By Mazdoor Inquilab
It had been 4 years since the last major general strike by central trade unions in 2021. Since 2010, there had been a general strike once every year by trade unions until the pandemic hit.
The past strikes were massive one day strikes that caused large, but temporary, disruptions to the system, without materializing into a lasting or sustained campaign. The strike of 9th July was no different in this regard. Like earlier general strikes called by the trade unions, it did not concretize a long term programme for agitation.
The trade union strike comes at a time when the Modi government is desperate in its attacks against the working class, youth and peasant masses. The success of the farmer’s agitation energized the masses of the country, and dealt a massive political defeat to the Modi government; it is significant that farmers’ unions which participated in that mobilization also came out in support of the general strike.
The strike had an impact across the nation, but the intensity varied from state to state. Though the trade unions claimed 250 million workers joined the strike, the real figure is likely to be far less, considering that many central trade unions aligned with the BJP, like the BMS (Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh), opposed the strike.
Repression of the strike was seen in different parts of the country, most prominently in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, where governments led by bourgeois opposition parties moved in to foil the strike. The TMC sent its goons to act as strike breakers, and the workers’ strike overlapped with the existing political contest between the ruling TMC (Trinamool Congress) party and the cadres of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Live footage of TMC goons and the police beating up protesting strikers could be seen on the news.
In Tamil Nadu members of the LPF (Labour Progressive Federation) acted as strike breakers in the transport sector, particularly in bus transport. LPF union members stepped in to drive buses left vacant by striking bus drivers. It is worth remembering that the LPF was also opposed to the Samsung workers’ strike.
The strike received solidarity from the youth, from farmers, from activists, and it had the sympathy of the vast majority of India’s masses. Despite repression in different regions, despite the traitorous actions of large trade unions, the strike drew tens of millions. Large protests took place in major cities across the country. Both formal and informal sector workers participated in the strike, bringing the most precarious workers into the strike.
Trade union leaders have stated that this general strike was but the first step in a long term movement for securing labour rights. Whether or not this materializes remains to be seen.
The condition of the Indian working class
It is worth remembering why the working class has gone on the path of struggle, why this general strike happened in the first place. The immediate reason of course is the passage of the Labour Codes, but that is not the only reason.
Since the neo-liberal onslaught of the 1990s, there has been a steady empowerment of the Indian capitalist class at the expense of Indian workers. Trade unions have declined in power, while hire-and-fire laws have made it easier for bosses to control workers. The most significant change however, is the increasing precariousness of work.
With successive governments privatizing state assets, employment in the public sector has either declined or moved further towards contract labour. The increasing push of capitalism into India’s hinterlands has resulted in the crippling of Indian agriculture, the more vulnerable sectors of rural India have been forced to find work in the cities, either as seasonal workers, or as migrant workers. Millions have been thrown into the meat grinder of India’s job market, where few positions are given for low wages to millions of applicants.
Migrant workers fill the ranks of gig workers, casual labour and contract labour. Much of India’s construction sector is powered by workers from the countryside seeking seasonal work in India’s cities. There is little to no protection for migrant workers, and with global warming, they face greater heat stress. Migrant workers were the worst affected during the pandemic lockdowns, many simply died trying to walk back home.
In the decades before the neo-liberal reforms, the public sector was the main provider of jobs. One could hope for a steady permanent job in the public sector, but today even the public sector is not immune to the contracting trend. Whether it’s the railways, telecom, power, contract labour is displacing regular permanent employment. In the competition for jobs, the fresh inflow of new workers from the countryside and small towns has swelled the ranks of low-paid, precarious work, depressing wages for workers across sectors.
Though not regularized as permanent workers, contract workers are often made to work the same hours, and do work that is similar or the same as those of permanent workers, but without any of the rights and protections. This is the situation for contract workers in a publicly owned company like BSNL (in the telecom sector), one can only imagine how much worse the situation is in the private sector, where unions are generally weaker.
The scenario for industrial labour is especially bad, considering the findings in the Annual Survey of Industries data. According to the data, in FY23, a total of 14.61 million workers were employed by 253,000 factories across India. Of them, 5.95 million workers (40.7 per cent) were on contract, the highest ever yet recorded, as compared to only 40.2 per cent in the preceding financial year. To make matters worse, such precariousness is combined with longer working hours, and stagnating pay.
Since the COVID pandemic, real wages have been largely stagnant. Meagre raises have not kept pace with inflation, and has workers have been forced to make do with less. According to the NITI Aayog (India’s alternative to the planning commission), salary increases have not kept pace with inflation for the last seven years. The real wages of workers have largely stagnated across rural and urban sectors. This, even as corporate profits reach a 15 year high, climbing 22% in 2024.
The stagnation of real wages, was one of the driving forces behind the Samsung worker’s strike. The fight for the recognition of the Samsung workers union continues. Longer working hours and increased expenses, coupled with a capitalist class that has been emboldened to treat workers worse, have only made these tensions worse. The most shameless capitalists publicly urge the beleaguered and burdened Indian working class to work 70 hour weeks, industry lobbyists urge the government to raise the working week to 90 hours, at a time when Indian workers are already working 60 hour work weeks, with even worse conditions in the unregulated informal sector.
India today is one of the most unequal countries in the world, wealth disparity has become worse than it was during the British Raj. There is no longer any mystery to where the fruits of the worker’s labour is going: while the Ambani family is building a billion dollar skyscraper, half of Bombay still live in slums. Those slums are now set for redevelopment, again for the benefit of another billionaire family. Today India’s richest 1% hold 40% of the country’s wealth. While billionaires buy property in foreign countries and Indian companies acquire businesses and land across the world, Indian workers are left living hand to mouth.
This is the context in which the central trade union called for the general strike on 9th July.
The political situation around the strike
It is important to understand the political context of the July 9th strike. Between 2014 and 2021, we witnessed the reactionary triumphalism of the Modi government. They could act as they pleased, pass whatever laws they wanted, ride roughshod over the weakened enfeebled opposition, crush workers’ rights, and punish dissent with ruthlessness. Nothing displayed this attitude of impunity better than the sudden demonetization that overnight destroyed tens of millions of people’s cash savings. Despite the difficulties faced by Indians, and even the death of several bank workers, the BJP government remained secure in power.
This impunity peaked with the pandemic lockdown, where the government simultaneously revealed their cruelty and incompetence. The arbitrary lockdowns and the suspension of trains and busses led to enormous difficulties for workers and poor. Worst off were migrant workers who had no means of sustenance and were compelled to find their own ways back home. Many died on the way back home, some dying from starvation. The lockdowns achieved nothing, COVID still spread, and hospitals were found woefully lacking to deal with the task. Indians died by the tens of thousands, a fact that remained hidden by the government.
Even as Indians suffered and died, the government was focused on pushing through several key bills into laws such as the new farm laws and the labour codes. This was a dual attack on workers and peasants, the response was almost immediate. Trade unions and farmers’ bodies planned a strike in September of 2021, right in the height of the COVID pandemic we witnessed a general strike by workers and farmers.
This was the precursor to the farmers’ protests which shook the government to its core. The government weaponized the pandemic lockdown to clamp down on protests, even though BJP party cadres had freedom to campaign and gather at will for the West Bengal elections, a major reason for the spread of the virus in its worst phase. The farmers’ protests were conducted with remarkable discipline, encompassing thousands of people who put the capital under siege, rallying behind a singular demand, the repeal of the farm laws.
The success of the farmers’ protests gave the BJP a defeat from which they have not yet recovered. The farmers’ protests ended around the time that the pandemic began to die down and normalcy returned. Without lockdowns, protests grew. Soon after the farmers’ protests there was the Anganwadi workers’ strikes, transport strikes against the new criminal laws, and quite significantly a series of electoral defeats over the period from 2021 to 2024.
Though the BJP won in 2024, their parliamentary majority was much reduced. The absolute majority that the BJP enjoyed was gone, they now had to manage a coalition of regional bourgeois parties.
At this time, bourgeois opposition parties have moved opportunistically to support the protest actions of workers and farmers. The DMK (Dravida Munetra Kazagham) in Tamil Nadu has posed as a defender of Tamil language and culture against Hindi imposition, while the TMC has posed as the foremost defender of secular values, minority rights and democracy against the BJP and their Hindutva ideology. Both parties pose as populist parties that care for the rights of workers and farmers, but this is a lie. The truth is neither the TMC nor the DMK, nor any opposition bourgeois party for that matter, care about workers farmers or youth.
The last year saw the revolution in Bangladesh which was followed soon after by the uprising around the doctor’s movement. This happened at the same time that the tea workers of Northern West Bengal went on the path of struggle for the payment of pending wages, protesting against the deplorable condition of work in the plantations. The same year witnessed the mammoth strike of the Samsung workers in Tamil Nadu. During this period the oppositional bourgeois parties acted as guardians of capitalism, siding with the bosses against the workers.
The Congress party is the second largest political party in the country, and the largest of the oppositional bourgeois parties. It was also the former ruling party of India, having held the reins of power for the longest period of any party after independence. Despite their words of support for workers and for the farmers’ protest, their government in Karnataka have begun taking steps to increase working hours, showing where their loyalties really belong.
The bourgeois parties’ charades continued during the strike. In the state of Bihar, which will go to polls in the next year, the strike mobilizations were combined with protests against electoral roll revisions, which may disenfranchise up to 20 million voters, mostly from poorer working class and peasant households. The Congress party, whose government in Karnataka is launching fresh attacks on IT workers, supported the general strike, as did their affiliate trade union the INTUC. In some areas however, opposition bourgeois parties were strongly against the strike, particularly so in the state of West Bengal.
The state of West Bengal had witnessed mobilizations against the criminal rule of the TMC party over the second half of last year. Much anger still remained and was on display as TMC goons and trade union activists confronted each other on the streets. The police force was deployed to arrest and beat up striking workers. Directives were put in place to punish striking government employees. This did not deter workers, many government workers and staff still supported the strike action, many were angry over unpaid dearness allowance (a cost-of-living adjustment programme).
In the aftermath of the pandemic, the BJP has seen its political position rattled, but not undone. This has made space for bourgeois opposition parties to rise in power. The Congress party recovered some lost ground, nearly doubling their seat share in the parliament. Regional parties have grown in power within their respective domains, while the CPIM (Communist Party of India Marxist)-led left front remains in doldrums, at least as far as electoral performance is concerned. Its seat share in the parliament increased from 6 seats to 8 seats, with vote share remaining mostly stagnant.
The Stalinist party’s abysmal performance hides the true scope of influence of the party, especially when counting its affiliated farmers and trade union bodies. Though their power is in decline, this decline has not resulted in the rise of alternatives on the left. The space for leftist politics is still largely dominated by the CPIM, its allies and affiliate bodies. This reality has showed itself time and again, the DYFI and SFI student unions linked with the CPIM were on the forefront of mobilizations during the doctor’s movement. The All India Kisan Sabha (All India Farmers Union) linked with the CPIM were one of the leading bodies in the farmer’s agitation. The Samsung workers strike is led by a CITU affiliated trade union, which is linked with the CPIM.
The series of mobilizations and struggles show that India is no longer in a reactionary situation but one that is heading towards pre-revolutionary situation. However, Indian capitalism remains stable: it is growing and politically secure. There is not yet an active pre-revolutionary situation as we saw in Sri Lanka in 2022 or in Bangladesh during August of 2024. The political context today bears many similarities to the period between 2010 and 2014, when India witnessed many national and regional protests, strike actions and mobilizations. The last time such a situation resulted in the BJP’s victory and the beginning of a reactionary situation in India; whether this time will be any different depends to a great degree on the course of class struggle and its leadership.
The impact of the strike and solidarity from different sectors
The General strike comes at a time when India is going through a period of upheavals as national and powerful regional mobilizations have shaken capitalist governments. Just the last year we saw the tea workers’ strike, the doctors’ movement in West Bengal, the Anganwadi strikes gaining victories, and the Samsung workers’ strike in Tamil Nadu. Even as the one day strike ended, transport workers in the state of Uttar Pradesh have struck over the policies of the BJP-run state government. What we are seeing is a continuing momentum that has remained in place since the farmers’ mobilizations in 2021, but this momentum has neither increased nor decreased.
The fear of war in May of this month had led to the delay of the strike, with trade unions shifting the date of the strike to July 9th, conceding to the reactionary mood that had been built up by the BJP government over an impending war with Pakistan. The skirmish did not escalate into a war, but tensions still remain. However, the fact that the general strike has still happened, and that it has happened with impact, shows that the BJP’s attempts at rallying reactionary sentiment to dampen the militant mood of the masses has failed, dissent against the BJP and it’s reactionary policies have not ended, and shows no signs of declining as of yet.
Trade union leaders have claimed about 250 million workers had joined the one day general strike, with some claiming more may have joined in. Even this number may be exaggerated, as 19 central and regional trade unions boycotted the strike, most prominently the BMS (Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh) affiliated with the BJP, and the TMC-affiliated trade union the INTTUC (Indian National Trinamool Trade Union Congress). Reports emerged of LPF workers acting as strike breakers in Tamil Nadu to ensure the normal running of state busses. The betrayal from some of these unions dampened the impact of the general strike. In Calcutta, where the impact of the strike was greater than most large cities, it was not uncommon to find one bank fully shut while other banks were running at half strength. While some government offices were shut entirely, others ran inefficiently.
The protests in various cities numbered from the hundreds to the thousands; while not the largest in recent times, they were visible. In Delhi the trade unions were joined in with farmer’s unions, student’s unions and youth organizations, most linked with the CPIM. In Calcutta, protests broke out in several parts of the city, but suffered from crackdowns by the police and attacks by TMC goons. In Mumbai the strike witnessed a good turnout, with disruptions to railway and bus transportation. Bihar witnessed large protests on the streets of Patna, here the strike coincided with ongoing protests by opposition bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties against the electoral roll revision. This was not unique to Bihar, in West Bengal too the pitched battle between the TMC and the CPIM cadres showed that the strike overlapped with other local political conflicts in the state.
By and large bourgeois parties and ideologues came out in opposition to the general strike, as is expected, what was unexpected is the degree of solidarity received from different sectors, but most significantly from farm workers and farmers’ unions. The same organizations which had participated in the mammoth farmer’s mobilization in 2021 had come out to rally in support of worker’s demands. This is a solid ground to develop a united front of workers and farmers, around a programme for revolutionary struggle.
Adding to the ranks of the workers were radicalized youth, student groups, and even journalists’ unions who joined the workers’ protest rallies in Delhi.
The emerging alliance between workers and farmers, the expansion of struggle from organized to unorganized sectors, encompassing both industrial workers and scheme workers (workers employed by temporary government programmes), is significant. This broad unity of workers and farmers is a good basis to develop a political programme for revolution, but without revolutionary leadership this will come to nothing. The Stalinist CPIM, which still remains under the bourgeois led ‘INDIA’ alliance, will use the energy of this mobilization to electoral ends and ultimately to the benefit of the oppositional bourgeois parties.
Conclusion :
The General strike is one of the most potent weapons in the arsenal of organized workers. Such a tactic must be used wisely and not squandered. To build up a general strike on a scale that is necessary to have national impact, in a country as large and diverse as India, takes huge effort. The central trade unions and Stalinist parties have once more proven that they can conduct such a strike, but that they choose to do it for a mere 24 hours, with no clear programme for further action, meaning that this enormous energy and effort will dissipate.
The strike call was given by leftist trade unions mostly aligned with the CPIM, but this call went unanswered by 19 different unions. These bourgeois-aligned unions must be ruthlessly attacked for this betrayal, they have abandoned their own workers at a time when they need militant action the most. The BJP-aligned BMS especially must be attacked and boycotted at every turn, workers must be convinced to leave the BMS until the union either changes its direction or dissolves entirely. In either case, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by weaning workers away from the BMS. The same goes for the trade union of the TMC, the INTTUC, which exists as a tool of the bourgeois TMC party in West Bengal to control labour militancy.
Bourgeois-linked workers unions are less organs of struggle and more tools of control, in such cases our strategy must be to convince the workers against their treacherous leaderships, exposing their true allegiance. The BMS had participated in past general strikes when their affiliate party was in opposition, now that the BJP is in power they have turned their backs on workers. This shows the cynical nature of bourgeois politics, the struggle of workers must rise above such cynical political machinations. The moves of the BMS are now reflected by unions like the LPF and INTUC which are respectively aligned with the DMK and the Congress party. These parties which find themselves in opposition now support the fight of the workers, but in their own governments they have taken anti-worker policies.
Across the board, bourgeois governments, whether led by the ruling party or opposition are steadily implementing provisions of the Labour Codes, undermining and dismantling protections provided by earlier laws. Their opposition amounts to nothing if they can’t protect the workers, and this failure exposes their class allegiances.
REPEAL THE LABOUR CODES !
LONG LIVE THE WORKERS STRUGGLE ! DOWN WITH TRAITOROUS BOURGEOIS PARTIES !
FOR THE 8 HOUR WORK DAY !
