Pranjali Bandhu
The new textile policy of the comprador Rajiv Gandhi government is making its impact on the entire textile industry in the country. True to their character of dependence on foreign capital and technology, the big textile mill owners are actively collaborating with the imperialists’ drive to make India the dumping grounds for their obsolete technology.
The new textile policy aids the mill owners and imperialists to carry out this plan: it provides the factory owners credit at low rates of interest to enable them to import machinery; it lowers duties for the import of machinery, synthetic fibres and yarn. It removes all restrictions on production capacity in the mill sector. At the same time it does away with subventions in the handloom and powerloom sectors, in which 10 million and 1 million workers are engaged in respectively. For the working class this means MASS UNEMPLOYMENT:
in the handloom and powerloom sectors because these will no longer be able to compete with the mill sector.
large scale retrenchments due to mechanisation and rationalisation in the big textile mills.
The government’s permission to close down ‘sick’ mills will throw another few millions into the streets. The logic of capitalism will ensure that the limited capital for ‘modernisation’ will be cornered by the few big mill owners rendering many more mills than already sick.
They are protesting against the closure of the Delhi Cloth Mills. Owned by the monopoly house of Sriram, this mill has for long, in complicity with the DDA (Delhi Development Authority), been threatening closure. The Srirams want to cash in on skyrocketing real estate values, which will be enhanced in this area by DDA’s plans to build a flyover here making it a particularly well-connected and well-situated area. Developing a commercial and flatted factories complex here which can then be rented out at exorbitant rates will enable the Srirams to net in substantial profits. They are also planning to open a new factory in the vicinity of Ghaziabad with new imported machinery and a reduced workforce from presently 7000 to about 1900.
They are protesting against the closure of the weaving section and some other sections in the Birla mills because of the management’s intention to introduce new machinery. They are fighting for the reinstatement of the victimised workers – of those workers who have been thrown out because they are a thorn in the side of the management due to their active participation in union activities, and of those who are thrown out to replace them with younger and fitter ones. The workers now clearly see through the farce of the government instituted labour courts where cases of dismissal and harassment take years to process and the decisions of which are ignored with impunity by the management.
The workers are also fighting for a wage hike, for house rent allowance or allotment of a quarter from the mill, an interim relief of Rs 100 per month, for 90 to 100 per cent neutralisation of the dearness allowance, for the rescinding of the new textile policy.
Class Collaborationist Face of the Trade Union Leaders
The strike is being led by a Joint Sangharsh Committee of six unions having affiliations across all the parliamentary parties from the Congress-I to the CPI and CPI(M). This unification on a common platform is of course due to the pressure exerted by the workers. On the face of it the 12-point charter of demand put forward by the Committee contains all the just economic and other demands of the workers.
But the reformist character of the trade union leaders stands out in bold relief, first of all in the illusions they create about the nature of the government. The government is represented as standing above classes, as being class neutral. It is appealed to intervene on behalf of the workers against the management and is urged to take over the mills. Nationalisation is the panacea. But let us have a look at the Ayudhaya mills which have already been nationalised since 1974 and are being run by the government-owned National Textile Corporation.
As the workers themselves describe it: No differently from the other mills it is run on the basis of exploiting the workers and maximising profits, of importing machinery, and laying off workers. More than in other factories a corrupt management has created a created a small, privileged, highly paid and largely unproductive section of technical and officer staff on the back of the working class: starting initially with a pay difference of only about Rs 100 between the two sections, according to revised pay scales of 1980 that of the technical and officer class climbed up to between Rs 2000 and 4000, whereas that of the workers, clerical and watch-and-ward staff remained stagnant at between Rs 800 and Rs 900 a month. In other respects, too, such as the lack of housing and facilities, the living and working conditions of these workers is in no way different or better than those of the workers in the other ‘privately’-owned mills.
Thus the demand for nationalisation proves to be a big DECEPTION on the part of the trade union bosses leading the fighting workers astray.
The class collaborationist face of the trade union leaders will be revealed even more clearly in the days to come: They will fall in line with the mill owners’ drive to reduce the demands to more or less the question of linking wage hike with productivity. There may also be a few concessions in the question of interim relief, neutralisation of dearness allowance, etc. But these will not commensurate with the rising inflationary trend and will not be able to stop a further downward slide in the living and working conditions of the majority of the workers.
As has already happened in many industrial sectors including in the textile sector, the leaders of the central trade unions will agree that a small section of the workers is paid slightly higher wages linked to their much higher productivity due to the new machines. This means on the one hand: a three to four fold increase in the work load of these workers. On the other hand, it means the retrenchment of another immeasurably larger section of workers, as well as the continuation of a large number as badli or casual workers.
The casual workers form about fifty per cent or more of the workers. They work either in the mills themselves or are engaged by thekedars (contractors). Certain operations like thread cutting, stitching seams and finish folding etc. are being increasingly transferred to contractors, who work with a smaller number of workers (often with women workers). These workers are excluded from the purview of the Factory Act and are thus disadvantaged in many ways: they are engaged only when there is work and often spend on transport fare to the place of work for nothing. They may be asked to do any kind of work, like sweeping, etc. They do not get double, but only single overtime pay. In this way, as they are rarely engaged for 20 days continuously they lose their entitlement of earned leave. Women workers in the cutting threads and the seam stitching sections of the Swatantra Bharat Mills are paid at piece rate which is fixed according to a certain quota. If they do not manage to cover the quota they are not paid at all, and if they exceed the quota they are not paid for the excess amount.
The trade union leaders have not only connived at this split of the workers into the organised permanent and the casual workers, but also have made no efforts to forge solidarity between the different exploited sections of the mill employees – for example, between the clerical, watch-and- ward staff and the workers. They have not made any earnest efforts at joint actions between the textile workers of textile mills in different parts of the country as well as support actions by workers from other industrial sectors. There have been no attempts to take up the problems of the handloom and powerloom workers, who are the worst affected by the New Textile Policy.
Also affected by the New Textile Policy are the millions of cotton growing farmers. The total fibre flexibility granted by the government means increased import of synthetic fibres and a depressed market for cotton. The cotton farmers, who are already super-exploited by imperialist agencies and monopoly trading and manufacturing units, came out strongly against the new textile policy by demonstrating and making bonfires of synthetic clothes at over 200 place. If they could come together in a joint fighting front with the textile workers and other affected sections it would strengthen their fight against the pro-imperialist policies of the Rajiv government.
Of course, the interests of the broad masses of the people, who in spite of all these years of increasing mechanisation of this vital industry have not had the benefit of cheaper and better quality cloth really suited to the climatic conditions of this country, have not at all been addressed.
Forging unity and solidarity between the various sections of the working class should actually be one of the most important tasks of the trade unions, if they are really interested in increasing the fighting force of the workers. This unity is essential for exerting the necessary pressure by means of mass strike, etc., which can really compel the bourgeoisie to make meaningful concessions. That our trade union leaders are not at all striving towards this shows that objectively they are agents of the bourgeoisie within the ranks of the working class. Their task is to hinder the fight of the working class and divert it into channels that present no danger to the bourgeoisie.
The Working Class has Nothing to Lose but its Chains and a World to Win
The workers on strike must realise that the deepening imperialist penetration, the search for markets by the imperialists in collaboration with the local ruling classes can lead only to an intensification of the process of rationalisation and mechanisation. It can lead only to a worsening of their situation UNLESS they being a really consequent fight against the WHOLE SYSTEM OF DEPENDENT CAPITALIST DEVELOPMENT.
The workers must realise that such a consequent fight cannot be waged together with the traitorous trade union leaders, but only in opposition to their politics of class collaboration, reformism and creation of illusions about the nature of the state and government.
It can only be waged if the workers do not allow themselves to be split and oppose this very old and well-tested method of the ruling classes to weaken and demoralise them. It can only be waged by relying on their own strength and building their own independent fighting unity against the trade union leaders and their collaboration with the mill owners and the government.
In the case of all militant struggles for partial gains within individual factories they must remember that these partial successes and gains can often be wiped out by an intensified onslaught of the ruling classes and an intensified exploitation and oppression that is why it is necessary to tackle the problem at its roots and make the entire system of imperialist domination with its local lackeys the main target.
Only when the working class begins such a struggle for the overthrow of the entire reactionary system it can become a strong support for the struggles of the rest of the exploited and suppressed masses – in their struggle against the black laws and suppression of democratic rights, in support of the struggles of the peasant and landless masses, the suppression of the minorities and so on.
In this struggle for the overthrow of the system the working people can play a decisive role. They can become the grave diggers of the world imperialist system. Every confrontation with the ruling classes has within it the possibility of bringing them to the recognition that this entire system of capitalism-imperialism is through and through rotten and needs to be overturned and replaced by a new world of new democracy, socialism and communism. Organic intellectuals from within and outside the working classes have their role to play in bringing about this clarity of vision regarding a new order.
[First published in Under the Banner of Marxism-Leninism, July 1986]