VIEWPOINT MAGAZINE

Autonomy in India: Tactical and Strategic Considerations on the New

Wave of Workers Struggles
Mithilesh Kumar and Ranabir Samaddar January 23, 2017 |

Over the last decade or so, workers struggles in the industrialized Gurgaon-
Manesar region near New Delhi have caught the attention of political activists
and trade union organizers throughout India and abroad. Many on the Lefthave
praised the workers, expressed astonishment at their perseverance, and offered a
sense of local solidarity. But a full analysis of the dynamics of the struggle, and
the lessons it may hold for us, has yet to be produced. There has hardly been any
discussion ofthis issue in places like West Bengal, where the Left was tradition-
ally strong and with a massive influence in the trade unions in part becauseits
unclear what to say in such meetings beyond expected words of solidarity and
sympathy. We do not know how to respond and relate to a situation, which is not
of our own making, but resplendent with all the glory and tragedy associated
with labor struggles of the past. Is this undecidability about the nature and orga-
nization of the workers movement related to what we call autonomy?

These local developments in Gurgaon-Manesar have a wider significance. Work-

ers struggles around the globe are entering a phase of recharged militancy. This
era of globalized production and casualized work has given rise to new forms of
struggle. To make sense of the current situation, commentators have adopted
neologisms, such as precarious work, precariat, and more familiar phrases like
unorganized and informal workers, and informal work conditions. There have
also been attempts to invent and improvise methods of organizing workers in
these changed conditions, where the organized sector is supposedly being
increasingly fragmented, with lean production or just-in-time production
becoming the norm, and shop floors becoming increasingly redundant as a site
of both production and mobilization. Even where the shop floor continues to be
important, as in the automobile sector, the worker is now a mere appendage of
the machine and has to tune their self to the iron rhythm of the robot. The ideal
worker, it seems, is one who can transform into one of the cogs of the huge
machine. Perhaps what we are witnessing now is not so much a clear division
between formal and informal working conditions, but a mix of the two and a
gradual transformation of the shop floor into a site of precarity. After all, the
Gurgaon-Manesar unrest happened in a so-called organized branch of industry
the automobile sector, where production unfolds in high-tech shop floors, with
cutting edge technology able to increase productivity to hitherto unseen levels,
but marked and permeated with the most rudimentary working conditions found
at the householdlevel.

Often automobile parts have many tiers to pass through before they end up at
the Maruti or Hero Honda main factory. For example, rubber hoses for carbure-
tors arrive in the form of rubber blocks in Mujesar, a village in Faridabad sur-
rounded by industry. What remains of the village is the scattered layout of the
small one-story shanty huts with cows and goats in front. The rest is trans-
formed by the industry. Inside the huts people work on 1970s lathes of German
origin, turning metal or working on antique power presses. Marutis sup-
ply-chain starts here.1 Gurgaon-Manesar has transformed the entire area into a
social factory not metaphorically but in reality, thus turning the battle at
Maruti as one for the command and occupation of the social factory. The Maruti
struggle showed the significance of the idea of thefactory and beyond.

In a substantial sense, industrialization at Gurgaon-Manesar represents the new

type of industrialization and circulation of finance characteristic of this age of
globalization. In most of the factories, unions were prohibited for a long time. In
the plants producing automobile parts, production standards have been set in
tune with the production needs of the car producing plants in the United States
and elsewhere. If work stops or simply slows down at Gurgaon-Manesar, it will
hamper wages, salaries, and the comfort level of the employees there, and most
importantly, the global profit margin in the industry. Perhaps economists will
have to rack their brains to find out how much of the present rise in productivity
has been due to the development of machinery and how much due to an intensi-
fication of the physical efforts of the workers by tying them to the rhythm of the
second, minute, and hour, and grouping them in a way that the rhythm is not
punctuated because of the absence of a worker, however small that period of
absence may be. But then, the calculations of the productivity of the body have
been always an impossible question for political economy.

This situation raises a series of pressing questions: What are the challenges in
uniting workers who have been segmented and marked by the vagaries and irreg-
ular frequencies across the entire supply chain? What should be the location and
site for working-class struggle when the shop floor condition shrinks or becomes
precarious? How do the workers mobilize and organize? What will methods or
approaches will be adopted by the political organizers?
All these questions, we want to argue, lead us to a critical discussion of the call
of autonomy of the working class movement from certain quarters. In this arti-
cle we will analyze two workers struggles in the peri-urban areas of Delhi: the
Maruti struggle and the struggle of workers in the unorganized sector in Wazir-
pur. These struggles, unfolding in two industries with very different conditions,
illuminate not only contrasts, but also important similarities. Indeed, these simi-
larities point to major, shared tendencies in working-class strugglestoday.

However, before we begin our analyses of these two movements we have to rec-
ognize at the outset that the state is fully aware of the problem of unruly workers
in precarious labor processes. In fact, one of the central problems of statecraft
today is precisely how to govern this unruly, often militant, population working
in extremely uncertain conditions. Every other day we hear news of workers
murdering a factory official, workers raiding a company or plant office, or the
sudden disappearance of a worker, or a laborer in a precarious work condition
committing suicide. To manage this situation, the state has recently devised a
novel idea, promoted in the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorga-
nized Sector. The Commission decided to transform the question of workers into
a question of the poor, displacing the original problem of the nature of work and
work process. While the Commission report conceptualizes both the informal
sector and the informal worker from various angles, it avoids the issue of capital,
ignoring the linkages of informal production to the organized and unorganized
market of capital and commodities.

Therefore it has no alternative but to turn to the concept of poverty as a way to

solve the problem. Instead of inquiring into precarious working conditions, or
the precarious worker, the Commission goes on a statistical tangent, quantifying
the laboring poor. As a result, the crucial distinctions between peasants and
industrial workers, domestic work and factory work, among many others, col-
lapse. Even worse, the recommendations essentially boil down to anti-poverty
initiatives, while the states own machinery to protect the rights of unorganized
workers remains woefully inadequate. This is a novel development in the art of
governance. The problem for the state seems to be: how to govern the unorga-
nized conditions of production without producing a subject called the organized
worker or how to think of a normative phenomenon (poverty in this case) as a
solution to the problem instead of defining a worker unorganized worker in
this case whose rights have to be protected by the state in face of an onslaught
by global capital. To put the dilemma more concretely, the state is now trying to
find ways to normalize the figure of the unorganized worker through social mea-
sures, while allowing and in fact facilitating the uncertain conditions of work
in the wake of globalization.

It is precisely this dilemma that has characterized the states response to work-
ers protests inDelhi.

Struggles at Maruti: The Changing Face of Labor and Capital

The history of Maruti is a fascinating on two counts. It began operation as a
state-owned automobile company (Maruti Udyog Limited) with its model Maruti
800 in 1983. In the final decade of the welfare state it was the car every member
of the middle class aspired to own. It acquired a brand loyalty unmatched in the
automobile sector. In other words, it was one of the success stories of
state-owned enterprises in the midst of the growing perception that such
state-owned enterprises were inefficient and only incurred losses. With the eco-
nomic liberalization of 1991, Maruti saw a gradual transformation from a public
sector undertaking to a joint sector company and finally to a privately-owned
company. With Suzuki Motor Company of Japan now at the helm, Maruti not
only saw a transfer of ownership, but perhaps the first experiment with
just-in-time production, or what was called then the Toyota system of produc-
tion.2 Under this new system, a whole set of stringent regulations governed the
workplace. Workers were told how often they could take bathroom breaks, and
how for long. Regulations determined how often a worker at the belt would need
to drink water, or how long workers would be permitted to talk to one another on
the assemblyline.

In short, this regime of production demanded the creation of a new kind of pli-
able workforce. Its impossible to understand the subsequent struggles at Maruti
 which now has two manufacturing units, one at Gurgaon and another at Mane-
sar without taking into account this attempt to forcibly transform the compo-
sition of the working classes. Indeed, the first wave of struggle at Maruti
exploded between 2000 and 2001, during a period of transition, so to speak, as
older workers were trying to come to grips with the new production system,
which unleashed an unprecedented rise in productivity at the factory. This first
struggle was important in the history of the struggle because in many ways it set
the template for subsequent demands, as well as the question of strategy and
tactics. The struggle began over incentive wages, which management unilater-
ally changed from the basis of savings of labor-cost to the basis of productivity
per direct worker. The agitation began on September 8, 2000 with workers wear-
ing black badges, shouting slogans, and meeting at the gates. After a general
body meeting, the union decided on collective action, which included a
tool-down strike, assembly, and collective hunger strike, as well as writing to the
management to call for a union-management meeting.

When there was no response from the management the workers began their tool
down strike of two hours in each shift. In response, the management started to
dismiss and suspend workers. On October 12, 2000, the management demanded
that workers sign an undertaking of good conduct in order to enter the factory.
This particular strategy was later employed over and over again by the Maruti
management. A lockout began on October 12. By mid-December the workers
realized that their agitation was being ignored. It was then that the union took
the decision to move their agitation to Delhi and started a sit-in demonstration
in the winter chill in front of Udyog Bhawan. This created a stir in Parliament
and the government had to intervene as Maruti was still was a joint sector com-
pany. A settlement was reached and the good conduct undertaking was with-
drawn but only a few workers who were dismissed were taken back.3 It was
through this struggle that management experimented with many of the tactics
that would be deployed later against future workers agitation. Further, during
this time, the workforce at Maruti became increasingly casualized with contract
workers and apprentices being recruited in large numbers. In fact, during this
first phase of struggle they were used to continue the production at factory to
undermine the strikes

The particular labor process and the production regime put in place in this
period were marked by the intensification of social control of the workers. Apart
from the usual management steps, such as banning unions, suspending workers
at will, handing over rebellious workers to the police, and restricting the physical
movements of workers in the plant, social control was buttressed from the out-
side. The rural rich gentry, the upper caste kulaks, and the wise elders of the
nearby settlements all supported the company bosses. Not only did these social
forces profit massively from the increasing financialization and consequent sale
of land for the special economic zone, the money was then invested in building
up ties with the businesses. Thus, some invested the money to build resorts for
the super rich coming from outside, while some built hutments for the workers
of the area all as matter of business. Some invested in high-end restaurant
business or in the sale of luxury items. Some became contractors to build roads,
while others engaged in supplying building material. Still others simply became
agents in the sale of land and other property. This moneyed class is the mainstay
of the mahapanchayat (village governing body) of the Gurgaon-Manesar area. In
most cases the mahapanchayat supported the Maruti owners throughout these
years. Not surprisingly, years later, when the great Maruti unrest broke out and
the fleeing workers wanted shelter in nearby villages, some of the wandering
workers were handed over to the police by the local gentry, particularly if the
worker belonged to a lowcaste.

Indeed, the surrounding region restructured around the factory. Some of the
members of the local rich gentry became contractors for Maruti and other plants
in that area. Others became canteen suppliers. Still others supplied other mate-
rial to the plant. All this was not a merely spontaneous consequence of the sud-
den availability of money. The company officials deliberately decided to turn
locals into suppliers as a guarantee for stability and security in the region. On
the other hand as more and more temporary hands were engaged in Maruti the
workers became casual, contract bound in special ways indicated above,bereft of
any social security entitlement. These workers were mostly Dalits. They were
kept invisible from the public profile of the company and the business so that
later the bosses could say that only a minority of the Maruti workers were trou-
blemakers, large-scale worker dissatisfaction was a lie, and the repeated lockouts
at Maruti were aimed at protecting the majority of loyal workers. All these claims
helped the state and the local government frame its response: quick apprehen-
sion of the troublemakers, quick trial, and quick exemplary punishment.

However, let us not anticipate the full story here. Let us go back to the agitation
in2000.

What followed the agitation should be taken as a study in transition the of

regimes from a welfare state to a regulatory state.4 Firstly, against the Maruti
Union Employee Union (MUEU) which had led the agitation so far, a new man-
agement controlled Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union (MUKU) was founded, holding
election in 2001. A massive retrenchment process in the name of Voluntary
Retirement Scheme was undertaken and workers were laid off. In 2002, Suzuki
increased its share to 54.2%. In 2006, the Manesar unit of Maruti was estab-
lished. The grip of management on the workers was tightened as never before.
There were regular reports of daily abuse of workers, mostly on ground of caste
and the impossible working conditions of the lean production system.

In 2011, a new wave of struggle at Maruti brought it to the forefront of working

class struggle in India and attracted global attention. The discontent with work-
ing conditions and the abusive attitude of the management reached a breaking
point. On June 3, 2011, workers at the Manesar plant submitted an application to
register their independent union Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU).5 The
next day a workers sit-in at the Manesar factory began. The primary demands of
the workers were the right to unionize and to make all contractual and tempo-
rary workers permanent. On June 6, eleven workers were fired. On June 17, the
labor department intervened and the workers were reinstated and a verbal assur-
ance was given that their union would be registered. During this entire period
the workers occupied the factory. They had learnt their lesson from the earlier
struggle:it was unwise to leave the factory as this allowed the management to
declare a lockout. What followed was constant threat and abuse by the manage-
ment as well as dismissals and suspensions. This continued until August 28-29,
when suddenly a large contingent of police entered the plant and management
sealed the gate. When the workers arrived, the management declared that they
could enter only after signing an undertaking (a signed promise) of good con-
duct. The workers refused to do so. Harassment and arrest of union leaders fol-
lowed. On September 30, the workers agreed to sign the good conduct undertak-
ing. However, only permanent workers were allowed to enter while 1,100 con-
tract workers were denied entry. They were told to take their dues and leave.
From October 7, permanent and contract workers occupied the factory, and on
October 13, the High Court passed the order that the workers should vacate the
factory.

In the meantime, the management laid a siege on the factory cutting the water
supply and closing the canteen. In a dramatic turn of events, still largely inex-
plicable, the strike ended in November as some leaders of the strike took com-
pensation from the management and left the company. In any case, the manage-
ment promised that the union would be registered by December 13, 2011; but it
was until January 31, 2012 that the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU) was
finally registered. The struggle, of course, continued.

On April 18, 2012 the union presented a charter of demands to reduce work pres-
sure, modify the extremely demanding work schedule, end of the incentive
scheme, etc. In May, two union leaders were suspended because of an altercation
with supervisor, but they were reinstated due to collective pressure from the
workers. Matters came to a head in June-July when talks between management
and the union broke down. Workers stopped reporting early and worked for only
eight and half hours. On July 18, 2012 a supervisor abused a worker with casteist
remarks and the worker was suspended.6 Subsequent events remain unclear.
Workers said that bouncers were called by the management and violence broke
out, resulting in the death of an HR manager. Who killed the manager remains a
mystery. Workers demanded an impartial probe into the incident. In any case,
the violence and the death of the manager allowed the state to crackdown on
workers with ferocity. Thus came to an end of the year long struggle of the
Maruti workers.

Overthis entire period, the struggle remained autonomous in the sense that the
direct intervention of trade unions of the Left and other parties was negligible.
However, after the events of July 2012 as the struggle came under heavy state
repression, several trade unions came to the support of the workers. This period
is more interesting as it revealed a completely new face of the trade union move-
ment in India, marked by new methods of negotiations between the workers and
the unions. There were several unions and workers organizations ranging from
various shades of what is called the far-Left, to ones which were more like
non-governmental organizations and labor solidarity associations than unions.
It meant a shift in the organizing principle hitherto based on the concept of class
to that of community. This, as later events showed, was to have serious repercus-
sions on the movement.

After the July 18 incident, 546 permanent workers were terminated along with
about 1,800 temporary workers and 147 permanent workers arrested on charges
of murder. To meet the consequences of the crackdown of July 2012, the union
reorganized itself through a provisional committee and a new movement began
from November 7, 2012. MSWU demanded that the arrested leaders be released,
dismissed workers reinstated, temporary workers made permanent, and an
impartial probe on the incident of July 18,be instigated.

The struggle this time, however, was perceptively different in terms of tactics
and strategy. The new phase of struggle began on November 7, 2012. While the
earlier movements recognized the importance of sit-ins or occupying either the
factory or an important government office, this time the workers moved around.
An important reason for this was that a large number of workers had been termi-
nated and the temporary workers were looking for jobs, thus making it difficult
for the workers to organize an occupation of the factory. However, there was
considerable debate between the various unions and MSWU to shift the site of
struggle to the capital (Delhi) rather than clinging on to Gurgaon-Manesar. This
suggestion was not taken up. It is a bit surprising as the experience of the strug-
gle had shown the gains of standing ground even if that meant shifting at times
the location of the struggle. In this case, if the terrain of the mobilization had
been even partially shifted to Delhi, the kind of repression possible in Haryana
may not have happened, since that level of repression in Delhi would have very
likely attracted large-scale public interest. In any case, by this time the issue of
the Maruti struggle was not a local one only, but a national, even a global issue.
There was a greater chance of workers mobilization from other places as well as
a greater display of social solidarity. The suggestion had come from some groups
involved in the movement withMSWU.

In the meantime MSWU aligned itself with some central trade unions like CITU.
On one occasion when the site of the movement shifted to Kaithal the workers
sought help from the notorious khap panchayat (a council of elders of few vil-
lages often emerging as quasi-judicial body and pronouncing harsh punishments
based on age old customs of practising violence on women and dalits). In some
circles, this tendency of workers of choosing their own leadership is taken as a
positive phenomenon and a sign of autonomy. However, the experience of
Maruti showed that such alliances are never symmetrical in their power rela-
tions. In this case the power was firmly in the hands ofthe khap panchayat. After
the police repression of May 19, 2013 in Kaithal, the khap panchayat withdrew
its support. With this came the end of this phase of the struggle. There was a
seminar held at Jawaharlal Nehru University where MSWU asked for suggestions
for continuing the struggle.

The latest notable situation in Maruti struggle is that MSWU has been reorga-
nized and a new body has been elected. However, this long history of Maruti
struggle has left the question of strategy and tactics of the workers movement
open. How do we conceive of the autonomy of workers movement? Taking into
account that many of these workers belonged to villages around Gurgaon-Mane-
sar, their impulse led them to fall back on the community organization of the
khap panchayat. They also tried to align themselves with central trade unions of
the parliamentary Left as well as organizations belonging to the radical Left.
These forces were parts of and not merely spectators in the debates surrounding
the question of organization. A working class movement, even as sophisticated
and led by what is called advanced workers such as those of Maruti, working on
the cutting edge of technology, cannot remove itself from its political and social
background. It might also be the case that this movement may not even want to
do that. Thus, debates, quarrels, party alignments, and various pulls remained
intrinsic to the situation.

It cannot be forgotten that to a large degree the struggle was sustained because
of their links with the villages. Perhaps the postcolonial condition not only does
not completely transform peasants into workers at least for now, but in this con-
dition the workers have to traverse both spheres. In the case of Maruti the work-
ers who were part of the struggle were only the first generation who had given up
farming and taken up technical education to become part of the skilled work-
force. Maybe that is the reason that forced them to look for succour in their vil-
lages rather than in their so-called autonomous self. Also, it must not be forgot-
ten that after the collapse of struggle post-July 18, 2012, the unions and organi-
zations of the Left rallied in the support of MSWU in the face of heavy state
repression, though not to the required extent. Certainly more could have been
done. However the support helped the movement remain alive both on the
ground as well as in the progressive circles and media. The question is: Is auton-
omy even desirable, at least in the way it is understood? Is there a new way to
conceptualize theissue?

There are good reasons to argue that the autonomous character of the workers
movement in Maruti stems from the specific, precarious labor conditions at the
plant. Suzuki has become an increasingly globalized enterprise since it started its
joint venture with Maruti three decades ago, with its centers of production,
investment, and export sales now reaching into parts of Africa, Europe, and the
United States. But its Indian subsidiary still accounts not only a large portion of
Suzukis foreign sales (62 percent), but its total sales (48 percent). But increasing
productivity rates at Maruti have only been possible due to changes in both the
forces and relations of production: namely, the adoption of a just-in-time pro-
duction system and the subsequent differentiation of the labor force into three
categories of workers permanent, contract, labor, and apprentice laborers. In
2012, of the total number of Maruti workers, 1100 Maruti workers were contract
laborers, 400 apprentice laborers; and only 950 were permanent laborers. The
number of contract laborers has periodically fluctuated. Combined with
speed-ups in the production process, this reorganization of the labor force has
helped the Maruti plant at Manesar to increase its annual production capacity
from 250,000 to 350,000 units.

Technological adjustments and the implementation of a flexible work regime

have also had tangible effects on the factory floor. For instance , if Maruti work-
ers previously received two 15-minute tea breaks per shift, now they receive two
tea breaks of 7.5 minutes each. Likewise, the time allotted for lunch was reduced
from one hour to 30 minutes. Strangely, while political economy speaks of inten-
sification of production, and thus the increase of production through constant
improvement of technology, it does not have the language to discuss, or any
means of measuring, the role of the body and the intensification of its laboring
capacities in the Post-Fordist regime of accumulation. This is the necessary
background, however, for understanding the currents forms of labor (permanent,
casual, and apprentice) and relations of production at the Maruti plant.

The failure of the traditional trade union movement led by the classical Left Par-
ties to adequately respond to the growing saliency of labor market flexibilization
and just-in time-production system in global capitalism today, and the constant
blows against working class institutions inflicted by the neoliberal state, point to
a central question: instead of the fight for wages, is the idea of autonomy the
best conceptual tool to understand today workers movements that are often dis-
playing new forms of organization, mobilization, and proletarian power? In
1970s Italy, a section of the theoreticians of workers movement argued that in
contrast to the centralized decisions and authority structures of modern institu-
tions, autonomous social movements involved people directly in decisions
affecting their everyday lives. In this way democracy would expand and help
individuals break free of the political structures and comportments imposed by
capital from above. Such an understanding involved a call in a revolutionary per-
spective for the independence of movements from political parties. Autonomia
in Italy sought to create a practical political alternative a terrain of struggle
that evaded the traps of both capitalist democracy and what they defined as
authoritarian socialism.

This is not the place to discuss in details the theory of the autonomous move-
ment, for more often than not the principle of autonomy has been discussed the-
ologically; at times a particular context has been universalized, and at times pol-
itics has been taken out of working class movement, with the result that the
experiences of workers movements have not been given adequate importance in
theorizing the issue of autonomy. This has been responsible for a lack of dialecti-
cal understanding of what we should mean by autonomy of workers movement.
In this background the recent workers movements in Delhi deserves importance,
and surely it will be necessary to look dialectically into the issue of autonomy in
the workers movement in the context of the strategy and tactics of proletarian
politics.

To arrive at that discussion we have to now move on to the second experience

that we propose to narratehere.

Struggle of Hot Roller Workers in Wazirpur: Who Organizes the Unorganized

andHow
The labor conditions in Wazirpur in Delhi are as far removed from the Maruti
case as one can possibly imagine. In Wazirpur, workers toil in hot rolling steel
factories under the most dangerous conditions. The temperatures of the blast
furnaces in the factories, reach more than 2700 degrees. The labor process
involves direct exposure to these extreme temperatures: one group of workers
will attend to the furnaces in 30 minute shifts, before taking a rest for the next
30 minutes while another group of workers takes over, and the process repeats.
The 30 minutes rest period is not recognized by the factory owners, and thus
goes unpaid.

Migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar provinces compose the majority of the
workforce. The migration pattern of workers is incorporated into the process of
production itself: during the summer, migrants return to their villages in the
summer for the sowing and harvesting season, permanent works tend to the fur-
naces; in the winter, when the weather in Delhi is often unbearably cold, new,
inexperienced migrants are often contracted to work on the furnace, as it is pur-
portedly more comfortable.

Migration is thus a decisive element in the formation of the workforce at Wazir-

pur. Most workers come through a well-formed migration network based on kin-
ship relations. The other alternative for workers from other provinces is to come
through a labor contractor, who is often the supervisor or foreman at the same
factory. However, as in Maruti, the percentage of permanent workers who live in
Delhi and work at the plant year-round is relatively low.

These structural conditions are essential for analyzing the steelworkers struggle
at Wazirpur in June-July 2014. Our analysis draws on the detailed chronology of
this political sequence posted on a blog created by a factory committee involved
in the struggle, which is a valuable firsthand account in its own right. What is
important in this discussion is how Wazirpur workers created novel forms of col-
lective action in and through their struggle a struggle often marked by intense,
yet generative, polemics between the different groups involved. But what was at
stake in this month-long battle? What issues were the most contentious issues
for workers, and what were the tactics and outcomes of the Wazirpur confronta-
tion?

As is so often the case, one must first turn to the issue of wage. Most of the
workers at Wazirpur are not even paid the minimum wage. There had been previ-
ous agitation around low pay and lack of benefits during 2012 and 2013, which
resulted in a partial success in terms of wages and holidays, but problems around
work hours, work conditions, and the absence of any legally-required social
security provisions remained major faultlines.

Moreover and this is a significant departure from the Maruti case the experi-
ence of collective action and the history of militancy among workers was fairly
low. In Maruti, there was a historical memory of struggle which was readily avail-
able to the workers; not so for workers in Wazirpur. This was due not to a lack of
antecedent struggles to draw upon: there was, for example, a heroic week-long
strike of 1988, which was unfortunately all but forgotten. This dynamic should
rather be attributed the specific obstacles of organizing in the informal sector,
and the dependence of this sector on migrant labor. Due to the constant shifts in
the internal composition of the labor force, it becomes difficult for a workers
movement to have a continuous history and culture of militancy, or a robust tac-
tical repertoire to return to. This history is interrupted by the ebbs of migratory
flows: long periods of inactivity means that the struggle has to begin anew, so
tospeak.

One of the most effective interventions developed during the struggle was that
of the community kitchen. In itself, this may not have been a completely new
tactic, but it had not been used for a long time. The problem of organizing infor-
mal sector workers is largely a consequence of the lack of any financial security
for migrants; the owners have thus always used hunger and food aid as a strategy
to break the workers. Almost 20 days into the strike striking workers established
a community kitchen, and the owners were taken aback and forced to negotiate.
Some even were forced to close their factories as they could not have run it prof-
itably according to the new settlement.

The struggle also made the government labor department, which was till now
mostly inactive, suddenly active and relevant. Once the settlement was reached,
the onus of the implementation fell on the labor department.7 The officials of
the labor department were genuinely surprised to find the kind of power they
still had over these informal units. All these may change however after new labor
reforms are put in place. But for the time being the struggle have forced them to
take up investigations of the factory and the working conditions prevailing in
these factories.

The struggle in Wazirpur and its partial victory is an encouraging signal that
even the most unorganized sector, where the parliamentary Lefts union activism
has only a limited presence, has the potential to become a thriving ground for
experiments in radical forms of workers organization. This is a vital supplement
to the Maruti case, which demonstrated that even in the organized sector at
the cutting edge of technological innovation in the workplace the radical Left
has an important role to play. With the rise of casualization of labor, it is true
that workers have become more geographically mobile and contractually flexi-
ble; but the upshot may be that they are now more amenable to the kind of poli-
tics articulated by the radicalLeft.

The struggle did, however, bring an important question to the fore. Who orga-
nizes the workers at sites that have not been previously organized or where trade
union influence has been minimal? Here the history of the Left movement in
India needs to be considered. The changing circumstances have forced the radi-
cal Left, which emerged after the movement of the late 1960s, to look at their
program, and strategy and tactics anew. Contrary to the belief that radical Left is
in terminal decline or at best only active in isolated spaces or distant forests,
there is a great deal of ideological and political ferment taking place within this
circle. As a matter of fact, the level of polemics is similar to the 1960s, if not
more intense. This renewed activity has been brought about precisely because of
the questions raised and methods of organizing developed by the working class
struggle, making it more militant and sustainable. The radical left is now forced
to reconsider the question of the party form, trade union tactics, and the possi-
ble new forms of association that can and must be elaborated through working
class struggle. Those are no longer ossified or arcane concepts, but living, urgent
strategies to be considered.

Concepts like war of position, mobile war, and protracted war (enunciated by
Antonio Gramsci and Mao Zedong) have not escaped the political understanding
of the radical Left in India, and these concepts can perhaps lead the way inartic-
ulating new forms strategy and tactics in workers struggles.

Concluding Remarks
Both the experiences suggest that the problematic of autonomy and the
received notions of workers autonomy need to be seriously investigated. After
all, we have to ask ourselves, what are the issues, forces, or institutions that the
workers struggles have to be autonomous from? What kind of emancipatory pol-
itics will such autonomous forms engender? Finally, through the looking glass of
autonomy, will the working class stumble upon only its own interests, or will it
complete the historical task Marx so eloquently expressed when he said, in the
aftermath of the Paris Commune, that the working class has finally discovered
the political form under which it can achieve the emancipation oflabor?

We have stressed the need to consider the question of autonomy in a dialectical

fashion. In other words, the issue cannot be framed as an either/or choice:
between the party-form or the union form, the union form or the autonomous
organizational form, political movement or the self-organizational movement of
workers, or finally, between a political upsurge or social movement. Every
instance of worker-led resistance has shown strong marks of autonomy, a swell
of consciousness on the ground, and a large degree of spontaneity. At the same
time, every uprising of workers has demonstrated features of strategic leader-
ship, effective organization, wide social networks, and a strong transformational
desire.

As Stephen Sherlocks 2001 study (The Indian Railway Strike of 1974: A Study of
Power and Organised Labour) and Ranabir Samaddars recent study (The Crisis of
1974: Railway Strike and the Rank and File) show, the great Railway Strike in
India in 1974 was one of the clearest instances of a current of autonomy devel-
oping within a movement. But the formation of the great autonomous institu-
tion of the NCCRS (National Coordination Committee of Railwaymens Struggle)
was a political decision and an agreed decision of the political parties leading the
struggle. NCCRS was backed by the tremendous upsurge of the railway workers.
Mass initiative was created through struggle: its advances and successes, but
also errors and failures. It is also important to note that the craft unions were
crucial in the wave of sectional protests and strikes by railway workers across the
country in 1967, 1968, 1970, and 1973, leading up to the great Railway Strike. In
all these senses, therefore, one can say that the 1974 strike was based in a signif-
icant sense on the rank and file, particularly the newly emergent crafts unions
among the rail workers. While labor historians generally regard craft unions as
being limited in their expressions of class consciousness, and prone to the pulls
of sectarian rather than wider class loyalties, such crafts unions broke the stran-
glehold that the large federations had on workers initiatives. Therefore, in the
papers relating to the Strike of 1974, we find repeated references to the
loco-running staff (locomotive drivers, train guards, etc.) Whoever has studied,
for instance, the legendary railroad workers movement in the United States will
know the strategic importance of the loco-running staff because of their work
conditions, long working hours, high-pressure work for days without a break,
and the solidarity that the loco-men forge through their work.8 The ascendancy
of the Loco Running Staff Association (LRSA) was crucial in mobilizing the work-
ers for the strike. In some sense, with the firemen joining the rank and file, the
railwaymen were now ready for action because they had found their leaders.

In 1968, the Firemen of Southern and South Central Railways walked off the job
for twenty-one days, demanding an eight hour day. While negotiations with the
Deputy Railway Minister to find a solution were going on, the leaderships of two
major unions, the AIRF and NFIR, entered into an agreement with the Railway
Board for a fourteen hour work shift from punch-in to punch-out. This compro-
mise broke the strike and decimated the strength of the workers. However, the
Loco Running Staff learned an important lesson: they decided to stand on their
own feet and organize themselves. A number of firemen councils, besides other
existing running staff unions, were established throughout the country. These
firemen councils and running staff associations formed the All India Loco Run-
ning Staff Association in 1970, at Vijayawada. The loco-men agitated persis-
tently, and organized a nation-wide strike beginning on August 2, 1973 which
resulted in an agreement on a ten-hour working day. The struggle boosted the
self-confidence of the railwaymen, and had a direct impact on the subsequent
formation of NCCRS (National Coordination Committee of Railway Mens Strug-
gle) and the historic strike of May 1974.9

Other nodal points in this submerged history of autonomous workers move-

ments in India bear mentioning. First, there is the well-known movement for
factory self-management in the Kanoria Jute Mill in West Bengal in the 1990s.
This movement was mobilized after an autonomous group of workers with a
very particular political perspective led a factory occupation with the support
and solidarity of different Left organizations.10 There was also the Dalli-Rajhara
miners movement in the late 1970s, led by late Shankar Guha Neogy, a case once
again marked by strong organization, a keen sense of tactics and strategy, and
active involvement of the rank and file. This history of autonomous organizing
on the part of workers exhibits the dialectical dynamics we described above.
Strongly poised between the two poles of insurgent self-activity and established
political and social institutions, workers in India are now learning to strategi-
cally and tactically use the concept of autonomy.

Autonomy, as a movement and as a theory, challenges the notion that capitalism

is an irrational system. Instead, it privileges what it takes to be the workers
viewpoint, emphasizing their activity as the lever of revolutionary passage as
that which alone can construct a communist society. The economic level and the
political level are intertwined; economic relations are directly political relations
of force between class subjects. And it is in the self-activity of the social worker
not in what is considered as an alienated political form like the party that the
initiative for political change resides.

But can the rich experiences of working class movements in India be compre-
hended through the concept of autonomy if the latter is theorized in non-rela-
tional terms? We are not indulging in semantic dispute here; at stake is our
understanding and sedimented conceptions of politics.

The idea of autonomy today is undergoing a revival in India; it is doubtless one

important mode of resistance to postcolonial capitalism. There is clearly a multi-
plicity of forms of dependent labor operating globally, with factories turning into
sweatshops, the most virtual forms of accumulation combining with the most
primitive, the wage question linking up with the issue of work conditions, and
labor processes becoming enmeshed with the issue of casualization of labor.
While admittedly the old trade union movement failed to revise its strategy in
light of the changes in the labor regime ushered in by neoliberal modes of accu-
mulation, the answer does not lie in making autonomy the holy panacea to the
impasses of trade union policies; the upsurges of workers autonomy must be
treated dialectically.11 This means bringing back the three great questions of the
workers movement: organization, transformation, and emancipation. The ques-
tion of organization is crucial, when we see that while in 1980-81 the share of
wages and salaries in gross national income was 40.5 per cent, in 2011-12 the
share had come down to 22 per cent.12

On the other hand, the Indian state has no illusions about the autonomous char-
acter of these recent workers movements, and the threat they pose. As Maruti
showed, the state came down violently on the strike and the entire movement,
justice was summarily denied, criminal justice provisions were abused, trade
union rights were trampled upon, and every governmental step was taken to
ensure that Maruti does not become the symbol of a politics of the workplace
and beyond.13 The employers, public authorities, local elites, the moneyed gen-
try, and the machinery of law and justice all of these agents allied against the
workers. In this instance, the imperative for the workers struggle was not to be
autonomous, but be more and more connected to the existing political relations
within society, the reality of the social factory, which called for rigorous thinking
and debate about strategy and tactics.

Workers have come a long way from earlier forms of resistance. From being rick
burners, machine breakers, humble petitioners, sober trade unionists, stewards
of unions, to trade union militants leading general strikes and teaming up with
other struggling sections of society this is the tortuous history of the workers
movement. Yet this inspiring and often tragic history has to be revisited again
and again in order to determine the strategy and tactics of the working class
movement in the context of our contemporary time. Strategy and tactics are cru-
cial concepts as crucial as the imperative of autonomy. While autonomy is a
concept, strategy and tactics are principles of waging class war, and are in fact
essential components of all wars. They indicate relational judgement, evaluation
of balance of forces, command, stewardship, mobilization, deployment of forces,
logistical planning, measurement of time, etc. Once workers have gone beyond
the boundaries of workplace trade unionism, which they know and understand
naturally, they often become reliant on national institutions like political parties
and national trade unions. Since the parties and unions have very little idea of
working outside the national institutional sphere, workers grope for a way out of
the institutional confines. This is the time when they cry out treachery! They
say leaders have sold out. Yet they cannot find the exitroute.

This is where the two experiences we have cited are indicative of new thinking
and new modes of organization, however faulty and hesitant the initial steps
may look to us. These movements have consciously or unconsciously addressed
the reality of the social factory and they have combined an autonomous charac-
ter mobilization from below and mass initiativewith the need to formulate
an appropriate strategy and effective set of tactics, which only political leader-
ship can provide.

As long as industry catered to local markets, served local areas, and drew from
local population to form its labor force, sectionalism and differentiation among
workers was not a major problem for union organizers. But now in the age of
globalized capitalism, precarious conditions of work have accentuated the prob-
lem of sectionalism and differentiation, which can bring back some of the mal-
adies evident in workers movements during the pre-mass industrialization era,
with reverse effects. One thinks of cases where union organizers from Europe
and the United States (the AFL-CIO, for instance) visit workers movements and
activists in the so called developing countries (for instance China, India, or
South Africa), encouraging the formation of autonomous unions there, while
unions in their own backyard have been drastically weakened, even destroyed.
The slogan of autonomy reflects the desire to exit institutional confines and out-
moded political forms; and as such it reflects the dualities and paradoxes in the
present situation.

The situation calls for a dialectical thinking of autonomy and organization.

While there has been a general consensus on the decline in union membership
and several other features associated with a strong labor movement, there has
also been a recent surge of activity in many areas, including the formation of
unions, associations, solidarity forums, militant groups, and the waging of local
battles that involve political choices at every step. We might say that the slogan
of autonomy is the appearance of a different reality, connected to the question of
precarious work and the labor process, inasmuch as the wage relation may
become under particular circumstances what Marx called the form of appear-
ance of the true state of affairs. Yet, as Marx said apropos of classical political
economy, it is absolutely essential to work beyond the form of appearance: The
forms of appearance are reproduced directly and spontaneously, as current and
usual modes of thought; the essential relation must first be discovered by sci-
ence. Classical political economy stumbles approximately onto the true state of
affairs, but without consciously formulating it. It is unable to do this as long as it
stays within its bourgeois skin.14

The task, then, is the following: instead of spontaneously giving oneself over to
the trend of providing an ideological name to a new or emerging reality, we have
to proceed in a dialectical mannertowards finding out what is actually happen-
ing in workers struggles today. Questions of organization, tactics, and strategy
are therefore essential; and they can be discovered (at least in elemental forms),
discussed, and elaborated only through a science of relational analysis.

1. Gurgaon Workers News, Newsletter 3, May 2007.

2. Peoples Union for Democratic Rights,Hard Drive: Working Conditions and

Workers Struggles at Maruti (Delhi: Hindustan Printers, 2001).

3. Ibid.

4. This is how the new role of the state is articulated in a paper published by
the Planning Commission in 2008. See Approach to Regulation of Infrastruc-
ture. New Delhi: Secretariat for the Committee on Infrastructure, Planning
Commission , Government of India, September 2008.

5. Peoples Union for Democratic Rights,Driving Force: Labour Struggles and

Violation of Rights in Maruti Suzuki India Limited (Delhi: Progressive Print-
ers,May 2013).
 6. Ibid.

7. For details of the settlement see Peoples Union for Democratic Rights,
Wazirpur Struggle Continues, As Factory Owners Refuse to Honour Written
Agreement, (accessed September 15, 2014).

8. Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working Class Organizers, ed. Alice
Lynd and Staughton Lynd (Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books, 1973); see in
particular, Wayne Kennedy, An Absolute Majority, 233-52.

9. For a detailed discussion on the role of the rank and file, particularly the
Locomen in the General Strike of 1974, see Ranabir Samaddar, Forty Years
After: The Great Indian Railway Strike of 1974, Economic and Political
Weekly volume 50, no. 4, January 24, 2015; Ranabir Samaddar, The Indian
Railway Workers and the Crisis of 1974, Working USA: The Journal of Labor
and Society, December 18, 2015.

10. Kushal Debnath, West Bengal: The Neo-Liberal Offensive in Industry and
the Workers Resistance, Revolutionary Democracy (accessed on October 16,
2014).

11. On the paradoxical play of autonomy, mass initiative, and political leader-
ship of the movement in the organization of the 1974 Indian Railway Strike,
cf. Stephen Sherlock, The Indian Railway Strike of 1974: A Study of Power
and Organized Labour (New Delhi: Rupa & Co., 2001).

12. From respective Annual Economic Surveys, cited in a report, Maruti

Karkakhanar Sramik Andolaner Shikkhoniyo Kichu Dik, Charcha, August
2013, 54-8.

13. On the legal dimensions of the violations of Maruti workers rights, see
Merchants of Menace: Repressing Workers in Indias New Industrial Belt:
Violations of Workers and Trade Union Rights at Maruti Suzuki India Ltd,
Report of the International Commission for Labour Rights, New York, n.d.

14. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin Books, 1990),