Watchtower overlooking shanty huts of 2,000 building workers

Gurgaon Workers News - Newsletter 6 (August 2007)

Gurgaon in Haryana is presented as the shining India, a symbol of capitalist success promising a better life for everyone behind the gateway of development. At first glance the office towers and shopping malls reflect this chimera and even the facades of the garment factories look like three star hotels. Behind the facade, behind the factory walls and in the side streets of the industrial areas thousands of workers keep the rat-race going, producing cars and scooters for the middle-classes which end up in the traffic jam on the new highway between Delhi and Gurgaon. Thousands of young middle class people lose time, energy and academic aspirations on night-shifts in call centres, selling loan schemes to working-class people in the US or pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the UK. Next door, thousands of rural-migrant workers uprooted by the agrarian crisis stitch and sew for export, competing with their angry brothers and sisters in Bangladesh or Vietnam. And the rat-race will not stop; at the outskirts of Gurgaon India’s biggest Special Economic Zone is in the making. The following newsletter documents some of the developments in and around this miserable boom region. If you want to get to know more about working and struggling in Gurgaon, if you want more info about or even to contribute to this project, please do so via:

www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com
gurgaon_workers_news@yahoo.co.uk

In the August issue you can find:

1) Proletarian Experiences -
Daily life stories and reports from a workers’ perspective

“Motherson: Graveyard-shifts and company supervised gender division at the international car part supplier”, Local Automobile Industry, Part Five -
Account from a young casual worker about his experiences in the Motherson Gurgaon plant.

“How even the poorest worker can still make him(!)self feel like a boss” -
A rather clueless discription of domestic work and violence in a neighbourhood in Gurgaon.

2) Collective Action -
Reports on proletarian struggles in the area

“Delphi - Automobile Boom and Crisis against the workers”, Local Automobile Industry, Part Six -
Some words on the situation at Delphi, world’s biggest car part supplier, in the North and South. Including a report on how the management of the Gurgaon plant was able to reduce the number of permanent workers from 750 to 250 workers while increasing the number of temps from 0 to 2,500. The reports, one given by a permanent workers and one by young workers hired through contractors, also describe how a wildcat strike of the temps in January 2007 was finished off by a united front of management and permanent workers’ union.

3) According to Plan -
General information on the development of the region or on certain company policies

“Dig your own hole: A Glimpse at Urban Development in Gurgaon”, Part Three -
The article has a look at the relation between private developers and public institutions and the outcome for the making of the city of Gurgaon. Basically both sides -, HUDA (public developer) and private developers - have a main interest in building up expensive housing estates, commercial and industrial areas as fast as possible and then, in a public show-fight, blame each other for not providing the necessary infrastructure. The unsolved question of water and electricity supply, waste disposal etc. leads to a situation of shortage and partial collapse. On the one hand this is an ‘unwanted’ outcome of capitalist urbanisation, a sign of its incapability. On the other hand capitalism is able to turn its own situation of demise into a profitable business, it develops an interest in maintaining its own short-comings.

“Corporate Watch” -
This month with news items on: Amartex, Adani, Hero Honda, House of Pearl, TCIL

4) About the Project -
Updates on Gurgaon Workers News

“Workers’ Theory” -
On the web-site (click “Workers’ Theory”) you can find two articles on ‘Operaismo’, a marxist current which tried to understand the new generation of factory workers, their rural background and their new modes of struggle in Italy during the 1960s. Their concepts and experiences might help us in the current situation in and around Gurgaon, for the debate on the revolutionary potentials in Delhi’s industrial south…

“Get sorted” -
New content list including all newsletters, now on the web-site.

Glossary -
Updated version of the Glossary: things that you always wanted to know, but could never be bothered to google. Now even in alphabetical order.