PaRCha - JNU - AISA material - 2006 ID-17117
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Gurgaon: British 'Good governance' of Jallianwala Bagh Reeanacted By Congress Govt in Favour of MNCs .
Even as PM Manmohan Singh and Congress leader Sonia Gandhi express 'anguish' over the police brutality over workers in Gurgaon, Home Minister Shivraj Patil has justified the savagery, saying the police was "compelled" to act as it did; and the police crackdown continues unabated against workers and protestors on the streets of Haryana. Distraught families of 'disappeared' workers, feared dead, are venting their rage on the police and District Administration, and women are at the forefront of these protests. The first day of the monsoon session of Indian Parliament was in progress on July 25; but all eyes were on the streets of Gurgaon, watching the shocking images of thousands of workers of the Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India being beaten to a pulp inside the compound of the mini-Secretariat in Gurgaon, and being forced to crawl on their knees holding their ears. Despite the world watching, despite Opposition parties as well as Left parties demanding Hooda's head, why hasn't the police brutality subsided? What is at stake? Japanese MNC Honda put up a placard outside its Gurgaon factory -boasting that on the Bloody Monday when workers were savaged, the factory met its production target of 900 vehicles! Honda can make this inhuman and arrogant boast because it is confident that for the Indian ruling class, the gory tale of Gurgaon is less about Hooda and Haryana, and more about protecting the interests of foreign investors like Honda. Honda is sure that Hooda as well as the entire brotherhood of ruling parties in India are as concerned as they are -less about the police repression, more about the spectre of heroic workers' resistance that Gurgaon has raised. The Japanese Ambassador has threatened that the workers' spirited protests is tarnishing India's 'image' as an investment destination, and the MEA has rushed to reassure that foreign investors need not worry; the 'legal interests of investors' will be safeguarded. Even as the Left forces unite to hold a Bandh in Haryana today, Nirupam Sen, Industries Minister in LF-ruled Bengal (India's No 1 destination for Japanese FDI) has praised the Japanese 'track record in industrial relation' and echoed the MEA's reassurances, saying that 'The Japanese need not worry...what has happened in Gurgaon will never happen in West Bengal." Gurgaon is not just a city in Haryana -it is a model laboratory of neo-liberal policies. Monday's events have opened a window onto the enslaved world of workers who labour in such enclaves -a world where workers need to secure written 'permission' every time they answer the call of nature; where the act of registering a Union results in suspensions of leaders; where the demand for the basic civic liberty to organise and unionise is met with wholesale retrenchment of thouosands of workers; and where police and Administration serve as loyal henchmen of MNCs. On June 26, (fittingly, the anniversary of Emergency), 3000 workers of Honda were locked out for daring to persist with the project of forming a Union. Many editorials have hastened to point out that Monday's incidents should not be seen as 'televised class struggle' -and that it was the scourge of 'militant trade-unionism' that was necessitated police intervention in the first place. Such statements give the lie to the fact that workers in the SEZs and secure sweatshops of Gurgaon are denied recourse to any trade unionism -militant or other wise! Just this month, the Indian PM had proudly claimed that the British Raj, far from being a tormentor of Indian people, was in fact a mentor for the institutions like police and bureaucracy and had 'served India well'. Within weeks, the Congress Govt.'s police has shown its colonial DNA -reenacting Jallianwala Bagh in its eagerness to brutalise workers in order to defend MNCs! Recently, an innocent Brazilian youth was hunted down and killed by British police in a London subway. Even as the Blair Govt. claimed that such 'unfortunate casualties' were the inevitable 'collateral damage' of the War on Terror, a mirror image incident happened in Kupwara (J&K), where Indian Army killed 3 young schoolboys, 'mistaking' them as terrorists. Clearly, the colonial legacy is not simply a matter of long-ago history. Even today, Indian rulers are playing 'follow the leader' with Bush and Blair, enacting London in the theatres of Kupwara and Guantanamo in Gurgaon. Multinational capital and its agents in the Indian ruling class alike know that the 'hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist' -it is to the credit of the Honda workers of Gurgaon to have forced that ' hidden hand' ('Congress ka haath'?!) to show its bloody and barbaric fist. Those workers -mostly young men fresh from ITI campuses all over the country -.
.
PaRCha - JNU - AISA material - 2006 ID-17117
.
Gurgaon: British 'Good governance' of Jallianwala Bagh Reeanacted By Congress Govt in Favour of MNCs .
Even as PM Manmohan Singh and Congress leader Sonia Gandhi express 'anguish' over the police brutality over workers in Gurgaon, Home Minister Shivraj Patil has justified the savagery, saying the police was "compelled" to act as it did; and the police crackdown continues unabated against workers and protestors on the streets of Haryana. Distraught families of 'disappeared' workers, feared dead, are venting their rage on the police and District Administration, and women are at the forefront of these protests. The first day of the monsoon session of Indian Parliament was in progress on July 25; but all eyes were on the streets of Gurgaon, watching the shocking images of thousands of workers of the Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India being beaten to a pulp inside the compound of the mini-Secretariat in Gurgaon, and being forced to crawl on their knees holding their ears. Despite the world watching, despite Opposition parties as well as Left parties demanding Hooda's head, why hasn't the police brutality subsided? What is at stake? Japanese MNC Honda put up a placard outside its Gurgaon factory -boasting that on the Bloody Monday when workers were savaged, the factory met its production target of 900 vehicles! Honda can make this inhuman and arrogant boast because it is confident that for the Indian ruling class, the gory tale of Gurgaon is less about Hooda and Haryana, and more about protecting the interests of foreign investors like Honda. Honda is sure that Hooda as well as the entire brotherhood of ruling parties in India are as concerned as they are -less about the police repression, more about the spectre of heroic workers' resistance that Gurgaon has raised. The Japanese Ambassador has threatened that the workers' spirited protests is tarnishing India's 'image' as an investment destination, and the MEA has rushed to reassure that foreign investors need not worry; the 'legal interests of investors' will be safeguarded. Even as the Left forces unite to hold a Bandh in Haryana today, Nirupam Sen, Industries Minister in LF-ruled Bengal (India's No 1 destination for Japanese FDI) has praised the Japanese 'track record in industrial relation' and echoed the MEA's reassurances, saying that 'The Japanese need not worry...what has happened in Gurgaon will never happen in West Bengal." Gurgaon is not just a city in Haryana -it is a model laboratory of neo-liberal policies. Monday's events have opened a window onto the enslaved world of workers who labour in such enclaves -a world where workers need to secure written 'permission' every time they answer the call of nature; where the act of registering a Union results in suspensions of leaders; where the demand for the basic civic liberty to organise and unionise is met with wholesale retrenchment of thouosands of workers; and where police and Administration serve as loyal henchmen of MNCs. On June 26, (fittingly, the anniversary of Emergency), 3000 workers of Honda were locked out for daring to persist with the project of forming a Union. Many editorials have hastened to point out that Monday's incidents should not be seen as 'televised class struggle' -and that it was the scourge of 'militant trade-unionism' that was necessitated police intervention in the first place. Such statements give the lie to the fact that workers in the SEZs and secure sweatshops of Gurgaon are denied recourse to any trade unionism -militant or other wise! Just this month, the Indian PM had proudly claimed that the British Raj, far from being a tormentor of Indian people, was in fact a mentor for the institutions like police and bureaucracy and had 'served India well'. Within weeks, the Congress Govt.'s police has shown its colonial DNA -reenacting Jallianwala Bagh in its eagerness to brutalise workers in order to defend MNCs! Recently, an innocent Brazilian youth was hunted down and killed by British police in a London subway. Even as the Blair Govt. claimed that such 'unfortunate casualties' were the inevitable 'collateral damage' of the War on Terror, a mirror image incident happened in Kupwara (J&K), where Indian Army killed 3 young schoolboys, 'mistaking' them as terrorists. Clearly, the colonial legacy is not simply a matter of long-ago history. Even today, Indian rulers are playing 'follow the leader' with Bush and Blair, enacting London in the theatres of Kupwara and Guantanamo in Gurgaon. Multinational capital and its agents in the Indian ruling class alike know that the 'hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist' -it is to the credit of the Honda workers of Gurgaon to have forced that ' hidden hand' ('Congress ka haath'?!) to show its bloody and barbaric fist. Those workers -mostly young men fresh from ITI campuses all over the country -.
.