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The Economic Times, New Delhi, August 5, 2005
ANTI-LABOUR VIOLENCE ISN'T RANDOM
The Haryana police was blooded in the 1970s as part of a strategy to
attract investment; employer attitudes and industrial relations
practices must change if democracy is to prevail, says Praful Bidwai
The sheer brutality of the violence unleashed by the Haryana police
against the agitating workers of Honda Motorcycle and Scooter Limited
(HMSL) has shocked the Indian public's conscience in ways few other
recent events have, barring perhaps the self-immolation a decade ago
by a Delhi textile mill-worker driven to despair by prolonged
unemployment. The shock was further compounded by the police's
continuing savagery the following day, its attempt to humiliate trade
unionists inquiring into its egregious conduct, and the insensitivity
of state functionaries.
Grotesque as the Gurgaon episode is, it could prove a turning point
and possibly trigger reform of the prevalent industrial relations
(IR) paradigm-if its background, context and significance are
properly grasped.
HMSL isn't the sole case in the Gurgaon-Manesar-Dharuhera belt of a
bitter dispute caused by workers' dismissal or attempts to break up
legitimate trade unions. It's part of a broader pattern, documented
by the All-India Trade Union Congress and confirmed by independent
fact-finding teams, which prevails in factories such as Omax Auto,
Anchal Engineering, Speedomax, etc.
The pattern is marked by low wages (e.g. Rs 4,500-5,500), prevalence
of casual labour and hiring of contract labour for regular jobs,
arbitrary lockouts, coercive good-conduct undertakings, extreme
insecurity of employment, absence of skill-improvement schemes, and
authoritarian shopfloor practices-a recipe for discontent and unrest,
especially amidst large-scale job losses.
Haryana's culture of repression and anti-worker violence goes back a
long time. This writer was personally witness to workers'
brutalisation in the Faridabad-Ballabgarh belt in the mid-seventies
as part of an activists' group which included Jairus Banaji, Neeladri
Bhattacharya, Sumit Guha, Lajpat Jagga, Dilip Simeon, Rana Sen, R
Bhaskar, Chitra Joshi and others who have attained distinction as
social scientists and scholars in India and abroad.
Every fortnight or so, the Haryana police would routinely round up
worker-activists, especially those trying to set up a trade union or
demanding permanency, and badly thrash them and illegally detain them
for days in incredibly filthy lock-ups, without producing them before
a magistrate.
Such treatment was often extended to middle-class sympathisers who
tried to help the workers draft petitions or contact other
plant-based unions. I recall carrying blankets and food from Delhi
for activists detained during a particularly bitter winter in
1974-75. They had only thin newspapers to sleep on and had to bribe
guards to get food.
The state's lower judiciary too bore a deep antipathy towards trade
unionism. It was virtually impossible to obtain bail even where
obviously trumped-up charges were filed, like attempt to murder, just
to harass activists.
Any agitation, however peaceful, would be repressed with brute force.
No demonstrations or rallies would end without broken bones.
Sometimes, the police would chase workers into their bastis, and
attack their wives and children. This is no exaggeration, but was
carefully detailed in small independent magazines like Mazdoor
Samachar and Fil-haal.
The Haryana police's actions had a clear, unambiguous,
well-understood purpose: to terrorise workers, intimidate activists,
prevent formation of unions, and assure existing and prospective
investors that there would be no industrial unrest in that
flourishing enclave along the Delhi-Mathura Road. Chief Minister
Bansi Lal, a senior bureaucrat later told me, had decided that the
only way Haryana could get industrialised was by promising indefinite
industrial peace to businessmen. This, besides proximity to the
North's markets, growing under the impact of the then-novel Green
Revolution, would be the state's USP just when capital was fleeing
Eastern India, especially West Bengal.
Haryana indeed gained from the East's deindustrialisation and Bansi
Lal was proud of this. Things like workers' rights, civil liberties
and democracy didn't matter: they are mere embellishments; what
counts is "development". The idea that all development must extract a
price through human misery is more widespread among policy-makers
than we like to acknowledge. The late Biju Patnaik, who wanted to be
remembered as the Father of Modern Orissa (such as it might be
today), voiced this publicly when he said no major development
project could happen without people's blood being spilled; that's
normal.
Haryana's police, then, was blooded decades ago and its officialdom
developed tolerance, if not a taste, for anti-labour violence early
on. This culture of authoritarianism and repression, promoted from on
top, was further strengthened by the absence of a social reform
movement in Haryana , and the prevalence of oppressive systems of
clans and khaps or gotras, which operate efficiently ruthless
panchayats that regularly order the killing of young couples which
marry against the khap's norms.
All that's new in Haryana is the growth of neoliberal ideas among the
higher bureaucracy, especially the belief that trade unions are
"unnatural" cartels/monopolies which "distort" the market; forming an
association cannot be a fundamental right-the Constitution is
probably mistaken to regard it as one. Regrettably, even India's
higher judiciary has legitimised, indeed enunciated, such ideas in
judgments outlawing strikes. This has contributed to what might be
called Shiv-Sena-isation-the practice of union-smashing and
strike-breaking using goons, with disastrous consequences comparable
to those seen in Maharashtra when employers created this undemocratic
monster.
This unacceptable situation cannot be remedied without radical IR
reform leading to a new paradigm. At Independence, we adopted a lot
of protective legislation for labour, which has been systematically
undermined or rendered ineffective. We have now slipped into adopting
the current United States-dominated anti-union model: it's as if most
Indian employers regarded Wal-Mart and MacDonald's opposition to
unions as something normal.
This won't do. Unions are a natural, spontaneous response to capital
embodying the rights of association and collective bargaining. Their
importance is especially high in our conditions, marked by virtually
unlimited labour supply, persistent unemployment-job generation is
down to half its level under the "Hindu" rate of growth-and labour's
ultra-low bargaining power.
We must adopt a paradigm where minimum wages are upgraded and
enforced, working conditions are tightly regulated, and union-bashing
is seriously criminalised and punished. We must also create an
effective grievance-redressal system, revamp industrial courts, and
mandate workers' participation in decision-making. Or else, labour
will have no stake in India's growth.
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