Though the work outside the Courts is as important as the ongoing legal
struggles , this week the Supreme Court has issued a Contempt Notice to several
officials in respect of the Contractual labour in the construction industry
among others . However as we all know how long , painful and laborious the
legal process is . In the last two decades the Supreme Court itself gradually
eroded its own previous decisions on contract and casual labour .
All sections have to be informed that it is State policy as determined by
various lobbies and groups including Corporate Sector interests which determine
what labour laws and policies are and whether and if at all they will be
implemented .
Democracy as of now is a broad term . It has actually to be examined in the
context of the Directive Principles of State Policy pf the Constitution of
India whether the peasantry , the tribal people , the unorganized and organized
workers in the industrial and agricultural sector are at all included in the
making of policy and its implementation . Similarly the Middle Income groups
are also affected by the privatization of education and health care and the
cost of housing , transportation among other problems .
So who is making policy ????????? Can it then be said that policy is democratic
when without crores of expenditure none of the present parties represented in
Parliament face the electorate .
It is time these issues are raised along with the economic issues confronting
all sections .
One house of the Parliament must represent people organized in major
occupations .
This is only for your information and use if any .
Niloufer Bhagwat
----- Original Message -----
From: Niloufer Bhagwat
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2011 2:44 PM
Subject: Re: [humanrights-movement:3905] Fw: CMM and contract
workersofChhattisgarh need your support!
Dear Colleagues ,
It is clear from your report that the government of Chhattisgarh as an
integral part of its economic and political policy seizes the land of the
tribal people for companies, establishes the Salwa Judum in collusion with
corporate interests for the mass evacuation of tribal villages singled out by
mining interests, falsely charges with Sedition among other sections of the
Indian Penal Code Dr. Binayak Sen among others who believe in the Gandhian
strategy of serving the oppressed masses of people and exploits workers
unorganized and organized and the peasantry and agricultural workers by an
open assault on all these sections .Stength of this resistance to injustice
lies in the unity of purpose and organization of all these forces and people .
In solidarity ,
Niloufer Bhagwat
----- Original Message -----
From: Ranjana
To: [email protected] ; humanrights ; mohan ; sujata
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 12:54 AM
Subject: [humanrights-movement:3905] Fw: CMM and contract
workersofChhattisgarh need your support!
--- On Wed, 16/3/11, Sudha Bharadwaj
<[email protected]> wrote:
From: Sudha Bharadwaj <[email protected]>
Subject: CMM and contract workers of Chhattisgarh need your support!
To:
Date: Wednesday, 16 March, 2011, 22:50
PERSECUTION OF CMM (Mazdoor Karyakarta Committee) and the
PRAGATISHEEL
CEMENT SHRAMIK SANGH UNION BY THE CHATTISGARH GOVERNMENT AND THE
MULTINATIONAL CORPORTATION, HOLCIM.
Dear friends,
This letter is to alert you to the developing situation in
Chhattisgarh, where the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (Mazdoor
Karyakarta
Committee) and its cement industry affiliate labour union, the
Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh, are coming under intense,
concerted
attacks from the Swiss Multinational cement manufacturer, Holcim,
and
Raman Singh’s government.
The latest incident occurred on 6th March, when YP Singh, the
Security
Officer of Ambuja Cements (which is now controlled by the Swiss
cement
giant, Holcim) got into an altercation in the village market of
Rawan,
Raipur where the Company is situated. According to villagers, YP
Singh, is a universally disliked, tyrannical person against whom
villagers and workers have repeatedly complained to the company. On
this day, he was brandishing his revolver, and threatening and
abusing
some persons in the marketplace, when a group of unidentified youth
chased him and roughed him up. Using this incident as a pretext, YP
Singh and another company official have lodged a bogus complaint in
the Baloda Bazar Police Station accusing senior union leaders and
activists of the Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh of dacoity,
alleging that they have snatched the cartridges of his revolver!
Hundreds of villagers are witness to the fact that these leaders
were
never at the spot, and it can be easily established that Lakhan Sahu
was attending a funeral in Raipur, while Bhagwati Sahu was
entertaining some outstation guests at his home. The alacrity with
which the police, at the behest of the Company, have maliciously
implicated these senior union leaders in such a serious offence in a
completely spurious case, highlights the present atmosphere of
repression in Chhattisgarh.
Background
This incident has to be viewed in the context of the determined
struggle of the Union to protect the rights of the contract
workers, a
majority of whom are from local peasant families whose lands were
acquired for the plant and mines. The Union has organized a
substantial section of the contract workers to demand minimum wages,
provision of Provident Fund slips, statutory proofs of employment
like
attendance cards etc. Before the workers started getting organized,
this Swiss multinational giant, which is the second largest cement
manufacturer in the world, was even deducting money for safety
helmets
and boots from their paltry wages!
The contract workers struggle in this plant is unique in the support
that they have drawn from the local farmers, who are also organized
for their own grievances against the company. The company has not
yet
rehabilitated all the farmers whose lands it occupied 25 years ago.
Of
the 38 farming families of Village Rawan which lost their land to
this
company, only 20 have received some form of compensation. The
company
has also failed to fulfill its promises of providing local
employment
and is accused by the villagers of illegally encroaching their
“nistari” lands.
However, this joint struggle by farmers and contract workers for
their
lawful rights has resulted in a severe backlash of repression
against
their organizations. Over seventy-five of the most active union
workers have lost their jobs at the factory in the past six months,
and police cases were registered against 20 workers and farmers last
year by simply labeling them as “criminal elements.” In January
this
year, Bhagwati Sahu, the leader of the local farmer’s movement was
picked up from his house in the middle of the night, on the pretext
that he incited villagers to riot after a company truck had crushed
a
16-year old girl, when in fact, he wasn’t even at the scene of the
accident. It was only after the contract workers spontaneously
struck
work at the plant that the police was forced to release him.
Attacks on Local Movements in the Context of Neoliberalism
The attacks on labour and farmers groups in the Ambuja plant are
happening at a time when the cement industry in Chhattisgarh is
booming, many more cement plants are coming up and there is an
ever-increasing involvement of multinational companies in this
sector.
Initially cement was a controlled product with strict regulations on
pricing and distribution, but the liberalization wave of the 1990s
saw
the entry of many foreign manufacturers in this industry. Riding on
the concurrent wave of large-scale infrastructure projects, Indian
cement industry has become a lucrative destination for global
finance.
India is already the second largest cement manufacturer in the
world,
and its cement manufacturing capacity is expected to grow by leaps
and
bounds over the next few years. Approximately, 40% of the current
cement production in India is done through multinational cement
companies, of which Holcim is the largest.
Chhattisgarh, with rich limestone deposits in the Raipur-Bilaspur
belt, is poised to become the largest cement producing state in
India.
Currently, it has 7 cement plants with a total production capacity
of
13.8 MTPA, but it plans to add over 100 MTPA capacity, which would
result in total manufacturing capacity that is 51% of India’s
current
cement manufacturing capacity. Ironically, while the private sector
in
Chhattisgarh can’t have enough of cement, the public sector plant of
the Cement Corporation of India at Mandhar (district Raipur) has
been
declared sick!
In this scenario, the Cement Wage Board Award (known as the Nevatia
Award), a hard-won agreement between All India Cement Manufacturers
Association and the central trade unions, becomes of crucial
importance. According to this agreement, to which Ambuja Cement
company (now, Holcim) is a signatory, no contract labour would be
employed in cement manufacture at all, and even if such labour is
employed, it would be limited to the loading and unloading of raw
materials and packing, and would be paid at the same rate as the
permanent workers.
The tragedy is that this landmark Award is being grossly and
blatantly
violated by all private cement plants in Chhattisgarh, including the
multinational companies of Holcim and Lafarge, and the huge Indian
company Ultratech, of the Aditya Birla group. The proportion of
permanent workmen in Chhattisgarh cement plants is barely 10%.
Holcim,
which pays its European workmen $8 for every hour, pays their
counterparts – the contract workers of Chhattisgarh -- a mere $2 for
an entire day (a 32-fold difference)! It is small wonder that Holcim
has closed down its Spanish plants, is preparing to close down
plants
in the US, while signing MOUs for several more plants in
Chhattisgarh.
Farmers, organized under the banner of “Udyog Prabhavit Kisan Sangh”
are strongly opposing the setting up of new cement plants. These
farmers have faced displacement with paltry compensation and there
is
an almost universal violation of the State’s Rehabilitation Policy
promising permanent employment to one family member per affected
family. Today, the farmers also face a severe crisis of water for
irrigation purposes since the water is getting diverted for
industrial
houses, and cement companies are encroaching on village commons –
grazing grounds, roads, canals, and village ponds. Recently, a dam
built for irrigation in Village Kukurdih was “acquired” for the
purposes of Ultratech Cement, and more than 600 farmers in the
villages of Guma and Pounsari are being coerced into giving their
consent for mining, further stirring up an already agitated
population.
The Union - and the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (Mazdoor Karyakarta
Committee) to which it is affiliated – have been determined
supporters
and organizers of the farmers struggle.
Attacks on Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha
Indeed there are many reasons why the CMM should earn the wrath of
the
BJP Government of Raman Singh. This working class organization is
trying to unite all workmen of the cement industry across union
lines;
and has been in the forefront of agitations against industrial
accidents like the Balco (Vedanta) chimney collapse in which 41
workers were killed, or the Godavari Ispat incident in which 20
persons burnt to death. This group is an active constituent of the
Chhattisgarh Visthapan Virodhi Manch and Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan
which have been agitating against the unprecedented displacement,
loot
of resources, destruction of environment, and deprivation of
peasants,
particularly the tribals due to unbridled industrialization. CMM
played a key role the scrapping of a Special Industrial Zone that
covered seven villages in Rajnandgaon district, and was in the
forefront of the struggle to save five major bastis of Raipur from
demolition. CMM has repeatedly exposed and strongly opposed the
stranglehold which the corporations have established today over all
democratic institutions, government departments, political
leadership
of all parties and the media.
CMM has resolutely raised its voice against the brutal
ground-clearing
operations of Salwa Judum in Dantewada and the violation of civil
liberties of ordinary adivasis and non-combatants during anti-Naxal
operations by security forces. CMM played a key role in the
organization of the Satyagraha for the release of Dr. Binayak Sen,
who
himself had been associated with CMM in the past. Advocate Sudha
Bharadwaj, a senior activist of CMM, also regularly takes up cases
of
many people’s organizations fighting for their democratic rights,
and
is the General Secretary of the Chhattisgarh PUCL, a leading human
rights organization in the state.
Given this history of defiance, it is not surprising that CMM has
faced increasingly intense repression over the years. Thirty two
CMM
activists, including the legendary trade union leader Shankar Guha
Niyogi, have lost their lives due to police firings or other
industry-sponsored violence. More recently, attempts are being made
by the state to identify CMM with the Naxalite movement, thus
delegitimizing the organization. A couple of years ago, the DGP of
Chhattisgarh - Mr Vishwaranjan wrote in an article that “Niyogi was
the first Naxalite.” In response, CMM held a massive protest rally
in
Jamul, Bhilai – which is its stronghold - and he subsequently
claimed
his words had been misinterpreted.
A more serious incident occurred in October 2011, when police
claimed
that two Naxals had been killed in an encounter in the industrial
basti of Jamul, close to CMM’s office and to the ACC cement plant
(also a Holcim plant). CMM publicly raised serious questions about
veracity of the police story, since all available indications showed
that these two persons had been killed elsewhere and their bodies
were
simply dumped in Jamul by the police. It is widely suspected that
the
bodies were disposed off in Jamul only to provide the police and the
Holcim Company with a pretext to create an atmosphere of terror in
the
area and cast vague allegations against the trade union movement. An
independent Fact Finding team composed of various civil liberties
organizations which visited Jamul in November 2010 and vindicated
the
observations made by CMM. Till today the copy of the FIR registered
in
this incident has not been made public.
The present spate of false cases seems to be another attempt to
crack
down on CMM, which has proved to be a lively and well-rooted working
class movement, playing an important role in solidarity with peasant
struggles against displacement and with the civil liberties
movement.
We request you all to protest against the attempts to brutally
suppress the workers movement, and the connivance of the police and
administration, with big industrialists and multinational company
Holcim which are earning super profits from cheap labour and the
loot
of resources.
Sudha Bharadwaj, Bansi Sahu, Lakhan Sahu, Kaladas Dehariya, Ramakant
Banjare, Neera Dehariya, Kalyan Patel, Rajkumar Sahu, Shalini Gera.
On behalf of
Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (Mazdoor Karyakarta Committee)
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