[Reader-list] GurgaonWorkersNews - Newsletter 26 (May 2010)

[gurgaon workers news]

GurgaonWorkersNews - Newsletter 26 (May 2010)
(full version: 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 May 2010 issue you can find:

1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers' perspective

*** Three Communists in Gurgaon / Interviews for an Open Debate -
The industrial development and proletarian unrest in Gurgaon did not  
remain unnoticed. We talked to three communists who decided to focus  
their political activity on the vast landscape of working class  
formation. The comrades are part of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist  
left, belonging to three different political organisations.

*** Service?! What the hell! / Reports from Service Proletarians,  
Street Labour Markets and Factory Workers in Gurgaon -
Some voices of security guards and drivers, metal and textile workers.  
Some voices from workers looking for a job at corner labour markets,  
harassed by the police and other thugs.

2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area

*** Inflationary Proletarian Struggles -
While opposition parties arrange token protests against the price  
hikes, workers on the ground battle for higher wages. In March 2010  
Delhi government announced 33 per cent increase of minimum wages, but  
this hike hardly ever reaches shop-floor reality. In the aftermaths of  
the minimum wage increase we observe various spontaneous proletarian  
actions in Gurgaon and Okhla industrial areas. The combination of an  
interlinked (automobile) industry and organisational efforts like  
Faridabad Majdoor Talmel can become future lines of coordination and  
generalisation of the unrest.

*** Update on Struggles of Permanent Automobile Workers at Sanden  
Vikas and Exide -
The first-tier supplying industry of the automobile industry is  
heating up under the double pressure of increasing demand of the  
assembly plants on one side and the more confident claims of the  
workforce on the other. The recent struggles at Denso, Sanden Vikas  
and Exide express the difficult position of a young permanent work- 
force: they appeal to the classical union form of struggle hoping to  
secure an increasingly precarious position. These classical forms  
detach them from the wider casual and temporary workforce and  
therefore from the true 'material' power-base.

*** Waterwars, Energy Crunch and Revolting Villages -
Groundwater levels in Gurgaon drop dramatically, gobbled up by  
industry and upper-middle class life-style. Water and energy flows are  
diverted away from workers' and peasants' spheres. We document some  
struggles of 'villagers' against the lack of resources and oil-pipe- 
line projects crossing their fields.

3) According to Plan -
General information on the development of the region or on certain  
company
policies

*** The Social Tsunami Impact / Snap-Shots against Capital-Class- 
Crisis -
This is an attempt to introduce a regular update on general tendencies  
of crisis development in Indian - motivated by Greek shock-waves,  
naked shorts and potential spillovers. Apart from short glimpses on  
the macro-level of things we focus on general trends in agriculture  
and automobile sector: the current demise of the past and the toxicity  
of the future.

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