Business Standard

The voice of labour repressed and management during the pandemic

This week in BS also looked at a book about a group of individuals who are on a mission to fight ransomware

Books

Photo: Unsplash.com

Vikram Gopal New Delhi

Listen to This Article

Industrial unrest may appear an anachronism at a time in India when state governments are competing with each other to dilute laws governing labour, but just a little over two years ago it was front and centre in the news cycle after workers protested at iPhone manufacturer Wistron’s unit in Karnataka.

But that unrest finds no mention in the current election cycle in that state. In fact, when the state government decided to amend labour laws to allow 12-hour work days there was hardly any protest. Little is known of what happened to those protestors, much like in other such incidents.
 

This past week, AK Bhattacharya looked at one such incident and its aftermath in his review of the book Japanese Management, Indian Resistance The Struggles of the Maruti Suzuki Workers by Anjali Deshpande & Nandita Haksar.

What began as an altercation between a worker and his supervisor at the Manesar factory of Maruti Suzuki on July 18, 2012, turned into a major dispute and ended with a section of the factory on fire and the death of a manager.

“The services of as many as 2,500 workers, of whom over 500 had a permanent job, were terminated. The police crackdown too was unprecedented. It arrested 146 workers and filed court cases against them,” writes Bhattacharya. As many as 33 workers were convicted and 13 of them sentenced to life imprisonment.

This book is a document of the lives of those workers in the aftermath of the unrest.

“The book is a commendable initiative as rarely do episodes of industrial unrest and violence get recounted with so much detail and analysis from the perspective of the dismissed workers. It is also a book that largely relies on a series of interviews that the authors conducted with these workers, some of them fighting court cases and others suffering the pangs and ignominy of spending days in police custody or jail,” writes Bhattacharya.

Though the book excludes the management’s version of the events, Bhattacharya says it looks at stories the media ignored at the time. Besides, he says, it reveals that the genesis of the unrest could have been the Japanese practices that were introduced by the company. “It was a classic case of Japanese management facing up to an Indian resistance,” he writes.

“The book, therefore, should be an important document to be studied by those governments that are at present busy framing business-friendly labour laws,” says Bhattacharya.

Pandemic change

Another review this past week looked at the seminal event of this century so far, the Covid-19 pandemic. Prosenjit Datta reviewed Crash Landing: The Inside Story of How the World’s Biggest Companies Survived an Economy on the Brink by Liz Hoffman.

It is a tale of how the big corporations in the US “reacted and navigated through the Covid-19 pandemic with more than a little help from the government”, writes Datta.

The book looks at what companies like AirBnB, Ford Motors, Hilton Hotels, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Delta Airlines and others did.

“For most of the CEOs featured in the book, the pandemic was a rude reminder of the old proverb about the best-laid plans of mice and men. Many of them had had one or more excellent years of galloping revenues and big profits when Covid-19 left them in a crisis they had no experience handling,” writes Datta. Indeed, according to the book few CEOs were even aware of the virus.

Crash Landing is a great book to read if you want to understand how some of the celebrated US CEOs acted when confronted with a once-in-a-lifetime crisis that was beyond even the 2008 global financial meltdown,” writes Datta.

Elsewhere in BS, Devangshu Datta reviewed The Ransomware Hunting Team by Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden, a very timely book considering the increase in ransomware attacks after the outbreak of the pandemic.

“Over the years, ransomware has claimed millions of victims, big and small, from personal computer users, to educational institutions, hospitals and government websites,” writes Datta.

Ransomware does not require much technical skill and most malware can be downloaded from the dark web. “Hackers also sell Ransomware as a service (RAAS) in a warped variation on the Software-as-a-service model,” points out Datta.

Enter “the Ransomware Hunting Team”, a group of a dozen individuals scattered all over the world. This book describes them, their work, and the effort it takes to track down malware.

“It’s a pacy, well-written book with technical detail thrown in. There’s lots of excitement. The authors also salt the narrative with anecdotes, ranging from the comic to the tragic,” writes Datta.

Don't miss the most important news and views of the day. Get them on our Telegram channel

First Published: May 06 2023 | 7:00 AM IST

Explore News