bengali,
Bihari…often all other identities based on class, gender etc get subsumed
under broad-based cultural-nationalist or sub-nationalist ones. In the
Northeast, multiple identity-based struggles, positive or negative, and the
acute nature of these struggles can more often than not be directly seen as
a result of a very heavily armed occupationary presence.

Even sectarian battles, not obviously against the Indian state, have strong
elements of Indian hegemony. In Gossaigaon, I found out that the Indian
government supported, either covertly or openly, both the Bodo Liberation
Tigers and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland at different times,
which not only resulted in internecine battles between the two groups, but
also the massacre of Adivasis and Muslims at different times by both Bodo
groups. A friend who was doing field work in Manipur investigating clashes
between different armed insurgencies such as Kuki and Naga groups found that
the Indian government had funded and supported numerous of these groups at
different times, playing them upon each other so as to dilute any resistance
to the Indian state or even suppress any popular, democratic assertions. She
also added that since the region she was examining bordered Burma, there was
added cooperation between the Burmese and Indian militaries in planning
operations together.

And this takes on other more sinister proportions. Another friend made an
interesting point that while usually soldiers from the Indian heartland in
the North and Central regions are used to suppress identity-based movements
in the Northeast, soldiers from the Northeast are used to suppress the armed
radical-left Naxalite movement in Central India, which has its base among
the tribal communities of that region. Again further proving the designs of
the Indian state that pits poor working class people with similar material
conditions against each other.

*Mongrel South Indian from Bangalore:* I must say that, with all this talk
on identity, I am of course finding previously dormant elements of my own.
Now I have to strenuously say that it has been nothing but pleasant for me.
The moment I say I’m from South India and live in Bangalore, I am greeted
with the utmost affection. Multiple friends have told me about the great
love that folks here in the Northeast have for South India and South
Indians. Thus far, they have been proved absolutely right. Whether it’s
workers, intellectuals, peers, shopkeepers, or bus passengers, I have faced
nothing but wide smiles and friendliness when I tell them about my roots in
Kerala/Tamil Nadu and particularly when I tell them of the city I grew up
in. Bangalore seems to have really built up it’s brand value (for lack of a
better phrase) across the region. Everyone tells me about a sister, cousin,
uncle or grandchild working in Bangalore as a doctor, call-centre employee
or a waiter in one of Bangalore’s umpteen “Chinese” restaurants (come on, we
all know Indian masalas are used there…which only makes the food that much
more enjoyable). South India and South Indians seem to be viewed with a lot
of affection, and I think this has to do also with the large number of
people from the Northeast region who have gone their for work and many who
have ended up settling down there.

One of the most interesting aspects of this treatment I have received is
that, even among those opposing the Indian state, I have not been viewed as
necessarily a denizen of the occupying state. I am not too sure why, because
the upper-caste Hindu community I was born into is right at the top of the
beneficiaries of any expansionist designs or resource-usurpation on the part
of the Indian state. I think partly this might do with viewing the hegemony
here as essentially one emanating out of the power-corridors in Delhi and
thus North India rather than Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore or even Mumbai
and Calcutta. It seems that the cultural character of the hegemony is
obviously viewed as a Hindi one, which almost completely separates it from
any South Indian connection, the numerous regions of which itself would have
strong anti-Hindi streaks.

*Shillong, a cursory look:* Finally managed a very short trip to the
very-famous city of Shillong in Meghalaya state. The trip itself was rather
trying. 12 adults and 2 children were squeezed into a Sumo taxi, which is
pretty much the only way to get to Shillong from Guwahati (the famous Indian
rail-connectivity is missing in most of the Northeast barring Assam). There
was probably a little irritation directed at slightly larger people like
myself, and possibly quite understandably at that. After all we were all
paying the same, yet I was occupying much more space then some of my smaller
co-passengers. Offers to buy tea at the rest stop and small-talk of course
cleared the air (and I always had Bangalore to fall back on as an
ice-breaker!). But the cramped traveling was not the problem, I had traveled
in much more tightly squeezed situations and through  distinctly less
beautiful scenery. The biggest problem was that the trucks along the road
from Guwahati to Shillong and back are among the most polluting,
black-smoke-spewing monstrosities this side of the continent. And we had to
travel with the windows down lest we suffocate from lack of air. Also the
windows had to be down because invariably somebody pukes during the drive
through curving, hill roads (as did indeed happen with one of the tykes in
our taxi). So the lowered windows and polluting trucks essentially resulted
in the entire vehicle being filled with smoke each time we overtook a truck
or one passed us, which happened approximately 50 times. It was 14 coughing
souls who finally emerged out of the vehicle at our final port of call.

Shillong itself is beautiful. On first sight it reminded me of Bangalore
many years back, before the city went mad with capitalism and started adding
200 vehicles a day onto its roads. Old Bangalore on sloping hills that is.
Shillong is also, funnily enough, the first place I’ve gone to where I heard
a lot of Hindi being spoken, probably because of the high influx of
tourists. The leads I had to do a couple of articles on the exploitative
mining industry didn’t pan out, and I had to postpone it to another trip in
May, so I decided to explore the place anyway.

Police Bazaar, which from what I hear is the heart of the city, is like any
other mid-sized or big city commercial centre in India with large
ad-hoardings, restaurants, bars, shops, crowds milling about and of course
the street market. There is also an obviously wannabe-hip culture among the
city’s youth, with many sporting gelled-up hairdos, earrings, and t-shirts
with old heavy metal bands on the front. The love for heavy-metal and
hard-rock music is quite obvious here. Even garages and small shops on the
way to as well as in Shillong had Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and PInk Floyd
emanating from them. The interesting aspect is that for all its commercial
activity, the place pretty much closes down by around 9/9.30pm, which is
when things are just about starting to heat up in places like Mumbai!

It was quite sad that I had to cut my trip short, because Meghalaya itself
has so much to be seen and examined, especially around mining. Uranium
mining by the Public Sector Undertaking UCIL is being planned in the state
on a fairly large scale, part of India’s ambitious nuclear plans, and
supposedly Meghalaya has the largest deposit of uranium in India. The
effects on the local villagers can only be imagined. Limestone and coal are
some other continuing mining initiatives, mostly by private companies
protected by the Indian state as well as some public sector companies. The
state and indeed the entire Northeast is being opened up to capital with
quite a vengeance, and it remains to be seen how resistance is mounted
against it.

******************************

*************************************************************************************************************************

*Struggles of tea garden workers in Assam*

Sipped with lime and honey in expensive china by manor dwellers and savoured
in tiny chipped glasses with milk and sugar by commuters in Indian railway
stations, Assam tea is a household name for most lovers of the brew. However
the story behind the cultivation, plucking and processing of tea leaves in
the plantations is one of exploitation and untold hardships for the toiling
workers who are the singular reason that this industry is one of the pillars
of the Assam economy, and in making the entire Northeast Indian region the
largest tea-growing region in the world. Assam alone produces more than 50%
of India’s total tea, and the Assam economy is deeply reliant on tea-exports
of around 150,000 tonnes yearly, both within India and internationally,
fetching over Rs. 400 crores in foreign exchange every year and resulting in
an industry turnover of over Rs. 3000 crore per annum.

Across the many plantations in Assam, most of which are situated in the
upper parts of the state, the condition of the tea garden workers is nothing
short of abysmal. Adivasis brought in as indentured slave-labour from
Central India by the British form the vast majority of the workers, with the
rest consisting of other local tribal communities, as well as Nepalis,
Bengalis, Oriyas and so on. During the initial decades from the 1850s till
the 1920s under the British, the working conditions were akin to harsh
slavery, with flogging, rape, torture and even the throwing of dead workers
in rivers. While certainly not comparable to earlier times, the working
conditions today are still far from being the well-regulated environment
that functions according to the Plantation Labour Act brought out in 1951 to
protect the interests of workers in plantations, who form the single largest
organised sector workforce in Assam and the entire Northeast region
numbering anywhere between 8 to 10 lakhs depending on the season.

The North Eastern Social Research Centre based in Guwahati conducted a
comprehensive study in 2004 across 172 tea gardens in Assam along with
numerous interviews and group discussions with workers and families. The
study brought to light numerous violations of the Act, including inadequate
or completely non-existent provisions for drinking water, crèches, schools,
proper health facilities, sanitation for women workers and shelter. Even a
cursory observation of the plantations today confirms these findings. Upon
further investigation and discussions with workers, one learns that wages
paid are much lower than prescribed minimum wage rates, no over-time payment
is made, and occasional physical abuse occurs.

Babloo, Signus and Ranjit (last names withheld upon request), all workers in
Mornia Tea Estate in Lower Assam, complained that they had to drink
bitter-tasting, hard water from pre-existing wells, when in fact they’re
supposed to receive drinking water either through taps or tankers from a
public water source. Late wage payments were another huge problem, with some
workers receiving their wages as late as 3 to 4 months after the due date.
Garden workers received around Rs. 1400 per month on paper, but portions
were cut from that for shelter repair (which hadn’t been conducted in over
10 years), canteen facilities (non-existent), and educational facilities
(again non-existent). This translated to a real wage of about Rs. 45 per
day, far lesser than the prescribed daily minimum wage of around Rs. 54.
They further said that Provident Fund had been cut on a monthly basis from
their salaries, yet since 2000 no retired worker had received gratuity from
PF. When asked about this, management simply shifted the blame to their
predecessors. The school was in a decrepit condition and the only education
the children received, when they weren’t working, was from the local church.

Further up north in Nagaon, this author was privileged to attend a few
wide-ranging discussions with workers in various tea gardens in the area
(whose identities have been protected due to their worker-mobilising
activities) as well as with Arup Mahanto, a rural workers movement leader.
All the workers said that the little benefits they did receive in earlier
times were rapidly getting eroded over the years. This included rations,
free medicines at the hospital in Kandoli Tea Estate (which has now been
downgraded to a dispensary), money for firewood at Sagubhai Gardens and many
others, all of which have disappeared with further and further deregulation
measures in favour of capital in the post-liberalisation era. Mahanto
further pointed to the nexus between management, police and corrupt union
leaders as one of the crucial reasons for the deteriorating situation.
Indeed, 4 of the 5 workers interviewed had been suspended and dismissed due
to their attempts at mobilising workers, and all 4 now try to eke out
livelihoods by working in the even more exploitative stone-quarry industry
or selling firewood, while trying to fight a legal battle to get reinstated.

Women, who are the backbone of the tea industry and the large majority of
the workforce, face even harsher working conditions. In all the tea estates
visited, one couldn’t spot a single crèche for infants and toddlers.
Sanitation facilities were either inadequate or completely non-existent. And
while nothing explicitly was mentioned, there have been many instances of
verbal, physical and even sexual abuse. Women are in fact preferred as
labour because most managers feel that they are particularly suited for
garden work and easier to exploit. Thus, while women labourers for the most
part get the same as their male counterparts, not a single woman can be
spotted in the plantation factories where the wages for workers are
marginally higher than their garden counterparts.

It must also be added that tea garden workers are caught between the
proverbial rock and hard place, and forced to accept increasing labour
exploitation due to harsh material conditions and lack of choice. Some who
have access to cultivable land tend to be better off and more
self-sufficient, at times working in the gardens only for short durations of
time out of temporary necessity. Those possessing no or uncultivable land,
and who leave the gardens, often end up as informal labour in nearby towns
and cities. Education levels, health indicators and poverty levels for the
workers are among the lowest in Assam. Many families find it difficult to
get their children into educational institutions and later on in finding
proper employment. Thus the oppressive environment of the tea garden is
often the only recourse for many of these families.

An examination of the reasons for this harsh predicament of tea garden
labourers is particularly warranted. Discussions with progressive labour
activists, tea garden workers and even upstanding labour department
officials reveal three crucial factors contributing to this situation.

One is the present neoliberal environment grossly favouring capital and
business. It is amply evident that post-liberalisation, labour has taken a
real beating with the state often kowtowing to capital’s demands for further
deregulation. Now, while most of the legislation protecting labour is still
intact, the present neoliberal environment has resulted in the state
wantonly neglecting the various labour protection acts and even coming up
with schemes like Special Economic Zones to bypass labour regulation as a
result of genuflecting to private capital. Even the various levels of the
judiciary, where prior to liberalisation would see more pro-labour verdicts,
have become far more pro-business.

Furthermore the tea industry has been passing through a crisis with the free
import of low priced tea and reduced exports being among its main reasons.
This has again affected labour in a harsh manner, with managers increasingly
using contract labour, thus reducing benefits, in order to ensure continued
profits. Even progressive steps taken by state governments like the recent
proposal by the Tamil Nadu Government to increase the minimum daily wage to
Rs. 101.5 was met with derision and vigorous protests by plantations owners
associations like the United Planters Association of Southern India.
Plantation owners across India have refused to accept responsibility for
social costs citing the crisis in the tea industry while labourers are
almost fully dependent on the plantation system for their sustenance due to
lack of viable, alternate livelihoods.

A senior labour department official in Assam, who has witnessed numerous
violations of the Plantation Labour Act in the tea gardens he has inspected
(and who would like to remain anonymous until his retirement) believes that
one of the main reasons owners feel emboldened to neglect labour welfare as
per law is that even if prosecuted a case can drag on for years in courts,
hardly easy for the working poor to deal with. And in the off chance that a
verdict favouring labour is given, the punishment meted out for violations
of the act is far too mild, usually a nominal fine that is hardly a
financial hit for the owner of a tea plantation.

In addition, due to this free hand being given to private capital by the
state, many senior union leaders also point to a dangerous trend developing
over the last few years in conflict-ridden states like Assam. Often large
private companies demand further deregulation or cheaper land prices citing
the supposed violent scenario in the region as a cause for making the place
more attractive for private investment. Threats are then carried out of
taking investment elsewhere or pulling out existing investment which gets
the state governments to meekly capitulate, wilfully overlooking harsh
labour violations.

The second contributing factor playing out in the oppressive conditions of
the tea garden workers follows very closely on the heels of the present
neoliberal environment, which is the developing corrupt nexus between tea
garden owners and state officials. The same labour department official
mentioned numerous cases of high ranking bureaucrats, including former
Assistant Labour Commissioners, as well as many judges completely in the
pockets of the tea garden owners. He said that some of the maximum
corruption occurs with respect to the Workman’s Compensation Act that
guarantees compensation for workers in case of injury or death. The tea
garden owner, in what is nothing short of cold criminality, just figures out
that it’s cheaper to bribe both, the labour department official and the
judge rather than pay the worker his due compensation. And in case there are
honest men at the bureaucracy or judiciary, like the labour official I
interviewed, then there is always the fallback option for the business
owners of going to the biggest bastion of corruption to solve their problems
and that’s the political bigwigs whose campaigns are funded by these very
big businesses.

The third and possibly most changeable factor contributing to the
exploitation of tea garden workers is the corruption and complete
pro-management functioning of the Assam Cha Mazdoor Sangh (ACMS) affiliated
to the Congress-backed INTUC federation. ACMS has a complete hegemony over
the labour scenario in the tea gardens of Assam, and essentially run as the
on-the-ground labour controlling wing of the garden owners.

Indeed the ACMS units I met across Assam seemed anything but aware or
concerned about labour rights. In the Mornai Tea Estate, the president and
general secretary of the local union didn’t even know about the Plantation
Labour Act 1951, which covers the very workers they represent! While in
Kandoli Tea Estate, the ACMS unit was instrumental in teaming up with
managers as well as the police and orchestrating the dismissal of numerous
workers who were struggling to get compensation for the family of one of
their dead fellow-workers in addition to fighting for better medical
benefits.

However a small ray of hope can be found in some fledgling attempts at more
progressive labour organising. In direct contrast to the ACMS is the much
smaller and infinitely more valiant Assam Sangrami Cha Shramik Sangh (ASCSS)
which has led numerous struggles and won some important victories in the few
tea gardens that it has a base in. And while one didn’t see a single woman
in any of the meetings with ACMS unions, all the ASCSS meetings had at least
a third of the participants being women. In addition, all of the ASCSS unit
leaders had a good understanding of labour rights as well as the need to
tackle issues of self-exploitation among workers such as patriarchy,
alcoholism, and sectarianism.
Subhash Sen, veteran trade union leader in Assam and leader of the ASCSS
pointed to numerous occasions when ACMS had been instrumental in sabotaging
struggles to gain greater benefits for workers, and also indicated the
longstanding tie-up between ACMS and tea garden owners in ensuring that more
progressive and militant unions were prevented from fighting for workers
rights. He pointed out to a particular event that showcased the abominable
lack of concern that ACMS leaders had regarding workers. It was under the
tenure of former Deputy Health Minister, Pawan Singh Gatwar, a former Vice
President of INTUC and leader of ACMS, that hundreds of tea garden workers
died of gastroenteritis and malaria, with nothing being done by the
ministry. Sen further outlined the need and plans of the ASCSS in trying to
break this hegemony of the ACMS and build a genuinely progressive movement
that yields positive results for workers in the long-run.

Progressive groups like the ASCSS have a long way to go in this endeavour,
as Sen himself pointed out that their membership of 50,000 was a mere drop
in the ocean of tea garden workers, compared to the ACMS membership of
around 7 lakhs. However launching a struggle in the tea gardens of Assam
that can break the state-owner nexus as well as the hegemony of a corrupt,
derelict union is no easy task. The courageous militancy shown by the
members and leaders of the ASCSS in many struggles is a step forward, one of
many that needs to be taken, but a hopeful sign nevertheless

–
Sriram Ananthanarayanan

***Humanity is all***

Food and South Asia’s Future

By J. Sri Raman

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Friday 11 April 2008

The way to the political future of three major South Asian countries now lies through the stomachs of their poor millions. Escalating food prices may have far-reaching consequences for India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, each of which is currently passing through a crucial political phase.

The region might have been spared food riots of the kind to have rocked some African and Latin American nations in recent days. South Asia, however, is still a victim of the global food crisis hitting the headlines everywhere.

Especially distressing for developing countries have been the consequences of a shift in the farming paradigm dictated by the advanced world’s quest for alternative fuels. Billed originally as a boon for the hungry of the earth, biofuels have actually spelled crop preferences that have proven cruel to the intended or imaginary beneficiaries.

The switch by tens of thousands of farmers in the US over the past two years from food to fuel production (on eight million hectares that provided mainly wheat, maize and soya crops earlier), with Europe and other regions following suit, has not meant fuller stomachs in either South America or far-off African and Asian areas. Experts agree climate change, entailing erratic rainfall, has compounded the crisis.

International agencies insist they are acutely conscious of the crisis, and the United Nations proposes conferences and promises concerted measures on the energy and environmental issues involved. The South Asians, however, can hardly afford to wait for such efforts to bear fruit. For them, the shortage of food and the spiral of its prices can have a political fallout of fundamental importance.

In India, a sudden and sharp spurt in food prices pushed up a long-contained rate of inflation from 5 percent to 7 percent over weeks after the country’s annual budget was presented at the end of March. Grains, constituting the staple food of Indians, are threatening to go out of the common man’s reach. The government has had to impose a ban on the export of wheat, consumed especially in the country’s northwestern states. The price of rice, on which about 65 percent of the population subsists, has gone up by about 33 percent on average.

Even in New Delhi, the seat of power and the city of subsidies, edible oils cost 40 percent more, and milk is dearer by 11 percent. Vegetables and fruit have also recorded a whopping rise in prices across the country. What makes the figures significant is the fact, despite all talk of India’s economic miracle, 75 percent of Indians earn less than two US dollars a day.

In Pakistan, the prices of “atta” (wheat flour, the ingredient of the poor Pakistani’s daily bread) have been increasing rapidly, with no measures to halt the rise announced even in Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani’s “100-day program.” In January, the government had to reintroduce a ration-card system, abandoned earlier as part of avowed economic reforms. The situation today is such that government agencies have, reportedly, to keep a strict eye on food trucks.

In Bangladesh, prices of rice and other essential food items have nearly doubled over the last year. The average family is today constrained to spend about 80 percent of its monthly budget on food. According to one report, the poor families make do with a single meal a day. The situation might have gotten worse but for New Delhi agreeing, possibly for non-humanitarian reasons, to keep India’s commitment, despite its own distress, to export rice to Bangladesh.

Critics in all the three countries have dismissed the claim about the crisis as an entirely international phenomenon and drawn attention to the internal factors behind it. They have a point. In India, while the government boasts about the economy’s growth at a rate of about 8.5 percent, agriculture has grown by no more than 2.5 percent over the past five years. Given that farming still supports the majority of India’s workforce, this shows a gross imbalance in the country’s development strategy.

Similarly, in Pakistan, the otherwise inconclusive debate on the issue reveals a large degree of agreement that the crisis is also a legacy of former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, with his background as a top Citibank executive and his baggage of elitist economics. Besides the floods and the cyclone that hit Bangladesh last year, the unconcern of the army-backed government in Dhaka has aggravated the problem. The famous anti-corruption campaign by the caretaker regime has made it worse, by most accounts, leading to the closure of many unofficial rice supply outlets without providing legal substitutes.

Popular protests were inevitable in all three countries. In India, the price spiral has elicited calls for agitations not only from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but also from the left that has lent support to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government from outside. The price rise would appear to have largely offset the political gain for the government from the waiver of 15 billion-dollar bank loans to farmers announced in the March budget.

In Pakistan, the movement of lawyers against Pervez Musharaff might not have acquired mass support but for the Mundane issue of “atta” prices. Insightful reports have pointed out the prices issue influenced Pakistan’s electorate as much as the question of democracy and dictatorship. The Gillani government cannot afford to forget the issue retains grave importance for the people. In Bangladesh, too, food prices carried further the pro-democracy protests of August 2007, in Dhaka University, with the city’s poor joining the students and teachers, and with the unrest spreading to other urban centers as well.

At stake in the food crisis is the political future of each country. Food prices have dislodged political parties and fronts from power in the states as well as the federal level, more than once in the past. History can be repeated in this regard only as a tragedy. The BJP today represents a far-right that is straining to move farther right (as we have seen in these columns before) …

Unchecked “atta” prices will pose a serious danger to the democratic experiment in Pakistan. Drawing attention to the danger, the Lahore-based Daily Times notes the fall in this year’s farm output and warns, “… we could be looking at an even bigger shortage of flour in the country once again. Therefore, given our inability to deploy a system of special distribution for sections of population directly affected by this shortage, one can say that the masses are likely to become quickly disenchanted with the new government.”

In Bangladesh. too, the current food crisis, considered the worst after the famine of 1974, cannot continue without serious political consequences. The two major political parties, the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, have threatened to launch protest actions against the continued detention of the leaders Sheikh Hasina Wajed and Begum Khaleda Zia. Food prices can provide popular fuel to such protests. It is hard to see how the military-backed regime – which has just given Army Chief Moeen U Ahmed a one-year extension until June 15, 2009, to ensure his august presence at the helm at the due time of elections in December 2008 – will handle such protests.

There is no easy or early solution to the problem of food prices in sight, of course. But the growth of hunger may bring no happy tidings for those who wish democracy and peace for South Asia.

PROPOSAL OF A PEOPLE’S FRONT

1. Democratic movements are integral to the policy of both leftist and rightist forces. For leftist forces it is the instrument of destruction of semi feudal social order and for the right forces it is the means of reconciliation of classes.

2. Undoubtedly Democratic movements can be in the common agenda.

3. Nandigram, Singur, Haridebpur, Nayachar, North Bengal Tea estates, Howrah Hoogli Jute belt, Border Terrorism by BSF, PDS corruption, Floods (and corruption related to embankments) in Medinipur, Murshidabad can be identified as the basis of uninterrupted people’s movement in West Bengal.

4. Objective of the people’s movement can be

a. solution of the temporary problems
b. destruction of semi feudal social order
c. creation of a vast working class

5. An organized people’s movement to create a capitalist democracy in West Bengal (in the interim period) with the following objectives

a. complete land distribution (ceiling 2.5 acres)
b. labor intensive and cooperative intensive industries
c. environmentally sustainable economy

6. People’s movement’s may include

a. continuous unarmed demonstration
b. active participation in voting system
c. continuous proposal of alternative in local, regional and state level

7. Conclusion

A. Uninterrupted democratic movement.
B. Unarmed, constructive issue and/or class based movement.
C. Mass mobilization through numerous people’s organizations through out the state.
D. Capture of administrative power through ballot contest to end the hegemony of CPIM
E. Land distribution, labor intensive industries being the focal point of the movements and power capture

ADDED NOTES AND QUESTIONS

1. Maoist viewpoint (as far as I know) is against the establishment of proper capitalist democracy through current structure. They say it is impossible.

2. CPIM has/had similar agenda.

3. Communalism is trying to exert full force. Weakening of CPIM may allow their intrusion.

4. Rightist forces are inherently against land distribution as it is against the personal interests of many of them (as a class).

I THINK DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENTS WILL VAST PARTICIPATION OF MASS HAS GREATER FORCE THAN ANY OF THE ABOVE POINTS.

Let us invite all the

1. sromik songothon
2. krishok songothon
3. chhatro/shikkhok songothon
4. buddhijibi songothon
5. nari songothon
6. chakurijibi songothonfrom each and every district and block of the state to develop a PEOPLE’S FRONT irrespective of class, culture, political affiliation.

POSSIBLE ORGANIZATIONS

District	Block	Organization	Contact Person	Contact Number
South 24 Parganas
North 24 Parganas
Kolkata
Howrah
Medinipur
Bankura
Birbhum
Purulia
Bardhaman
Nadia
Murshidabad
Maldah
Coachbihar
Darjeeling
North Dinajpur
South Dinajpur

Bharatbarsha – Madhya Pradesh

Pashchimbanga important links

SANHATI

Sanhati has been created to resist neoliberal forces in West Bengal and to spread the spirit of dissent that has been sparked by Singur. The forced acquisition of agricultural land and the consequent dispossession of thousands of farmers made many of us rally in Calcutta, elsewhere in India and abroad. Democratic forces, leftist forces, people who stand for human rights and civil liberties all came together to form the Chhatra Chhatri Sanhati Mancha in Calcutta. Sanhati is inspired by this solidarity of resistance.

HINDMOTOR RESISTANCE

Hindustan Motors and Hyderabad Industries Ltd. Sangrami Shramik Karmachari Union (HM & HIL SSKU) is the culmination of a long course of evolution in the struggle of the workers of Hindustan Motors factory. This union has been established in 1997. The workers and members of the staff formed SSKU after breaking away from the Hindustan Motors and Hyderabad Industries Workers Union, affiliated to CITU, the then largest union.

Bharatbarsha – Pashchimbanga

Civil Liberties and People’s Movements under Attack in India

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/amr210308.html

The “Maoist” Scareby Analytical Monthly ReviewAnalytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur,West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of MonthlyReview. Its March 2008 issue features the followingeditorial. — Ed.

The struggle for democratic rights in India, its forward and backward movement, has been continuous from the days of British colonialism to the present. Independence and Emergency, for example, were not qualitative changes. The closest correlation has been with upsurges from below of the impoverished rural andurban masses. In such times the rulers of India slash at democratic rights, and focus on how best toeliminate, whether by co-option, arrest or murder, theemerging leaders of mass protest. Here there hasalways been unanimity among India’s rulers, howeverthey might disagree on other matters. “On 19 March1931,when the dates for the executions of BhagatSingh, Rajguru and Sukhdev were announced, HomeSecretary Emerson asked for Gandhi’s help to containthe disorder that the government apprehended. ‘Gandhipromised to do what he could.’”1Today we are witnessing the sharpest assault ondemocratic rights since Emergency. And as before, thereason is an upsurge from below, in the current casein resistance to the imposition of neoliberalpolicies. During the past few years, an increasingspontaneous movement is being seen all over India –against dispossessing impoverished rural residents inthe interests of private profit such as inKalinganagar and Nandigram or against imposition ofnew anti-worker policies as in Honda Motors and ToyotaMotors, and in Jute-mills of West Bengal. In mostcases initiative is being taken from below, and theaffected people have tried to keep control byrejecting leadership from the established politicalparties, although not always with success. Yetstories of successful resistance spread quickly and,as the strength of mass struggle is recalled after along break, local resistance rapidly develops braveand intelligent, though inexperienced, new leadership.Though this mass upsurge is in but a nascent state,the ruling classes and their representatives are verymuch aware of its strength and are hell-bent to crushthese struggles in any way possible.A primary method now adopted by the rulers of India isto brand as “Maoist” anybody who is involved withthese new types of movements — whether as journalistor sympathiser or civil/democratic rights activist orpolitical activist of a non-parliamentary group. Thepolitical parties (however bitterly they may beotherwise divided), police, administration and most ofthe mass-media are united in claiming that most of thesympathisers or leaders or activists of these new typeof struggles — not under the banner of any existingpolitical parties — are connected with CPI(Maoist),which is engaged in armed struggle. CPI(Maoist) infact does seek to build a new society where there willbe no exploitation, and their work is mostlyconcentrated in the poorest regions of India. Yetthere is much controversy among revolutionaries inIndia regarding the path to achieve agreed ends, andState terror directed purportedly against theCPI(Maoist) affects a far larger community, one inwhich rests much of such hope as exists for a betterfuture for India. The charge of “Maoism” is nowpretextual, a police means of attacking the leadershipof any resistance to neoliberalism from below. Thoughthe CPI(Maoist) is not a banned organisation in manystates, it is becoming commonplace that anybody whomthe police choose to regard as a “Maoist” may bearrested or taken into police custody forinterrogation and deposited in jail under sections 121et seq. of IPC (“Waging, or attempting to wage war, orabetting waging of war, against the Government ofIndia”), and then held without recourse pursuant tothe latest Congress government versions of colonialBlack Laws. Most of these cases go unreported in thecorporate media, yet some of the incidents do getnoticed through different channels and in local media.The following few examples from different states maybe cited:* We wrote in June 2007 “The renownedpublic-spirited paediatrician Dr. Binayak Sen isGeneral Secretary, People’s Union for Civil Liberties(“PUCL”), Chhattisgarh and the Vice-President,National PUCL. He was arrested May 14th, 2007, underthe provisions of the Black Laws (The ChhattisgarhSpecial Public Security Act, 2005 (CSPSA), and theUnlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 as amendedin 2004(along with Section 120-B, 121-A, 124-A ofI.P.C). . . The People’s Union for Civil Liberties -Chhattisgarh has demanded enquiry by the CentralBureau of Investigation (CBI) in all extra-judicialkillings in Chhattisgarh since 2005. Fake encountersin the past two years have claimed the lives of at aminimum 155 people. In a single fake encounter case atSantoshpur in Bijapur on 31st March, 2007, the StatePolice killed not less than 12 innocent citizens.” Dr. Binayak Sen is still in jail. As is universallyknown, “encounter killings” are the murder by policeof the emerging leadership of local mass struggles. The trend in the number of extra-judicial killings,for whose exposure Dr. Sen was jailed, continues torise. Dr. Binayak Sen’s persecution has been carriedout by Congress authorities at the center and thelocal BJP, working in smooth co-ordination when itcomes to the attack on democratic rights.* Prashant Rahi, a senior journalist ofUttarakhand, with over 17 years of service to hiscredit, has been reporting on under-representedcommunities and pro-people’s movements in the state. Prashant began his journalist career with The HimachalTimes and then later moved to The Statesman. Heparticipated in the Uttarakhand movement, and foughtaggressively for the rehabilitation of Tehri damvictims. He was arrested on 15 December 2007 in thestate capital Dehradun, and held in “secretconfinement” by police for five days. Later on 21December 2007, police officially booked him underSection 121 etc. as a “Maoist commander” and displayedhim as arrested “from the forests of Hanspur Khatta.” “He used to raise his voice against police atrocities.He always fought for the people’s cause, and finallyfell prey to the police conspiracy. The police appearbent on proving him to be a Maoist commander,” hisdaughter Sikha Rahi told IANS.* Roma and Shanta Bhattacharya of the NationalForum for Forest Peoples and Workers (NFFPW) are twohuman rights activists working for the land rights ofwomen, dalits, tribals and other marginalisedcommunities in the Sonebhadra region of the State ofUttar Pradesh. Local police arrested them inRobertsganj on 3 August 2007, along with several otherwomen from the community. This was followed by the 5August 2007 arrest of two Dalit activists working withthem (Lalti Devi and Shyamlal Paswan), and activistMohammed Hanif. The arrests were accompanied withviolence against the activists and villagers. Romaand her fellow activists were arrested whilecampaigning for awareness about the Scheduled Tribesand Other Forest Dwellers (Recognition of ForestRights) Act, 2006, under the banner of Kaimur ChhetraMahila Kisan Sangharsh Samity (kcmkss) — a women-ledorganisation. On July 31, KCMKSSadvanced a slogan “Jojamin sarkari hai, wo jamin hamari hai” (the land thatbelongs to the government is ours), following which,dalits and tribals asserted their rights by plantingtrees in the forest. The community believes that thearrests were a conscious attempt to demoralise theactivists and the members of the local organisations. The region has witnessed violence from authorities incollusion withthe land mafia for a long time. At amedia conference, members of the National Forum ofForest People & Forest Workers said the local policeand administration were falsely implicating tribals asNaxals. Another recent incident may be noted here. When the police team went to arrest a tribal leaderfor his allegedly link with the Maoists in Chandiavillage under the Kalinga Nagar police station 5thFebruary 2008, tribals chased them away. He wasinvolved in the movement against land acquisition. Vistapan Virodhi Jan Manch (VVJM), which has beenspearheading movement in the area since the 2 January,2006 firing in which 14 tribals were killed by policewhile opposing land acquisition for the Tata steelproject, decided to gherao the police station forentering the village. They also decided to restrictmedia movement.* A most ominous event is the recent arrest, bythe police of CPI(M)-led left front government, ofMithu Ghosh, an activist of Sharamik Sangram Committee(SSC) and Krishak Committee (KC), along with a seniorleader of Nandigram movement and his son on 12thFebruary, 2008 from Sonachuda, Nandigram West Bengal. An allegation of Maoist link under section 120B, 121,121A and 153 of IPC was charged. An excerpt from theleaflet published by SSC and KC after the arrest ofMithu Ghosh sets out the facts: “SSC and KC, for thelast thirty years, have been working among the workersand peasants and all the toiling masses to make themconscious and organised for the complete abolition ofall types of exploitation, with the aim ofrevolutionary change of the present social system. Itis true that the declared aim of the CPI(Maoist) isalso the radical change of this exploitative society. But we have continuously opposed the politics ofCPI(Maoist) and its predecessors among left extremistorganisations, insisting that social change is notpossible through the activities of armed activistsdetached from the masses. Only the working class canabolish exploitation from this society forever. Onlythe working class can ensure the spontaneous andactive participation of millions of peasants andagricultural labourers, all the toiling masses, byarousing them for the radical, revolutionary change ofthe society. And to achieve this, the most importantthing is that the working class has to be organisedindependently, has to build their own party whosecontrol will be in the hands of advanced workers. . .. By detaching advanced workers, on the one hand,from the revisionist-reformist politics of solvingproblems through change of government and, on theother hand, from ultra-left politics of changingsociety through the activities of a few armed cadres,we are working to organise the toiling masses on thebasis of class consciousness.” SSC is a smallorganisation, yet it leads the union of a big MNC,Hindustan Lever, and (along with some smallerfactories) Garden Reach Ship Builders and EngineersLtd.’s union is also led by SSC. So, SSC and KC (andtheir political history) are not unknown organisationsto police, administration or ruling parties. Still,their activist is arrested with the allegation ofbeing “Maoist” and his bail petition rejected in thelower courts. As Ashok Mitra warned the leadership ofthe CPI(M) in Anandabazar Patrika on November 14,2007, “you shiver at the terror of Maoism, will thatshivering compel you to throw West Bengal into thegutter of fascism?” The attack on Mithu Ghosh is astep into that gutter.* In June 2007 the Karnataka Police released alist (originally meant for intelligence agencies) of19 suspected Naxals, nine organisations and 33suspected Naxal supporters. Activists wereparticularly alarmed with the listing of KadidalShamanna, a farmers’ leader from the Malnad region,Rajendra Chenni, a lecturer from Kuvempu University,KL Ashok, secretary of Komu Souharda Vedike (a forumfor communal harmony) and Kalkuli Vittal Hegde wholeads the agitation against the creation of theKudremukh National Park that will displace thousandsof tribals. Shamanna was placed in the list for aspeech he made against the government at a farmers’rally.The list can be expanded but we think our point hasbeen made. As we write we are aware of the outrageousSangh Parivar attack on the CPI(M) central committeeat its Delhi headquarters. The moral is clear, and wehope it is not too late to be learned. The attacks ondemocratic rights and police state tactics endorsedtoday by the CPI(M) against “Maoists” will tomorrow beput more broadly to use by the fascists. As themartyred US revolutionary Malcolm X said of the fateof John F. Kennedy, responsible for the many murdersthat followed on his administration’s imperialistaggression against Cuba and Viet Nam, “chickens comehome to roost.”1 Quoted from GOI, Intelligence Bureau, Terrorism inIndia 1917-1936, in Suniti Kumar Ghosh, India and theRaj 1919-1947, Sahitya Samsad, 2007, p.94

PRITHIBI – WORLD