[Reader-list] Gurgaon Workers News

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear All,

Below is an interesting newsletter on workers and their experiences  
and struggles from Gurgaon, New Delhi's neighbour in Haryana. I  
thought that it would be of interest to several people on this list.

regards

Shuddha


>
> Gurgaon Workers News - Newsletter 13 (October 2008)
> (full version at: www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com)
>
> Gurgaon in Haryana is presented as the shining India, a symbol of  
> capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the  
> gateway of development. At a first glance the office towers and  
> shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the facades of the  
> garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade,  
> behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial  
> areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars  
> and scooters for the middle-classes which end up in the traffic jam  
> on the new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young  
> middle class people lose time, energy and academic aspirations on  
> night-shifts in call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class  
> people in the US or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the  
> UK. Next door, thousands of rural-migrant workers uprooted by the  
> agrarian crisis stitch and sew for export, competing with their  
> angry brothers and sisters in Bangladesh or Vietnam. And the rat- 
> race will not stop; on the outskirts of Gurgaon, Asia's biggest  
> Special Economic Zone is in the making. The following newsletter  
> documents some of the developments in and around this miserable  
> boom region. If you want to know more about working and struggling  
> in Gurgaon, if you want more info about or even contribute to this  
> project, please do so via:
>
> www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
> gurgaon_workers_news at yahoo.co.uk
>
> In the October issue you can find:
>
> 1) Proletarian Experiences -
> Daily life stories and reports from a workers' perspective
>
> *** Gated Communities and Repressive Social Paranoia
> With the increasing spatial concentration of wealth and misery, of  
> upward opportunities and downward spirals, those who feel  
> privileged tend to feel threatened. In that way Gurgaon is a  
> landscape of mass-psychosis. The faceless dominance of exploitation  
> - the assembly line, the export markets and real estate shares -  
> have to congeal in physical people: the managing middle-classes,  
> which are forced to live too close to the impoverished cogs of the  
> game. Some notes on the consequent urban armament: gated  
> communities, increased repression in the local prisons, more CCTV,  
> more police...
>
> *** Ten Construction Workers Die after Accident in Gurgaon
> The main driving force and victims of the construction boom are the  
> construction workers themselves. In times of credit crunches real  
> estate developers and construction companies try to squeeze margins  
> and cut corners. In September this resulted in the death of ten  
> construction workers in Gurgaon, ten workers deaths that we heard  
> about that is.
>
> *** Short Report from Orient Fan / Wal-Mart Worker
> The factory is situated in Faridabad, Sector 6, Plot 11.  When a  
> representative of Wal-Mart visits the factory, all workers hired  
> through contractors are told not to come to the factory. Wal-Mart  
> sends its reps once a year and then it's always this very same  
> procedure: the 'inofficial' workers have to turn invisible. In the  
> last year the factory produced 200,000 fans for Wal-Mart. The shift  
> times in the Blade department, the paint shop, the air flow and the  
> packing department are 12 to 12 and a half hours. Published in  
> Faridabad Majdoor Samaachaar (FMS), July 2008.
>
> *** Yet another list of short information from workers employed at  
> different companies in Gurgaon - Continuation of short reports of  
> workers from Achiever Creation, Elite Medical, Radnik Export, Rolex  
> Auto, Viva Global, gathered and published in FMS, July 2008.
>
> 2) Collective Action -
> Reports on proletarian struggles in the area
>
> *** Wildcat Sit-Down Strike at HMSI
> Short news item on yet another short wildcat action by casual  
> workers and workers hired through contractors at Honda HMSI. The  
> green-field factory - only opened seven years ago - has already  
> developed a tradition of unrest (see GurgaonWorkersNews No.7).  
> Sources said about 1,500 contractual and casual workers of HMSI  
> have gone on a sit-in protest, on 6th of September 2008. The strike  
> was triggered when a factory supervisor slapped and manhandled a  
> worker after a scuffle during the night shift
>
> *** After wild-cat strike and mass-dismissals: Factory manager of  
> automobile supplier in NOIDA got killed during workers' unrest
> Two weeks after the wildcat-strike at Honda, another wild-cat  
> strike of workers hired through contractors employed by the  
> automobile industry ended in a bloody mess, just around the corner.  
> In NOIDA, a group of sacked workers killed the factory manager of  
> an Italian automobile supplier, Graziano Transmissioni. The workers  
> had gone on strike for higher wages, the management refused the  
> demand and sacked 200 workers, a riot started, security guards  
> fired, the manager was alledgedly beaten to death. It could happen  
> anywhere at any time again: sacked workers, a replicable dead  
> manager, and 130 detained and charged workers - 60 of them with  
> murder - facing legal repression.
>
> 3) According to Plan -
> General information on the development of the region or on certain  
> company policies
>
> *** The Bloody Real Estate of Crisis
> On 13th of August 2008 on a protest march in NOIDA, another  
> satellite town of Delhi, several farmers were shot dead by the  
> police and dozens got injured. The farmers demanded higher  
> compensation for the land which they had sold to a public  
> development authority some years ago. If the protests in NOIDA and  
> the demands for higher compensations are the rock of the current  
> crisis of the real estate sector then the rising interest rates,  
> the rising prices for construction material and the recession of  
> the US economy is its hard place. The current drop in real estate  
> prices and of the shares of private developers like Gurgaon based  
> DLF - the biggest in India - is more than a mere adjustment in the  
> market swing of supply and demand. The situation of the sector can  
> be described as a blocked pressure valve of the wider economy. The  
> rising inflation of proletarian goods increased the pressure from  
> below: workers particularly in the urban industries are getting  
> restless. In this blocked and intertwined situation those in power  
> are aware and afraid of any possible trigger effects, tipping  
> points, chain reactions - and be it a small protest of farmers in a  
> suburb of Delhi. A glimpse on the current crisis...
>
> *** Hells Bells - Glimpses on Current Trends in Gurgaon's Call  
> Centre Sector
> In August 2008 the newspapers announced the lay-offs of hundreds of  
> call centre workers, many of them in Gurgaon. The reasons given for  
> the job cuts are the recession in the US and the high costs for  
> office rents. We summarised some news on the sector. We start with  
> an article reporting on the attempt of the regional BPO industry to  
> counteract the tendency of workers changing jobs too quickly - by  
> setting up a sector-wide 'investigation company' which is supposed  
> to provide a kind of 'black list' of the worst job hoppers. The  
> second article was published in April 2008 and describes a  
> potentially booming new trend from the US: cutting costs of private  
> debt collection by outsourcing it. Following a summary of articles  
> on various job cuts at major call centre companies in Gurgaon. We  
> finish with two short notes, one concerning the many road deaths in  
> Delhi-Gurgaon caused by speeding call centre cabs - a result of the  
> enormously long working hours and time pressure which is put on the  
> drivers. The last note is on the effect of call centre work on  
> gender relations and the emergence of a kind of call centre workers  
> caste.
>
> *** Energy Crunch and Destructive Forces in Gurgaon
> Machines have to run 24 hours a day in order to suck up enough of  
> human energy for profitable consumption, but the frequent power  
> cuts pose a serious problem to the local industry. Maruti runs its  
> own power-plant and in the way most of the factories and call  
> centres in the industrial belt around Delhi do: burning fossil  
> fuels in their generators. About 350,000,000 litre of diesel are  
> consumed each year by these industrial units. The rising price of  
> diesel hits hard. Nearly Rs 14,000,000,000 per annum is spent on  
> diesel for running gensets by about 40,000 industrial units in  
> Faridabad, Gurgaon, NOIDA. This sum amounts to an annual wage sum  
> of about 430,000 workers. The machine has to keep on running,  
> energy is turned into destruction of human health and environment -  
> and into business, e.g. by carbon emission trading. For good  
> reasons the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit  
> (GTZ) GmbH ‚ (German Technical Cooperation), opened their carbon  
> emission trading office for India right in the centre of the  
> polluting money-machine - in Gurgaon.
>
> 4) About the Project -
> Updates on Gurgaon Workers News
>
> *** Glossary -
> Updated version of the Glossary: things that you always wanted to  
> know, but could never be bothered to google. Now even in  
> alphabetical order.
>
> News from the Special Exploitation Zone -
> www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
>
>
>

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
Raqs Media Collective
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net