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Iran war sparks strike wave in India Now, the war in Iran has provoked a worldwide energy crisis, placing huge pressure on the cost of living. India imports 60 percent of its Liquefied Petroleum Gas from the Gulf. As a result of this, industrial gas supplies have been cut under emergency orders, forcing factories to reduce output. 550 kilns have shut down in the pottery industry in Gujarat. Certain industries have begun rationing fuel. Gas cylinders, officially priced at ₹900, now sell for as much as ₹4,000 on the black market. Millions of workers are being pushed towards desperation. In these circumstances, a small spark could set alight an enormous fire that could burn down the regime itself. Thus, everything has been done to stamp out this strike. The state governments have let the police loose on both the strikers and the wider population, with police marching in squad formation, 10-20 strong, through working-class neighbourhoods like an occupying army, beating people indiscriminately. A key organiser was labelled a ‘Pakistani instigator’ and a bounty placed on their head for their arrest. During the massive, symbolic one-day strikes of the past, the trade union leaders were left more or less unmolested. But this time, the organisers of the solidarity protest, the heads of the CITU, have been put under house arrest. The message is: ‘don’t you dare even think of helping this strike wave to spread.’ Combining the carrot with the stick, state governments have responded with major concessions, anything to quench the movement: 10 percent, 25 percent, 30 percent rises in the minimum wage. These are the actions of a petrified capitalist class, who understand, after the revolutionary wave sweeping across the neighboring countries of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Nepal and Bangladesh, that the millions-strong working class of India will come for them too. Iran war sparks strike wave Across India, life has become intolerable for the working class. In late March, around 7,000 workers in the state of Haryana, in the Gurugram-Manesar industrial belt, began demanding ₹20,000 a month. This is not a demand for comfort: a worker’s family now expects to spend ₹5,000-6,000 on rent, ₹8,000-10,000 on food, and ₹3,000-4,000 on gas. That’s already ₹20,000, before electricity, transport, phone, school fees, or medicine. They are demanding to break even, which at present is impossible. Despite this, the Haryana state cracked down on the strikes in Manesar, including beating strikers at the Richa Global garment factory in Manesar. Subsequently, on 9 April, the Haryana government conceded a 35 percent increase in the minimum wage, pushing pay for unskilled labour to ₹15,221 a month. This concession, intended to defuse unrest in one state, set off a wave of class struggle in the next: workers across the border in Noida – earning roughly ₹11,313 a month for the same kind of work – asked the obvious question: ‘why should we work for ₹6,000 less?’ On the same day, garment workers at Richa Global in Noida walked out over their own demands and in solidarity with their colleagues in Haryana. The next day, a sit-in began in the Hosiery Complex, located in Phase 2, an industrial area in Noida. Over the following weekend, the protest grew. By Monday, 13 April, workers from dozens of companies – Dixon, Motherson, Selcom, Sparky, QCL, and many others – flooded the streets across five sectors and into Greater Noida. One of the key companies involved in the unrest is Dixon, a smartphone manufacturer. Dixon is India’s largest enterprise of this type, and is a darling of Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative, intended to re-shore technical jobs. Dixon’s mobile division alone posted revenue last year of ₹33,043 crore (₹330 bn, approx $3.5bn, which is up 203 percent year on year) with an operating profit of ₹1,153 crore. The workers there were promised wage rises on 1 April. Having not received them, a sit-in and picket began on 10 April. The testimonies given by workers present summarise the mood on these pickets. One worker at Dixon said to Jist: “The pay last went up in 2019. Since then we have had COVID, the price of everything has gone up, how are we meant to live? We have no gas to cook our food, what are we supposed to do?” Another worker commented. “They promised us that we would receive a pay rise on 1 April. It's currently the 13th. They keep cutting our holidays. We did not receive Holi off. They really torture us in there. They swear, berate and insult us." Hired thugs indiscriminately beat the workers on Monday 13 April. This led to huge outrage and riots outside the workplace, which the police further cracked down on. The Week reports that a woman was shot by police, and that tear gas was also used. Jist, a YouTube news channel, went to interview workers on the scene on the afternoon of the attacks. On camera, the police can be seen rounding up the picketers and bussing workers away at the request of the bosses. One of these esteemed ‘keepers of the peace’ can be seen striking a reporter with a baton. Women and children have been beaten. 466 workers have been arrested. Worker testimonies collected by The Federal describe a rampage. The lathi [baton] charge extended well beyond the protest site. Rohit Kumar, a worker at Sparky, Sector 149, had finished his shift at 1pm and was walking home when police beat him on the head and legs. In an interview with The Federal, another woman described: “The police in Uttar Pradesh have become uncontrollable. I was going home with my child. The police beat me and did not spare my child either.” One striking house cleaner said: “The police don’t care about us. They [the employers] have them on speed dial. Anything small happens, the cops are there. They serve the rich. Not us.” These are the conclusions workers in the capital are reaching under the lathi blows of the police. Solidarity protests The CITU (a Communist Party of India (Marxist)-affiliated trade union) organised a national demo in solidarity with the striking workers. This was the heinous ‘crime’ for which its leaders were placed under house arrest. This is a sign of the panic and fear of the Indian state in the face of this wave of class struggle. The protest spread across India, across neighbouring towns and then to 11 of the 28 states in India – from Jammu and Kashmir in the North to Assam in the East, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Bihar, Jharkhand, Hyderabad and more. This is the broadest spontaneous workers’ movement in India since the 2020 pandemic migration crisis, and possibly since the 2016 general strike. The plight of the NCR workers is striking a chord with workers across India, in many affected industries. This is just what the ruling class fears. Down the road from Surat and Hazira is Morbi, in Gujarat, the ceramics capital of India. There, the fuel crisis has put workers out of work in 550 factories. It is this widespread solidarity – and the potential this shows for the sparks of this movement to set fire to the working class at large – that is keeping the Indian ruling class in a state of frenzy. Their panic is reflected in a huge uproar that has been whipped up about the influence of ‘Pakistani agitators’ – the go-to excuse for the Indian state. Allegedly, these agitators have created this movement out of thin air using nothing but nefarious WhatsApp QR codes. Videos of burning cars and bikes are disseminated without context. The bosses speak in the press, claiming the strikes are driven by ‘misinformation’. This propaganda spread by the state is obvious nonsense. It shows the real purpose of the constant fearmongering with regard to Pakistan: to divide workers and sow doubts amongst their ranks. Aditya Anand, a software engineering graduate who quit to become an activist to report on conditions in Noida and organise the workers, has been arrested in Tamil Nadu as the alleged ‘mastermind’ of the unrest in Noida. A ₹1 lakh bounty (around $1,070 USD, or 9-12 months’ pay for a worker at Dixon) was placed for his arrest. This is an outrageous act of repression by the state, which views the workers in Noida as too stupid or docile to organise on their own. The Revolutionary Communists of India wholeheartedly condemn this arrest. We demand the release of Anand and all the workers who have been arrested. What next? Out of fear, the government has resorted to both repression, and simultaneously a hike of 21 percent in the minimum wage in the NCR. But this still leaves wages at 70 percent of what the workers demand just to stay afloat, and is just half of what the CITU has raised as a demand. Shamelessly, the employers themselves are claiming that the pressure of the Iran War means they cannot afford to meet this meagre sum, let alone ₹20,000. We say: show us the proof! Let the workers in each company across the NCR look over the books. If companies cannot afford to keep running without these slave wages, then the bosses must be the first to go, and the factories put under democratic workers’ control! A militant struggle led by the trade union leaders could transform the situation entirely, placing enormous pressure on the states and Modi’s government itself. A 21 percent pay rise is far from the level required for a dignified life. But even this concession was the product of fear that the movement might spread and take on revolutionary proportions. The wave of solidarity protests that have followed the strikes are a sign of the mood amongst the masses for a determined struggle. Beyond organising ‘solidarity protests’, the trade unions must whip up every spark of discontent. The conditions are there for a wave of strikes that will strike terror into the hearts of the rulers. A campaign of coordinated open-ended economic strikes to claw back everything lost in the past period must be launched now, and connected to the political demand: Down with Modi! For a workers’ and farmers’ government! Concretely, this means demanding: *No return to work until the Noida workers win ₹20,000 a month *Release Aditya Anand and all the arrested workers! *The end of the house arrest of the CITU leaders *No victimisation of striking workers, which must be enforced through union control of hiring and firing in the NCR *Open the books! If the bosses claim ₹20,000 a month is not possible, the workers in the factories must be shown the finances and make decisions themselves on how to afford the pay rises *Pay the wages or pay the price! Factories that cannot pay a living wage must be expropriated and put under democratic workers’ control *Down with Modi and his reactionary mob of capitalists! For a workers’ and farmers’ government! What is clear is that this demonstration is another instance of a wider phenomenon. The spiralling price of energy is widening inequality and worsening the conditions of the poor. It was conditions like these that led to the Gen Z revolutions in all the countries surrounding India: Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar. India is no exception to this trend, and events like the current strike wave are a portent of what is to come. https://marxist.com/iran-war-sparks-strike-wave-in-india.htm Back |
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