Editorial

Not Cheap Talk

There is a huge chunk of India’s population that continues to toil very hard round the year mainly in the informal sector to meet even the minimum basic necessities. With the inflationary pressure mounting and real wages declining these people won’t be able to sufficiently feed and clothe themselves and their families in the coming days. Even organised sector workers, not to speak of millions working in almost bonded conditions in the ever expanding unorganised sector, are not happy, notwithstanding living on ‘decent’ wages, by Indian standards, of course, they get. The statistics for all categories of labour force, fully employed or partly employed, are alarming. India is a showcase of how extreme poverty and extreme wealth co-exist in a somewhat static society that is highly structured and lives at many levels. The situation is worsening with every passing day because nobody is safe in the leaky neo-liberal boat piloted by the Singh–Gandhi combine.

But market reformers and shameless apologists of foreign investors present a different India to the poor and have-nots. Their beggars’ opera is proud of performance as it is certified by multinationals. The market fundamentalists are ‘confidently’ looking forward to the day when people who have little comfort and security in their lives of drudgery, no longer have to worry about employment, housing, education and medical treatment.

Right now Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail is the talk of the day. It is no cheap talk. Parties, academics, labour organisers, traders—all are discussing it seriously. So it seems. But in the end they think it is inevitable. They have no option but to greet the Walmart people. And the prodigals, albeit they form a minority in the ruling and opposition elites, are being pursued by benevolent foreign diplomats to accept the reality as the machine of globalisation is too powerful to be stopped by bare hands.

No doubt all are concerned about what will happen to retailers and millions of employees engaged in retail establishments. They will disappear. Then it is not the concern of the neo-rich, the millionaires and billionaires. Only retail employees are nowhere in the picture, they are voiceless. In most cases they are not unionised and even minimum wages for them have not moved a bit for at least a decade or so and many have to cope with frozen salaries at a time when price rise is as natural as anything else. Officially retial inflation rose to 9.90 precent last month, thanks to Walmart controversy. But law applicable to shops and establishments provides ample scope to unionise employees there. If anything the left in Bengal once succeeded in unionising a large segment of shops and establishments employees, taking advantage of the Shops and Establishments Act. True, in some cases, their unnecessary union militancy ruined labour organising in the bud.

As organised sector workers being a privileged lot, are unlikely to offer any resistance to the entry of job-killers like Walmart, only shop employees can protect their future by getting organised to face the giants who are a sure receipe for the impending catastrophe. No, that is not happening. Employees look more passive, if not docile, than before. Only retailers indulge in a token strike or two against the government’s ‘FDI in Retail’ policy and that too in some isolated pockets.

Labour Organising as it is in India under party-controlled trade union affiliates, is restricted to those areas where union coffers get substantial funds from levies. It is manufacturing, mining, service sector, banking, insurance and all that. India’s retail shops are under attack, retail employees are under attack and shop and establishment employees have every reason to raise their voice in unison against the onslaught of multinationals and their government that is literally selling India to foreign bidders. It is unlikely for central trade unions to take initiative to organise these low-wage people, having no fixed working hours and social security net. Things could change radically if employees in shops and establishments across the country show maturity and consciousness by continually unionising themselves and exposing the myth created by the advocates of FDI in retail.

As jobless growth is the buzzword of the day organised sector didn’t witness the expected rise in employment potential. Employment in public and private sector establishments was 27.2 million in 2002 against 27.8 million in the 2001 and it declined to 26.5 million in 2005. Despite massive retrenchment and closures, ‘total mandays lost due to industrial disputes declined to 27, 17.4, 13.3, 17.8 and 0.61 million in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 (upto January to June)’. In other words, notwithstanding sporadic union militancy here and there labour has been at the receiving end in all these years as lock-outs, not strikes, were mostly responsible for mandays lost.

Given the emerging pattern of industrialisation under the able diktats of foreign investors who are penetrating every sector of Indian economy—manufacturing, service, retail and agriculture—with a bulldozing approach, toilers in the unorganised sector have no future unless they get organised in a massive way to halt the march of Walmart and their likes.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 24, Dec 23-29, 2012

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