The endless factories of the heavily industrialised belt south of Delhi might appear to be unstoppable. But tens of thousands of workers not turning up will put a pretty big dent in production. The strike, therefore, that shut down the Gurgaon-Dharuweda industrial belt is an occasion to examine the fragilities it reveals in our industrialisation process. The spark was the death of Ajit Yadav, a worker at Rico Auto Industries. Labour in Rico has been locked in a dispute with management; Yadav, one of the protesters, was brought to the hospital “with head injuries caused by a heavy, blunt rod”, according to the examining doctor. Many of the workers in Gurgaon’s factories seem to have responded with anger; by some estimates, as many as 80,000 went on strike today, showing, if nothing else, that there are grievances here that are broad-based and need to be dealt with expeditiously. (Concerns that the strikers assaulted workers who chose not to join the strike, or that they blocked Gurgaon’s vital highways, need to be addressed, too.)

But those who should be most concerned, the trade union leadership, seem to be failing to do just that. This is a straightforward labour-management dispute: workers want higher pay, and some of them want their union recognised; management is understandably concerned about its bottomline when the auto industry’s in a downturn. Responsible national union leadership would aid Gurgaon’s workers in getting a good deal, with minimum disruption to the economic processes central to everyone’s prosperity. But, instead, Gurudas Dasgupta, the CPI MP who heads that party’s affiliate trade union congress, the AITUC, summed up the national Left’s abdication of leadership when he promised “support” if the workers “take up arms in retaliation”.

... contd.