The Great Indian Mail Strike of 2000

Vijay Prashad

For two weeks in December 2000, almost all of the 600,000 postal workers in India struck work, on behalf of 300,000 part-time workers. From Cyberabad to Silicon Galli computers tried in vain to send packages to each other, as the Sensex sang a dirge for the uncertain whims of the investor class of India's 'new economy.' Executives fretted and fumed, managers pounded their desks with taylorized rage, economists poured vitriolic scorn on the aspirations of the million who literally <carry> the goods and services, the love notes and junk mail of the billion Indians. Dot.Com India was rudely reminded of the world of Dot.Comrade, the mirthful reality of labor solidarity.

Bold workers stood on strike for two weeks despite any number of threats and temptations. The agitation was nothing new. Four months after the BJP-led coalition came to power for the first time in mid-1998, the postal workers went out on an eight-day strike. That time the government broke the strike when it threatened to bring out the Army and when it made a series of empty promises. This time the promises did not work, nor did the fulmination of physical force. If unity amongst the various trade union groups held the first time, in 2000 the right betrayed the left as well as the heroic workers whose strike was as much political as economic, a sigh against the Economy of the Temporary, of the logic of capital.

The collapse of the fragile Keynesian consensus (nurtured in Bretton Woods) and the birth of the Washington Consensus (codified in 1989 by former IMF adviser John Williamson) discounted for working people the 'enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame le Terre do their ghost walking as social characters and at the same time as mere things' (Marx, Capital, vol. 3, p. 830). Over the past few years, working people in decisive actions around the world, unmasked the arrogance of Wages-Interest-Rent, and showed them for what they are, Labor-Capital-Land. The Washington Consensus demands an Economy of the Temporary, where workers abdicate the gains of the labor movement for part-time work, just-in-time production, privatization of benefits. Adjuncts on college campuses, maquiladoras in Mexico, half-day workers in India -- these are the manifestations of the logic of capital, and their presence sends a message to all of us: this is not 'cowboy' capitalism or 'turbo' capitalism, but simply CAPITALISM itself. Some may rest within the bosom of a less developed form of ruthlessness, but all of us are under the sway of the Part-Time, the Temporary, either by fear of being exiled to that island or else to find oneself stuck there forever. The Economy of the Temporary enforces discipline (stop this nonsense, or else you're back on the island), and it allows for more efficiency. 'What, more efficiency,' you say?! Yes, more efficiency for capital, for whom flexibility allows it to use labor when it requires it, and to keep on reserve an army of workers whose creativity is to be held in check by the fear of Ephemeral Island.

The Teamsters 1997 action against UPS was a salvo in the fight against the Temporary. The Indian postal workers fight is along the same grain. For decades the left wing labor movement has called for an intensive push to organize the unorganized. Communist leader B. T. Ranadive noted in 1983, for instance, that 'if the trade unions do not pay attention to this widespread section they will be damaging the movement by alienating a section that is militant, heroic and has become a strong contingent of the common movement.' Among postal workers the problem of the part-time became acute in the 1990s. The State classifies 300,000 workers as 'Extra-Departmental Employees,' most of whom work in rural post offices. Bold actions by the workers and by Left political parties forced the Parliament to convene the Justice Charanjit Talwar Committee to study the problem. On 30 April 1997, just as the UPS workers in the US came close to their strike, the Talwar Committee submitted its report to the Indian Parliament. The Report asked the government to give full benefits to all workers (including pensions) and to classify all postal workers as civil servants. Government tried to mollify the unions, saying that it would meet the recommendations. Nothing moved, so the workers struck in 1998. The Communications Minister of the Hindu Right told Parliament that the recommendations would be implemented post haste, and the workers withdrew. A few weeks later the Ministry of Finance reneged on the agreement, citing overwhelming fiscal reasons. No doubt word must have come from the IMF to the willing ears of the Hindu Right's Finance Ministry: Point #8 of the Washington Consensus says, 'privatization of state enterprises, leading to efficient management and improved performance,' and Point #1 promises 'a guarantee of fiscal discipline, and a curb to budget deficits.' When it comes to labor, Washington and its minions are so very fussy.

On May Day, 2000, the new minister of Communications, Ram Vilas Paswan (of an opportunist social democratic formation in alliance with the Hindu Right) conducted hectic negotiations and pledged to settle the issue within four months. Again, nothing moved. The unions called for a strike and went forth without any illusions about governmental promises. Comfortable with the rhetoric of a strong State, the Hindu Right bound to break the strike by recourse to the old colonial standby, the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA). 'Extra-Departmental Employees,' those who struggle on Ephemeral Island, suddenly found themselves essentialized. But five decades of nation construction, borne partly of anticolonial sentiment, had reduced the central government's ESMA power. Only five states in the Indian union have the capacity to enforce ESMA, but since the Congress Party ruled over these five states the Hindu-Right led coalition could not even work its authoritarian magic there. The Communist-led states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura refused to enforce ESMA, and several bourgeois-regional formations followed suit. The government had no avenues left to crush the strike.

Betrayal finds its way by unexpected means. Indian workers are not organized into one federation, but they are organized at the worksite into a number of union formations all of whom are affiliated to political parties. While the workers at a worksite win the right to a union, the several unions jockey for power over the leadership in the unions. The Communists have two unions, the CPI's All-India Trade Union Congress and the CPM's Centre of Indian Trade Unions, while the Congress controls the Indian National Trade Union Congress and the socialists have a stake in the Hind Mazdoor Sangh. The Hindu-Right's trade union formation, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, walks the line of the Right, but it did fall out with its parent organizations during the 1998 strike. The main strikes have been conducted under the framework of the Joint Action Committee, a confederation of the postal version of the party unions (the BMS' Bharatiya Postal Employees Federation -- BPEF; the Left's National Federation of Postal Employees -- NFPE; the Congress' Federation of National Postal Organisations). The BPEF represents only 6% of the workers and the FNPO only 15%, with the Left having organized the rest of the workers. The weakness of the Right within the postal unions was not to deter its machinations.

On the 17th of December the leadership of the Hindu-Right union (BPEF/BMS) and the Congress union (FNPO/INTUC), both beholden to the Washington Consensus, accepted a tepid offer from the government. With the pledge of 'unions' for an end to the strike, the government declared victory. The Left held fast at first, and it seemed as if the agitation would continue. But, in an unenviable position, R. L. Bhattacharya, secretary general of the Communist-led NFPE, noted that the workers should return to the job, after one more day on the picket line. Chander Pillai, a leader of the NFPE, said that 'the next action will be done on our strength. We will not rely on the other two federations as they are prone to leave the struggle mid-way. We have asked our members to join duty.' Bhattacharya wrote that the postal workers 'have become victims of this naked betrayal of BPEF and NFPO.' But 'to preserve the unity of the workers and to build up a militant united movement to carry on the struggle further, the [NFPE] Secretariat decided to call off the strike action for the present.' The Communists asked the workers 'to preserve and strengthen the unity already achieved for safeguarding their interests in the future.'

Triumphs are won drop by drop. This is not a retreat, but only an interruption. The flood of history brings us Ephemeral Island, but we are not tempted by the Temporary. A respite to regroup, but onward. That is the message of the Indian postal workers.