The Curious Case of the Missing Worker by Siddharthya Swapan Roy
From The Hoot, 1st Aug 2011
On the 28th of July 2011 a great many media outlets descended on Mumbai to cover the Mill Workers’ March. Two prominent, evidently newsworthy and seemingly the only, guests were the two embattled cousins from the Thakeray family Shri Raj and Shri Uddhav. The Thakeray brothers’ story is unquestionably a dramatic one with all the trappings of how political dynasties fall apart over inheritance. Pregnant with a trove of plots and sub-plots, as family sagas always are, the morning after the “national media” was, ad nauseum, hailing the seemingly colossal “news” of two warring Thakerays coming together. Here are some of the headlines of that were delivered the next day –
“Shiv Sena says Mumbai will stay shut on Monday” – DNA front page, 29th July
“Mill Workers’ Stir: Thakeray brothers untied in cause, divided in stand” – Indian Express 4th page (The front page had place for only two main headlines since nearly half the page was rented out to advertisements)
“Uddhav, Raj join hands for Mumbai mill workers” IBN Live web edition
“Uddhav, Raj Thackeray march for same cause in Mumbai” reports Ketki Angre on the NDTV.com
While the pieces above are almost entirely about the histrionics of the Thakeray brothers, they also make place for other juicy snippets like what actor Nana Patekar said in support of the issue. But ironically what does not find place anywhere in the reports is the core issue itself – the workers’ protest! What was the march about? How many people attended it? Who were the organsiers? What were their specific demands? What’s the background of the issue? How has the State responded to it?
None of these details find any space in any of the reports. Never mind that this march was about the legal rights of thousands of workers who’s mills, the sole income of their families at one time, have been shut down and they’ve been rendered paupers. Never mind the fact that Mumbai has not witnessed such a congregation of workers agitating for their legal rights and dues in many decades (more than 45000 workers are said to have assembled). Never mind the fact that it was the co-ordinated efforts of nearly nine major trade unions who’s struggle for many years resulted in this huge rally. Never mind that the real drama is the dichotomy that while the mills’ workers have been denied their minimal legal benefits for decades, the mills are now getting converted into swanky malls and multiplexes which seep with opulence.
The IE makes half hearted references to one of the workers’ demands – that of housing for those who have been evicted but that’s just one of the demands. The others include –
· An effective ban on sale of mill lands and the change of user of such lands.
· Demolition of all unauthorised constructions and illegal activity in the area of the existing mills.
· A complete halt to mill closures and retrenchment, including Voluntary Retirement Schemes; action to restart the closed mills and provide employment to the workers; and genuine involvement of the workers in formulating, operating, and monitoring every scheme for revival of the mills.
· A transparent and public enquiry into the sales of the mill land, the uses to which the proceeds from such sales have been put, and the grievances of the workers ; involvement of the workers and their organisations in this en enquiry, and opening of the records of the mills and land transactions to the workers and public.
· Criminal prosecution of mill owners who have diverted funds meant for revival or modernisation of the mills, or for payment of workers’ dues; action to return such diverted funds to the mills.
· Criminal prosecution of mill owners, politicians, and officials of the government and municipal corporation, who conspired to sell the mill land and change the user of the land.
· Scrapping of the Bombay Industrial Relations Act, under which the workers have had no choice of their representatives.
Even a cursory look at the list of demands will show their grave nature. It is in fact a window into the tormented lives the mill workers have lived after having been defrauded by their employers in collusion with a state machinery that was hand-in-glove with the owners and provided them impunity. Moreover the event was far from a Thakerays only affair. It was the culmination of many years of preparation in which nine major trade unions had participated.
Sadly the Mumbai episode is hardly an exception. Major workers’ issues that have happened in the country have either gone unreported or even if reported then it is often under-reported or misreported. For example on the 23rd of February this year Delhi was witness to a huge workers protest with a numerical strength of a staggering 1.5 lakh people. They were demanding action on vital issues like food-security, inflation, unemployment and the like. Hardly any major newspaper (barring The Hindu) reported the news even objectively, let alone sympathetically. Without bothering to mention even one of the workers’ demands the ToI Delhi edition had its 3rd page dedicated to a piece blaming the aggrieved workers for traffic congestion. Adding insult to injury, Dwaipayan Ghosh of ToI took a jibe at the trade unions with it’s story headlined “Why unions love Jantar Mantar”. It is noteworthy that ToI printed with photographs the comments of an investment banker, a student and an (ambiguously termed) office-goer but did not bother to get a byte from even one of the lakhs of deprived workers who had strained their meagre earnings to travel from all parts of the country into Delhi.
It is notable that on all these occasions when the dailies and channels missed reporting the workers’ issues, they did not miss renting out newsprint to full page ads or doing nuanced reports on the lives and styles of well heeled celebrities. News stories that highlight issues of workers are an absolute rarity today. While the dumbing down of news is all pervasive in nearly all sections and beats from politics to film to sports, the practice of reporting workers’ issues has been altogether done away with at the altar of “selling what sells”.
It is now a common practice to refer to journalism as the fourth pillar of our democracy (the other three being the legislative, the judiciary and the executive) and very often the fourth declares itself to be the one with the right to keep tabs on the other three. Now while going about his/her daily life earning his/her livelihood, engaging in the mundane act of being alive, a participant of India’s democracy may not come in contact with the three real pillars of democracy. But thanks to the very high TV penetration and the multiplicity of India’s print channels, he encounters the fourth pillar far more frequently. In fact the fourth’s omnipresence makes it unavoidable for anyone who lives in society to not come in contact with or be affected by it. So in times of live debates and dinner time dispensation of televised justice, for many of India’s citizens, the fourth pillar may in fact seem as democracy itself. So there’s no escaping the fact that his/her degree and nature of participation in democracy is therefore determined by the sensitisation (or lack of it) which the fourth pillar drills into him.
In such a scenario if the media turns against issues as basic as the questions of livelihood (also known as gainful employment) of the very producers of wealth (also known as workers), how will society survive? Without the firm footing of the productive layer, we cannot have secondary markets like the real estate or consumers for jewellery or the share market (the first two are something the dailies are regularly seen selling their front pages to and the third is something they report with unwavering diligence come rain or shine). Without a productive and healthy society, there will be no democracy to which the media can aspire be the fourth pillar. The shallow aspirations of the well heeled (eg a smooth driving experience) which the commercial media seeks to portray as outweighing fundamental human wants (eg affordable food) does immense disservice and damage to democracy.
As for the piety which the media claims as its pedestal when judging the morality of the nation’s politicians, it is, due to such open biases, at best a shaky one.
The Vanguard 