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]
A CRUEL BLOW AT THE MOTHERLAND OF COTTON
T.G. Jacob
The new textile policy announced by the central government on 6 June, 1985 does not really bring in any surprise. Before this new textile policy was declared there was the new electronics policy, then there was the budget and changes in the export-import policy and a host of other similar policy statements relating to the economy, particularly the industrial economy. In general, we can say that the new textile policy is yet another concrete expression of the maturity of the Indian economy as a neo-colonial one.
But the textile industry has got certain peculiarities and it is this aspect which makes the new policy statement one of the most arrogantly anti-people policy statements in recent years. As an industry, it is the biggest as well as the oldest employer. The mill sector, powerloom sector and the handloom sector together employ at least 122 lakh workers directly, with the handloom sector accounting for the major share. Moreover, at least 20 lakh farmers are dependent on this industry by way of growing cotton. Several other lakhs of people are also employed in marketing textiles, yarn, cotton, production of manmade fibres, production of textile machinery etc. and the industry is spread almost all over the country, in both rural and urban areas, though the big mills are concentrated in a few metropolitan centres like Bombay, Ahmedabad and Madras. The manpower and geographical dimensions of this oldest Indian industry is such that it enjoys a unique position in the overall economy.
The new textile policy makes it a point to inflict its deadly fangs on all the major sections of people dependent on the industry. It affects the powerloom sector, handloom weavers, mill workers and cotton growers as well as the textile machinery manufacturing units and relatively smaller mill owners in varying degrees of adversity. It will affect composition of output, import dependency, cropping pattern, unemployment, cloth availability and wages. In short, what the new textile policy strives to achieve is a total restructuring of the industry, which will have its backwash effects on agriculture.
In this case also the magic phrase constantly repeated by policy makers is ‘modernisation.’ They identify backward technology resulting in low quality production and lesser exports, and rigidity of market structure as the reasons behind the stagnancy of the industry. Under the new policy there should be no obstacles to closing down the so-called sick mills and handloom sector should make use of its own internal dynamism to survive in the face of open and shameless concessions provided by the government and its agencies to the powerful mills.
Out of the workforce of 122 lakhs, 100 lakhs are employed on an approximate 35 lakh handlooms. Handloom production is conducted to a significant extent in the rural areas and unfair competition from organised mill sector and powerlooms promoted by big mill owners had already made survival very difficult for them. The handloom weavers are as a rule unorganised and with very little capital to fall back upon. Very often it is a fact that these weavers are not able to avoid starvation through their earnings from weaving and are thus forced to look for other employment opportunities like field labour which is by no means easy to come by. And it is precisely this weakest section in the textile industry that is singled out for the most cruel treatment by the new policy.
On the one hand, the government is seeking to throw massive numbers of handloom weavers into the streets by removing all capacity restrictions on the mill and powerloom sectors. The mushrooming of powerlooms during the past was in spite of certain formal restrictions and it is this mushrooming of powerlooms that has shrunk the market for handloom cloth. When this process is a well known one what the government has done through its new policy is to accord legal sanctity to the further accelerated shrinking of the market for handlooms. Here also in reality there is no basic policy shift because the government had never bothered to implement its own laws stipulating the growth of handlooms even while it was crying itself hoarse about the need to preserve handlooms. Now of course, the process will continue with hitherto unknown speed creating unemployment to millions of handloom weavers.
Then there is the farce about reserving the production of ‘controlled’ cloth for the handlooms. Here the hypocrisy of the policy makers is crossing all limits. According to government sources themselves it is this ‘controlled’ cloth production that has made many mills (including National Textile Corporation mills) ‘sick.’ The government wants us to believe that now this reservation of production for handlooms and will develop and preserve handloom sector while the same policy for the mills (with incomparably more capital and resources) could only make them ‘sick.’ So in reality, the present reservation can only shift sickness form the mills to the handlooms.
The powerloom sector as such is supposed to get a boom from the implementation of this textile policy. Now the powerlooms and the organised mill sectors are supposed to compete with each other for the market and it is stipulated that registration of all powerlooms is compulsory. Capacity and modernisation constraints are abolished and now they can expand production or update their looms as much as they wish. On the face of it, it may look that power looms are going to thrive due to removal of these restrictions. But a closer look at the structure of this sector and its relations with the organised mill sector (particularly the bigger textile houses) shows who the real beneficiaries are.
First and foremost, powerlooms are a sure means of superprofit making by the big mills. And we have to keep in mind that not all the mills in the organised sector are prone to ‘sickness.’ Among the 875 mills in the whole country only the relatively older mills working with old fashioned machinery and using cotton as the main raw material are becoming ‘sick’, but others like Reliance Textiles, Gwalior, Orkay etc. are steeply rising in terms of profits and turnover. What these big firms do is supply yarn to powerlooms which are concentrated in a few cities and towns and buy the cloth at predetermined prices. Then the appropriate seals are fixed on the cloth and marketed. The profits are huge mainly because the workers working on powerlooms receive pitiably low wages and work for as long as 12 hours a day. And there is nothing surprising in these mills, rather commission agents of the crudest variety, amassing huge profits. In the words of Dhirubhai Ambani, the boss of Reliance Textiles, “now after this new textile policy everything is merged, so there is nothing like powerloom.”
What the new textile policy aims to do with the powerlooms is to make the entire sector a gold mine for the select few thriving middlemen like Reliance and Orkay. By the present merger any semblance to independent growth for this sector is ruled out. They will be totally left to the mercy of these middlemen and the condition of the workers will definitely undergo further degeneration. So the government is achieving two things by the new policy: one, ensure that handlooms will be progressively eliminated from the market in a systematic manner, and two, subjugate the next important sector, powerlooms, to the brutal profit drive of a bunch of middlemen.
The workers in the organised mill sector are not going to fare any better. The new textile policy envisages liberal concessions and loans to those mills that want to modernise and threatens that ‘sickness’ will not be entertained. Government calculations show that at least 1.2 lakh workers will be sacked when the ‘sick’ mills are closed down. But this is nothing when compared to the labour displacement that is going to occur when the modernisation starts. For example, the production of wide width air jet or projectile looms is ten times more than that of the older Indian looms. And the labour displacement for every such loom is 50 workers. The new textile policy by promising liberal concessional finance to the mills to modernise will generate unprecedented unemployment of the workers.
Certainly, all mills are not going to be beneficiaries. It is a foregone conclusion that the already ‘sick’ mills will be closed down and owners can salvage whatever they can by selling the land and other fixed assets. Modernisation of the mill sector is estimated to cost at least Rs. 2000 crores and the government has no specific ideas on how this money will be raised and to whom it will go. Already a dozen or so mills are almost entirely working on imported modern machines and it is these mills that are making superprofits. In the light of the decision to remove all restrictions on capacity expansion and fibre composition it is these mills that are going to expand by cornering the available concessional finance. The lesser among the mills will be pushed to the wall. Moreover with increased use of synthetic cloth, product differentiation is bound to go up which will automatically bring in a greater role for advertising etc. the mills that are already enjoying monopoly or near monopoly in the product market will even more aggressively expand and diversify production and go in for even more massive advertisements etc. obviously they stand to gain at the cost of mills operating with lesser amount of capital and less sophisticated machines. What the new policy will achieve is that instead of removing ‘sickness’ fresh ‘sickness’ will be created. More and more operating mills will fall ‘sick’ and this process is bound to continue uninterrupted until the whole industry is wholly brought under the control of those mills that are already thriving.
Full fibre flexibility between cotton and manmade fibres will depress the cotton market even further. Drastic reduction in the customs duty on imported fibres is already announced. The cotton growers are faced with the impossible task of maintaining themselves by increasing export of raw cotton, which is at present undergoing continuous deterioration in the international market. Otherwise they will have to stop cotton cultivation or at least cut down the acreage under cotton. The government is least worried about any of these developments and has no policy to do anything about this situation. An important side effect of this government move is to be noted. Cotton clothes, proven to be the best clothing in our tropical conditions from the point of view of health and comfort, will soon become a luxury for the masses: instead artificial fibre clothing will be thrust upon us with its inevitable health hazards. Meanwhile, these very cotton textiles snatched from us, will flow into imperialist metropolises and countries. Modest estimates put the cotton displacement during the coming five years at 30% of the present level and when the speed of modernisation and restructuring picks up all these calculations are bound to become gross underestimations. Cotton growers will be more and more left to the mercy of the imperialist market mechanism, a situation of utter callousness being shown towards the millions of cotton farmers.
Apt and Prompt ‘Greetings’
On 2 October peasants all over Maharashtra protested against the new textile policy of Rajiv Gandhi by taking out demonstrations and making bonfires of synthetic clothes at over 200 places. In Wardha peasants under the banner of Shetkari Sanghatana took out a mammoth demonstration and more than one thousand of them threw their shirts into a huge bonfire. In Ahmedabad, a similar massive protest was mounted.
The new textile policy has declared to reduce the cotton demanded by the textile manufacturing units and very clearly severely victimises the several millions of cotton growers who are already under heavy burden as a result of the superexploitation by imperialist agencies and the monopoly trading and manufacturing units here itself. By granting total flexibility in the fibre composition the growers are going to be further penalized and the new policy might very well mark the demise of this agricultural activity which is woven so inextricably into the cultural and economic life of the masses. Cotton growers ridicule the imported synthetic fibres as ‘Rajiv Vastra’ and rightly think that it deserves only to be burned.
According to the new policy, liberal import of machinery not manufactured in India will be allowed at very low duty rate and there can be no better noose to strangle the Indian textile machinery industry. The government expects the indigenous textile machinery industry to reduce costs and improve quality and technology. But it doesn’t say how and why these things are to be done. But the policy towards the import of machinery and technology clearly brings out the solution. As such the Indian textile machinery industry produces machines with relatively lower labour productivity and that is why liberal aid is given for importing high productivity machines. And the machine industry in India is welcome to modernise itself by going in for surrender to external textile machinery making companies. An all round chain of vicious and crippling dependence is envisaged by the central government for the entire textile industry and related production activities.
This is not the first time that the “motherland of cotton” is deprived of her glory in textile production. The British imperialists brutally murdered the nascent cotton industry during their direct rule and converted India into a market for their inferior quality textiles. They resorted to chopping off the thumbs of the fine muslin weavers of Dacca besides throttling the weavers through a maze of discriminatory rules and regulations imposed with an iron hand. This is the second such attack and this attack is being waged by a handful of big compradors and their state machinery. The present restructuring is aimed at cutting the roots of any independent development of the textile industry and converting it into an export dependent monopoly sector thriving due to its dependency on imperialist capital and technology. In this process many millions of people will suffer great misery. The present attack on the textile industry is more complicated and it embraces a variety of production activities. It will increase labour productivity, may even increase the output. But it will turn out products that are not suited to the tropical conditions and will cater mainly to the upper deciles of the population. A handful of compradors will make quick money, lots of machinery will be wasted, unemployment will become monstrous and the imperialists will make money by selling machinery, raw materials and the technology and capital necessary to produce both.
The workers and cotton farmers are going to be the most directly and immediately hit and they are bound to rise up in struggle. The fighting spirit of the textile workers will once again emerge to the forefront; the already existing serious problems of farmers producing for the market will get even more acute and they are also bound to rise up in struggle. And as our past experience shows the state will try to brutally suppress these people’s struggles. It will become necessary to rally broader sections of the people against the suicidal and outrightly sell-out policy of the state by developing the consciousness of the broad masses and popularisation of slogans like boycott of cloth produced by the compradors; creating demand for handlooms etc. will become an integral part of the strategy for fighting the willing slaves of imperialism. In other words, to counter the anti-people economic programme of the central state the people must formulated their own economic programme and struggle to implement it.
(Massline Oct.-Nov. 1985, vol. 12, no. 1-2)