Massive strike shuts down businesses in India

On Dec. 14, a massive national strike called by 56 left-affiliated trade union organizations caused large corporations and businesses to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

The strike helped to shatter the corporate media’s image of a country blossoming under the influence of neoliberal

Activists from the Centre of Indian Trade Unions block a railway track during a strike on the outskirts of the northeastern Indian city of Siliguri, Dec. 14.

globalization and economic “reforms,” with hundreds of millions of happy consumers, and low-paid workers content to produce enormous profits for capitalists.

The strike protested government efforts to privatize state-run companies, government plans to allow direct foreign investment in banks, corporate tax cuts, the dismantling of social services and price supports, and unemployment and inflation.

In the capital city of New Delhi, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in support of the strikers. Communist members of parliament protested the central government’s policies against workers. Commerce ground to a halt in the states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.

Stores were shuttered and steel and coal industries, shipping docks, transportation, banking, commercial, and insurance businesses, among others, came to a virtual standstill.

The Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India estimated that financial losses in West Bengal and Kerala alone amounted to $450 million for the day.

In Kolkata (formerly named Calcutta), streets were empty. Most flights in and out of the city were cancelled or rescheduled. In the state of Madhya Pradesh, strikers held rallies and burned effigies of various government officials.

Several political parties and trade unions supported the strike, including the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), the Communist Party of India (CPI), the All India Trade Union Congress, the Centre of India Trade Unions, the Bank Employees’ Association, the Insurance Employees’ Association, the Central Government Employees Association, the Federation of University and College Teachers’ Association in Karnataka and the Association of Mangalore University College Teachers.

The strike—the third in the past month in Kolkata—was just the latest indication that Indian workers are organizing in militant resistance to the harsh anti-worker policies pushed by capitalists, both domestic and foreign, and supported by the central government. Almost entirely ignored by the American corporate media, this is a news story that will not go away.