All-India strike: Ahmedabad's 400 workers detained, taken to Police Stadium amidst anti-Modi slogans

Protesting women workers being taken to Police Stadium

By Mujahid Nafees
The Gujarat Police cracked down on 400-odd protesting workers, participating in the nationwide all-India strike, in Ahmedabad, first barricading them from all sides, and then detaining and taking them to the sprawling Police Stadium, so that they could not take out a rally on Ashram Road.
Shouting slogans against “anti-worker” policies of the Narendra Modi government, the workers were seeking to take out a rally as part of the all-India strike, called for September 2. They were attached with the Federation of Trade Unions and Jan Sangharsh Manch, a civil rights organization.
Kept in police custody till late afternoon, the workers, many of whom were women, shouted anti-Modi and workers’ unity slogans at the Police Stadium, which is situated in the posh Shahibagh area of Ahmedabad. An emergency van, 108, was called in as a detainee went ill. He was treated in the Police Stadium.
While the workers were brought to the Police Stadium in five vans them to Shahibaug Police stadium, around 200 more reached there to get themselves detained. Even as the cops served the protesters lunch, a participant in the rally said, “One reason why we were detained was, we were not given permission for taking out the rally.”

He added, “Instead of spending tax payers’ money to feed the participants of the rally, had the police given permission, all of us would have demanded for our rights peacefully, and gone back home. It has done it to keep the Gujarat model in wraps.”
Protests also took place in Vadodara, where thousands of workers participated in all a rally in support of the worker's strike called by central trade union. The rally began at Gandhinagar Gruha and went to Kothi Khachar and submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister through the district collector, Vadodara.

Trade Union rally in Vadodara

The all-India strike has been called against the “path of liberalisation, privatisation and globalization”, which began in 1991, and is now being aggressively adopted by the Modi government. The last general strike, observed on September 2, 2015, saw participation from nearly 150 million workers.
In this strike, all central trade unions, except the RSS-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), have joined hands with independent national federations of workers in banks, insurance, telecom and state and central government departments to protest what they call the “anti-worker, anti-people policies of the government.”
The unions want the government to take urgent measures to contain price rise by making the public distribution system more efficient and banning speculative trade in the commodity market, strict enforcement of all basic labour laws without any exception or exemption, stringent measures to punish those who violate these rules, universal social security cover to all, and workers minimum wage of not less than Rs 18,000 a month with provisions of indexation.
The unions’ charter also calls for assured, enhanced pension not less than Rs 3,000 a month for the entire working population, including those in the unorganised sector, payment of same wage and benefits for contract workers as that of regular workers, and removal of all ceilings on payment and eligibility of bonus and provident fund and increase in quantum of gratuity.

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Counterview

Search This Blog