Strikes, Gheraos, Bandhs – Who Pays The Bill?

 - Dr. Ramesh N. Rao

I worked for an associate bank of the State Bank of India in the late 1970s, early 1980s. One of the reasons I quit the banking service was the way both the officers' association and the clerical union held the nation and the bank's clientele to ransom every other year. There was nothing that I could do as a young officer. The edict came from above, and we struck work for a day, and it was so timed that the day we struck was just before a national holiday or was the end of the week or else the beginning of the week. Thus we got to "enjoy" a two or three daybreak from work, and I don't believe that we ever lost our pay for striking work. If the officers were so callous about what they were doing to the country and to the bank's customers, just imagine what the more powerful clerical unions were capable of! In fact, there was nothing that we officers could do to reprimand a clerk: the local union leader would see to it that the manager of the bank was merely a lackey of the powerful union.

In one branch where I was posted as the second officer, and was in charge of the bank's vault, the assistant head-cashier and local union leader was also a petty smuggler. Once a month he would go off to Madras, on a working day, and return to the place of work with Seiko and Casio watches, calculators, and other nick-knacks and sit in the bank and sell his wares right under the manager's and my nose. When I complained to the manager that such activity was not only bad for the morale of the rest of the clerks but also illegal, the manager would say "Ramesh, we can't do anything. He is just a pest and we better let him be rather than become a real pain in our necks". This assistant head-cashier would also make sure that he kept his "boys" happy by making sure that the manager signed a five or ten hour overtime pay for all the clerks and other staff each month.

I don't know if smuggling such imported stuff is any longer attractive in India, but I know that the officers' associations and the clerical unions still strike work, and still don't pay any price for their truancy. How much money does the nation lose when hundreds of thousands of bank staff shut the banking system for a day or two or three? I don't believe any of our economists have figured it out, and I don't believe any of our politicians are keen on asking for such information. After all, in India it is the politician who manipulates the system most and uses strikes, gheraos and bandhs to push his agenda.

Gandhi, the "father" of the nation, has to bear some responsibility for the Indian penchant for bringing a city or a state or the nation to a standstill. Gandhi sought to bring moral pressure on the British by resorting to non-violent Satyagrahas. What Gandhi "patented" has been used in patent disregard to the rules that Gandhi followed in staging such satyagrahas. Post-independence, India's politicians have no qualms about morality and the public good, and they manipulate various sections of the population to bring life to a standstill. It would be fair to say that the ordinary politician has no regard for the nation as a whole. What such politicians cater to are sectarian, sectional, caste, vested, and local interests.

I think the 1970s and 1980s were the worst decades in India for such strikes, legal or illegal. Bombay (Mumbai) was notorious for its trade unions and the violent ways in which they held industry to ransom. Dr. Datta Samant, the trade union leader who himself came to a violent end, was a dreaded name in industrial circles, and I remember one of my cousins who worked for Godrej industries donating blood to save one of the Godrej owners who was stabbed by a worker.

The lumpenization of politics that followed Indira Gandhi's "putsch" to take command of the Congress party led to some of the worst excesses by various organized groups, whose leaders did not think twice about what harm they were doing to the country by resorting to strikes and other kinds of shut-downs.

The Indian citizen is not well-trained or informed about his or her duties to the nation. Mostly, the individual and the groups are aware of what they think are their "rights" and so have very little concern for the public's rights. In Bangalore there was a rash of strikes in those two decades by state transport workers, and the city would come to a standstill because the Bangalore Transport Service bus drivers would park their buses on a busy thoroughfare blocking all traffic. They would resort to such action either because an irate passenger beat up a thieving bus-conductor or a policeman rough-handled a driver who had caused an accident, or whatever. Similarly auto-rickshaw drivers resorted to such road blockages whenever one of their union members got into trouble. How many people suffered because of such impromptu strikes was never recorded, even in the next day's newspapers. Indians are used to delays, aren't they? So, what does it matter if a few thousand commuters got delayed getting home, or getting to the hospital, or getting to work.

Last month the Pre-University College teachers in Karnataka struck evaluation work. They were demanding higher pay, on par with university teachers. They did not mind delaying the evaluation of exams of their students. So what if the results were delayed and students lost the opportunity to apply to colleges and universities around the country or abroad? The Karnataka government arrested some of the leaders of the teachers' union under the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), but released them when the strike was resolved. The government had to hire some four thousand more evaluators to make sure the exams were evaluated on time, but none of the teachers are going to be penalized for the extra cost the government had to incur. Who bears the cost? Of course, the ordinary citizen.

In 1999 in Delhi the strike by nurses exposed the inefficacy of the ESMA that was invoked to quell the stir. Though originally enacted as a stringent piece of legislation aimed at preventing a collapse of essential government services the Act has over the years become "toothless". The invoking of the Act could not prevent the collapse of the health care infrastructure and the resultant inconvenience to patients. Even as the government issued threat after threat of action under the law, the nurses refused to budge from their stance. The strike was withdrawn only when the government signed an agreement, acceding to most of the demands of the nurses.

In October and November of 1996, the striking employees of the Safdarjung Hospital too refused to buckle under the threat of ESMA and continued their strike for 24 days, eighteen days after ESMA was in force. Though as many as 75 arrests were made and FIRs were lodged against five union leaders, the strike was withdrawn only when the government and the unions reached an agreement. The law stipulates a jail term from six months to one year for those who fail to comply with the order. The reason why ESMA is not taken seriously by the striking employees is that the political will to actually enforce the Act is missing. The central ESMA was promulgated in 1981 and some lawyers argue that Parliament failed to reinstate it when it expired in 1990. However, it is religiously invoked whenever there is a strike and equally religiously ignored!

In 1998 postal workers went on strike. Nearly 150 million postal articles were stuck in transit after five days of work stoppage. The strike was particularly severe in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. West Bengal and Kerala, bastions of communism, have for long been a "workers' paradise" and a citizens' "hell" but when the majority of the citizens are "hired" by the government then everyone compromises everyone else's life. In the case of the postal strike government officials claimed that ESMA could not invoked because the postal service is a "public utility service"! I am as much flummoxed about this explanation as you are about this "explanation" but would any explanation make sense in the large scheme of "chaos" and "anarchic mismanagement" that Indian bureaucracy and bureaucrats represent?

In February 1999 newspapers reported that the government had "cracked down" on striking air traffic control (ATC) officials by invoking ESMA. But, surprise, surprise, nothing really happened because no one was arrested and no one was charged for fear that air traffic could come to a complete halt. In October 1999 Indian truckers went on strike. After a week-long protest that at its height had kept 2.5 million trucks, trailers and tankers off the road and crippled the distribution of food, fuel and other goods, the All-India Motor Transport Congress (AIMTC) terminated the protest after the newly elected National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government agreed to consider its demands for changes to freight charges, permit fees and other aspects of transport policy. But the truck owners' main demand -- the roll-back of a 40 percent hike in diesel prices -- was excluded from the agreement, meaning the government had to some extent prevailed in its insistence that the price hike was non-negotiable.

The first time that an Indian government, whether at the state or at the national level, dealt effectively with striking workers was when the Uttar Pradesh state government took on the workers of the state electricity board. The power crisis in Uttar Pradesh worsened when most of the 87,000 employees of the UP State Electricity Board stuck to their call for a strike. They were protesting the reforms the government had ordered in the state's power structure. Parts of the state, including the state capital was without power for 36 hours when the much-awaited reforms came into force at midnight, when the UPSEB was broken up into three independent corporate entities, each of which were to separately look after the state's thermal generation, hydro-electric power generation and the transmission and distribution systems respectively.

The State Government was determined not to relent. It threatened to disconnect water and power supply to striking employees' houses, besides asking them to vacate the official residences. It gave them two days to return to work, and a tough-talking State Energy Minister Naresh Agarwal said the Government would not hesitate to compulsorily retire or retrench the staff, and warned that absence would be treated as resignation. He also told the striking workers that the National Security Act would be invoked if required. The State Government, after waiting a few days more terminated the services of two of the powermen's top union leaders, and arrested them under the National Security Act. The workers then came back to work with their tails between their legs.

But just peruse the archives of any newspaper and you find an almost daily litany of some group or the other going on strike. Unless and until governments crack down on such strikes the people will continue to suffer. The Uttar Pradesh example is one which other governments should follow promptly and one would begin to see a change in attitudes among the people. Does my "solution" mean that workers should lose their right to strike? No, not at all. There are many small industries, and un-organized sectors of the economy that continue to exploit workers. They are the ones who need the help and support of the people in their struggle for a living wage. But most of the organized sectors, including the government employees in India are fairly well taken care of, and they should be dealt with strictly when they resort to strikes. Bloated bureaucracies that eat away most of the government's revenues should be trimmed and the workers' attitudes whipped into shape. Where is the need for government servants to organize into unions and officers' associations for the purpose of collective bargaining? A ban on such unions and associations for those purposes would serve the country well. Any grievances that government servants have should be looked into by grievance cells established in each department or ministry. If officers exceed their brief or if the clerical and other staff don't perform their duties there should be swift action. For too long the Indian public has suffered under this colonial/feudal dispensation where government servants are really the old-fashioned feudal masters.

But all of these are no alternative to the Indian thinking of the nation first and whatever sectional interests, second. A strong nation and an egalitarian society can be created only when the people begin to think of the public good. So, it is time to enact laws, which will penalize the striking workers, especially government servants and those working for public utilities. If they don't work for a day, they should lose two day's pay, and the monies so collected should become part of a national fund that would be used in emergencies. Workers in private industry should continue to have the right for collective bargaining, and the Labour ministries, both at the state and at the national level should be active in encouraging negotiation, mediation and arbitration. Finally, there should be an all out effort at inculcating in every child and adult Indian the need to think of the nation first. United, India could be riding the crest of prosperity within just a decade.

Ramesh Rao

May 23rd, 2000

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