Industrial Workers of the World

GurgaonWorkersNews - Newsletter 29 (August 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 proletarianised 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@yahoo.co.uk

In the August 2010 issue you can find:

1) Proletarian Experiences

- Daily life stories and reports from a workers' perspective

*** Short Workers' Reports from Gurgaon Factories

- The following short reports have been collected and re-distributed by Faridabad Mazdoor Samachar in late spring 2010. Most of the workers are employed in garments export factories.

*** Fifteen Years of Proletarian Existence in Delhi and Gurgaon /

5 Minutes Chat with Worker in Udyog Vihar - Starting his life in Delhi with work at an electronics factory, he shifted to Gurgaon to work in the export garments industry, now he is unemployed looking for day-jobs.

*** Short Report of a Pavement Shop-Keeper in the Industrial Area of Gurgaon

- Struggle of small pavement-traders with the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC), about the right to stay in the area.

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

*** Local struggles over Water, Struggles over Power

- Gurgaon is an open drain of human energy, converting it into tiredness and commodities. It is a drain of water and power. Residents fight back against the city, fight over the energy flow. As it seems on the surface, urban and rural are in clinch over power-distribution.

In Faridabad industrialists complain about the power-shortages, making it impossible for them to keep up with global competition, while farmers in the hinterland say that they cannot irrigate their land due to lack of electricity. We document some struggles over water and (social) power: road blocks, blockades of power stations, strike of power staff against privatisation, boss-napping, riots and destruction of polluting factories.

*** Street Fighting Days /

Delhi Street-Sweepers have a Riot - Delhi rulers spends billions on the prestigious Common Wealth Games, paying little to those who build and maintain the city. Construction workers already had a riot on Common Wealth sites after one too many fatal accidents. Now street sweepers had had it, they expressed their riotous souls and anger, demanding proper contracts and higher wages. Several cars got burnt, the police had to resolve to warning shots.

3) According to Plan - General information on the development of the region or on certain company policies *** Gurgaon: A Paranoid Post-Neo-Liberal City - Neo-liberal endorphins are re-ceeding, land-prices dropping, bonuses in the middle-management departments coming down.

The city wakes up, looks around itself and startles in fear: who are all these people left out by the rush?! We start with a comment posted on GurgaonWorkersNews expressing the general angst towards the unknown proletarian aliens.

The city soothes itself with booze and online-checks on its servants: are they Maoists? In the end we have to create our own ideal world of neo-rich India without the poor: "The Kingdom of Dreams", "a 5.66 acre entertainment and leisure hotspot", a soapy-bubbly image of our gated fantasies.

*** 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 India - motivated by Greek shock-waves, naked shorts and potential spill-overs.

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. In June-July petrol-prices went up after the government's free-floating, we saw token general strikes and the state extending its anti-Naxalite counter-insurgency to the rural workers' unions of Punjab and Gujarat. Read more...

4) About the Project

- Updates on Gurgaon Workers News

*** More translations by FMS: Shanty-Town Economics

- You can find two more English translations of texts by Faridabad Majdoor Samachar on their web-blog. The texts concern the question of proletarian housing and state control over reproduction:

http://faridabadmajdoorsamachar.blogspot.com/

*** 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 India's Special Exploitation Zone - www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com