Bombay Mill Strike

The political economy of rent gaps emerging from the "highest and best use" of land in Mumbai has led to a spatial restructuring of the city. Manufacturing units are increasingly relocated to the suburbs and the working classes and the poor cleansed from the high-end business and financial districts as the state is increasingly subordinate to the economy in the liberalisation era.

The Shiv Sena's rise from the 1960s was assisted in large part by its ability to effectively channel emotions based on identity. It was the mill areas of central Bombay that formed the battleground for different political parties as they fought for representation of the class that had played a key role in shaping the city's destiny. Whereas the actions of the left parties were limited to the workplace, the Sena, through its shakhas, ensconced itself in the neighbourhood and rather than radical worker concerns took up emotive issues relating to livelihood and identity that played up the image of the deprived Maharashtrian.

I have plagiarised the title of T S Eliot’s drama Murder in the Cathedral because of its broad commonalty in the theme with the book under review. In a misfeasance moment, King Henry instigated the murder of Archbishop Becket who was one of the pillars of the realm. Similarly in pursuance of a misconceived theology, the government of India unwittingly killed the cotton mill industry, which was one of the foundations of India’s economy. The only difference was that Becket died swiftly, dispatched by the sword, in his cathedral. The mill industry, on the other hand, was progressively crushed by the steady piling of the diktats of the Congress-controlled state. It amounted to murder nonetheless.

In refusing to give permission to textile mills in Mumbai to sell their land the Maharashtra government gives the impression that it is being sympathetic to the cause of the mill workers, but actually it is pandering to the builders' lobby. The take-no-decision policy of the state government does not mean, however, that changes will not take place, albeit haphazardly and clandestinely. Based on recent developments, some likely scenarios are sketched here.

Bombay Textile Strike 1982-83 by H van Wersch; Oxford University Press, THE strike of textile workers in Bombay during 1982-83 has few parallels in the annals of the trade union movement anywhere in the world considering the number of striking workers and the duration of the strike. Yet, as the blurb of H van Wersch's book rightly observes, it has not received as much serious study as one would expect from trade union historians and social scientists. Perhaps the very size and duration of the conflict deterred scholars from launching upon a detailed exploration of it. Ultimately, it was a foreign researcher who undertook the daunting task and it is to his credit that he has done such a thorough job of it.