Rising inflation! Rationing of LPG cylinders! Price hikes in essentials! Divestments in public sector companies! Mass arrests and repression on worker's organizations!

These are the reasons why all the major trade-union bodies and even smaller trade unions throughout India are coming in a general strike on 20th and 21st February.

In an interview, Adhiraj Bose, from the "New Wave", talks about the wave of protests against the rapes in India.

We are publishing below the interview with Adhiraj Bose, one of the activists of the New Wave, Indian group that maintains fraternal relations with the Workers International League - Fourth International (IWL).

On the 16th of December, a 23 years old girl was raped in Delhi. According to several Internet news sites, the victim and her friend had been to see a film when they boarded the bus in the Munirka area of Delhi, intending to travel to Dwarka in the south-west of the city. The bus was driven around on a stretch in south Delhi for more than an hour and had "crossed" three police patrol vans, while she was raped for nearly an hour, and both she and her companion were beaten with iron bars and thrown out of the moving bus and into the street.

End the divestment! Stop this FDI! End the Price Hikes!!

For whom are these reforms?

The government of the Congress has again begun its old capitalist tricks. Winning the presidential elections has given it the confidence to restart its reactionary programme of attacking the workers and poor peasants and petty bourgeois. The first major attack has already be fallen us in the form of a triple offensive of fuel price hikes, divestments, and FDI in retail and aviation. Whilst this has made 'Corporate India' very happy,(Stock markets rose 400 points immediately after this announcement), it has made ordinary Indian working people very miserable. Imagine a family of 8 having to ration their consumption with only 6 LPG cylinders a year! On top of that food inflation still keeps rising!! It is for these reasons that the enraged people of India have taken to the streets in protest, in an all India general strike and shut down!

Fact finding teams of New Wave New Delhi have confirmed that the 'murder' of the executive at Maruti is in fact a lie and in all likelihood he died in an accidental fire. The factory at Manesar is now under lockout and workers are under threat of layoffs with plans of the plant being shifted to Gujarat.

The general strike of 28th February 2012 is of immense significance in the recent history of worker's struggles in India. Beginning from 2003 there has been an upswing of a united strike action resulting in several general strikes (Al Jazeera reports 14 general strikes having taken place since 1991).