The Working Class Struggles For Its Dignity

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

We have all learnt about the One Rank One Pension scheme that is demanded by the retired soldiers and officers of the Indian Army, which is fiddled with by the BJP government led by Narendra Modi's coterie in New Delhi. The immense support the movement has gained caused it to hijack national headlines of all mainstream corporate media. The army in India is wrongly connected with the notion of patriotism, and army worship is made an integral part of the fascist society which is developed to consolidate the rule of feudal landlords, comprador capitalists and their master the foreign monopoly capital. Since, the OROP agitation was related to the veterans of the army asking for same pension for same ranks irrespective of when an individual retired from service, became a cause with which the ordinary middle and upper middle classes felt identical with.

The government of Modi, which is backed by the RSS that does military eulogy at every step, has promised to look into the matter and bring a solution which will end the fiasco and make everyone happy. The compromise formula of the government was rejected by several quarters of the agitating veterans, and some sought to conclude a truce with the government by withdrawing their agitation. Very soon a crack appeared in the unity of the veterans and two major factions appeared in the movement. Anyways, the movement seems to be catching the support of the conscience of the middle and upper middle classes and the corporate media is highlighting the plight of the veterans to draw more support for their cause.

At the same time, the working class of the country, who neither enjoy special privileges like the military, nor has any social security or other covers, are struggling for increasing their minimum wages to Rs. 15000 per month, which is a very negligible amount in view of the skyrocketing inflation in the country. The working class is also struggling for a different type of one rank one wage struggle, which calls for similar wages and similar benefits for the workers, both permanent and contractual. However, it seems that the corporate houses are not willing to allow that, as it would affect their profit extraction process that survives on exploiting the labour to the extreme. The media has opposed the agitations of the working class repeatedly, calling them futile and disruptive for 'national growth' and 'economic development', the middle class and upper middle class strongly despise working class movements as they feel these people are filthy and are getting enough for what they do.

The working class along with the peasantry forms the backbone of an economy, on which the pillars of politics, arts, culture, etc survives. The working class is the creator of all values and yet they are deprived from the basic requirements for survival like proper food, medication, clothing, housing and of course education. The government is reluctant to increase the minimum wages to ensure that it does not offends the corporate giants that they exist to appease. Though the increase of minimum wages for the working class will not impose any further burden on the national exchequer but on the huge profit that these multinational corporate houses exploits from India, the government and the big corporations have joined hands to form an unholy nexus against the working class and its demands.

This has left the working class of the country with no other option but to intensify its struggle, take it beyond tokenism, and show the strength of united working class struggle to the multi national corporations and their agent Indian capitalists, who are since trying to rule the country with the rod of injustice and oppression with active assistance from the saffron outfits like the RSS and BJP. The workers of Maruti Udyog in Gurgaon intensified their struggle this September, as the owners of the company hiked the wages of the permanent workers without hiking the wages of the contractual workers who consists of the majority of the workers employed in the production process. The management of the Japanese MNC controlled by Suzuki Corporation (a fascistic organisation) first deployed the police to baton charge the agitating workers, and when the police action remained inadequate the Japanese brought their agent Indian feudal lords and their private goons from the nearby villages of Haryana to intimidate and physically assault the workers. Despite the assaults and intimidation, the workers of Maruti continued their struggle without any break.

The major national news media controlled by the American - Indian in-laws of Japanese corporate Suzuki did not dare to cover this news, they simply blackened the incident of Haryana with the coverage of Modi visiting US and appeasing the corporate giants through his gimmicks and cheap marketing acts. The 'national conscience' of the middle and upper middle classes was not affected, and everyone kept on gossiping on Digital India and its benefits in uplifting the nation.

The struggle of the working class is the struggle for establishing their dignity on everything produced by them. They are not asking for it, they are struggling to establish it with force. Covered by media or not, the struggles that are isolated and weak today will forge iron strong unity in the coming days and will strike the corporate giants and their stooge media like a powerful lightening, burning down the very foundations on which their empire of exploitation stands today.

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