Gurgaon, North India: workers riot after death, DLF and Maruti shaken by crisis
These updates are from the December 2008 issue of Gurgaon Workers News
1. Updated list of exploitative companies and what they do
2. Commonwealth Games: Building Workers’ Riot in Delhi
3. Maruti Suzuki and DLF: Pillars of Gurgaon’s Urbanisation shaken by Crisis
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Commonwealth Games: Building Workers’ Riot in Delhi
After a fatal accident on the Commonwealth Games construction site more than a thousand building workers destroyed company offices, cars and trucks. The aggravating global crisis imposes a new social framework for incidents like this: the daily deaths and legal murders become explosive. The cops shooting a fifteen year old became the trigger of social unrest in Greece; the fatal accident of a building worker sparked the simmering turmoil in Delhi. The construction site is a prestigious show-piece of the capital city, a costly parasitic display of anti-social wealth in times of proletarian misery, desire and wrath.
Violence at Games village after death of worker - Dec 15, The Hindu
A 28-year-old worker died at the Commonwealth Games Village site near Akshardham Temple on Sunday morning when a portion of the crane being used to lift materials to the eighth floor of an under-construction building in the complex fell on him.
The accident led to tension at the site as thousands of workers demonstrated against the project developer, EMAAR-MGF, and the contractors, Ahluwalia Contracts. Three of their offices were ransacked and more than half-a-dozen vehicles, including SUVs, an ambulance and a dumper truck, were damaged by the mob. The violence, which took place in phases, lasted over four hours.
A case of negligence against the contractors has been lodged with the Pandav Nagar police station. Meanwhile, a company of Delhi reserve police was deployed inside the village to control the situation.
The workers claimed that another labourer, Manish (24), was also injured in the incident. There were claims, too, that B P Singh, legal advisor for the contractors was attacked by the workers.
Police said that matters went out of hand around 9.30am. “Thousands of workers at the site suddenly went on the rampage after finding that senior officials had fled the scene. With no news on Shailendra’s condition, they barged into the adjoining three offices, broke windows, ransacked the rooms and destroyed computers. Later, they marched to the main security room and tried to set it on fire. They also attacked cars at the site,” said a senior police officer.
However, the workers were in no mood to relent. “There have been regular accidents at this site. But the management has never taken our warnings seriously. We demand immediate compensation and a proper identity-card that mentions our designations,” said Changoori Singh, a worker at the site.
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Maruti Suzuki and DLF: Pillars of Gurgaon’s Urbanisation shaken by Crisis
Maruti Suzuki and the real estate major DLF are the two symbols of Gurgaon’s urbanisation. The opening of the Maruti Suzuki plant in the early 1980s accelerated the industrialisation of the semi-rural fringe around Delhi, Gurgaon village turned into an industrial city. A decade later DLF - India’s biggest real estate developer - turned Gurgaon into a bubble of private and cooperate property, a desert of gated concrete. When the global crisis kicked in these two pillars of urban and industrial development start to tremble.
Beginning of December 2008: Maruti announces that the November sales dipped by 27 per cent compared to the same month last year, while net profit slumped by 37 per cent in the second quarter this fiscal. As a consequence Maruti Suzuki has announced a five per cent production cut. The factory has an annual manufacturing capacity of 700,000 cars, meaning a cut in production by 35,000 cars. While the news report that Tata and Hyundai are sacking hundreds of temporary workers, Maruti hasn’t announced any lay-offs yet. Most likely the lay-offs will happen in the vast net of unofficial employment which Maruti relies on: the thousands of workers hired through contractors in the main plant and in the surrounding supplying industries.
End of November 2008: DLF, the role-model of private business town development, had to ask the state of Haryana to refund license fees worth Rs 2,350,000,000. At the same time economic analysts declared that the real estate prices in second-tier cities like Gurgaon will have to fall by at least 30 per cent in order to rekindle the frozen sales. DLF has bought large amounts of land in the Gurgaon area, which are now turning sour, e.g. the land for an IT SEZ in Noida which DLF is now eager to sell. DLF is the rule, not an exception. End of November: Unitech, the country’s second largest listed real estate company, put all six of its hotel projects under construction at Gurgaon and Kolkata up for sale, forced by financial difficulties to pay back loans.
There are first signs of workers’ response to the impact of the current crisis, like the riot of building workers after a fatal work ‘accident’ in Delhi, the road and railway blockades of Dunlop workers in West Bengal, protesting against the closure of the factory, the strikes and lock-outs at multi-national car part manufacturer Bosch in Jaipur.
