Japanese Management, Indian Resistance: The Struggles Of Maruti Suzuki Workers – Anjali Deshpande & Nandita Haksar

Description

Violence broke out on 18 July 2012 at the Manesar plant of India’s largest car manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki. A manager died, and 90 other managers and hundreds of workers were injured. Within days, over 2,000 temporary and 546 permanent workers were dismissed by the company, and 13 of them—including the entire leadership of the workers’ union—were later charged for murder, thus destroying yet another body for collective bargaining.

The often misrepresented events of July 2012 were thus far from an isolated incident. But few people today, as then, are willing to see the matter from the workers’ point of view. To ask if those accused of committing violence received a fair trial, or understand the dehumanizing pressures that they were subjected to. This book is one of the first to tell the Maruti Suzuki story through the voices of the workers. Interviewed over three years, they tell us of their resistance to being turned into robots by an uncompromising management, and the price they were made to pay for it. Their story is not only that of a union fighting for workers’ rights; it is a glimpse into the new India that is emerging: a welfare state transforming into a corporate state, in which profits trump the rights of citizens.