Re: Strike woes haunt Maruti's Manesar plant again. 1 DEAD & Production hit Quote:
Originally Posted by born_free There has been passionate discussion on this thread and I am happy that the discussions are held in true spirit.
I personally feel that whatever happened inside Maruti can have negative effects on the economic development of state.
There is research paper in internet which investigates the downfall of West Bengal from a
being one of the richest state in 1965 to its current not so good postion.
One of the reasons it mentions is labor issues for the decline of industry in WB.
I understand there may be Bhpians from the West Bengal who may not agree to this but I also hope there is nothing offensive or personal in my posts.
I have done my higher studies in this state and so have natural curiosity as external observer.
Full article can be read at http://www.econ.ucla.edu/people/pape.../lahiri319.pdf |
No offense taken. I was expecting the communist angle to drop in given the city I hail from. As I have stated earlier I am not one nor there is any love lost between me and the communists here. Since time immemorial I have always been with war with them actually. But I don't raise my hand in salute with the other hand on my heart to say that. The problem is the extremist form of capitalism that has sadly taken over many nations including India expects unquestionable and blind allegiance to this extremist form of capitalism while openly shunning communism or any other ism which could have a divergent viewpoint.
Coming to the study you have quoted, I happened to browse through it and what it seems like it quite accurately shows the downfall of manufacturing industries in West Bengal during the most part of its communist rule backing it up with the right facts, figures and graphs (correct me if I am wrong in this presumption). However one thing we should not ignore is that statistics are like bikinis. They hide far more than they reveal. Did this study cover why an extreme version of a leftist movement such as communism took over West Bengal like that? What were the primary reasons behind that? Its not that one fine day all Bengalis out here woke up and decided that they would become communists? History has repetitively shown us that when a fairly large group of people feel that they are being exploited due to certain policies or laws then there is a backlash. This backlash generally takes some grotesque form which is always harmful as we see in the case of MSIL. The rise of communism in the erstwhile USSR or the rise of fascism through the third Reich in Deutscheland and Mussolini in Italy after their back breaking economic hardships in the 1930s are resultants of such extreme reactions. More recently we have the examples of Islamic fundamentalists who are killing in the name of religion. The result of such extreme backlashes sow the seeds of even more backlashes. In my view one of them is the Ayn Randism after the rise of the communists. A more recent example is the rise of the extreme far right and left parties in Eastern Europe and Greece because of the economic mayhem they are going through. If one were to do a root cause analysis of the causes that give rise to such extremism we find that it is due to the extreme economic hardships faced by the commoner that reason loses to emotion. Unless we have a wholesome policy to address that instead of piecemeal approaches which reward only the select few including the biggest shareholders, this problem is not going to go away. I know we have gone quite here so let me bring this out in context of MSIL.
Rightly or wrongly the contract workers felt that they are being short changed by MSIL even though they were doing the same amount of work. The problem festered for months and culminated in an extreme reaction where unfortunately a life was lost needlessly. Instead of addressing the root cause now MSIL is talking about this
and this
Pray how would any of this help. Adding gunmen within factory premises? What about the German shepherds? Is MSIL running a factory or a concentration camp? They have a right to fire workers who do not accept their pay package and allow legal action to be taken against those who caused the mayhem recently and they should do so. But with the solutions they are proposing they can never ensure that the new set of workers would be feeling totally chirpy all the time with the low pay they are being given and no more violence would take place ever again specially when those guns from those gunmen can be easily snatched. Humans are unpredictable and imperfect by nature. Although that particular school of economics I have talked about earlier would like to have it the other way round but unfortunately nature isn't that way. One has to strike a balance and come to a mutually acceptable solution which buys some long term peace and not score some short term goals. Till now from everybody that has supported MSIL blindly I have not heard one single rational workable solution which will let MSIL operate in relative peace. Also one thing we should keep in mind that whatever greater purpose and goals are being cited (I am not sure what they are as they have not been described crisply out here) for paying workers subsistence level salaries while telling them that Somalia is worse of, the only thing we manage to do is reduce the relative prosperity of a nation. Telling them that they must suffer for some intangible greater good which they simply don't understand and see is only going to fester more resentment. What should we be telling them? You have no right to marry and/or reproduce because you were not born as lucky? As they continue living from hand to mouth, more and more people start relying on government dole, subsidies and yes free power including power theft. We have seen the results of that already haven't we in the past two days . So really this brand of capitalism being propounded here has clearly not worked for any of us except for maybe the Ambanis who have a gigantic backup power supply to light up their palace.
Last edited by samarjitdhar : 1st August 2012 at 11:31.
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