[Reader-list] Sudipta Paul (Asansol Industrial Area): Labour and Capital, An Old Story Retold

[Vivek Narayanan]

This is the fourth posting by the independent fellow, Sudipta Paul

Labour and Capital : Old Story Retold
>
>   Capital thrives on profit maximization. Whenever
> it gets threatened by the prospect of a falling rate
> of profit – and inevitably it has to face such
> misfortune at some point or other of it’s journey –
> capital typically responds by resorting to
> increasing the rate of exploitation. That is to say
> it tries every trick to reduce the fraction of the
> surplus value (produce by the worker) it has to
> return to the worker in the form of wages. All these
> are well known ever since Marx expounded his famous
> theory of capitalist development. But twentieth
> century has taught capital an important lesson.
> That, the blessed mission of expropriation of
> surplus value and accumulation of capital often gets
> jolted by satanic forces, because every attempt to
> increase the rate of exploitation brings back the
> specter of social unrest. The later half of the last
> century was there fore also capital’s period of
> learning and experimenting how to exorcise the ghost
> of popular dissent. It was in this
>  process that post-war period witnessed welfare
> sate, new deal and so on. But beyond political
> imperative, welfarism is clearly incompatible with
> profit maximization and encouraging the sense of
> social security is considered sacrilegious by
> capital because so long there is at least a
> perceived social security, people will not rush to
> the market to sell their labour power. So, with the
> shadow of socialism receding to furthest corners,
> capital has gradually liberated itself from the
> welfare cloak and by the last decade of previous
> century it has once again returned to it’s original
> business of profit maximization in the form of so
> called liberalization.
>
>   Looking back at this trajectory is necessary to
> understand that this liberalized economy is not only
> a liberation from the welfare cloak but also a
> conscious effort to pre-empt social and political
> opposition. The process, at least in our country, is
> still evolving. To explore and analyze multifarious
> aspects of this phenomenal development are both
> challenging and exciting for any social researcher.
> Presently, though, I do not intend to arrive at any
> comprehensive analysis but will only look at the
> changes taking place at Asansol region, the
> pre-eminent industrial area of West Bengal.
>
>   Coal production is the core industrial activity in
> Asansol. Till ‘90s, ECL was the main producer of
> coal. But in 1993 coal Mine Nationalization Act 1973
> was amended to allow private sector participation in
> coal production and after that, Bengal EMTA Ltd, a
> joint venture company with 74% share of private
> agency and ICML, the first major private initiative
> in coal production has started producing coal. Apart
> from that, ECL has outsourced ten coal reserve
> patches for contractual extraction by private
> contractors. And beyond the ambit of ECL and
> licensed private agencies there are the “illegal
> mines” engaged in rat-hole mining, which can be more
> accurately termed as unlicensed small private or
> cooperative companies.
>
>   The ostensible reason for inviting private
> agencies is, ECL is no longer able to make
> investments required to increase the volume of
> production. But the queer fact is, neither it seems
> that private agencies are coming with large and
> responsible investments. They are not interested in
> underground mining which requires larger investment
> and has longer gestational period. They are picking
> up areas for open cast mining where Dumper and
> Doser, shovels suffices, no systematic long-term
> planning is required and the investor can walk off
> with easy profit quickly enough. Incidentally this
> trend is not peculiar to coal production. In fact
> almost whole of what is being hailed as resurgence
> in manufacturing segment in West Bengal is
> essentially small and medium scale investment for
> quick profits in areas like sponge iron units (of 50
> or 100 ton per day capacity), iron rolling mills,
> ferro alloy units, small cement units and so on. And
> the secret of their easy assured profit lies in
>  their common mantra of brazen labour exploitation
> and spending nothing whatsoever for environmental
> safeguard. These workers are sweating it out for
> astonishingly meagre wages. If comparison helps, it
> can be stated that a worker of a public sector
> integrated steel plant earns almost five times than
> that of a worker of sponge iron unit or iron rolling
> mill unit. More often than not, they toil for twelve
> hours a day without adequate safety provision. In a
> sense, they are not even formally employed by the
> owners. They have no pay structure, identity card or
> for that matter, no piece of paper supporting their
> status of regularly employed worker. Actually what
> happens, they are simply gathered together by labour
> contractors and are being put to work on no-work-no
> pay basis.
>
>   Along with this stark exploitation and scornful
> violation of existing labour laws, planned efforts
> to pre-empt labour unrest are also clearly
> discernible. There is no other reason why half of
> the workers engage in private coal production and
> newly built manufacturing units should have to be
> brought from neighboring states. Especially when
> Asansol is reportedly having a ‘reserve army’ of
> nearly one lakh workers rendered unemployed by the
> spate of industrial closer in last fifteen years.
> Nearly 90% of this migrated labour are skilled
> labour though it is scarcely believable that in the
> oldest coal field of the country there is any dearth
> of skilled miners.
>
>   Local workers are very categorical in their
> opinion in this regard. They say that those who are
> coming from far- off places find here themselves
> completely at the mercy of contractor and their
> acolytes and are in no position to bargain for fair
> wages. Skilled workers generally wield some sort of
> bargaining power, workers feel, and to emasculate
> them almost entire section of skilled workers are
> being brought from outside. And their story of
> migration seems to be an endless one. One group of
> workers don’t stay long at one place because
> contractors go on rotating them between different
> work sites, so that they always remain alien in the
> land where they are toiling.
>
>   Of course, remaining half of the worker are local
> men and women whose legitimate dissatisfaction and
> grievance about abysmally poor wages and working
> conditions may turn out to a fountainhead for
> popular dissent. The way of this inconvenience has
> been taken care of is truly remarkable. Take one
> example. In one unit of joint venture coal
> production, nearly 600 people from nearby village
> are engaged as piece rated workers at the site for
> coal loading in railway wagon. For several months
> they were agitating for rational wage, drinking
> water facility, rest shelter, one weekly rest day
> etc. In response, the management sought the
> intervention of local political power which the
> latter readily did. And the political party quickly
> took control of the situation, successfully
> dissuaded the workers – or at least a section of
> them – from agitating and brokered an agreement by
> which hereafter two groups of workers are to work
> rotationally, one group for 20 days a month and the
> other
>  group for 10 days. This bizarre arrangement was
> hailed as a victory because now more people are to
> get jobs! Similarly when there was unrest among
> local people demanding jobs in Mangalpur industrial
> estate and in the private coal mine, it was the
> local political power which took charge, convened
> village level meetings and choose people for the
> jobs.
>
>   This, unquestionably, is a very significant
> development. At least in West Bengal, political
> power is not merely political but social and
> administrative as well. This omnipotent, omnipresent
> power is playing a crucial role in present day
> industrialism. The political establishment is the de
> facto employment agency and labour contractor and by
> this virtue it commands unquestionable social
> authority in a society starved of employment
> opportunities. And this authority has placed itself
> at the service of capital for ironing out whatever
> inconvenience capital has to encounter in its
> mission for profit maximization. Thus we get the
> strange ambience of an industrial area where
> coloured flags symbolizing workers movement flutters
> at every rook and corner as if presiding over there
> eerie silence where workers have lost almost all of
> the right including to have their union.
>    Write Up prepared by Sudipta Paul and Sovon Panda
>
>