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 first glance the office towers and shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the front fassades of the garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the fassade, 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 loose time, energy and academic aspirations on night-shifts in call centres, selling credits 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, at the outskirts of Gurgaon Indias 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 get to know more about working and struggling in Gurgaon, if you want more info about or even contribute to this project, please have a go at:
www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com gurgaon_workers_news at yahoo.co.uk
For this and following newsletters we want to introduce four different categories of texts which should make it easier to trace back certain developments.
1) Proletarian Experiences - Daily life stories and reports from a workers' perspective 2) Collective Action - Reports on proletarian struggles in the area 3) According to Plan - General information on the development of the region, certain company policies 4) About the Project - Up-Dates on Gurgaon Workers News
Most of the texts in this issue display the dark-side of the boom. A deeper analysis of the more hopeful recent struggles of temp workers at Hero Honda, Honda Manesar (HMSI), Delphi and the dynamic work-force composition within the new industrial areas is still to come.
1) Proletarian Experiences
Death and Development - Short news on industrial accidents, road deaths, bomb alarms, serial killings and other achievements of development in Gurgaon and on its highways.
Factory and Police Station - Recent story by metal worker from Faridabad, told to FMS.
Exploitation and the Law - Short glimpses of current conditions in various Faridabad factories, in the shadow of the official labour law (March 2007 issue of FMS)
Glossary - Glossary on welfare policies, wages and prices.
2) Collective Action
Pressline Worker - Example of small but sucessful industrial action, trying to avoid the lock-out trap.
Bicycle-Rikshaws and Strike at Liberty Shoe factory - Short chat with former Liberty Shoe worker and short news on last industrial dispute at Liberty Shoe factory, Haryana.
Commuter Riot - Fear on the highways, stress on the railways. Proletarian commuters causing a riot at Faridabad Old Station. From October 2006 issue of Faridabad Majdoor Samaachar (FMS).
Techy Wage Increase - Unsuccessful attempt of wage increase by Gurgaon Call Centre Workers
3) According to Plan
Not yet special enough: Special Economic Zones - Economy times two in Gurgaon, short summary of recent newspaper articles on the planned SEZ.
Cooperate Watch - Recent news on multi-national companies in Gurgaon.
4) About the Project
Short Presentation of Gurgaon Workers News
1) Proletarian Experiences
Death and Development
Capitalist development kills in many ways. On 14th of March 2007 several peasants in Nandigram, West Bengal are shot dead protesting against being displaced for a SEZ. In Singur people get killed because they resist the construction of a Tata car factory. Once the car factory is running, the production creates more victims. Suzuki Maruti in Gurgaon has outsourced most of the dangerous sheet-metal work to work-shops and slum production-units in Faridabad. The blood now flows outside the companies premises, union sources estimate that daily over a dozen fingers are mutilated in the work-shops. On 14th of March 2007, while peasants are shot at in Nandigram, three workers in Gurgaon die and six get injured at Evergreen Plywood Limited factory when a boiler explodes. Technical failure. The enforcement of (automobile) industries, the production and the product are fatal. On 12th of March 2007 a young man dies on the new Gurgaon-Delhi highway. He is the twelfth, other sources say the seventeenth person who got killed on this short 15 to 20 km stretch of the NH8 during the last 50 days. In the period between 2003 and 2006 over 1,500 people got injured on highway. The highway and the double lane street beneath it cuts old and new Gurgaon in half and there is hardly safe way to get from one side to the other. Foot-crossings are not part of the supply-chain. Main reason for the construction of the highway: supply of the Gurgaon call centres with thousands of workers from Delhi, just-in-time supply of Maruti, Hero Honda and HMSI with parts, easy travelling for the upper management and high-speed drive-way to Gurgaon's shopping-malls. Wealth on display attracts people wanting to shine in its halo and people wanting to shine in its purgatory. The shopping-malls on the road between Delhi and Gurgaon are packed with tens of thousands of consumers every day and monthly tens of thousands run onto the street in panic, scared by bomb alarms, the last time on 16th of March 2007. Development is brutal and causes brutalisation. In February 2007 the chapter of a serial killing is legally closed. During the time between January and April 2006 a group of taxi drivers killed 20 people travelling between Delhi and Gurgaon, most of them local workers. They robbed a total of 60,000 Rs, this is 3,000 Rs for a life.
The following reports are translated from Hindi, published in Faridabad Majdoor Samaachaar (FMS). FMS is a monthly independent workers newspaper, about 5,000 copies are distributed in Faridabad and beyond. The newspaper exists since the early 1980s, it is free. Workers are encouraged to contribute with their thoughts and experiences. If you want to get in touch: Majdoor Library Autopin Jhuggi, NIT Faridabad - 121001 ...............
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) About the Project
About Gurgaon Workers News
Gurgaon Workers' News is a project independent from political parties or unions, trying to support workers' self-organisation in their struggle for a better life. One of the projects aim is to document the development and workers' struggles in and around Gurgaon, one of the current boom regions of global capital. For this reason we publish a monthly electronic newsletter on this site.
GWS is not meant to be a purely documenting project, it is not supposed to be a one way street. We plan to distribute a regular newsletter/leaflet amongst workers in the area which, apart from local news, would contain workers' information of related industries, companies or boom regions from other places in the world. If you want to have your information distributed to workers of a specific company, see list of companies on this site, or if you would offer to do the same at your place, please get in touch.
News from the Special Exploitation Zone - www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
Wage-slave's Escape http://happystiletto.blogspot.com/
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