Prime Minister Modi's retinue on his frequent foreign trip often includes top businessmen representing India's powerful and rich. Are they the best ambassadors for our country?
18,000 steel workers in the UK don't think so. In 2007, Tatas took over the company which employed them, Corus Steel, in a 12 billion dollar acquisition. Tatas have 'achieved' in just seven years what no employer in the steel industry in the UK has done in the last thirty years - to force its workers and employees to go in for a strike ballot. From May 6 to May 29, these 18,000 workers will vote on whether or not to go on indefinite strike against the employer's intransigent attitude regarding their rights. The legal notice of the strike ballot is to be served on the company on April 29.
The immediate issue is that of the pension scheme. In the UK, the pension scheme for the steel industry, the British Steel Pension Scheme, applies to all workers who retire at the age of 60. The workers each pay around 8 per cent of their salary, and the employers 12 per cent, as a deferred wage towards the pension scheme. Tatas now want the workers to keep working till the age of 65. If they opt to retire at 60, they have to accept a 25 per cent cut in pension entitlements. The unions have calculated that this would, on average, mean a whopping 100,000 pound loss per worker. Negotiations between the employers and the unions have failed and Tatas have now reportedly threatened to scrap the pension scheme altogether.
India's corporates believe in the "
dil maange more" mantra, never an end to their demands to help maximize profits at the cost of the rights and entitlements of workers. The Prime Minister's 'Make In India' slogan accommodates this philosophy, One of the selling points that the Prime Minister has showcased in world capitals while asking foreign investors to come to India is the carrot of labour reform.
Labour reform is nothing more than a euphemism for the elimination of the rights that the working classes have won through years of struggles and sacrifices. The right to a basic minimum wage, the right to bonus, the right to pensions, the right to security of employment are all under attack. The first attempt to take away these rights was made by the UPA Government through amendments to various labour laws. They failed to do so. Now, the Modi Government, using its sledgehammer single majority in the Lok Sabha, has pushed some of them through. State Governments led by the BJP like Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat, and by the Congress party in Himachal Pradesh, are eliminating legal rights through extremely retrograde amendments which remove over 70 per cent of India's workers from the framework of legal protection against arbitrary dismissals, cuts in wages and other benefits.
Already, labour cost to total production cost is at its historic low in India. In 2011-2012, the central Labour Bureau in a special publication revealed that labour cost was just 5.25 per cent of total production costs. Labour reforms will target even this rapidly shrinking share.
The changing patterns of labour deployment and the increasing resort to outsourcing, contractualisation of work in place of permanent employment, and the establishment of the hiring and firing of workers as the sole right of the employer without any intervention of protective labour legislation is what employers all over the world demand. The Prime Minister's 'Make in India' slogan promises them all this and much more.
Indian corporates who invest abroad carry these anti-labour practices with them, seeking to impose them on workers abroad. The understanding is that contempt for workers' rights is shared by neo-liberal advocates of the governments in the UK and most of Europe - the whole world is the stage for corporate offensives. The steel workers of the UK have challenged this thinking. Workers in India and indeed across the world wish their struggle success. Each struggle strengthens the other, regardless of its location.
And one last word. The slogan of 'Make in India' would have more credibility if the Made in India business houses invested in India rather than abroad. According to an Assocham study released in November 2014, between April and September 2014, which includes the months when Mr Modi took over as Prime Minister, Indian companies invested 17.6 billion dollars abroad. In the 2013-2014 fiscal, it was over 36 billion dollars.
Bring this investment back to India, Prime Minister. And if you can't, at least publicly reprimand corporates who bring a bad name to India by the kind of attitudes being displayed by Tata Steel against the ongoing struggle of steel workers in the UK.
(Brinda Karat is a Politburo member of the CPI(M) and a former Member of the Rajya Sabha.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. NDTV is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.