Gurgaon Workers News - Newsletter 7 (Oktober 2007)

Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:52:38 +0100
Gurgaon Workers News - Newsletter 7 (Oktober 2007)
(full version on: www.gurgaonworkersnews.wordpress.com)

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 want to contribute to this project, please do so via:

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

In the Oktober issue you can find:

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

>>>"Working in the grave of Hauz Rani, a textile factory hidden in the cellar" - report from a textile worker, published in FMS no.229, July 2007. Ghost factories manufacture clothes for bigger companies in Gurgaon and Okhla to later export. In June/July 2007 some piece workers went on strike and enforced a piece rate increase.

>>>"Working at Nutan Printers" - longer report of a print worker in the south of Delhi, published in FMS no.229, July 2007. The print-shop's main client is the central government, the workers do 35 1/2 hour shifts.

>>>"Injured!" - a mother tells about how a company tried to get rid of her son after he had been badly injured at work, published in FMS no.229, July 2007

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

>>>"How to punish some and spread fear amongst thousands", Local Automobile Industry Part Seven - A longer overview on the situation at Honda Scooters and Motorcycles India (HMSI) factory in Gurgaon, from the repression in summer 2005 to the wildcat strike in September 2006 to the situation of workers hired through contractors today.

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

>>>"Not yet special enough: Special Economic Zones, Part Four" -
Short note on farmers threatening to commit suicide against land acquisition and short article on mass factory closures in Noida, possibly related to the re-concentration of capital in the Gurgaon, Manesar area.

>>>"Corporate Watch" -
This month with news items on: Caparo, DLF, Lockheed Martin, Uppal/Luxor Group (SEZ)

4) About the Project -
Updates on Gurgaon Workers News