Workers' Liberty

In India the liberal feminist Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin is being threatened with expulsion from India in the aftermath of Islamist protests against her criticisms of religious fundamentalism.

The following text is my speech given at Workers' Liberty’s London forum on “Sixty years since Indian independence”. The other speaker was Sarbjit Johal from South Asia Solidarity

Just before xmas, the US retail monopolist Wal-Mart, that also owns ASDA in the UK, did a deal with India's leading telecoms company Bharti Enterprises Ltd.to open hundreds of stores in India over the next several years. According to Investor.com, "Under the deal, Wal-Mart and Bharti Enterprises will set up a joint venture to manage procurement, inventories and logistics, while stores will be set up under a franchise agreement, said Sunil Bharti Mittal, the chief executive of the Indian company."

Background

The Mandal Commission in India was established in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to "identify the socially or educationally backward."

Workers for the Michael Aram Export Company, which manufactures metal artware goods such as cutlery, vases and tableware for such top-end New York department stores as Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s, are demonstrating outside their Okhla, New Delhi workplace against poor conditions and with-held pay.

Did you know that the ‘hand-pulled rickshaw’ was designed in the year 1870.A light wooden cart with large wheels probably for the royal people.It was in 1914 that the hand-pulled rickshaws was launched in Kolkata, most of them are Biharies migrants on the busy city streets.

"Shame upon such crimes!

Shame upon us if we do not raise our voices against them!"

Samuel Gompers, U.S. labor activist, 1881

With credible estimates ranging from 60 to 115 million, India has the largest number of working children in the world. Whether they are sweating in the heat of stone quarries, working in the fields sixteen hours a day, picking rags in city streets, or hidden away as domestic servants, these children endure miserable and difficult lives. They earn little and are abused much. They struggle to make enough to eat and perhaps to help feed their families as well. They do not go to school; more than half of them will never learn the barest skills of literacy. Many of them have been working since the age of four or five, and by the time they reach adulthood they will certainly be exhausted, old men and women by the age of forty, likely to be dead by fifty.

News from working-class struggles around the world...

By Dave Ball

There are estimated to be 11 million street children in India. This includes those who are on the streets in the day but return to a family or other home in the evening, as well as those who sleep on the streets. Worldwide there could be as many as 170 million street children. The April 2005 issue of New Internationalist (NI) (published on the web at www.newint.org) focussed on the issue, giving most of the space to street children themselves to tell their experiences and put forward their hopes in their own words.

Notes from a talk by Clive Bradley at North London AWL branch, 14 December 2004

The disaster took place on the night of 2-3 December 1984. Just after midnight, poison gas leaked from a chemical factory, which killed up to 8,000 people immediately, and between 16,000 and 30,000 people over time. It was a terrible atrocity, which symbolises global inequality and the reality of capitalism to people in the 'third world'.

By Harry Glass

What do the surprise results of the Indian elections mean for the Indian working class?


The first surprise was the defeat of the Hindu chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has ruled India for the past five years. Most commentators thought that a BJP victory was inevitable, yet the party lost 4% of its vote compared with 1999 and more than 40 of its 182 seats.

By Sam Ruby

Two Indian women, Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla, have won the Goldman Environmental Prize for their battle on behalf of the victims of the Bhopal gas disaster 20 years ago. The women will use the prize money - $125,000 - to fight corporate crime. Their fight is an awe-inspiring story of working class people taking on corporate murderers, capitalist courts and corrupt government.

• India: 30 million strike

• Car workers strike in Brazil
• Repression of Chinese workers

India: 30 million strike

Thirty million workers in India went on 24-hour strike last week to protest over a Supreme Court ruling that said government employees had no right to strike because it inconvenienced citizens and cost the state money.

From Workers' Liberty 63

Imperialism yesterday and today 3

How Britain ruined India

When black Africa was put under colonial rule in the late 19th century, it had already been shattered and devastated by four centuries of the slave trade. But the India conquered by the British from the mid-18th century was a great and splendid empire. European trading bases had existed in India since the early 16th century, but they had exported manufactured goods from India - for India "had an industrial sector producing luxury goods which Europe could not match" (Angus Maddison). Now Britain imposed restrictions on textile imports from India, and promoted cheap exports from the new cotton mills of Lancashire. "The handicraft industries were destroyed - the same which had supplied the eastern trade of more than thousand years and had provided Greek and Roman, Arab and Venetian, English and Portuguese traders with their wealth. 'The bones of the weavers' - and an English Governor-General said it [in 1834-5] - were 'bleaching the plains of India'" (Michael Barratt Brown).

In probably the largest general strike ever seen, 60 million workers came out on 21 May in protest at the Indian government’s privatisation plans.


The impact of the one-day strike was felt in the power, fertiliser, banking, insurance, coal mining, oil, transport and postal industries. Union leaders claimed there was a complete shutdown in West Bengal, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and elsewhere.

By Cathy Nugent

Tensions could rise again between Pakistan and India over the disputed territory of Kashmir, as elections for Kashmir's regional Assembly take place this month.

Four separate polls will be held between 16 September and 8 October. At the beginning of September jihadi-separatist groups killed civilians, police and government in several attacks - these groups are boycotting the elections as they - and other Kashmiri separatists - do not believe Kashmir should be part of the Indian Union. The jihadists are also threatening violence against people who do participate in the elections - although it is difficult to judge how serious the level of intimidation is.

War between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory in Kashmir is still a possibility. India has been pressing for Pakistan to act against Kashmiri "militants" - the Pakistani trained and supported Islamic jihadi groups, one of which attacked the Indian Parliament in December 2001. A visit by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld backed up Pakistani military ruler General Pervez Musharraf's promise to act against the Islamists. India has now pulled back some of its war ships.

By Farooq Tariq
Responding to a call from the Left parties of Pakistan, the Communist Party of India (ML) Socialist Unity Center of India, CPIML(Red Flag), and CPIML (Unity Initiative) have agreed to organise peace demonstrations on 13th June.
It will be for the first time in the history of Pakistan and Indian Left parties that there will be rallies on the same day and on the same issue across Indian sub continent.

By Cathy Nugent
The threat of war between Pakistan and India over disputed territory in Kashmir has been building since December 2001, when Kashmiri armed fighters attacked the Indian parliament, killing 14 people. At that time Indian government demanded the military government of General Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan act decisively against Kashmiri "terrorists".

From a statement of the Labour Party of Pakistan.
The governments of both India and Pakistan are on a road to disaster. Both countries have gone to war against each other several times in the past. The last limited war was in 1998. The mad politicians of India and military regime of Pakistan were on the same side with the international community during the Afghan American war. Now they both blame each other of harbouring terrorism via armed religious fundamentalists on the question of Kashmir.
They want to take the American road to score their points. War is the only solution, that is the conclusion these mad rulers are drawing.

Trade unions and left-wing parties in both India and Pakistan have condemned the two countries’ nuclear weapon tests. India carried out tests on 11 and 13 May; Pakistan tested weapons on 27 and 31 May, and has declared a state of emergency.