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What
is more, despite the rapid GDP growth and all the government
promises about providing some relief and social protection
of unorganised workers, nothing has been done and there
is absolutely nothing in the form of minimum provisions
for health care, insurance, pension and so on for these
millions of workers who are labouring in these wretched
conditions.
Such worsening conditions predictably find little or
no coverage in the media. But even when a major strike
was organised in the industrial areas of greater Delhi
over 24-25 April to protest against these worsening
labour conditions, there was still hardly any mention
of it in the newspapers and absolutely none on the major
local or national TV channels.
The
strike involved several thousands of workers in the
industrial areas of Mayapuri, Mongolpuri, Wazirpur,
Okhla, Ghaziabad and some parts of NOIDA. In each of
these areas, there were processions and picketing by
large numbers of workers: in Mongolpuri between 15,000
– 20,000 workers gathered around the pickets on both
days; in Badali there was a complete strike and a procession
by more than 5,000 workers; in Okhla a thousand workers
marching in a procession were attacked and dispersed
by police; there was a complete strike in Site 4 industrial
areas of Ghaziabad; in NOIDA the police resorted to
lathi-charge of several thousand workers at the Labour
Chowk in Phase II; in Karol Bagh several hundred rickshaw
pullers an vendors took out a procession and the Sabzi
Mandi was closed down for a day.
It
would seem that these are sufficiently major events
to warrant at least some mention in the media. But the
main newspapers covered nothing. Instead, a small demonstration
of less than a hundred medical students protesting against
OBC quotas was given a lot of publicity, with photographs,
in almost all the newspapers. The news channels – even
the ones that claim to cover the city and local news
– did not provide any coverage of this strike, the various
protests and processions of many thousands of people,
or the dreadful conditions that have led the workers
to protest in the first place.
It is difficult to estimate how much worse things must
get for the workers before there is some public outcry.
But it may not be difficult to guess how much anger
and resentment all this must be creating among the workers
themselves. It is of course common among the working
class to blame government, employers, etc for their
bad conditions of work, and it is obvious that they
are responsible.
But
the media is generally perceived to be playing a more
positive role, the essential role in a democracy of
pointing out the reality and forcing not only society
but also government and employers to respond. Instead,
our media seem to have abdicated this role, and have
become themselves very corporate-driven and insensitive
to the conditions of the majority. The disconnect between
the elite (including the media) and the people at large
continues to grow, and it is a disconnect that will
ultimately be the most dangerous for the elite.
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