In stark contrast to the United States, India has generally had a rather strong labor movement throughout its modern history, beginning prior to its fight for independence from the British Empire. The first instances of revolutionary trade unionism taking action in the subcontinent occurred in 1918 in Bombay, where 120,000 workers went on strike. Just two years later, a strike including 2.5 million workers took place across the colony. During the 20th century, India remained non-aligned in the Cold War, but saw frequent labor-oriented organizations arise and take various positions of power. Two among these are the trade unions and the Indian Communist Party, which was powerful enough to hold control of the governments of some states, including Kerala – the most humanly-developed state in India, with healthcare better than many developed nations, and a life expectancy higher than the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recently, the labor movement has reared its head again, this time in the form of a 150-200 million-worker general strike against the national government’s policies. The government of Prime Minister Modi, that of the BJP, is highly nationalistic and neoliberal in nature, frequently fighting back against the social advancements spearheaded by the Supreme Court, and doing what it can to strip away the rights of organized labor. While this has happened, the ICP – despite having lost control of the Kerala government recently – has continued to back the Court in regards to progressivism on social issues, and the trade unions have continued to retaliate against the government. This strike is not the first, but the second hundred-million worker strike in the past few years, with another having occurred in 2016. Additionally, the presence of Maoist rebels in an eastern strip of the country continues to agitate many, particularly among the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what does this mean for the future of Indian labor? The outcome of the strike will determine that – that is, who will cave first? The Modi government, or the trade unions? If the trade unions give in first, the Modi government will have additional time to continue its neoliberal crusade unimpeded, while organized labor takes time to recover from the effort required to carry out such a large action. Labor will likely not have the will or resources to carry out anything beyond small, localized actions for several months afterwards. However, if the Modi government backs down, labor rights in India will likely be forced to expand, lest the BJP face intense public backlash, from rural and urbanized areas alike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In stark contrast to the United States, India has generally had a rather strong labor movement throughout its modern history, beginning prior to its fight for independence from the British Empire. The first instances of revolutionary trade unionism taking action in the subcontinent occurred in 1918 in Bombay, where 120,000 workers went on strike. Just two years later, a strike… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,15,87],"class_list":["post-2954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis-post","tag-analysis","tag-india","tag-labor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2954"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2960,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2954\/revisions\/2960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}