Hundreds of thousands protest anti-labor legislation in India

Farmers joined the factory and public sector workers across the country on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the historic Delhi protests which had forced the extreme right wing government to withdraw anti-farmers laws

Protesters march on November 26 -- image via the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Facebook

By Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch

On Wednesday, November 26, hundreds of thousands of workers and farmers across India came out in a mass protest against the Narendra Modi government’s so-called anti-people policies. One of the primary demands was the withdrawal of the four recently-implemented labor codes widely considered as detrimental to basic labor rights won after generations of struggle and sacrifices.

Workers in coal mines, railways, ports, refineries, cloth mills, banks and several other sectors staged protests and organized rallies throughout the country to express their opposition to the labor codes.

Joining the workers were thousands of farmers, who staged protests at hundreds of local, district and state administrative headquarters in solidarity with the workers and to push for their joint charter of demands.

The call for the farmers’ protest was given by Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), a collective of farmers’ unions, to mark the anniversary of the launch of their protests in Delhi in 2020 against the three farm laws which the Narendra Modi-led government was forced to withdraw a year later.

Central Trade Unions (CTUs), a joint platform of the country’s major trade union federations, joined the call with the demand of the repeal of four labor codes notified last week. It has called the new codes “deceptive fraud” on the working people.

At several places protesters burnt the copies of the notification to implement the codes.

Several other groups such as the agricultural workers, student unions, women organizations, and other civil society groups joined the protests in solidarity with the farmers and workers calling the Modi government’s move to enforce the labor codes a part of its “systematic assault” against the people.

The protesters also opposed the sectarian approach adopted by the ruling Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) calling it an assault on the country’s secular constitution.

November 26 is also celebrated as the constitution day in India. The BJP government which came to power in 2014 has been accused of promoting majoritarian ideas and failing to protect the rights of the country’s religious minorities.

Farmers also questioned the government’s failure to fulfil its promises of a legal minimum support price (MSP) for the agricultural products among others. The promises were part of the agreement the government signed at the time of the withdrawal of the farmers’ protests in 2021.

Resistance to anti-people policies

Almost half of India’s total population is involved in agriculture. Farmers have been complaining about lack of enough income from agriculture as the prices of their produce is not rising despite a rise in the cost of production largely due to neoliberal economic policies adopted by successive governments.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers have commited suicide due to the economic distress in the last few decades and millions have been pushed out of agriculture without any alternative means of livelihoods.

Farmers have been demanding a legal MSP based on the formula of C2+50% (total cost of production + 50% profit) for years. Instead of addressing this demand, the Modi-led government has tried to introduce big corporate interests in agriculture despite the fact that the majority of farmers in India are small-scale producers.

In Wednesday’s agitation, farmers also demanded the withdrawal of all cases filed against farmers arrested or facing charges during the 2020-21 agitation, withdrawal of attempts to raise electricity charges through the installation of smart meters, and adequate compensation to the millions of flood affected farmers in Punjab and elsewhere.

One of the key demands raised by the farmers in the agitation is also related to scrapping of trade agreements signed with the UK earlier this year and a proposed trade agreement with the US. It is speculated that these agreements will open the country’s agriculture sector for foreign imports further deteriorating the condition of farmers.

Assault on hard-won rights

Workers claim that the Modi led government has enacted the labor laws to appease big corporations who want to minimize the cost of labor by exploiting the situation created due to destruction of the agriculture sector and lack of proper alternative employment opportunities.

Though the Modi government passed the new codes in 2019 itself, it has been unable to implement them due to strong resistance by the trade unions across the political spectrum. The government had pushed the laws forward using its majority in the parliament without conducting any debate or proper consultation with stakeholders.

Unions claim that the new codes would systematically weaken all the rights achieved by workers through generations of struggle including their right to collective bargaining, limited working hours, and basic social security.

The codes, namely on wages, industrial relations, social security, and occupational safety, health and working conditions erode the power of both the unions and protective institutions and leave the workers at the mercy of their employees, unions claim.

A statement issued by Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU) last week also claimed that the new codes will increase retrenchment as the minimum number of employees for layoff and closure. Any workplace which has less than 300 employees does not need necessary prior government permission to carry out mass layoffs now. This will lead to easy hire and fire as more than 90% of Indian workplaces employ less than this number.

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