Posted by Radical Notes August 27, 2008 at 11:06 pm in Working Class, Press Release, Labour, Women's oppression, India
The Delhi Shramik Sangathan, a federation of Construction Workers Union & Car Cleaners Union along with its constituent organization Delhi Domestic Workers Union jointly organized a rally on Tuesday, 26th, Aug’08 at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. Around 1500 domestic workers attended the rally and submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister, Labour Ministry and the Lok Sabha Speaker.
The rally was addressed by several eminent political leaders, Union leaders, scholars and social activists.
Anita Juneja, convener of Delhi Domestic workers unions welcome the participants at rally and urged the domestic workers of Delhi to increase the pace of the movement so that domestic workers could become a political forces to reckon with. She said that around seven-eight lakh strong workforce of domestic workers in the city is working at paltry sums of Rs 1200 – 1500 per month and live in semi-human conditions of bondage and starvation. They are victims of constant verbal and sexual abuse without any grievance redressal mechanism. Worsening their situation is the city administration’s brutal eviction drive – dislocating and destabilizing the lives of the very people without whom the city would come to a crippling halt. This disruption of people’s lives has led to children being the worst victims with an absolute denial of basic health care and education. Spending the meagre resources available to them to tackle continuous illness, the children by the age of ten are also forced to join as domestic help to contribute to the paltry income of the family. In the absence of any provision of maternity benefit, pension, ESI, PF, Gratuity, health facilities, crèche at work site etc these workers are forced to continue with no security of work.
The union along with Nirmala Niketan approached the National Commission of Women (NCW) to raise the issue at the national level. A subcommittee was formed by NCW to draft the bill on Regulation of Employment & Working Condition of Domestic Workers. The draft prepared was discussed during the National Consultation on Domestic workers organized by NCW on 14th-15th of March’08 at New Delhi. The recommendations of the consultation have been finalized. Now the recommendations need to be incorporated in the Bill drafted by the Sub-Committee of NCW and the final shape of the Bill need to be sent to the Central Government as recommendations of the NCW.
Details of the NCW proposal
Under the proposed law a tripartite Board is to be formed by the State & Union Territories governments. This Board will register all employers, domestic workers and Placement Agencies. Board will collect its fund mainly from the registration of employers. Rs.1000 per year will be collected from the employer of live-in full time domestic Worker and Rs.200 per year from the employer of part time domestic Worker, which will add to about rupees one hundred crore rupees per annum in Delhi alone. In addition the Board will collect a nominal fee of Rs.100 per annum from the live-in full time domestic worker and Rs 20 per year from the part time domestic worker. Rs.100 per placement per year will be collected from the placement agencies besides a lump sum fees and security amount depending upon the number of annual placement done by an Agency.
The Board will provide an identity Card, bank account, regular medical check up, shelter in crisis & sickness, provide working conditions, dispute regulation, regulation of placement agency, keep full record of domestic workers which will check and prevent child labor in domestic work and help in tracing trafficked girls to prevent trafficking for domestic work.
The demand of the Domestic workers is to accept Domestic Work as ‘Work’ and Domestic Worker as ‘Workers’ and lend it the dignity and reorganization of labor. Consequently all benefits and rights that accrue to workers must be extended to this huge workforce (of which no census statistics are available) so far unprotected by any labor legislation. Minimum labor standards should be applied to achieve decent conditions of work and a living wage by including domestic workers as unorganized sector worker as the Central Government representatives assured the Supreme Court of India in a PIL on behalf of Domestic Workers.
The rally demanded that –
1. The legislation proposed by the National Commission for Women be called The Domestic Workers (Regulation and Conditions of Employment & Welfare) Act;
2. The Domestic Worker Act should provide for compulsory registration of Employers, Domestic Workers and all service providers, including placement agents/Agencies and contractors;
3. The Tripartite Boards of Domestic Workers should constitute State/District level Committees for complain against sexual harassment at work place which should also provide protection for women going about to work as Domestic Workers;
4. Domestic Workers should also be registered at the source area and regulation of employment along with ID cards be done, also at source;
5. Minimum age of employment should be 16 years;
6. Tripartite Boards of Domestic Worker to be set up to regulate employment conditions, social security and welfare measures. The board should be authorized to constitute dispute resolution councils and Appellate Authorities;
7. Tripartite Board of Domestic Worker should have 50% representative of Domestic Workers directly elected by the registered domestic workers and 25% representatives of related department of Central and States Governments such as Labor, Child and Women Welfare, SC/ST Welfare, Social Welfare etc. and 25% representatives of employers and Resident Welfare Associations;
8. Tripartite Boards of Domestic Workers should be authorized to formulate guidelines for regulating employment and working conditions for domestic workers going outside India as domestic workers and provide social security to them;
9. All Labor laws to apply including Minimum wages Act, Payment of wages Act, Workmen’s’ compensation act, Accidents benefit Act, etc. and any such legislations applicable to industrial workers;
10. Tripartite Boards of Domestic Workers will be authorized to file complains/FIR etc. on behalf of Domestic Workers where the Domestic Workers is not in a position to file a complain;
11. Rights to inspection of workplace and living space by individuals / groups / organizations as assigned by the Tripartite Board of Domestic Workers;
12. Tripartite Boards of Domestic Workers will primarily depend upon the registration fees collected from Employers, Domestic Worker and Placement Agencies but till enough fees is collected the government must make adequate budgetary provisions for implementing the Act either as grants or loan.
Contact Address: c/o- Flat No-231, Pocket-A, Sector-13, Ph-II, Dwarka, New Delhi-110075. Ph-011-28031792; email- delhidss@gmail.com
Posted by Radical Notes August 27, 2008 at 1:54 am in Communalism, Orissa, India
Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
1. RELIGIOUS REVIVALISM BECOMES BLOODY
A stalwart of Hindu religious revivalism Laxmanananda Saraswati has been shot dead while resting in a female child asylum at Tumudibandha of Kandhamal district along with five others at about 8.30 in the evening of August 23.
RSS alleges that Christian religious fanatics have killed Laxmananand who was very active in foiling their attempts to Christianize the tribals and hence was in their hit list.
Orissa has experienced a lot of communal conflict due to religious revivalism. Laxmanananda was a known agent provocateur whom the Law and order authorities a few months ago had prohibited to enter into Phulbani in order to contain communal carnages.
Plutocracy, ushered into India by Manmohan Singh infested Congress and pampered by profiteers’ political organ BJP, is eager to keep the jungle-dweller tribes subdued forever as it is only they, who can valiantly resist the spread of industry and trade that needs to grab their land and to destroy their environment to proceed and profit.
Therefore plutocracy is apprehensive of a tribal uprising, specifically as, abandoned by mainstream politicians and exploited by local bureaucrats and middlemen and contractors and moneylenders and traders, they have got a strong ally in the left-wing ultras that the exploiters and their pet media go on projecting as Naxals or Maoists. The left-wing ultras have given the tribes their voice to raise demands for their economic rights and as evidenced in spread of Naxal influence from district to district, the poor peoples’ voice of demand for their economic right is stronger day by day. This is fidgeting the scoundrels that are exploiting the peoples.
As this new phase of peoples uprising is getting more defined, the precipitators of plutocracy are using a two-pronged strategy. One, they are using state exchequer to instigate armed forces to annihilate the left-wing ultras in blatant contravention of the civil laws in force and two, they are encouraging religious revivalists to confuse peoples into the fold of fate so that plutocracy gets a good shock-absorber to surge ahead. This is why in Orissa’s tribal areas where left-wing ultras are active, religious revivalists are seen aggressively active.
When the armed forces engaged against left-wing ultras are not ready to block the poor peoples’ demand for economic rights, the religious revivalists are intrinsic to plutocracy and are active supporters of plutocratic power play as plutocracy for survival fully depends on existence of God or Gods that the religious revivalists create, propagate and protect.
So religious revivalism is a political game aimed at putting exploiters in power. No game is a game if rivals are not there. Naturally therefore, there is bitter rivalry between the Christian and Hindu fanatics in Kandhamal and similar other places. Hindu religious chauvinists are marked for their support to Indian capitalists when Christian religious fanatics are active collaborators of foreign capitalist interest in India. There rivalry is not religious but in the guise of religion it in reality is a politico-economic rivalry that in other words may be said as national versus international rivalry in serving the system of exploitation. No wonder, it is bitter.
This bitter rivalry has led to death of Laxmanananda. If anybody is to take note of this, it is the religious revivalist of all hue, primarily.
They should note that if their foul play against poor people in the name of religion does not stop, time will come, no God would come to their rescue as Laxmananand’s God has notably failed to save him. As dinosaurs supposedly killed each other and got extinct, the religious revivalists would kill each other as bloody stooges of politico-economic rivals both in the national and international arenas.
Orissa’s Tumuribandha may just be the beginning.
2. LAXMANANANDA’S POSTHUMOUS MISUSE BY ADVANI AND CNN-IBN
BJP leader L.K.Advani and media organization CNN-IBN have preferred Hindu sectarian leader Laxmanananda’s posthumous misuse against Leftist ultras through premature assertions that Naxals have killed him, when, his own organization Viswa Hindu Parisad that is supposed to know where the shoe really pinched has declared that it is the Christian fanatics who are the real killers.
Both the assertions are premature and irresponsible specifically as the matter is under active investigation by rightful authorities.
We have earlier discussed that religious revivalism that has ruined the peace and tranquility of tribal belt is meant to counter Naxal influence by pushing peoples into the labyrinth of fate so that they can tolerate economic exploitation by accepting their wretchedness as the result of sins they might have committed in previous birth. So religious revivalism, conversions and counter-conversions and acrimonious sectarian quarrels practiced by both the Hindu and Christian chauvinists are not meant for making peoples religious but are promoted by Indian capitalism and American imperialism to stop evolution of exploited peoples’ conscious rising for their economic rights by blocking the spread of Naxal influence. In other words, rival religion practitioners are not their enemy; the real enemy is the Naxal organization. Therefore, Advani was quite eager to attribute Laxmanananda’s annihilation to the Naxals only.
Naxals are known as politically aggressive advocates of wretchedly poor and blatantly exploited peoples’ economic rights. Therefore to oppose them is a clear act of exploitive political activism. Advani is an exploitive political activist. When peoples of Orissa had raised the first ever Indian mass movement against deliberate price rise by profiteers and hoarders and blackmarketeers in the early eighties, Advani had instigated marwadis to observe Diwali as ‘Black Diwali” in protest against the Orissan movement. So there is nothing unusual in his attempts to make propaganda that Naxals have killed Laxmanananda. And he has not done any wrong by that, because that is the right way in pursuit of his political creed and nothing other than that is expected of him. In doing this he has just extended the mission of Laxmanananda in a political way that he is supposed to do as a right wing politician.
But why a media organization like CNN-IBN has ignored the minimum professional discipline needed in such cases and shown so eagerness to use Laxmanananda posthumously against the Naxals?
Conduct of this organization in cash for confidence vote matter exposed recently is yet alive in mass memory. Therefore it attracts suspicion in matter of its motive in trading this most premature but prejudiced propaganda that Naxals have killed Laxmanananda, the master craftsman of counter-conversions so dear to Hindu ultras.
Advani and this media organization look like close collaborators in frustrating the peoples who love democracy, peace and tranquility and want inequality to honorably end.
Subhash Chandra Pattanayak is a senior Oriya journalist and litterateur
