The sudden burst of street protests in Bengaluru last week has surprised not just the local government but also shocked the Central government for its sheer vehemence. Thousands of workers from garment companies came out on to the streets when they realised that the changes in the Provident Fund laws would mean that they would not get the employers’ contribution in hand when they retired. The spontaneous demonstration paralysed the city’s traffic, and its reverberations were felt in Delhi. The government soon backtracked. It was a major victory for workers’ rights and what was quite surprising was the fact that the protests were not organised by any trade union; union leaders themselves were taken aback at the scale and suddenness of the demonstration.
Equally significant is that the outburst was by workers from an older, more traditional industry. The entire services sector has been created in a union-free environment; whether high-tech workers in Bengaluru or Hyderabad, or security guards in Mumbai and Delhi, unions have been resolutely kept out. They don’t fit in with the narrative of the new economy — unions are seen as disruptive and not beneficial to employers or workers or indeed the country. The end of the Cold War, according to Western thinkers and liberal democracy, meant that the capitalist system had won. The end of the Cold War coincided with economic liberalisation in India, wherein the vestiges of socialism were cast away. One of the many certitudes of the post-reform (1991) era was that trade union activity had almost disappeared.
It was going to be a brave new world in which the state was going to withdraw from running businesses and interfering with the animal spirit of the country’s entrepreneurial class. People had aspirations, for goods, for services, for new homes, cars and travel. In an era of plenty — at least for some sections of society — where was the need to protest? And yet, what do we see around us, 25 years after reforms, when achche din are said to be round the corner? Students are at war with the government, different communities, ranging from Jats in Haryana to Patels in Gujarat, are out on the streets demanding reservations and workers too are up in arms against government policies. The new PF rule would have affected the salaried class everywhere, but they did not come out on the streets; it was left to blue collar employees.
To some extent it is the policies of the Modi government that are responsible for this climate of unrest. Certainly, changing the PF rules — done unthinkingly and handled poorly even after it became clear that the salariat was angry — was a gift of the Modi government. Similarly, it was at the provocations of the government — creating the bogus Jawaharlal Nehru University slogans controversy and pinning it on specific students — that students are fighting the student wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) in various universities.
But the demand for reservations goes back much longer. Whether the Gujjars or the Marathas, and now the Patels and the Jats, well off, prosperous communities have been demanding preferential treatment in government jobs for a while. This is the protest of the privileged who see their status declining and want to continue holding on to their social position. There is no one unifying theme to the rising unrest in different parts of the country — it cuts across communities, castes and classes. But in each case, there is dissatisfaction with the government and an increasing sense of frustration that the policymakers are either too distant, unwilling or simply unable to tackle the issue. Coming out on the streets — as the garment workers of Bengaluru did — or indulging in violence and more, as happened in Haryana recently, appears to be the only way to get the government to pay attention to demands.
These incidents also show that while economic reforms have brought many benefits, not everyone has benefited. More important, in the early period of liberalisation the government found it relatively easy to dismantle the licence raj and get political and public support for its programmes. Things are not going to be as easy anymore. The Modi government’s decision to tinker with the PF scheme angered the salaried class; changing labour laws is going to be doubly difficult. There is already a perception that this government is only concerned about giving more sops to big business rather than the common citizen; it will now have to tread carefully before it introduces new regulations. (Smaller businessmen are none too pleased either, as the protests by jewellers shows.)
How have governments — at the Centre, in the states — dealt with mass protests? In Gujarat, the Anandiben Patel government was completely caught off guard at the intensity of the agitation by the Patidars and reacted by throwing Hardik Patel into jail for sedition; her counterpart in Haryana, Manoharlal Khattar, was like a deer caught in the headlights, clueless in the face of the Jats who went on a rampage and held the state to hostage. The government has formed a committee to look into reservations for Jats, which is half a victory for the agitators.As for the students, the Modi administration is determined not to give in, whether it was in Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, or in JNU or Hyderabad University, where the old vice-chancellor was brought back, an act seen as provocative by dalit students. If anything, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is becoming more belligerent.
Are we heading towards more protests in the coming months? The success of workers in Bengaluru is bound to enthuse their counterparts elsewhere and undoubtedly union officials too would have drawn lessons from the incident. The same would apply to students as well as to communities which are aiming to extract something from the government. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has let it be known that he is tough and doesn’t buckle under pressure; the evidence suggests otherwise. More challenges are coming his way.
