Slavery in the Global Factory:

From Durgapur (West Bengal) to Kota Tingi (Malaysia)

The Sramik Istahar [both in Bengali and Hindi versions of Apr. '05 issue] and Ananda Bazar Patrika (ABP) [10 May ‘05] published two shocking narratives, which revealed how horrible is the working condition of the workers in the Factories in areas of ‘emerging', ‘throbbing' new industrialisation in the era of Globalisation – Global Factories – etc. The narratives were given by some eyewitnesses at Durgapur in West Bengal , and workers of Kota Tingi in Malaysia . One Bengali worker, representing several hundreds of South Asian ‘neo slaves', gave an apt heading for the letter he sent to ABP: An Anecdote Of Modern Slaves!! Capitalists have perhaps turned crueller than the early nineteenth century English ones, as we find in the description by Frederic Engels in his “The Condition Of The Working Class In England”.

Let us present a translation of some excerpts from the letter from Malaysia . “ We landed in Malaysia on 16.02.05 . The agents who brought us here had told us that our basic wage would be Rs. 750. Just 3 hours before the flight from Chennai, a sub agent came with ‘agreement' papers where the basic was mentioned as only Rs. 500. We refused to sign. … The company also assigned us work without signing any papers, and we were told that the basic would only be Rs. 341, and it would never increase. … Here we have to work continuously for 12 hours, and that too standing all the time. For the 4 hours extra work, we are paid only Rs.2 and 1/2 .A single day's absence means a loss of day's wage. There are no medical benefits even if one is seriously ill. The only benefit the company gives is that they kindly sent home the dead-body of the dead-workers at the company's expense. We make cordless & mobile phones here. Many are suffering from neurological sickness due to uninterrupted 12 hours' standing. Many were stricken with paralysis. … Please send us the address of a voluntary organisation of Malaysia who struggles for minimum wages of workers in Malaysia . … Prakash Kumar Mondal. Lot 8, Kawasan Perindustrian, Kota Tingi. Batu-2, Jalan Lombang, 8/900 Koata Tingi, Johar Dar Ul Takjim. Malaysia .

Don't think it is some horrific distant picture from the country run by the ‘once-valiant anti-Imperialist' [!!] Mahathir Mohammed, whose name incidentally is, derived from a venerable Pali-Buddhist Title and the name of the Prophet of Islam. Same agonising cruel picture is often seen in Buddha Dev [Bhattacharya]-run West Bengal .

The investor-friendly govt of WB is [and has been] so gracious towards the capitalists that they have forgotten the very concept of ‘minimum' wages, and in many places wages is less than animal-existence standard. The West has a peculiar measuring stick of poverty – less than or equal to $2 a day! The Jute Baron Bajoria will pooh-pooh them – in his new factory in the Durgapur industrial belt [streching from Durgapur to Burnpur, via Ranigang and Asansol] he employs some 10,000 workers, most of them at an average wage of $1 a day!! There, some thousands of workers were named ‘learners' to deprive them of even the paltry wage and benefits scheduled for contract workers. In this industrial belt there are few hundred thousands of workers in Steel, Coal mining and allied industries. But in many establishments, particularly in the new ones, the workers are treated worse than slaves. In the morning queue, any day the supervisor of the contractor concerned can tell that several dozens or more won't get job that day. Industrial accidents are common occurrences here. The condition is so severely brutal that in a ‘small-scale' factory dead body of a worker killed in an accident inside the factory was stacked in a jute bag within the working room and other workers were told to carry on their job without bothering and without stopping work !!!

Accidents are usually never reported to the appropriate authorities, and workers get no compensation either. The Govt Inspector of Factories of Durgapur expressed his frustrations recently – ‘the employers are not reporting me about accidents and other things in many cases'! Only when the workers burst out in rebellion out of their accumulated anger, like a recent incident in an Angadpur factory, the management was compelled to offer some compensation. Harassments to workers in the govt undertaken Eastern Coalfields, and protests, both are almost day-to-day affairs. Workers in the illegal mining work in more dangerous conditions and are paid extremely paltry. Besides, the ‘new' factories totally flout environment pollution norms. Already hundreds of hectares of agricultural land have suffered severely from the pollutants excreted by those factories. The pollution is already so horrible that the govt authorities of the adjacent Bankura district are refusing further licenses to Sponge Iron Works in the Barjora Block – the most polluting kind among the new industries.

Apart from this cruel-neo-industrialisation there, the de-industrialisation process [of the old industries] is also continuing, and already the old industries are much ‘down-sized', with many of them closed. Whereas the industrial production and export from this industrial belt is skyrocketing [particularly in the buoyant international steel market and present ever-increasing steel-prices] the workers are squeezed more and more intensely and being maltreated more and more.

Those workers of Malaysia are trying to put faith on something ‘without', on things, individuals, not of the working class. They aren't yet at the level of fighting on their own, and trying to win over to their side thousands and millions of their class-sisters-and-brothers. Well, after decades of ‘scattered retreat' of the class, after decades of revisionist culture, this may well happen – nothing to worry. The bourgeois, and petty-bourgeois reformist-revisionist gentlemen will give them half of the ‘lesson' in a negative way. [The rest is our responsibility.]

Carry on, you bourgeois gentlemen – if you dare to show more audacity than the primitive period of capitalism, you yourselves will prepare and push the workers to show severer and harsher workers' revolts than you've seen in Germinal [by Emile Jola ], or the Great Continental Shock of 1848!!! We, the tiny and scattered class-conscious contingent of the proletariat know that blind rebellions are not something ‘revolutionary' in the socialist sense, but, we welcome the rebellions – happening only some, at present, and surely-to-multiply in future – and those rebellions will throw up more and more raw materials of becoming members of the advanced socialist contingent – and already they are tossing up many – already they are preparing the ground for our work to spread. You bourgeois gentlemen may laugh scornfully, “You fellows couldn't even carry on your ‘forward march' for just two third of a century [since Nov.'17]; and you are talking big in front of us, who are advancing for two + three centuries!! Ha! Ha!!” Well sir, let us remind you that a defeated army learns better [of course, only if they strive to learn ].

go to top

Home Page >> Development(!), Gender Questions Ecology, General, & Misceleneous >> Slavery in the Global Factory...