Radical Notes
JournalAuthor Archive
Video: On Maruti Workers’ Strike
Pradeep, a leader of Maruti Suzuki Employees Union, talks about the various aspects of Maruti Workers’ agitation. He also notes the designs of the capitalists to use Maruti issues to effect changes in the labour laws.
October 17: Gurgaon Rally in Support of Maruti Suzuki Workers
Rally in support of Maruti Suzuki Workers (Oct 17 2011) from Radical Notes on Vimeo.
Solidarity Strike: Interview with Suzuki Powertrain Workers
Suzuki Powertrain Workers in solidarity with Maruti Suzuki workers. They see this struggle as not company-specific, rather it represents the pain and anger of general workers throughout the country. They find in this struggle a widespread industrial unrest in making.
More on Struggle for Maruti Suzuki Employee Union
Interview with Mathew Abraham on the ongoing conflict in Maruti plant at Manesar.
1st september 2011 – The Struggle for Maruti Suzuki Employee Union
Amit of Krantikari Naujawan Sabha has been interacting with the Maruti workers for the past few months.
9 Aug ’11 – 100hr Student Youth Barricade Against Corruption and Corporate Loot (part 2)
Organised by Student-Youth Campaign Against Corruption at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi after a nation wide campaign. Interview with Aslam Khan, Student-Youth Campaign Against Corruption
9 Aug ’11 – 100hr Student Youth Barricade Against Corruption and Corporate Loot
Organised by Student-Youth Campaign Against Corruption at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi after a nation wide campaign. Interview with Kavita Krishnan of CPI (ML)Liberation
Delhi University: DO WE KNOW WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING IN OUR DEPARTMENT?
WHAT ARE WE DOING ABOUT IT?
Do we support of the Department becoming a Police State?
NO!
Do we support the presence of Bouncers in Faculty meetings?
NO!
Do we voice our dissent?
NO!
Silence in the face of Totalitarianism is equal to Support for Totalitarianism.
Is this who we want to be?
An apathetic and apolitical body of students?
Do we care?
THE NEED OF THE HOUR is to MEET.
Take time to look beyond busy exam schedules at the big picture,
Recognise the value of having an academic space which allows faculty and students to express opinions.
GET INFORMED. Read http://kafila.org/2011/04/18/is-it-nineteen-eighty-four-already/
SHOW SUPPORT.
hello all,
its time we put an end to this long silence.
what are we doing? what exactly are we doing? an MA? running desperately towards a degree? with as much speed as possible?
the only thing that can really get us into gear is exams! i wished we could do better than that. else, we could do much better in the apathetic corporate sector and science colleges we so critique for their “apoliticalness”. are we, the literature students, who theorise and tear authors and critics apart, better just because we STUDY lit.? for we dont seem to be any more political than the table in my room.
facebook is the platform for our protests. upcoming exams, bad syllabi, lack of chairs in classrooms and unsatisfactory IA – all of it goes on facebook. and of course, we expect our techie teachers to take the hint and sort our problems for us. we, helpless souls are limited to our computer mouses. thats as far as we move our fingers. the only time we draft petitions are when we want exams to be postponed, even when it is a perfectly comfortable date sheet. that’s as far we theory people can delve in practice. of course, we expect some of the practioners to see our protests on face book and demonstrate it physically for us.
and surely we do not waste our time organising seminars or attending the ones which were painstakingly fought for by the “over-enthu” and apparently not-so-studious few for their own fun.
why would the messy MA admission process bother us once we are done with it?
why will the semester system issue for UG level bother us, for we are Post Graduate students!
why should it matter if the dept is in a state of chaos, for we will get going soon enough. and if there are those who want to stay here, its their problem.
and if our teachers and mentors who have helped us through so many different things, why should we feel grateful? after all, its their job?
NO. its not their “job” to deal with our questions outside the class. its not their “job” to push for a better IA mechanism or organise a students seminar, or listen to our personal problems, as a lot of them do.
but we do ‘like’ and ‘comment’ on their plight on FB. and surely, as students, busy preparing for our exams (which probably cant happen if these teachers were not there), we cant be expected to do more! poor, helplessly busy us.
we cant speak for ourselves, we cant speak for anyone else. and of course we are students of English Literature who specialize in being articulate, in making coherent theoretical arguments and speaking for the rights of the “mute” subaltern. well, charity begins at home. start speaking for the rights of the environment you are a part of, even if provisionally.
can we please, for once, get over ourselves, our petty goals, our exam phobias and take responsibility for our political positions. for, inaction and silence does not mean NEUTRAL GROUND. it is very much a position. it is very much a choice!
can we, for once, try to take our grudges beyond our comfortable computer tables and fb groups and actually step out to express the beliefs and critiques we so well write down to get a 60%?
can we for once think of a future beyond exams? we are not half as messed up as we will be in the time to come, if we keep shirking from our political responsibilities, if we are not willing to interfere in the course things take in our work/study places, if we are self-obsessed enough to allow the flow of things to drown us.
we have actually read very little, and perhaps understood even less. for if we had understood, we wouldnt have been in the pitiable shape that we are, letting ourselves down as we have.
So. Do we meet? When?
Videos: Dismantling Democracy in the University (March 4, 2010)
Following is the video of a seminar organised by Correspondence and Kudos, the Literary Society of Hindu College (University of Delhi) on 4th March, 2010 with the aim of initiating a discussion on radical student and university politics.
Birendra Nayak on People’s Movements in Orissa
Birendra Nayak, Prof. of Mathematics, Utkal University, has been studying the movements in Orissa for the past 30years. In this interview, he talks to Correspondence and Radical Notes about the limitations of the very many struggles in the region and future possibilities.
Part – 2
Part – 3
Correspondence Pamphlet No 4: The Student as a Worker
This pamphlet was read and distributed in the Seminar, “Dismantling Democracy in the University”, organised in the University of Delhi on March 4 2010.
Is the semester system good or bad? If we say it is bad then why do we say so? I would say, and many might concur that privatization of the educational sector is also bad. Why do we say that? In the final session, we will discuss ‘politics in the university;’ why do we need a politics at all here? To begin to answer any such questions a more fundamental question needs to be addressed. What is the university and what do we do here?
The university is a workplace, where students, teachers and the karmcharis work. What is work about? It is about production – human beings are creative, and we create in our workplace. As creative beings we find fulfilment in what we create; what we create is an extension of ourselves, through which we reach out to others who are also part of society. In the university knowledge is produced; we study, teach, research and discuss. As creative beings involved in the production/creation of knowledge it is through the knowledge we produce that we put forth ourselves, our identities to the world. To truly find fulfilment, to be happy in other words, we would like to determine what we create, how we create and with what we create; this holds equally for teaching, learning, researching and by extension discussing. Although some could argue that the work place, in this case the university is not that important a site in our lives, home is more important. But honestly, we spend so much of our time and energy here, that it would be foolish to argue that it has no bearing on our happiness; some amount of thinking should make this seem self-evident. So then assuming that for happiness it is necessary for this space in its capacity as a workplace be fulfilling, we can contend that: it is important for us to have a say in the decisions that determine its running. So if new changes are being imposed into its structure, we as the people who work here, and to whom by extension this place belongs, have the right to not accept these changes, and even to remodel older structures. What determines our likes and dislikes is the ability or inability of these structures to gives us space for the fulfilment of our creativity.
In this framework of ‘those who work’ in the university, students are an uncomfortable fit. When the teachers view them, or the administration, the students are either consumers or products. They are paying for a commodity, education, which they should get – so if teachers go on strike, they break the producer-consumer pact. Or it is the task of the teachers to prepare students for the market, so if they go on strike, they are hindering production. When individuals situated in the university, as subjects, look at the university, they see that while for those who “work” here it is the permanent site of labour, for the majority of the students, it fails to have any connotations of finality. Studenthood is a temporary state, a purgatorial interlude that precedes entry into the heaven of work and salaries. When one tries to “politicize” this space, one of the main problems one faces is that students do not feel that they have much to gain by its improvement – “I’m here only for one more year.”
A substantial number of professors have been cribbing about the semester system, but there is not much they can do. They are afraid to go on strike, because they themselves feel that by hindering production and by breaking the consumer pact they will be ‘harming careers’ and might bring the wrath of the ministry on them. On there own, they cannot stop these developments. They need to communicate with the students, establish a bond altogether different from the pedagogic one that exists right now. They need to be able to think about students differently, students as part of the same continuum as they, working in the university, desiring fulfilment, affected by what affects the teachers. In a system where value is eternally deferred, the formal manifestation being exchange value, even when they start getting salaries they don’t get fulfilment. What is common to the time when they will get salaries and now, is that in both realms they labour, work, make use of their creativity, and in circumstances that they do not determine.
If I were to translate ‘creativity’ in the register that agitational politics usually makes use of: it is nothing but our capacity and need to labour. Understanding creativity like this would allow us to elaborate upon the nature of the said continuum. When Marx says ‘working class,’ does he mean only the ‘male, white, industrial proletariat?’ Maybe. But what was the logic behind designating somebody a worker? The working class is that section of the people on which work is imposed; the people who are alienated from their creativity, who are forced to create in circumstances that they do not want to create in, and who as a result will have to fight to be able to determine these circumstances. There was another concept, that Marx often made use of: the collective worker. The collective worker is this continuum, a continuum beyond localized time or space, of the working class subjectivity. The collective worker is a universal, common to all those on whom work is imposed. Work is imposed on the collective worker: the collective worker is made of various people on whom work is imposed in various ways; in a different way in the factory, in a different way in agriculture, in a different way in the university, in a different way in the household. So work is imposed on the professor in one way. We propose that work is imposed on the student in another. Studenthood is a phase in the life of this ‘collective worker.’ It doesn’t matter if some students come from rich households, if some will go on to become factory owners, or vice chancellors, at the moment of studenthood they are part of the collective worker. Professors and students are part of the same continuum. They together occupy the university, and in fighting for self-determination they are essentially on the same side. So in opposition to the student as a consumer, and the student as a product, is the student as worker. That the student does not create ‘value’ does not matter, because capitalism decides what is valuable and what is not: but this does not change the fact that work is imposed upon the student.
Anyhow, we need self-determination for happiness, and for self-determination we have to fight. The tribal in Chhattisgarh might need to fight the police, multinationals, and the armed forces for self-determination, the factory worker will need to fight the factory owner, we have to fight the administration, the vice chancellor for instance. If students, teachers and Karamcharis work in the university, what right has any random person to determine what will happen here? The Vice Chancellor and his pals are not elected representatives; they come in through mechanisms in which we have no say. Today we might be fighting the semester system, or the service regulations, or against the attendance rule, fee-hike or for timely payment of karamchari salaries, but we also need to fight the arbitrariness with which these problems impose themselves upon us. It is not enough to say that the vice-chancellor should not bring in the semester system, we have to ask why the vice-chancellor should do anything at all? If there has to be an administrative body, then we should elect it, and have the power of immediate recall, if what we don’t want to happen happens. Of course all this is a long way off, but are we even ready to think our problems through? If we don’t push further than questioning a move here or a move there, we should know that till there is an administration, such things will happen.
What about political students’ organizations: essentially left organizations. How do they see the university and the students? They too seem to not think of the university as a valid site for struggle. For them it seems, the struggle is always somewhere else: in the forest, or in the factory or in slums? Of course it is there. It needs to be fought there. But it is also here. And it needs to be fought here as well. The university is not a place where activists are to be made to go and fight elsewhere. Unless we bring the struggle home, fight the particular forms of power that we face, transformation can never happen. I don’t intend to be vituperative; these are not charges. It is just an appeal to rethink the aims of struggle in the university.
Someone could ask, ‘what if we do get this right to determine what happens here? What if we are allowed to elect our own administration? Does this mean our problems are over?’ No, of course not. If we struggle merely for power to regulate, it won’t take us anywhere. Once we gain it, instead of the current administration some of us will be mediating between the market and the university. The outside, which will continue to be a problem, arbitrary, based on the idea of profit, not human happiness, will still determine us. Self-determination will not be complete in this localized fashion. Our demand for self-determination at a local level can only be tactical, not the final end. People everywhere face the problem that we face here, in different forms, in different degrees; but essentially the same. True self-determination, true democracy can only come when the structure that centres this dynamic is destroyed. People struggling in their respective circumstances, for self-determination, will finally need to come together to push the struggle to its culmination. But this is a somewhat larger matter. We start with what we face, with the local structure through which power tries to determine our lives. In the process we will of course, as Laclau would say, solve a number of small problems, make our lives in the university a little better, bring a greater degree of democracy here, but we must keep in mind that these small things are not the end, because the end is that which seems impossible right now; this impossible can be made possible, through an act which will retroactively make its own impossibility the condition of its possibility, shifting the horizon of possibility altogether.
