186 MADE IN CHINA - WINDOW ON ASIA

Indian labour politics today faces a historic paradox. On the one hand, ’s vast labour movements have continued to organise what is, after China, the world’s largest working-age population and to mobilise record numbers of workers in national street protests in response to regressive changes to labour laws. On the other hand, several massive labour protests have failed to make a dent in the political popularity of Prime Minister and his right-wing Hindu nationalist (BJP). Since 2014, the BJP has dominated government at the national level and at the local level in 13 states, including strategically-important Indian workers on strike, september 2016. Photo: Karo4Greatness. and populous states like Uttar Pradesh and , as well as Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Haryana. Indian Labour To explain this paradox, we need to look at the historical legacy of India’s trade Movements unions as well as the rise of the BJP, as part of a wider ‘family of organisations’ (Sangh under Modi Parivar), since the 1980s. Historically, the backbone of India’s labour movement has Tom Barnes been in the public sector and organised sector, which refers to all non-agricultural enterprises with ten or more employees. Indian labour politics today faces a historic Despite the appearance of political strength, paradox. On the one hand, in response to India’s system of industrial relations never regressive changes to labour laws, India’s gave unions the right to collectively bargain trade unions have continued to organise with employers, and public sector wages what is, after China, the world’s largest and conditions were effectively fixed by working-age population; on the other, the state. Unions were divided between massive labour protests have failed to make competing federations—known as Central a dent in the political popularity of Prime Trade Union Organisations (CTUOs)—each Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing with different political party affiliations and Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. most heavily reliant on political patronage. To make sense of this apparent contradiction, Therefore, when India’s economy this essay will outline the role of the Indian stagnated and industrial conflict began government in the formation of new labour to rise in the 1970s, the movement as a law regulations since 2014, and the response whole was poorly prepared to advance the of India’s trade unions to this new challenge. interests of workers independently of state institutions or regional political classes. From that point onwards, the organised sector has declined as a proportion of total employment. The vast majority of new MADE IN CHINA - WINDOW ON ASIA 187 jobs created in the 1980s and 1990s were Modi has expressed sympathy for in small firms in the unorganised sector, reforms enacted by several BJP-led which refers to enterprises with fewer state governments in the areas of labour than ten workers. Even when organised contractors and hire-and-fire flexibility. For sector employment began to grow again in example, the Governments of Rajasthan, the 2000s, recruitment was increasingly Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh have made dominated by the precariously employed, it easier for employers in organised sector such as workers hired by labour contractors. firms to sack workers. This has been done Despite the enormity of this challenge, by changing the rules established under the the union movement grew significantly Industrial Disputes Act 1947 (IDA), making it during the ‘neoliberal’ era of the 1990s possible for firms which employ 300 workers and 2000s. Union membership doubled in or more to make large-scale layoffs without India from 1989 to 2002, which is the last state permission (previously the threshold year the national government verified trade was 100 workers). This change will be union numbers based on complete records applied nationally if the Modi Government from all states (John 2007; Government of is able to pass its Labour Code, which aims India 2008). Although unverified by the to consolidate three central labour laws, state, the most recent data released by the including the IDA, into one simplified law. 12 officially-recognised CTUOs in 2012 and Although this code was introduced in April 2013 suggest that total membership may 2015, its passage has been delayed by the have increased by three or even four times slow pace of the Indian legislature and by since 2002 (Menon 2012). Much of this opposition party control of the Rajya Sabha increase has come from informal workers. (upper house). It is on such a background that this essay If passed, this Code would also extend will outline the role of BJP-led Governments the IDA’s restrictions on strike action. at both national and regional levels in the Currently, public sector employees must formation of new labour law regulation since give two weeks advance notice for any 2014, and the response of India’s CTUOs to strike. The proposed change would extend this new challenge. this restriction to all workers and impose fines of 20,000 to 50,000 rupees (about 300 to 780 USD) and potential imprisonment Modi’s Labour Agenda for ‘illegal’ strike action (Gopalakrishnan and Sundar 2015). The Modi Government Labour law reform is a major part has also proposed changes to the Minimum of Narendra Modi’s economic reform Wage Act and the Apprenticeship Act, which agenda, which is framed by the ‘Make would allow inter-state migrant workers to in India’ initiative. This aims at making be hired as apprentices and sets their wages India the destination of choice for global as a ‘stipend’ of 70 to 90 percent of the manufacturing investment by continuing minimum wage, with no medical insurance. with previous governments’ generous While popular among industrialists, much subsidies for large corporations and of this mainstream labour law debate has promises to cut governmental ‘red tape’. focused on the small minority of regular Industrial conflict and union rights stand workers employed in organised sector firms in the way of this dramatically ambitious and does nothing to address the interests and agenda to challenge China’s domination of rights of the majority of informal workers. global manufacturing. Arguably, a more significant shift for informal workers involves proposed changes 188 MADE IN CHINA - WINDOW ON ASIA to social security. The Modi Government (Jagannathan 2016). Additionally, tens of has already dramatically wound back the thousands of coal miners joined the strike, National Rural Employment Guarantee, along with university and college teachers which, since its inception in 2005, was (Live Mint 2016a; Reddy 2016). Many large supposed to provide 100 days of manual private sector firms were also closed down waged work (albeit at sub-minimum wages) or substantially affected. for rural households. Now the government This Bharat Bandh—literally ‘India is proposing to collapse all existing social closed’ in Hindi/Sanskrit—was the result security provisions into the new unified of coordinated action by ten CTUOs who Labour Code. If implemented, this reform promoted a 12-point charter of demands on would consolidate 15 separate laws into a the Modi government (Live Mint 2016b). single labour law (Gopalakrishnan 2017). These demands include calls to expand This would have a potentially dramatic subsidised food schemes, enforce existing impact on the rights of millions of poor labour laws (including minimum wages), informal workers. For example, labour implement universal social security, end the activists have made major breakthroughs in privatisation of public sector units, and ban some regions by organising workers to access foreign investment in railways and defence entitlements through tripartite (employer- (Industriall Global Union 2016). The same union-state) welfare boards. Many workers CTUOs had organised another national in informalised sectors, like construction or strike in September 2015, which attracted cigarette rolling, have benefited from death a similar number of participants (Australia and accident insurance, maternity leave, Asia Worker Links 2015). In February 2013, education scholarships for their children, tens of millions had also joined a national and funding for marriages. The new labour strike (Australia Asia Worker Links 2013). code threatens to undermine these hard- The scale of these successive protests won rights by severely undermining these demonstrates not only the sheer size of the welfare boards. Indian working class—the official labour force count is around 500 million, although the true figure is probably much larger—but ’Bharat Bandh’ also that CTUOs have been growing steadily in recent years. Still, in spite of these Since Modi’s election in 2014, unions— numbers and despite the BJP facing a new led by the core of India’s CTUOs—have test in the Gujarat State elections at the time periodically mobilised in large numbers to of writing, these protests have made little oppose the government’s labour agenda. In difference to Modi’s sustained popularity as September 2016, a massive nationwide strike a politician and to the success of the BJP in caused major disruption to the economy. state elections. Some unions have claimed this was the largest general strike in history, with up Explaining the Paradox to 150 million workers involved and costs to business of around 2.7 billion USD (Safi 2016). While these figures are impossible to What explains the apparent contradiction verify, the strike was highly significant with between massive labour protests and a virtually all public sector units, banks, and failure to change the direction of Indian electricity power stations closed, in addition politics? One reason is that India’s polity and to insurance companies and, in many civil society is extremely diverse and ‘labour regions, trains, bus services, and schools politics’ represent just one relatively minor MADE IN CHINA - WINDOW ON ASIA 189 part of it. Another is that labour politics 136 workers fired, and dozens jailed. This tends to be squeezed outside mainstream came after the most serious conflict in the debate by the country’s political and media auto industry to-date, at Maruti Suzuki elite, who are largely hostile to unions. India Limited (MSIL) in the nearby town A more fundamental reason relates to of Manesar. This conflict in 2011 and 2012 the BJP’s historical success in appealing resulted in thousands of sackings, the tragic to a range of classes and castes, which fall death of a human resources manager, and between India’s minority of industrialists the imprisonment of dozens of workers. and organised sector workers. As India’s Another important strike in 2016 took economy liberalised in the 1980s and 1990s, place in Bengaluru (Bangalore) where up the BJP often succeeded in appealing to 400,000 workers emptied the city’s to the interests of these ‘intermediate garments factories and flooded the streets classes’ within a populist framework, in response to government changes to state while continuing to support and facilitate pensions (Bageshree and Bharadwaj 2016). neoliberal economic policies (McCartney Key features of this strike included its 2009). The BJP also appealed to the primarily ‘wildcat’ character—local CTUOs minority of salaried ‘middle class’ Indians in were taken by surprise, despite having large cities—the well-educated, upwardly- organised their own, much smaller response mobile sons and daughters of public to the changes—and that the strikers were sector employees and professionals who overwhelmingly women. This massive underpinned new markets for automobiles, protest succeeded in deferring the Modi electronic goods, and other trappings of government’s plans (Aanchal Magazine consumer society. 2016). This electoral appeal intersected with Given that women tend to work outside the rise of an immense anti-corruption the male-dominated structures of most movement in 2011 and 2012, which related to trade unions, another highly significant Indians’ experience of everyday corruption. development occurred in the tea plantations At the time, the movement severely of Munnar in Kerala in September 2015, undermined the Indian National Congress- when female plantation workers established led national government. This confluence of a new women migrant-led union—Pembila factors meant that Modi, who cultivated an Urumai (‘Unity of Women’ in Tamil)—to image as a ‘clean’, no-nonsense technocrat, break with male-dominated unions (Banerji was well positioned to take power in 2014, 2016). winning in a landslide. While some of these workers may have participated in the CTUO-organised general strikes, the real challenges to the Beyond the Set-Piece current polity have occurred in between these set-piece events, in a society in which Interestingly, many of the most significant the labour laws and social protections social struggles since 2014 have occurred that have provoked such ferocious debate outside the set-piece events orchestrated among industrialists, union federations, and by CTUOs. In the auto industry, a strike by political classes are so rarely applied. The 3,000 Honda workers in Tapukara in early Modi Government has signalled the intention 2016, 100 kilometres southwest of New to plough ahead with its controversial Delhi, was heavily repressed by the state labour reform agenda, so further points of BJP government (Workers Solidarity Centre contention are likely to emerge. 2016). Over 1,000 workers were arrested, This text is taken from Gilded Age: A Year of Chinese Labour, Civil Society, and Rights, Made in China Yearbook 2017, edited by Ivan Franceschini and Nicholas Loubere, published 2018 by ANU Press, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

doi.org/10.22459/MIC.04.2018.34