Ordinance Factory Employees (Federations, Associations, Unions) were to go on strike on 26 July, 2021 against the corporatisation of Ordinance Factory (OF) and against the Essential Defense Service Act, which barred them from protesting and going on strikes. This, they rightly claimed, is snatching away their democratic rights.
Further, they were angry against the arbitrary and biased decisions by the GOI, who violated all the norms, previous written assurance and agreements. But the strike fizzled out without even giving a warning to the government, meting out another humiliation to the working class and its Trade Unions.
Then the government had announced in Parliament that the Unions and employees had “agreed” to the government’s proposal for OFB’s corporatisation on the former’s terms and conditions. And now, on 28 September, 2021, the government announced that the OFB would be dissolved and placed under seven Corporations with effect from 01 October, 2021.
The various unions, like All India Defense Employees Federation (AIDEF), leaning to the Left, and Bhartiya Pratiraksha Majdoor Sangh (BPMS), affiliated to RSS, are going to various HCs, but are refraining from any form of protest, except wearing black badges on 1 October, 2021; which they will celebrate as “Black Day“.
OFs were under Department of Defense Production (DDP). Finally, they are under the public domain and will be treated like any other PSUs. Now 41 OFs are split and converted into seven non-viable PSUs, called DPSU (Defense Public Sector Undertaking).
In brief, let us see the works of earlier OFB:
- Ordinance Clothing Factory in Chennai. The task is to stitch personal protective equipment.
- Twelve OFs of ammunition and explosives.
- Five OFs of producing vehicles.
- Five OFs producing weapons and equipment.
- Eight OFs metals and steels.
- Three OFs opto-electronics.
- One OF ordinance parachutes in Kanpur.
- The turnaround of OFs was 19,000 Crore.
How The Bill Was Passed In Parliament
While the whole country is burning with the CAA and JNU attack, children of paper mill workers in Assam have allegedly come out on the streets—not to protest, but beg. https://t.co/3jemUlmjvT
— Youth Ki Awaaz (@YouthKiAwaaz) January 9, 2020
Before the dissolution of OFB, without any discussion, despite the opposition demanding on 04 August, 2021, the defence minister, Rajnath Singh, had announced that the government had taken all the employees into confidence (and hence, where was the need for the opposition to discuss?) and there would be no hindrance in defence supply.
If you remember, the Pegasus Scam was in the air, and other “non-essential” issues were sidelined naturally. And Essential Defense Service Bill, 2021 (EDS, 2021) was passed by voice votes, albeit without any discussion.
It was also claimed that the EDS Act, 2021 was only for 1 year, so why worry (and where was the need for any discussion)? Are we heading towards the Parliament less democracy?
Now, most of the Unions are going to various HCs, like Madras and Delhi, to seek justice. The so-called claim of the GOI, and the defence minister, is busted that the employees were convinced and assured with the government’s proposal and agreed to comply with the corporatisation, and other new acts, working conditions.
Even the Indian Ordinance Federation Services (IOFS) Officer’s Association has filed a case against the methods of selection of the top management, CMDs.
What Was The Government’s Reasoning Behind This?
- Due to lack of competition, the quality of products was lacking (a false allegation).
- Make the OFs (now DPSUs) more autonomous, accountable, efficient in supplying the ordinance through competition.
- Make the newly constructed DPSUs (old OFs) profitable. The role of the OFs was never to create profit but to supply arms and ammunition and other ordinance to the Armed Forces with minimum resources and move forward to make the country self-independent in defence equipment (though that was never achieved).
- We know through experience, while being under the rule of BJP (and even under the Congress Government, more so after the 1990s), the top corporations and financiers will become shareholders very soon, and privatisation will follow, in the name of “Atmanirbhar Bharat”.
- The pension and other facilities or the employees, like leave, medical and educational aids, PFs, EPF of the workers and their families will vanish, the contract workers will replace the permanent workers, and thus, make the DPSUs “profitable”.
A simple and small example, where the question is only of the future of approximately 86 thousand employees. We have in front of us hundreds of millions of workers whose future and present itself is dark, who are being surplused from the field of production.
From organised sectors to unorganised sectors, from unorganised sectors to becoming self-sustaining workers in streets and fields, maybe part of contract workers, and finally into the category of lumpen workers and paupers.
Privatisation takes place in bulk, with the sole consideration of selling public properties, be it banks, insurance companies, factories or mines. They are part of the concentration and centralisation of production and capital. Even the big ones are being sucked into this process.
More so when the government is doing it on behalf of the capitalist class forcefully and the resistance of the working people has been made absurd.
Social mobility is downwards, more so, if one is at the lower steps in the social ladders; in caste and minorities, tribal society, women, small and poor farmers. For them, there is no constitutional help, neither by any political parties nor NGOs.
Yes, many of them have government-sponsored “ration”, “employments”, as in MNREGA, if they can survive, fine enough, if not, that will be the “Act of God”, or will be examples of “happens”, which used to happen earlier also, happening in other countries. But the country and the GDP are progressing, to which the world is bowing.
What Needs To Be Done?
Think, educate politically, educate the masses, unite and act. We had the farmers movement, which was successful as far as the three Farm Bills were concerned, as they were repealed, even though they could not manage all the demands from the government, like the end of all the FIRs against the farmers, MSP and the legal binding on the government to buy the farmers’ yields, etc.
Further, this movement, though shook the fundamentalist government in the centre, its effect on the people’s political consciousness is yet to be seen, as far as the historical socialist revolution is concerned.
The labour movement, on occasions, had been historical, but only as a token, despite more than 20 crore workers joining the protest. Crowds do not make revolutions, though the number of the working people and allies are needed for any successful revolution who revolt against the existing unbearable exploitative and repressive system, creating revolutionary situations.
There has been a shift in the structure of the working class in India as the organised sectors are shrinking and unorganised sectors are swelling, approaching 94–95%. The role of the contract workers has risen through Labor Mate or Contractor.
Educating these workers and uniting them is a difficult task, though some efforts have been made by the existing Labor Unions or party of the workers, albeit their roles have been in the scanner, due NGOism, like making Labor Card, helping them get compensation if fatal accidents have taken place at workplaces, other facilities from the government, even on “commission”.
However, the role of the advanced section of the working class, as the vanguard, cannot be denied. Neither has it shifted to any other class (be it “informal sector”, service or in the agricultural sector, despite the rise of militancy, due to farmers one year plus movement and victory), however militant the allies or other workers may become unless armed with the revolutionary ideology.
Our task, as before, remains agitation and propaganda among the working class, youths, intelligentsia, strengthening the revolutionary party, created and developed on the principle of democratic revolution. The fight with the exploited and the oppressed people must lead to the alternative for the present capitalist plunder, that is socialism, based on social ownership of the means of production as well as subsistence.
Whatever and however reactionary or repressive the situation may be, the work of the revolutionary party must continue, ideologically as well as in practice, overground and underground. Negate reformism for revolution.