On July 9, India, a nationwide general strike was held that Indians call Bharat Bandh. The numbers are impressive, the organizers estimate about 200 million striking workers who, for a day, have paralyzed large sectors of the economy and services in many States of the Indian giant.

The strike was called by 10 of India’s 11 largest trade union confederations against the economic and labor policies of the central government. However, it is a trade union front controlled by bourgeois left-wing parties and self-styled communists. The Indian National Trade Union Congress is run by the large Indian National Congress bourgeoisie party, now relegated to the opposition, but scrambling again to serve the needs of his majesty capital.

The AITUC, India’s oldest trade union federation, is under the direction of the Communist Party of India, while the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, is the trade union wing of the Communist Party of India (marxist), founded in 1964 by a split of the CPI. Finally, another major union is the All India Central Council of Trade Unions which is politically linked to the Communist Party of India (m-l), born from one of the many divisions that took place in the 1970s.

It is nothing new that since the bourgeois band of Modi reigns in India, the only great trade union confederation that generally does not adhere to these strikes is the Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), affiliated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government party.

The demands of this strike were summed up in 17 points presented to the Minister of Labour. Among the main ones is the withdrawal of the four new Labour Codes, approved by Parliament between 2019 and 2020. These revoke 29 pre-existing laws, with the Indian government’s stated goal of “improve the ease of doing business.”

Although the government has given the green light to these reforms for five years now, their full application has been delayed pending individual states to pass the implementing rules.

The unions argue that they reduce workers’ rights, increase working hours, precariousness and exploitation. They also asked for the introduction of a monthly minimum wage, automatically adjusted to inflation, of at least 26,000 rupees (about 290 euros). They reiterate that working hours should be maintained at eight hours a day while the new laws would allow companies to get up to 12 hours to work.

The unions are also calling for the privatization of State-owned companies in key sectors such as railways, banks, insurance, post offices, mines, electricity, defense and telecommunications.

It also claims the return to the previous non-contributory pension system and the guarantee of a minimum pension of 9,000 monthly rupees for all members of the mandatory pension fund and other social security schemes (excluding the immense informal sector).

Another point of the document calls for the prohibition of the widespread practice of contract and outsourced work by imposing permanent employment in the public sector, industry and services.

All this in a scenario that fully guarantees the right to organize and strike to all workers without restrictions.

The Informal Workers

The backbone of the strike was public sector workers, in particular insurance, postal, coal and iron mines, banks and steel workers. The transport sector has seen a strong membership of bus and train drivers, although some large independent rail unions have not joined. Numerous trackblocks and interruptions have occurred in different areas of the country. The wide participation of the workers of the electricity grid is also to be noted in several countries.

Millions of workers from the “informal sector” also joined, characterized by the lack of regulation, written contracts, without paid leave, sick leave, health insurance, pension plans and other forms of protection. Wages are often below legal lows and there is no regulation on working hours. In the workplace, the lack of safety and hygiene is the norm. The lack of employment contracts makes it difficult for these workers, who make up the majority in different States, join the unions and bargain collectively. They are often internal migrants, working in unregistered micro-enterprises, not infrequently family-run. Among them are construction workers, small business workers, domestic workers, agricultural workers, operators of childcare centers, home workers, porters, school canteen operators, rickshaw and taxi drivers, and many others.

The Regional Framework

The strike had a significant impact in almost all Indian States, although its intensity and participation was different in the regions. Traditionally stronger areas for trade union and left-wing movements have experienced near-total paralysis.

In Kerala, governed since 2016 by the Left Democratic Front (LDF), an alliance of parties led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI(M), public and private offices including transportation had remained closed, shutting down almost all commercial activities. The port of Kochi and the nearby refinery were also closed despite the laws of the State forbidding it. In several cities, protests were held.

Even in West Bengal the strike has experienced a strong impact with road and railblocks and massive demonstrations. There have been clashes between left-wing activists, police and supporters of the TMC (Trinamool Congress) the current center-center party in Bengal that since 2011 has taken over, after 34 years, the Left Front, led by the “communist” parties. The coal sector and jute factories, where unionization is strong, have seen massive adherence.

But even States not ruled by the left, such as Tripura, Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand, have seen workers join the strike with road and railroad blocks, and broad adhesions in several key sectors such as the coal industry. Strong adhesions were registered in Uttar Pradesh, in particular among the workers of the electricity grid.

Also in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Puducherry, Gujarat, Goa, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh there have been subscriptions and service interruptions.

In the Maharashtra, the strikes and workers’ blocs have joined Maoist political activists who protested against the recent Public Security Bill. This legislation gives the State government broader powers to prevent “illegal activities,” particularly “urban naxalism,” the Maoists. In Tamil Nadu there would have been several thousand temporary arrests of the participants in the strike and demonstrations.

The Unresolved Question of the Peasants

Among the 17 points of the trade unions there are requests that come from the world of small farmers. One concerns the Minimum Support Price (MSP), the guarantee that products are purchased by the government at a “fair” price, protected from market volatility and intermediary speculation. Another point requires the pardon of loans for this class, a chronic and irremediable snare with which capital strangles Indian countryside.

If the figures of the adherence to the strike demonstrate the great numerical strength, and therefore the potential of the Indian working class, it must be reported that the wage-earner class has joined the acronym of rural workers who mainly collect small farmers who cultivate a land of property or rent in the long term.

Among these, the United Farmers’ Front (Samyukta Kisan Morcha, SKM) stands out, consisting of dozens of agricultural unions that in several States, including Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, organized massive peasant demonstrations in support of the strike and against the government.

Their strength lies in the large number of small and marginal farmers, who still constitute the vast majority of the Indian peasant world and who, in the recent past, had led massive protests against the new agricultural laws of the central executive. The article – Among peasant protests and workers’ strikes” in this newspaper n.407.

This category in India accounts for about 86% of all farmers who own less than 2 hectares of land. Of these, the “marginals” (with less than 1 hectare) are the largest slice, about 65%. They have 47% of the total arable land area. This share decreases from year to year, a slow but continuous process of proletarianization.

For many of these small and marginal peasants, wage labour has become the principal, or integrative source of income needed. As early as 2018-19, wages, or a salary, represented the highest income item for the average agricultural household. Many "owner farmers" have often been forced to look for work as laborers, usually without any formal contract, after cultivating their field.

However, there is also another aspect to consider: several farmers, although “small”, hire laborers, sometimes seasonally and for operations that require manual labor. In this case the farmer has an interest in keeping the wages of the laborers low. The increase in the minimum wage, a key claim of laborers, would bring an additional burden for the farmer, who struggles to live with the land’s profits.

They are therefore different classes with different needs and it is in this framework that the relationship between the movement of wage workers and that of the varied peasant world must be set, as well as the propaganda of the false communist parties.

Meanwhile, the government, driven by the capitalists, is forced to break with the past and make India increasingly competitive to attract capital. Agriculture must produce at ever lower costs, in competition with other regional markets and to feed the millions of proletarians thrown into the vortex of industries, from which to extract surplus value.

This is the aim of the Indian capital, which tomorrow will also be pursued by those who oppose the current government. Indian capital and international investors want modern production in the countryside. The Indian bourgeoisie no longer has the possibility of maintaining these hybrid sub-classes, the centralization and modernization of agricultural property is a slow but inexorable process in India.

Certainly in India the heterogeneous peasant world, which for millennia has been the basis of society, will try to resist, to survive, but the death sentence of their small managements is written in history. The only way out will be the revolutionary transition to a new society, to socialized production, freeing the small peasants from work of the small parcel, which in the world of Capital no longer represents a richness but a slavery.

The Indian workers, and their class brothers of each country, will break these chains by attacking capital head-on.

But today in India, as everywhere, political and trade union opportunism prevails, which blocks or diverts the motion of all those who have been disinherited in the defense of the national interest and the preservation of bourgeois power.

The strength of the proletariat as a class, the only potentially revolutionary one, lies not exclusively in the number, but by the sound consistency of its defensive organizations and their political direction, which must end the intransigent struggle against the bosses and their State. This will only happen when one of their minorities, the most advanced elements of the proletariat class, are recognized in the revolutionary communist party.