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Last year, on the day my book, Can the Working Class Change the World?
(translated into Hindi by Indian Comrades) went on sale at the Delhi book
fair, a massive general strike began. Now, another, still more massive, general
strike is in progress. I hope that the consequences of this strike are
far-reaching. There have been many such strikes over the past 20 years, but the
results have been only moderately beneficial to workers. Still, it is
impossible to imagine anything like this in the US. And we never know what
spark will begin a conflagration. Solidarity to all Indian workers and peasants.
Here is the beginning of chapter 4 of my book:
"In 2016, workers in India organized a massive general strike. Estimates of the
number of participants went as high as 180 million, which would make it the
largest such strike in history. All but one of the major Central Trade Union
Organisations called for and supported the strike. However, most workers in
India do not belong to labor unions, nor are most covered by the country’s
weakly enforced labor laws. Unorganized employees, many in informal and
contracted-out employment, took an active part in the strike. Workers in every
Indian state, in all sectors—agriculture, mining, transportation,
manufacturing, services, government—and in nearly every occupation, walked out
in large numbers. Tens of millions of women struck.
The general strike, one of seventeen that have occurred in India since 1991,
should be seen in the context of the twenty-seven years of a
government-capitalist alliance that has wreaked havoc on India’s workers. State
properties have been sold to private businesses; the needs of capital have
taken precedence over those of workers and peasants to an unprecedented degree;
rural lands have been stolen and privatized; unions and left-wing political
parties have been subjected to great state repression; workers have been
squeezed to work more intensively, meaning that while productivity rose,
employment did not; wages have stagnated; food consumption in the countryside,
home to more than 800 million people, has fallen; the oppression of women
continues; and ecological crises loom menacingly over the country. Given the
difficulties of waging struggles in individual workplaces, rage has boiled
over, providing fertile grounds for short general strikes as the best available
means of protest.
The main organizers of the strike put forward a list of demands, similar to
those in the previous general strikes:
Ÿ Contain price rises through a universal public distribution system [see below
for explanation] and ban speculative trade on the commodity markets.
Ÿ Institute concrete measures for employment generation.
Ÿ Enforce all labor laws and stringently sanction violations.
Ÿ Provide universal social security coverage for all workers.
Ÿ Assure minimum wages not less than Rs 18,000 [about $267] per month.
Ÿ Assure pensions not less than Rs 3,000 [about $44.50] per month for entire
working population.
Ÿ Stop disinvestment of central and state public sector undertakings.
Ÿ Stop contract work [precarious work] . . . and institute equal wages for same
work.
Ÿ Require registration of unions within a period of 45 days and immediate
ratification of ILO [International Labour Organization] conventions C87 and C98
[these guarantee the rights of people to free association and to organize for
mutual protection, including bargaining collectively with employers].
Ÿ Stop labor law amendments [restricting workers’ rights].
Ÿ Stop FDI [foreign direct investment] in railways, insurance and defense.
These are worthy demands. They address the conditions of the entire working
class and not just those of a particular group within it. The first demand is
especially noteworthy. The Indian government has established a network of Fair
Price Shops, which sell basic foodstuffs to the poor in publicly-owned shops at
subsidized prices. This “public distribution system,” which began in 1947, has
left much to be desired in terms of coverage, corruption, and quality of the
goods sold. The unions’ request doesn’t address these problems, but it does
insist on universal coverage. That is, every Indian would have access to the
shops, something that could help alleviate the country’s food crisis. To keep
prices low, the demand includes a curb on commodity speculation, which has been
responsible for spikes in food prices.
The fact that so many Indians embraced the demands and stopped work throughout
the nation is remarkable, as is the great diversity by class, caste, gender.
industry, and occupation of the strikers. Nothing remotely
