|
|
|
|
||
|
INDIA'S ELECTRICITY AND PORT WORKERS STRIKE
By B. Prasant, PV correspondent in India
(This article is from the Feb. 1-14/2000 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
CALCUTTA, Jan. 21 - Every major port in India has been brought to a standstill as more than 100,000 dock and port workers went on strike across India following breakdown of talks between their trade unions and the BJP-led federal government in Delhi.
At the same time, the northern electricity grid that supplies power to nearly half of the country was switched off when electricity workers including members of the officers' association and the engineering staff struck work. Both strikes have continued unabated since January 18, and the power workers' strike would spill over to the rest of the country following a call for a one-day all-India power strike on January 24.
The port strike was always a threat to the Vajpayi government since the federal minister for surface transport boasted in public that the "decision to privatise the ports as per the wishes of the World Bank shall be carried out and the protestations of the `anti-national' TU bodies shall simply be ignored by the government."
Speaking to PV in Delhi, the leadership of the five all-India trade unions for docks and ports stated that the strike was in protest against the efforts of the BJP-led federal government to privatise the ports and to forcibly lay off thousands of workers. The striking workers also demanded that the federal ministry for surface transport raise wages and salaries, frozen since the first BJP-led government assumed office in 1996-7. Another urgent demand of the stewards and the loaders concerns the failure of the federal government to pay bonuses which had earlier been agreed upon by all concerned.
The power workers and engineers of the northern grid went on strike against the recent decision by the BJP-led government to begin a tri-furcation of this large power corporation. This preliminary step towards privatisation and massive retrenchment is to be followed by a steep increase in power rates.
The entire exercise, the general secretary of the Electricity Employees' Federation of India, and CITU leader, M.K. Pandhe told PV, formed part of the package offered by the World Bank whereby a loan component of $1 billion would be forthcoming at "concessional rates of interest."
A.B. Bardhan, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI), who heads the All-India Electricity Workers Federation, added that the national Platform for Mass Organisations had met in Delhi to call for bigger strike actions in the power sector if the government rejected the legitimate demands of the unions following January 24. The present strike action by the electricity workers and employees is their largest-ever, exceeding the strikes organised in the power sector back in 1988.
Northern India remains plunged in darkness, with public services and utilities severely affected. Popular resentment has risen sharply, with rallies and processions organised by the opposition parties in different parts of the country to condemn the anti-worker and anti-people outlook of the BJP-led government. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayi is particularly embarrassed as the power strike affects Uttar Pradesh, the scene of a recent political upheaval in the wake of the BJP high command's decision to remove Vajpayi protégé and BJP leader Kalyan Singh from the post of chief minister. The departure of Kalyan Singh has eroded a substantial part of the BJP support base among the "backward caste" of the Lodhs. At a more personal level, Uttar Pradesh also happens to be the province from which Vajpayi won his way to parliament and the prime ministership.
Meanwhile, the docks and ports, both riverine and sea, remain virtually deserted. The ugly ploy of the BJP government to employ elite Indian Navy commandos to try to force the strikers to return to work has backfired, with the local populace coming out in support of the striking workers and forcing the Navy personnel to leave.
The postal employees unions have also given a call for a nation-wide strike against the federal government, which has failed to live up to its promises regarding the early absorption of part-time postal employees in the "extra-departmental" category, who are paid a pittance of a salary. In the wake of the all-India postal strike in 1998, the federal government had assured the striking workers that their demand for the regularisation of the part-time workers would be taken up "as early as possible." Based on this assurance, the postal strike was ended.
With the federal government showing little sign of taking action on the contentious issue, the postal employees' unions have threatened to launch a continuous strike action by late January.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||
