Friday 24 July 2009

Labor Movement in Pakistan

Labor movement of Pakistan
An overview


Labor as an organized movement is a relatively recent human experience. Laborers have been exploited since times unknown. With the advent of feudal society vassals and serfs started working for the overlord, usually in return for bare minimum in food, shelter and clothes. They had no recourse to law or religion, both under control of the landed gentry. Their plight was, in some ways, worse than that of slaves who being saleable community, had to be kept in prime physical shape.
With increasing complexity of society, a tiny percentage of people started specializing into professions. Artisans, physicians, mechanics, builders, potters, weavers, and tailors organized guilds and societies and gained a small measure of independence from landowners. (Teachers and clerics came from the landowner class). Relationship between masters/heads of guild ands pupil/workers was paternalistic, latter often living in master’s houses and regarded as family. The relationship usually continued even after the pupils got married. Employment was usually inherited.
With rapid growth of population, demand for commodities increased. Labor-intensive manufactories developed. Capitalist mode of production, however, had to wait for invention of steam driven engines, when fewer hands could replace a large number of workers. An era of mass unemployment starvation, homelessness and destitution ensued all over Europe.
Let us look at evolution of capitalism. An individual, for example, invested two dollars, paid his workers one dollar and sold the product for ten dollars, making a profit of seven dollars. According to Marxist dogma, he should have paid the worker four dollars and kept equal amount of money himself, as his management skills are deemed equal in worth (or even less) to laborers work. Capitalist theoreticians on the other hand claim that you can get any number of workers, but investors with management skills are few and deserve much higher return on their skills and acumen. In any case, capitalist mode of production flourished. Industries grew at a tremendous pace, more and more workers were hired and paid proportionately less and less to enhance return on investment. Individual concerns became partnerships and latter evolved into corporations transforming initial worker/owner personal interaction into totally impersonal relationship. With each improvement in efficiency of machinery, fewer hands were required and large numbers were let go. Production had to be increased during wars and at end of the conflict there would be further retrenchment.
Every person (and group) has a breaking point, beyond which he/she would fight back regardless of consequences or the strength of oppressors. Continual surrender comes to be perceived as worse than death. Palestinians, Iraqis and Chechnians, Irish and Burmese have taken on overwhelming powers. At some point, group of workers must have gone to the owner asking for more wages, shorter working days and weeks. The owner must have told them to get lost. There may have been violent suppression. All this eventually led to reforms and labor movement starting in late nineteenth century and culminating in the powerful labor unions and liberal/socialist government that sprung up all over Europe post World War II.
The above is much abbreviated and simplified account of events, which are well documented and are meant to provide background for the un-initiated but interested observer.
British and other colonists arrived in India, when the country was still in pre-industrial age. What is worse is that among the denizens of the country, high and low, there was no awareness of progress elsewhere. They were caught napping. The “Decline and fall” of Indian rulers is beyond the scope of this paper, but the consequent tardiness of the development of industry and labor movement is not. The British as their control grew, started aggressively discouraging Indian artisans. As their rule consolidated, they violently suppressed all manufacturing activity to the extent of chopping off the hands of Dhaka Muslin weavers. The Muslin they produced was world renowned and far superior in quality to the crude product of Lancashire Mills.
India was rich in agriculture. Its range of products ranged from rice, wheat, maize, pulses, and fruits to cotton, jute and indigo. It was rich in minerals, precious metals and stones, coal and forests. It was self sufficient in arms and ammunition. India produced more steel in the eighteenth century than the combined production of all the countries of Europe. Naval ships the British fought Napoleon with were made in India.
Moghal Empire had run out of “Martial steam”. Princes competed in patronage of arts and crafts rather than in military prowess. Cracks had developed in the ramparts. Central authority had receded, till the last emperor Bahadur Shah’s writ
extended only to the Red Fort. He had to ask British appointed magistrates for favors. Concept of nationalism was unknown yet. Allegiance was owed to regional satraps who till 1857 had paid nominal obeisance to the emperor. 1857 war of independence was the last convulsion of the dying empire. It was the last time that Hindus and Muslim Nawabs and the King united to fight against the interloper. Bahadur shah was a reluctant warrior. He had to be forced into leadership. He perhaps knew the quality of his followers. Given the circumstances, he rose to the occasion in a political sense. For the duration he banned cow slaughter during the Muslim festival of sacrifice.
The fight was essentially between North Indian rulers and the British. South India looked on and North West India fought side by side with the British. But for the support North West gave the colonists, Indians might have won.
After the victory, the British went on a rampage, killing hundreds of thousands, hanging people on trees for miles and miles and consigning innumerable copses to rivers. . Collaborators were richly rewarded. Paupers became feudal lords. Prior to that all land belonged to the King, who acknowledged acts of valor and appreciated scholarship by awarding lifetime income from the land. After defeat,
Indians went through a period of mourning; Muslims lamented more than Hindus as the former had “lost” the governance. Introspection prevailed and all modern knowledge shunned.
Hindus had survived a thousand years of Muslim rule. They excelled the Muslims in business, administration and finance. They controlled the machinery of the government and if the British had not supplanted Muslim rulers, Hindus, along with the Muslims of Non ruling class, would have wrested power from their overlords, as their counter parts did all over Europe. Feudal lords overcame the King and the common man in turn defeated the lords. It is not an unrealistic scenario. Hindu Rajas consorted with Muslim Nawabs and not their Hindu or Muslim subjects).
Hindus, having honed the skill of survival, were better able to with stand the onslaught of foreign rulers. The British patronized them initially and used them to put down Muslims as they having wrested power from the latter, they were more apprehensive of them.
We owe the later development of industry in India and adoption of “Western” mode of production to the resilience of the Hindu middle class. One linguistic group, the Gujratis stand out. (In fact it were Muslim Gujratis who dominated Business, commerce and industry in Pakistan East and West, till Z.A. Bhutto in a singularly successful attempt to restore feudal primacy, confiscated their business, pushing the country deeper into the morass of fundamentalism and obscurantism). The British could not control the march of time. Industry and commerce grew in India. Seeds of nationalism had been sown in the now receptive soil.
Labor did remain quiescent for too long. Communists had taken over Russia and successfully warded off the imperialist attacks. Communist party of India was launched in m 1915-1916 and one of the founder members was a Muslim and another a Hindu religious scholar!! They spearheaded the working class movement in India. With growth of indigenous industry trade unions emerged as a sizable factor.
Indian industrialists (national bourgeoisie) wholeheartedly supported the national liberation movement led by Indian national congress which was essentially bourgeoisie in character. Independence would free them of the primacy of British Capital, which exercised hegemonistic control over Indian market and raw material. Trade unions also supported liberation movement, but for altruistic nationalistic sentiments they allowed themselves to be exploited in the name of freedom. They relegated the fight for their rights to a status subservient to that of national struggle even though their leaders had no doubt that their lot would not necessarily change with departure of the British.
Having got rid of the common foe, industrialist and labor reverted to class struggle. There was a spate of strikes in late forties and early fifties. The national government, true to its character, exhorted labor to desist from and cease strike activity. But labor movement in India stood its ground, matured and has been an independent force to be reckoned with since independence.
Pakistan in 1947 did not have any industry worth the name. Jute was produced in East Pakistan, but Jute mills were in India. Cotton was grown in Punjab and Sind, but all mill owners had left for India. They were very few Muslim industrialists in British India. One could, in fact, count them on fingers of one hand. There were Isphahanis in Bengal, Saigols of the Punjab but domiciled in Calcutta, Habibs, Adamjis, Bavanis and Ragoonwalas in Bombay. Compared to Birlas and Tatas, they were insignificant. Most of middle-level and small businessmen were Non-Muslim too. Muslims dominated a few cottage industries- leather and metal works, handicrafts, carpet making etc.
Only a small number of laborers and farmers migrated to Pakistan. Immigrants were mostly civil servants of all classes, members of armed forces, artisans, and small businessmen. East Pakistan was largely rural. West Pakistan after departure of Non-Muslim industrialists and laborers was reduced to the same status. Pakistan inherited little of labor or progressive movement. Trade unions and (Indian communist party) had to assign personnel to Pakistan, with fond hopes of promoting class-consciousness. The workers in any case, were moved more by faith than by class struggle.
Labor movement progressed faster in East Pakistan. Owners and managers were Urdu and Gujrati speaking immigrants (Isphahanis though domiciled in Bengal, were, if anything, more foreign). Linguistic clash lent an edge to trade union activity. In West Pakistan, except for Karachi, there was little labor/trade activity. The vanguard of “progressives” were actually students. Trade unions were so weak that their leaders were able to barter away labor rights for personal gains, with impunity. A railway workers leader in the Punjab, himself a communist, defied a direct order from the secretary general of the party, confronted the government and had his union demolished. The left was so immature that it wasted whatever little influence it had in the misadventure of supporting an ill conceived military coup. The conspirators, well into their cups, confided in secret service agents, were easily picked up and put away. The civilian co-conspirators received long jail sentences or deported to India.
The essential character of Pakistan movement was feudal. Except for Jinnah and a few other Bengal and Bombay Barristers, all leaders were large landowners, progeny of supporters of the British in 1857 war of independence. They would not countenance industry or education, much less labor rights. Natural resources had to be exploited, there was a mercantile class eager to do it, but their efforts were sabotaged. Industry developed much more slowly than it should have. Bureaucracy, armed forces and Mullahs ultimately derive their strength from the feudal class. Labor gains rights at the expense of this evil quad. Nascent bourjoise joined hands with it in depriving labor of rights and amenities. “Progressive” political parties would make all kinds of promises at the time of elections. Conservative parties would too. Neither would keep their word. Progressives never had to honor their pledge. They never got power. Nevertheless, labor movement had taken great strides, during the chaotic years of “Parliamentary Democracy” from 1951 to 1958, but before they could develop into a worthwhile force, Ayub’s marital law banned all political activity and all talk of any kinds of strikes became illegal.
Ayub ruled from 1958 to 1969, followed by General Yahya from 1969 to 1971. Civil war in East Pakistan followed the 1970 elections. Bhutto, self styled progressive and the most articulate politician of the time, hood winked trade unions, students, farmers and intelligentsia alike, and became the dictator of West (now all) Pakistan. Laborers had been told that factories belonged to them. They banished owners and supervisors from many a work place. Having no management skills themselves, they let production go downhill. Destruction of industry would only help restore the deadly grip, loosened only a little by industry, of feudals over the country. True to his feudal origin, Bhutto nationalized industry and Banks wholesale. Capital and capitalists fled the country reducing economy to the primitive agrarian base of 1947.
Bhutto was followed by the Muslim Machiaveli, Zia, who shared the delusions, but not the skill, of grandeur with Bhutto. He led Pakistan down the garden path of Islamization and Jihad and left drug and gun culture as his legacy. A plan crash took Zia to his longed for “Paradise”. Three unstable civilian governments all beholden to the armed forces followed. The fourth government won over two third majority in Parliament. The PM sacked a naval chief and forced an army chief into retirement. It was too much for armed forces to take. Musharraf clipped his wings with ease and consigned him to a comfortable exile.
What all progressives in Pakistan have abysmally failed to understand is that Pakistan is an un-regenerate feudal society. It has of necessity to develop into a Capitalist society before the seeds of human rights, labor movement and democracy will germinate. All progressives including working class have to support industrialists of the country without which representative institution will not be prevail .To complain that, this party or that did not honor their word or civilian governments was not any better than military ones is a sign of sheer political naiveté. Labor movement has to close its ranks, align with progressive elements, support national bourgeoisie and together undermine the evil Quad.

No comments:

Post a Comment