This refers to Shyamal Mazumdar’s column “Maruti’s labour pains” (September 2). The events being played out at Maruti have a familiar routine. A multinational corporation finds itself cornered by a mob of workers backed by political groups and, alas, a hapless government is caught between the diametrically-opposite contentions of labour empowerment and investment imperatives as it were.
Indeed the columnist and other news reports frequently take recourse to words such as the “two sides” and “no breakthrough in talks” to suggest an equivalence that is farcical and so tragic that it is funny. The truth is that one side can break the law because it can wait it out in the labyrinth of our judicial system, while the other side is condemned to being exhausted and defeated by delays, apathy and, finally, betrayal.
The last strike in Maruti in 2000 at its Gurgaon plant saw the exit of the strong union. One employee, Amar Chakravarty, was dismissed without an enquiry by the management on the grounds that circumstances of violence prevented one. The dismissal was challenged in the labour court that shifted the onus of proving innocence on the worker. Thereafter, the high court upheld the labour court’s contention, which was later shot down by the Supreme Court that said the onus of adducing evidence to justify the dismissal without an enquiry rests on the company. It has taken 10 years for this elementary process to be completed and now the labour court has to examine the whole process according to the Supreme Court’s directives. (Amar Chakravarty and others vs Maruti Suzuki India).
For 10 years the workers at Maruti have worked without creating a strife having seen the outcome of the 2000 strike. In these 10 years more than 50 per cent of Suzuki’s global profits have come from its Indian venture.
The tyranny of globalisation is not in the managements’s approach. It lies in the “innocence” of the media, the government, the courts and society at large.
Hari Parmeshwar, on email