Gurgaon: A Warning To Exploiters

Chittabrata Majumdar

THE scar caused by the brutal atrocities in Gurgaon by Haryana police on thousands of agitating workers of Honda Motorcycles & Scooters India Private Limited (HMSI), a wholly owned Japanese MNC, is quite fresh in our memory. Nationwide protests and condemnation filled with anger and hatred have compelled the state authority and the multinational company to retreat and to reinstate the retrenched workmen.

It is by now established that the happenings of July 25, 2005 that shocked the entire society was the culmination of the continued deterioration of industrial relations in HMSI and needs retrospection to understand a whole gamut of the capitalist machinations to grind the labour force and army of jobless supported by the obsession of the State power for development and industrialisation. Already, reactions have been aired from many quarters expressing the concern for the country’s investment climate vis-à-vis the prospects of the overall investment and so on. Comments have been made cautioning against so-called ‘rowdiness of the workers’ since FDI demands indefinite industrial peace at all costs and does not like labour agitations, however, democratic that might be.  

A section, citing the Gurgaon incident, is trying to sell the psychosis, that even a legitimate workers’ movement to protect themselves and their jobs would deter the investors to invest and cause damage to industrial growth. They try to hold the workers responsible for the outrage in Gurgaon, suppressing the facts of the rampant ongoing repression by the management of Honda Motors and Scooters India including retrenchment and un-provoked lockout. They are in a way advocating for curbing the legitimate rights of the working class to form association, right to bargain collectively and right to strike. They have vowed to justify the capitalist belief ‘no major development project could happen without people’s blood being spilled, that’s normal’.    

Attempts have also been made to divert the focus from the rising repression by the employers flouting the law of the land, trampling the workers’ rights across the country, attributing the HMSI case as a stray and “freak” incident sparked in the unit owned by a multinational corporation. According to them the incidence is a random one and not rampant. They are desperate to hide the fact that this culture of repression and anti-worker violence goes back long time, not restricted in Haryana but being the feature across the country and has heightened in the contemporary neo-liberal regime, often with patronage of the State machinery.

Arguments are being forwarded attempting to acquit the Japanese MNC, holding Haryana police solely and wholly responsible, as if the brutal attack by the police was for some reasons not related to the legitimate agitation against the management caused by its atrocities and repression. Such a feeble argument is a futile attempt to shield the Japanese company. 

The section propagating the above arguments is committed to appease capital and glorify the system. They are at the same time averse to facing the reality, obstinately denying the history of class struggle and restless to re-impose medieval style repression on the working class.

Governments all over the world are, swayed by the slogan of industrialisation, and succumb to the Fund-Bank pressure, to woo investment. They are working against the interest of labour. They deny registration of unions and are quick to deregister trade unions on lame excuses, non-implementation of agreements, refusal to attend tripartite meetings and even treating the workers as their slaves. On the other hand, the authorities deliberately overlook the non-adherence of all sorts of labour laws by the employers. Attempts are made to replace the existing labour laws in favour of employers to shelve the workers’ rights to appease the capital.

The mayhem in Gurgaon and subsequent reaction are a result of the ferocity of the attacks on the working people resulting from the neo-liberal process.

As the liberalisation-globalisation process advances, and attacks on the workers and trade unions keep growing, the workers have mounted a mighty resistance. The violence on the part of the employers to punish their workers is becoming frequent. The Honda episode amounts to a warning to the stubborn exploiters attempting to deny even the basic human rights and trade union rights to the working people.