Only 148 of the 546 workers dismissed with immediate effect owing to a loss of trust were found guilty in the SIT report filed by Haryana Police. Even among those, only 31 were convicted, with the remaining 117 acquitted. However, it is surprising that after 12 years, not a single worker has been taken back to work. Isn’t there a provision in the law that specifically allows or even expedites reinstatement?
Anjali Deshpande: I think Nandita can answer this better. Nearly 2,500 workers were dismissed of whom 546 were permanent workers. The rest were contract workers and apprentices. Criminal charges were filed against 148 workers. Of whom 117 were acquitted. None of the acquitted got their jobs back. Not even compensation for having been fired without any reason, as their acquittal proved. The rest of the workers who did not have charges against them also did not get their jobs back.
Their struggle still continues. They are now on an indefinite sit-in outside the Tahsil office in Manesar. Soon they will begin a relay hunger strike.
Nandita Haksar: Please check the figures of convicted. Some of the workers had joining letters and even though they were not charged they were not given their jobs back. In 2012, the Maruti Suzuki management had filed an application before the Labour Court, as per labour law, for permission to dismiss workers without a domestic enquiry. But in 2015, the company withdrew its petition and told the Labour Court that the company’s standing orders allowed them to dismiss workers without any domestic enquiry. The Court directed the company to pay workers ₹1 lakh each but till date, these orders have not been obeyed.
This is just one example of how the Suzuki company is violating Indian labour law and for them their standing orders take precedence over Indian labour law.
Most online accounts about the violence of July 18, 2012, in Manesar Plant give a disjointed, slanted view, each attempting to rush to easy, common-sense conclusions without providing an objective analysis. Your book also mentions an internal committee report, which has been kept confidential. Should there be a provision to make such reports available to at least workers as a part of greater corporate accountability? Will the truth about the manager’s death —not coloured by personal biases — ever emerge?
AD: I think, yes. Presumably the internal enquiry committee of the company went into all aspects of the management and particularly the role played by managers on July 18, 2012. It must have looked into the reasons for the mounting frustration and anger of the workers. For the workers to not get to know what the committee report said about them is unfair. They should have a right to know. However, the Right To Information act does not apply to corporates. Perhaps workers should be given those rights.
As for the death of the HR manager, Avanish Dev, for me, it is still a mystery. Why with so many managers around and the police standing there he could not be taken out of the room is a question not yet answered. His legs were broken and he was found in the office room the next morning. How it happened continues to be a mystery.
NH: The manager’s family had demanded an enquiry by CBI and the government did not concede. The workers were not given access to the enquiry report or to other documents which could help them in their defence.
Review: Japanese Management, Indian Resistance
The internet was aghast by the tragic death of Anna Sebastian Perayil caused by excessive workload. Naryana Murthy recently even proposed that the nation’s economic and social advancement could be aided by a workweek of 70 hours. A chapter in your book, Karoshi: Death by Overwork, describes how workers struggle to complete their tasks in the allotted time of less than a minute. RC Bhargava compares it to squeezing water out of a dry towel. How have the working conditions changed after the 2012 agitation?
AD: Yes, that was what Suzuki was here for, to squeeze water out of a dry towel. Excessive workload is now being recognised as a cause of death. In Japan, the Ministry of Labour has recognised two kinds of overwork related deaths. Karojijatsu, which means suicide due to overwork. There have been many cases of such suicides in Japan. Karoshi is a term used for death because of overwork-induced cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. An employee has to have put in a 100 hours overtime in the month preceding death. Courts have ordered compensation in several such cases.
Japan has passed laws to rein in such overload of work that causes physical and mental harm to workers. One Act was passed in June 2014. It is called Promotion of Preventive Measures against Karoshi and other Overwork related Health Disorders. It recognises cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases induced by excessive workload and suicide because of overwork-related mental disorders as Karoshi.
It may seem surprising but Karoshi was first clinically reported in Japan as far back as 1969 but it has taken such a long time for the government to officially recognise it.
Workers of Maruti Suzuki of both Gurgaon factory and the Manesar factory, also talked about a lot of stress. Mathew Abraham, who later became a legendary trade union leader of Maruti in the Gurgaon factory, was earlier in the Border Roads organisation. He told us that within a month of joining the Maruti factory he wanted to quit because he had never worked so much in all his life. He was so stressed that he did not want to work there at all.
On top of it, there is this need to shovel your tea and snacks within seven-and-a-half minutes of tea break. As workers told us, they never tasted the food, even though it used to be good and varied. They just gobbled it, Is this any kind of life? To work so hard and not find time to be able to relish your samosa?
NH: It was not Bhargava who said about squeezing the towel but Suzuki himself.
After Indira Gandhi’s close confidante Bansi Lal gave over 300 acres of land to support her younger son Sanjay Gandhi’s idea of producing a small, affordable car, Haryana’s automobile hub cut its first turf. Many more vendor companies that brought in millions of dollars of foreign investment followed Maruti Suzuki. The state currently claims to have the most SEZs (Special Economic Zones), of which seven are in operation and the remaining 25 have formal approval; yet, the state paradoxically has the highest unemployment rate. As of the fiscal year 2023-2024, the state average of unemployment at 29.1% is nearly three times higher than the 8.1% national average. Why?
AD: That is because of the unwritten policy of not employing locals as workers. Locals have a support structure in place. They have families and friends and somewhere to go, someone to turn to in times of crisis like long drawn-out struggles against the company and its policies. Migrants from other states have nobody to help them in such times. In the Manesar factory, they did have a large contingent of local workers. A former manager we interviewed for our book said that that was a mistake. The company must have also viewed it as a mistake later after the July18, 2012 incident. Now it has come to such a pass that the Haryana government passed a law in 2020 to reserve 75 percent reservations in the private sector for locals. It was struck down by the High Court and the government went to Supreme Court.
NH: I do not know to what extent but technology is also responsible. With “advances” in AI-based technology and increasing number of robots being used is also responsible for unemployment.
The initial interviews consider employment in Maruti a privilege and a dream come true, with workers praising non-caste-based discrimination and fair treatment to both workers and managers. The tone, however, shifts eventually as Suzuki’s share percentage increases, and a public sector company is finally acquired by it. While it affected Maruti workers specifically, does it not also hint towards a bigger syndromic issue brought about by neoliberalism and growing privatization?
AD: Yes, it does. When Maruti was in the public sector, they had a far better deal. Yes, even then they had only seven-and-a-half minutes as tea break but the other things compensated them. Wages were better.
Now with increased privatisation, the accent is on paying less for more work. What is called the lean model of work. So, wherever you go, people are overworked. In almost all sectors. Health. Education. Manufacturing.
In the Maruti factory, privatisation affected workers very badly. The number of permanent workers went down. The proportion of contract workers increased. Contract workers were doing jobs expected of permanent workers. Even apprentices were doing the work of regular workers. Job security practically disappeared. Over 80% of workers in this more automated factory were contract workers.
We just came across this data from the Centre for Economic Data Analysis. It says that employment in the manufacturing sector in 2020-21 had halved from what it was five years before that. There is more mechanisation now. Robots are coming in. Factories are making do with fewer employees.
Also, a lot of control from workers is being taken away. The limits on working hours for instance. Like you pointed out, Narayan Murthy says that there should be a 70-hour week. What does this mean? Assuming you work six days a week it means that you work nearly 11 hours a day. Add to that travel time to and from the workplace. Over half the day is given to the workplace. How much time will it give you to wash your clothes, play with your children, go out with friends?
NH: This is the shift from welfare state to corporate rule.
There is an interesting quote by EO Wilson in your book – “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Palaeolithic emotions, mediaeval institutions, and godlike technology.” Later in the book, you explain through the Amit Chakraborty and Nayanjyoti report how the change of production technology from the Fordist model to the ‘just-in-time’ or ‘lean’ model outsourced the management of a large workforce and reduced the production costs. Can you please explain it a bit for our readers? Moreover, how would increased automation aided by AI affect the relationship dynamics between the workers and management?
AD: The just-in-time model of manufacturing that Suzuki brought in is actually like fragmenting a piece of work. They had to make a car. It may require, say, some 1800 components. From big things like engines, to small things like the key that opens and shuts car doors. In the Ford model, everything was done under the same roof. Like in our old factory that made Ambassador cars. I don’t know if the young have even heard of that very sturdy car. They made everything in one huge complex and put all the parts together to build a car. The number of workers was naturally large. They had unions and they negotiated their wages at regular intervals.
In the lean model, the car was broken down to its components. What they do is they outsource almost everything except the finished product, which is the car. have hundreds of factories and even small mohalla level workshops to make some of these parts. So, one big factory will produce the engine, another will make the gear box. Some will make headlights. Some will make steering wheels. Some pretty small things will be made by tiny enterprises that may not be paying out minimum wages.
The company benefits in many ways. One, it does not have to handle a large workforce. That reduces its wage bill. It gets cheap components from its suppliers known as vendors. It tells them every week or at some regular intervals how much of which part it needs. It does not have to take care of a large inventory of parts piling up. Parts are brought in, used up and cars roll out. That is what a lean model and just-in-time production means.
AI and increased mechanisation means loss of jobs. Plain and simple. We will have to watch how it plays out.
After 12 years, the workers still haven’t received justice from the courts. Most of them who wanted to work in places other than Manesar had to maintain their Maruti link as a top secret. But that would eventually surface, leading to their quick termination. The cat-and-mouse game continues as their families face economic uncertainty and unprecedented futures. While the workers still brim with an unadulterated hope, do you feel the same way?
AD: Yes. Optimism is what has kept the struggle alive. I think that struggle against injustice itself is a source of hope. What option do the workers have? Their unity and their camaraderie is their strength. As economic hardships mount more such struggles are bound to emerge. Look at the recent strike by Amazon India warehouse workers. They brought one of the most powerful of global platforms to its knees.
It’s been little over a year since the publishing of this book, and both of you have already published a new book. What prolific writers both of you are! I am sure you’ve already started thinking about your next books. Tell us more about it.
AD: I am not a prolific writer. More of a lazy writer is what I am. I don’t want to talk about what I am working on. Nandita is a prolific writer. She has over 24 books published. Over to her.
NH: I think it would have been nice if you asked us about the present struggles of the Maruti workers.
The dismissed workers have been fighting for justice all these years under the leadership of the Struggle Committee. They have knocked on the doors of politicians of every political party, different trade unions and finally they have been sitting on dharna at the Manesar crossroads sleeping on the pavement, eating meagre meals and hoping against hope that the law and the Constitution will find a way to give them justice and not protect the illegal acts of the Japanese corporation. They are, after all, citizens of India.
Kinshuk Gupta is the associate editor of Usawa Literary Review and the poetry editor of Jaggery Lit and Mithila Review.
