Indian Workers Strike

So I think I've established a pretty predictable routine here. I'll post about either the middle east uprising or Occupy Wall Street and if something really big gets to my activist core then I'll post about that too. *cough cough* SOPA *cough cough* But today I feel the need to talk about something beyond the realm of either of those two (three) aspects. Recently while browsing Reddit, I stumbled across this article. Basically these factory workers are being mistreated and work under horrible conditions and when the police/management cracked down on the first group to protest the whole factory went on a rampage and killed the company president as well as besieging the police headquarters and torching cars. Very scary stuff. But this sort of backlash is slowly becoming more prevalent in India. The caste system still having its grip on the country means most of India works for poor wages in disgusting and dangerous conditions and lives in small shanty towns. Protests and strikes happen from time to time but rarely result in anything due to the sheer amount of "I-don't-care-and-neither-do-the-police." given by the management. So when things like this happen, catapulting the conditions into the  spotlight, its definitely something. And it is, mob murder of a company president? How despicable! But look closer into and you see how these people were pushed to the breaking point before they did this.

Activists from the Indian Workers Union march to parliament in New Delhi.

After an initial strike coordinated by their union leader, these workers went on the rampage they did because of the brutal crackdown by the police. The union leader was killed by police forces, beaten to death by the very people who are supposed to protect. But India doesn't work that way and repression of this kind of stuff is key. As M. Murali Mohan led a group of workers to disrupt the morning shift, they were interrupted by policemen in riot gear wielding lathis, a baton on roids. This development led to numerous injuring and sadly Murali Mohan died of his beating on the way to the hospital. The fact that he was beaten to death is appalling to me, as all he was doing was standing up for his rights and then he dies from one of the most terrifying ways to die in my opinion.  So what do the workers do? They get angry and march to the police headquarters, demanding the policemen responsible be charged with homicide. A reasonable request don't you think? Being denied this they went about torching cars and in the end eight workers were injured and hundreds arrested and police once again took action. However the workers did not have enough and went on a rampage basically, destroying factory property and eventually invading the company president's house and killing him. Overall, a very dismal look at how India's society is right now.

In fact, this reminds me of Cory Doctorow's For The Win, a book following many different characters in Asia as they deal with government repression. Set in china, the US, India, and everywhere in between, the book exposes some of the conditions and child labor taking place and one of the story lines (the Indian one) is actually remarkably similar to this one. I would recommend it, even though its about gaming half the time (its related, trust me) and is fiction, its definitely worth a read.