Massive strikes in India?

[albionism]

Awesome news...Lets hope there is more to come
http://libcom.org/news/100000000-workers-grind-india-halt-worlds-biggest-ever-strike-28022012

 

[albionism]

ooops!! mods, could you change title to" massive strikes in India? thanks

 

[editor]

Done

 

[bimble]

This is the thread i was looking for !

Some extraordinary stuff has been going on in india this past week and I can't see much international coverage apart from in sort of specialist websites.

Started with tens of thousands of farmers marching towards Delhi in protest at proposed new laws from the Modi government which will, if passed, likely see them starve (removal of protections that have sustained small scale agriculture to date).

Tens of thousands of farmers swarm India's capital to protest deregulation rules | CNN

Tens of thousands of farmers have swarmed India's capital where they intend to camp out for weeks to protest new agricultural laws that they say could destroy their livelihoods.

edition.cnn.com

Police were mobilised to put up barriers and stop the protestors from entering the city and there are thousands of farmers still now camping out on the borders of delhi.

Then an estimated two hundred and fifty million people went on general strike last week, in support of the farmers & now the taxi drivers and truckers are saying they are going to strike too, unless the farmers demands are met.

“This Is a Revolution, Sir”

Workers in India last week launched a general strike that brought out an estimated 250 million people, arguably the largest in human history. Now, they’re joining hands with farmers to protest Narendra Modi’s pro-corporate, far-right agenda.

www.jacobinmag.com

 

[yield]

This is the thread i was looking for !

Some extraordinary stuff has been going on in india this past week and I can't see much international coverage apart from in sort of specialist websites.

Started with tens of thousands of farmers marching towards Delhi in protest at proposed new laws from the Modi government which will, if passed, likely see them starve (removal of protections that have sustained small scale agriculture to date).

Tens of thousands of farmers swarm India's capital to protest deregulation rules | CNN

Tens of thousands of farmers have swarmed India's capital where they intend to camp out for weeks to protest new agricultural laws that they say could destroy their livelihoods.

edition.cnn.com

Police were mobilised to put up barriers and stop the protestors from entering the city and there are thousands of farmers still now camping out on the borders of delhi.

Then an estimated two hundred and fifty million people went on general strike last week, in support of the farmers & now the taxi drivers and truckers are saying they are going to strike too, unless the farmers demands are met.

“This Is a Revolution, Sir”

Workers in India last week launched a general strike that brought out an estimated 250 million people, arguably the largest in human history. Now, they’re joining hands with farmers to protest Narendra Modi’s pro-corporate, far-right agenda.

www.jacobinmag.com

Looks like this has legs. Good luck to the strikers all.

 

[Pickman's model]

i see a new record's been set for the world's biggest strike

 

[yield]

‘This winter, our hearts are burning embers’

At the farmers' protest sites in Singhu and Burari, at the end of each day, protestors staying in makeshift camps prepare for the long night and fight ahead in a spirit of camaraderie and renewed resolve #RuralIndiaOnline

ruralindiaonline.org

15/12/2020
Good luck to the strikers

 

[bimble]

There are a lot of amazing images online, of the protests. Just a few of them here taken off twitter, these are all from just the last couple of days.
The farmers and allies are still there and new protestors are joining them even today, in convoys from different states.
Some of them are really old, its cold now, 41 farmers have died at the protests, from what i can make out.











(on that banner are some of the 41 who have died since protest began)

 

[hitmouse]

Here's a collection of resources on the strikes that got posted up on libcom.

 

[yield]

Three Lessons From the World’s Biggest Worker Uprising Hampton Institute.
31/12/2020

The Kisan Ekta Morcha (Farmers United Front) is a mass movement of 100,000+ farmers, youth, workers and allies from India and the diaspora. For the past 27 days, Satyagrahis have occupied all but one highway leading into Delhi, the capital of India.

1.5 million union members in Canada have declared solidarity with KAM. Protestors say that people of the country and world are with them. They are determined and equipped to occupy Delhi’s border roads until the government repeals three farm bills that were made into law in September 2020.

The significance of this ultimatum by the country’s working-class peasantry is twofold: first, they are mounting an uncompromising opposition which is salient in an age of police violence forcefully suppressing anti-capitalism protests worldwide. Second, the farmers are publicly renouncing their faith in an elected ruling class whose actions do not display any care for their wellbeing.

The world’s largest general strike

On November 26, 2020 Indian workers organized the world’s largest general strike.(1) Why did 250 million workers strike? Members of national trade unions struck from work to protest a number of the central government’s policies, such as the “dismantling [of] protective labour laws, refusal to negotiate an increase in minimum wages, [and] selling off several public sector units to private entities'' (Varma 2020).

This government promises “empowerment” and keeps unilaterally passing laws to make extraction and exploitation easier for wealth-hoarding billionaires. How is the Kisan Ekta Morcha peasant uprising connected to the general strike? Peasant-farmers (at the time largely from neighboring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh) called for a march to Delhi to show their solidarity with striking workers.

As farmers approached, the police sealed border roads to try to prevent them from entering Delhi. The farmers overturned barricades and continued to march. They were injured by cops who assaulted them with tear gas and water cannons. It’s important to note that tear gas is internationally classified as a chemical weapon that is illegal to use in war as per Geneva Protocol 1925, yet nation-states continue to use tear gas domestically to harm and deter popular revolutions.

 

[hitmouse]

It's definitely not calmed down in India: Violent clashes as Indian farmers storm Delhi's Red Fort
Not seen that much in the way of analysis yet.

 

[yield]

The many-splendoured sewa network at Singhu
People’s Archive of Rural India. Jan. 23, 2021

“I don't own farmland, nor did my ancestors,” says Kamaljit Kaur. “But still, I am here to help our farmers in my small way, because I fear that if I don't, I will have to counter corporate greed to put something on my kids' plates.”

Kamaljit, 35, is a teacher from Ludhiana city in Punjab, and along with a few friends she is running two sewing machines in a shaded space at Singhu. They come to the protest site in turns, three days at a time, and fix for free missing shirt-buttons or tears in salwar-kameez outfits of the protesting farmers. Around 200 people turn up every day at their stall.

At Singhu, such sewa is available in many-hued and very generous forms – all as offerings of solidarity with the protests.

Among those serving are Irshad (full name unavailable). In a narrow nook outside the TDI mall in the Kundli industrial area, some four kilometres from the Singhu border, he is vigorously massaging the bare head of a Sikh protestor. Many others are awaiting their turn. Irshad is a barber from Kurukshetra, and says he has come here out of a sense of biradari – brotherhood.

Also on this route, sitting outside his mini-truck, Sardar Gurmik Singh has gathered around him many seeking a free massage to relax their aching muscles, after the long hours of travel in crammed trolleys from Punjab to Singhu. “They are going through so many other kinds of pain right now…” he says, about what brought him here to help.

For Surinder Kumar, a doctor from Chandigarh, sewa has taken on the form of running a medical camp at Singhu, along with other doctors. This is one of numerous medical camps at the protest site – some run by doctors who have come here from as far as Kolkata or Hyderabad. “We are trying to abide by the pledge we took while graduating – by tending to the aged exposed to this biting cold day after day, many staying on open roads,” says Surinder.

 

[William of Walworth]

In the latter part of that ruralindiaonline.org story just above, there's some excellent pictures IMO -- here's a good one :

A village in Haryana has sent to Singhu a truck fitted with solar panels, which provide power to charging ports hung from the truck's side. The protesters get their phones charged at this truly mobile charger.

 

[petee]

 

[cyril_smear]

It’s like Armley gyratory on a weekday morning.

 

[yield]

Govt Thought No Water, No Protest. They Were Wrong
The Wire. 11/Feb/2021

Jalandhar: In the first week of February, when Navdeep Kaur Brar, a resident of Bagha Purana village in Punjab’s Moga district, arrived at the Singhu border with a group of women to participate in the farmers’ protests, she was stunned.

There was no water. No power. No internet. No mobile phone service. The government had cut off all basic facilities for the protesters after the violence in Delhi on Republic Day. “The biggest crisis we faced was the lack of water for basic needs,” Brar said.

Brar, who is associated with the Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), the umbrella body of the farmers’ unions, said that the clearest impact of the government action could be seen near the mobile toilets. “Throughout the day, there were long queues of men and women outside the mobile toilets. Somehow the men managed, but for the women there was no way out until volunteers, including many sportspeople, arranged water for us from nearby houses in Kundli village with hosepipes and buckets. Every day they ran back and forth between Kundli village and our camp, bringing water to us,” she said.

The lack of water did not only affect the toilets. About 10 to 15 jathas (Sikh groups) at the Singhu border were unable to prepare their langar (charitable meal made in a Sikh community kitchen) and clean their utensils until buckets of water arrived from Kundli village via volunteers from a group called Dharti Maa de Waarisa da Langar, which included kabaddi and football players, wrestlers, their coaches, non-resident Indians and other groups from different villages.

 

[yield]

Indian farmers plan major road blockade outside Delhi to mark 100th day of protests

 

[yield]

India: Farmers' protests give way to new independent journalism
16.03.2021

No one anticipated how large the protests would be. An old farmer told the founders: "We don't get to know what happens on the stage, what decisions are taken by the leaders."

One of them joked, "What can we do about this? Start a newspaper called the Trolley Times maybe?"

The Trolley Times, a newspaper run primarily by volunteers, is now published weekly, highlighting stories from each protest site.

In addition to deep-dives into the political and historical context surrounding the movement, and profiles on protest leaders, the paper also handles elements often overlooked by the mainstream media, such as caste, class and gender, said editor Mukesh Kulriya.

Paper issued in several languages

Kulriya also takes pride in the bilingual weekly's design: When folded a certain way, the Punjabi segment comes first. When folded differently, the front page is in Hindi. The aim is to attract readers across different protest sites.

Starting with an initial 1,000 copies, the team now publishes 7,000 copies. They also upload PDF versions of the newsletter. Supporters convert the English translation into a number of languages, including Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, French, Portuguese and Shahmukhi, a modified Perso-Arabic alphabet used by Punjabi Muslims in Pakistan.

 

[Nigel]

This is a monumental event and shows what working people and working middle classes can do to change the world for against neo liberalism and transnational corporations agribussiness.
However it appears that some cummunalists and seperatists are trying to capitalise on this.
Pro-Khalistanis have acted in reactionary ways previously attacking and murdering trade unionists, socialists communists, leftists progressives etc.
Are such people, along with other religious reactionaries going to opportunistically and divisively attempt to use this for their own interests.

Critiques based on opposition to farming policy going back to Nehru's 'Green Revolution' along with Modi's neo liberal pro corporation policies appear to be prominant against not only secularism & against Hindus. This with the demise, relatively although recent Indian elections show a 'turn' towards left in North India/Punjab & Kerala, could lead to religious fundamentalists and reactionaries gaining influence and ethnic/religious communal violence re-appearing?

 

[teqniq]

Result!

Farm laws: India PM Narendra Modi repeals controversial reforms

Indian PM Narendra Modi has announced the repeal of controversial farm laws.

www.bbc.com

 

[hitmouse]

Article from an Indian anarchist here:

How Farmers Defeated the Government of India

A year of protests shows the effectiveness of horizontality and direct action.

crimethinc.com

 

[yield]

Article from an Indian anarchist here:

How Farmers Defeated the Government of India

A year of protests shows the effectiveness of horizontality and direct action.

crimethinc.com

An Unlikely Success: Demonstrations Against Farm Laws in India

On 9 December 2021, Indian farmers announced an end to demonstrations against the country's aborted agricultural reforms (The New York Times, 9 December

acleddata.com

On 9 December 2021, Indian farmers announced an end to demonstrations against the country’s aborted agricultural reforms (The New York Times, 9 December 2021). Still, key organizers maintain that the movement will continue to monitor government implementation of demonstrator demands into 2022 (The Free Press Journal, 12 December 2021). The decision followed the repeal of agricultural laws deregulating the sale, pricing, and storage of farm produce on 29 November (Reuters, 29 November 2021), more than a year after they were enacted on 20 September 2020 (BBC News, 16 February 2021). As of 9 December 2021, ACLED records over 5,200 demonstration events associated with the farm laws across India.