Over 100 million stop work in India

2013-03-01 · first published in marxsite · 216 words

This was not a Socialist Resistance publication. marxsite was Phil Hearse’s own long-form site, run alongside the paper he helped edit. It is kept here with his agreement, recovered from the Internet Archive after the domain lapsed and was taken over by someone else; nothing here links to the address it now points at.

Only part of this piece survives. The capture it was recovered from is truncated, so the text below stops before the article did.

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26/02/2013

Impact of the 48 -hour general strike

Anand Kumar, New Socialist Alternative (CWI India), Bangalore: SocialistWorld.net

The 48 hour general strike called by the Joint Committee of Trade Unions (JCTU), comprising of 11 Central Trade Unions, once again saw massive participation of the working class. On 20 and 21st February, over 100 million workers all over India participated to say ’No’ to neo-liberal reforms . Although the strike was declared a ’partial success’ by the mainstream (bosses’) media, the strike did see a major shutdown in many parts of India. The industry association, ASSOCHAM, estimated losses due to the strike at Rs. 26,000 crores ($ 4.77 billion).

While this general strike comes after a gap of almost a year since the last one, last year also saw two major bandhs (shutdowns). These were called by the opposition parties – in May on the issue of the fuel price hike and in September against the ’big bang’ reforms such as Foreign Direct Investment by muiltinationals in retail. This strike is also the third time that all the Central Trade Unions have united on a common platform, including the INTUC organised by the governing Congress party, and the BMS, organised by the main right-wing opposition party, the BJP.