Nearly 40,000 to 50,000 casual workers die every year due to occupational hazards in India’s unorganised sector, according to numerous research studies. This is just the tip of the iceberg, as many perish without even a mention in official records.
India’s unorganised sector, which employs nearly 80 per cent of the workforce, bears the burden of this regular massacre. Human lives are counted as the collateral cost of development, ignored much like the demolition of anthills for construction projects.
Are we aware of the abject conditions in which workers on real-estate projects live? Are we not aware of stories of domestic helps being subjected to inhuman conditions and torture in housing societies that are among the most expensive in Delhi-NCR and other metros? We read these stories as remote observers, as if they are not connected to people like us. They are not our stories.
On April 13, when thousands of workers in Noida and Ghaziabad took to the streets to demand higher wages, the Noida police, caught off guard, all but invented a conspiracy theory about the agitation being sponsored by “Pakistan-based handlers” and radical leftists. In no time, the agitation was not only “otherised” but also criminalised to a large extent. About 200 people were arrested for inciting violence, including two — journalist Satyam Verma and DU student Akriti Chaudhary — under the draconian NSA, not for their acts but for their ideological leanings. While the Uttar Pradesh government announced higher wages, those who were arrested fought a grim battle in courts and continue to face the aftermath even after coming out of jail.
The episode was noticed by the wider public, possibly because it disrupted traffic for many hours, causing some to miss their appointments and flights. Otherwise, workers’ plight or agitations rarely make news.
Liberalisation of the Indian economy has progressed to the point where the trade union movement has become a relic of a distant past. The trade union movement produced great leaders such as George Fernandes, but that era is over. Since “working journalists” were classified as labour, there were union leaders in newsrooms and printing presses too. Sometime in the 1990s, news organisations began hiring people on a contract basis instead of on the payroll for the long term. That was part of a trend already under way in many sectors. Eventually, the biggest employer in the country, the governments in the Centre and states, too adopted it as a cost-saving exercise, precipitating the “casualisation” of labour.
As a result, workers and employees today have no means to demand better working conditions or fight against any injustice. These are also the years of the Leftist parties losing their political strength and even relevance. In social-media parlance, ‘leftist’ is used as a pejorative. Those protesting in Noida were, of course, “leftists” in the old as well as the new sense of the term.
In the whole Noida episode, the conspiracy of silence shocks me no end. In my formative years of journalism in Kanpur in 1985, I had seen a bond of unique camaraderie among leaders of trade unions, irrespective of their ideological pursuits. The CITU, AITUC, INTUC, BMS and others would join hands for the cause of labour. Workers in textile mills and defence sectors justifiably earned their rights by dint of their consistent struggles against the management. The trade union movement consolidated workers’ unity and did not divide them on ideological grounds. The leaders of the BMS and the CITU would not work at cross-purposes despite their ideological differences. This was why Kanpur, despite being a predominantly Brahmin constituency, was represented in the Lok Sabha by S M Banerjee, a veteran trade union leader, from 1957 to 1977.
What is particularly galling is the criminalisation of written material in the possession of an individual. How can a book on Marxism, or on Gaza or the Palestinian struggle, be categorised as a criminal offence? In India’s polity, the Marxist ideology is as much part of the political mainstream as the Congress or the BJP. All political parties that swear loyalty to the Indian Constitution are allowed to grow and function in the country.
In the past, political parties and their leaders had shown sagacity and flexibility in accommodating ideological adversaries without rancour. This was evident when, in 1997, the BJP’s national executive passed a resolution mourning the assassination of AISA leader and former JNU Student Union president Chandrashekhar by Mohammed Shahabuddin in Siwan. Chandrashekhar belonged to an ideological stream aligned with the Naxal ideology.
Perhaps, in today’s context, the BJP’s national executive resolution of 1997 would itself be treated as seditious material by the Uttar Pradesh police — worthy of slapping the NSA against someone if it was found in their possession.
The writer was Press Secretary to former President Ram Nath Kovind and is the author of The Architect of the New BJP: How Narendra Modi Transformed the Party
On April 13, when thousands of workers in Noida and Ghaziabad took to the streets to demand higher wages, the Noida police, caught off guard, all but invented a conspiracy theory about the agitation being sponsored by “Pakistan-based handlers” and radical leftists. 
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