●A reading of March 2020 to May 2021 from a residential area of factory workers●
## New Town Railway Station Faridabad, Bata Chowk, and Mujesar Metro Station are at the centre of Faridabad industrial complex. At walking distances from them are :
— NH-1, a settlement of the 1947 refugees from Pakistan.
— A.C. Nagar, Indira Nagar, Ajaad Nagar, and Autopin Jhuggi clusters of shanties.
— Mujesar, an ex-village.
These settlements are thickly populated and they are at a walking distance from a thousand plus factories in Industrial Area, New Industrial Area, Sector-24, Sanjay Memorial Industrial Estate, Sector-5, Sector-6, and a portion of Mathura Road.
## On a thin strip of land, about a kilometer long, between a line of factories and an open drain are three rows of the Autopin Jhuggi. Demolished during the internal emergency in 1975-77 and rebuilt. Majdoor Library is here since 1988, jhuggi number four. Word “Library” in the name is a carry over from the leninist phase of Majdoor Samachar. It is a “library” without books. It is a meeting place. It has been Majdoor Samachar’s space.
## The 2011-12 upsurge of Maruti Suzuki Manesar factory workers led to the printing of ten thousand plus copies of the monthly Majdoor Samachar.
Industrial area wide revolts in :
— Noida (UP state);
— Delhi’s Okhla Industrial Area;
— Udyog Vihar Gurgaon;
— Prithala-Baghola Industrial Area adjoing Faridabad in Palwal district.
And a spurt in the de-occupation of factories in the National Capital Region.
Majdoor Samachar printing increased to 15,000 copies. And stabilised.
## From 2018, number of copies of Majdoor Samachar taken by “non-activist” factory workers for onwards transmission to other factory workers increased in leaps :
— November 2018 — 16,000 copies
— December 2018 — 17,000 copies
— January 2019 — 20,000 copies
— February 2019 — 25,000 copies
— March 2019 — 26,000 copies
— April 2019 — 25,000 copies
— May 2019 — 28,000 copies
— June 2019 — 32,000 copies
— July 2019 — 34,000 copies
— August 2019 — 35,000 copies
— September 2019 — 36,000 copies
— October 2019 — 36,000 copies
— November 2019 — 30,000 copies
— December 2019 — 30,000 copies
— January 2020 — 33,000 copies
— February 2020 — 30,000 copies
## In this scenario, in November 2019, workers hired through contractor companies in the two wheeler Honda Manesar factory created a new terrain. From November 5th to 18th, 1500 temporary workers de-occupied the factory. Temporary workers in factories are 85-95 percent of the employees in this region. And, 1500 workers hired through contractor companies in Honda factory became the axis for fifteen days. Vibrant-lively-pregnant time!
## And a difficulty for Majdoor Samachar emerged :
Importance of constitution, parliament, laws was articulated in December and continued in January-February 2020.
Whereas, for quite some time now, explicitly put, the reading of Majdoor Samachar has been :
●Wage-workers in general and factory workers in particular are the radical social subject.
●Wage-labour based commodity production has been increasingly dysfunctional from the 1860s.
●As a corollary, sine qua non of money-market relations, the rule of law is in dire straits. Violation of laws is the norm.
●Democratic states are increasingly tottering. Democracy is in haphazard retreat. Representation as such has become irrelevant.
●The times are vibrant, pregnant with the new. And, wage-workers today are global wage-workers.
## To think and reflect at some ease, decided not to publish the March 2020 issue of Majdoor Samachar. And, as an experiment, a fifty page booklet in Hindi was published in March.
The response of factory workers to the booklet during 17th-21st March was very encouraging. With regard to corona-19, the situation in industrial areas was normal :
●On March 18, a garments factory worker said :
There are four thousand plus workers and more than seventy percent are female workers. Three lunch-breaks for workers, a thousand plus in the canteen at one time. Benches on both sides of the table. Very close to one-another, three on a bench(fourth adjusted at times). Most of the workers use shared autos for to and fro to the factory. Closely packed, 16-17 workers in an auto. From 11th March, twice in a shift, sermons on speakers in the factory regarding corona virus. Mask is compulsory. Masks have been stitched in the factory and given to workers. But no day off and production target must be met.
(To be continued.)
— 14 May 2021 Majdoor Samachar/Kamunist Kranti