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STATES:
WEST BENGAL
Fear
Factories
As
two executives are killed, the persisting violence in mills is forcing
the state's antiquated jute industry to move to the more benign environs
of Andhra Pradesh
By
Labonita
Ghosh
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| A RUSH
OF BLOOD: Tiwari's son outside the mill |
The
shift change at Baranagar Jute Mill, 30 km from Kolkata, is never
a quiet affair. At exactly 11 a.m. every day, about 1,300 workers finish
their morning stint and an equal number take over for the afternoon. At
the best of times, the change is chaotic. You have to shout to make yourself
heard. On Saturday, January 13, a group of "zero" category workers-the
ones who fill in for regulars when they go on leave-did shout. But it
was more than mere soapbox oratory. Armed with iron rods and sticks, they
entered CEO J.P. Tiwari's office to protest against the suspension of
two labourers.
As the exchange
got heated, the workers started attacking Personnel Manager Gautam Ghosh.
Tiwari, knowing he was next, pulled out a .32 Webley Scot revolver and
fired into the crowd, killing a worker. The mob lost control. The workers,
their numbers swelled by the shift change, dragged Ghosh and Tiwari to
the cobbled courtyard, doused them with petrol and torched them alive.
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| The
spot where Tiwari and Ghosh were torched |
The brutal
killing has shocked whatever remains of corporate Kolkata. Baranagar is
one of West Bengal's 59 doddering jute mills, but not among the 26 referred
to the Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR). Till black
Saturday it was running as usual, with its 4,200-strong workforce in attendance.
Today there
is a lock on the Baranagar gates, and there's panic among Kolkata's 20-odd
owners of private jute mills. "Now you never know what will happen
in office the next day," says Sanjay Kajaria, chairman of the Indian
Jute Mills Association and owner of Hastings Mill. Three days after the
killing, mill owners got together in Kolkata and decided to meet Chief
Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya. On his part, Bhattacharya has ordered
a probe and dismissed the incident as a "stray" happening.
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JUTE
WOES
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- Unions
says PF dues rose from Rs 5 crore in 1980 to Rs 188 crore in 2000.
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Productivity is the pits. It takes 45 mandays to produce a tonne
of jute; in Andhra Pradesh it takes 32.
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Modernisation is still a dream. Workers in Bengal's mills still
crank 100-year-old machines.
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It's anything
but that. In two decades of Left Front rule there have been several brutal
killings on mill premises. For instance, in 1990, at the Champdani Mill
in Hooghly, manager A.K. Chatterjee was thrown into a cauldron of boiling
water by workers protesting against a delay in payment of salaries. In
1997, senior officer Mohun Dutta of Srirampur's India Jute Mills was shot.
In the past six months itself, mill managers can remember at least five
near misses, where officers' rooms were ransacked (Dalhousie Mill) or
they were dragged out and beaten up (Hooghly Mill).
An Industry
Passed Its Prime
Why is the
atmosphere in the jute mills so volatile? The answer is complex. Bengal's
traditional industry is highly labour intensive. It employs close to 2.5
lakh workers, organised into as many as 18 labour unions. Some 40 per
cent of these are ghost workers who operate under dubious categories like
bhagawala (sharing the work and wages with a senior employee), voucherwala
(paid on a daily basis) and zero.
In a booming
economy, there would be jobs for everyone. But Bengal's jute has long
since passed its prime. The international market has been carved up by
Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh-and Andhra Pradesh. Bengal's share (90 per
cent of the total jute goods produced in the country) is fast eroding.
Modernisation is still a distant dream. An IIT Kharagpur study last year
found workers are still cranking 30 to 100-year-old machines.
A 1999 Confederation
of Indian Industries study made a point: "Though ... there is (an)
acute problem of financial viability and the industry is sick, the millowners
have no dearth of money ... the need is for total revamping of the industry."
Unfortunately, private millowners in Bengal have collectively developed
a reputation of being penny-pinching, profit-driven, real-estate sharks.
"Their modus operandi is to make a frontman buy a sick mill, run
it for a few years, squeeze every rupee out in the name of revival and
finally close it down again," says Samir Banerjee of the Bengal Chatkal
Mazdoor Union, "till another frontman, sent by the same owner, comes
along." The perception is that each time, it's the worker who is
exploited (see box).
But
if labour protests take the form of Baranagar, investors will be driven
away. Shaken by the continued violence, many of Kolkata's panic-stricken
millowners are contemplating a southward shift. Some, like jute baron
Arun Bajoria, have already started operations in Andhra Pradesh. Bajoria
has recently bought four mills (worth over Rs 10 crore each) and insists
he'll "be the last person to buy a jute mill in Bengal after this".
The buzz has it that millowner Harsh Kanoria is also about to start a
modernised mill in Andhra. He's apparently already installed the machinery.
According to jute associations, at least four other millowners are considering
Andhra Pradesh as an option. The evasive owner of Baranagar, Govind Sarda,
apparently also runs a mill in Nellimarla, Vijayanagaram, though he says
he sold it three years ago.
From next
to nothing Andhra Pradesh has emerged as a formidable rival to Bengal's
jute industry. It has over 70 mills and its wage structure and labour
relations are better, says G.M. Singhvi, an industrial consultant. Another
study found that labourers in Andhra mills get less than a third of what
their Bengal counterparts do. It also said it takes 45 mandays to produce
a tonne of jute in Bengal, while it takes 32 mandays in Andhra Pradesh.
"But
the most important thing is the state government's support," says
a millowner. "The state has to stop pretending that all law and order
issues in mills are internal labour problems from which it must steer
clear. Only then can it arrest the flight of capital." That's not
something you can announce from a soapbox.
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