#1
Post rating: +++++

So like 200 million workers across India have taken to the streets in a general strike, demanding labour justice and opposing the No Shit Straight Up Fascist BJP, darling of western imperialist shills. The BJP are the folks who made a shrine to Ghandi's assassin, suppress voters with armed gangs, and have rewritten the history books to erase Communist heroes of India's liberation from the british empire, or brazenly claim that they were actually Hindutva nationalists the whole time (they were not!!)

https://www.newsclick.in/workersstrikeback-historic-all-india-strike-receives-massive-response

The CPI-ML's twitter account is providing some rad highlights:

Let's talk India.
#2
Post rating: +
I've thought for a while now that the next big country to have a revolution will probably be India due to material conditions and movement development. Hopefully this is a turning point.
#3
Post rating: +

shriekingviolet posted:

The CPI-ML's twitter account is providing some rad highlights


the cpi(ml) liberation is a splinter of the cpi-ml after its dissolution in 1973, you fool!

#4
Post rating: +

blinkandwheeze posted:

the cpi(ml) liberation is a splinter of the cpi-ml after its dissolution in 1973, you fool!


aww fuck, once again my lax inattention to detail has doomed the people of India. better luck next time, everyone.

#5
Post rating: +
people angry it is barely gaining any coverage in the west but come on, imagine the effete journalists of the guardian or cnn trying to compute 200 million indian MLs going on strike tho lol
#6
Post rating: +++++
This is more workers on strike than the entire existing labor force of the united states and the UK, combined.

Unfortunately none of them empty trashcans in the nearest US national park, so all the reporters currently have loftier priorities
#7
Post rating: +
i checked all the local papers in the city i grew up in and even they don't care, most see it as a mild inconvenience. i hope the strikers win what they want strategically but they've been pretty comprehensively worked around

Edited by Bablu ()

#8
Post rating: ~
reddit being surprisingly good:
"While the Western media only talk about Venezuela, one million people gathered in Kolkata’s largest public park Sunday to attend a demonstration organized by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)-led Left Front against Neo-liberal policies of Indian Prime Minister"
#9
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
Big Indian strikes are good but they are hard to compare to the US or something. They tend to be one or two day walkouts that are organized by anti-BJP governments and unions together based on the understanding that they will time-limited and stage-managed. Like the government gives people the day off with certain expectations around that. It's probably debatable how much actual power this represents but it's still cool to see. I remember getting annoyed once hearing about Greek general strikes when I found out they tend to have them on scheduled days every three months as a sort of routinization of labour protest.
#10
Post rating: +

getfiscal posted:

Big Indian strikes are good but they are hard to compare to the US or something. They tend to be one or two day walkouts that are organized by anti-BJP governments and unions together based on the understanding that they will time-limited and stage-managed. Like the government gives people the day off with certain expectations around that. It's probably debatable how much actual power this represents but it's still cool to see. I remember getting annoyed once hearing about Greek general strikes when I found out they tend to have them on scheduled days every three months as a sort of routinization of labour protest.


I don't really get this complaint. I think it's a big assumption to worry about things like "Because these mass labour agitations are happening in a deliberately controlled fashion, labour might be powerless to do anything else," especially coming from western locales where our organized labour tactics are mostly pure shit. India clearly still has huge labour issues, but mass actions like this build mass solidarity and keep people aware of their power to walk out and make demands together, something we sorely lack. Doing this doesn't exclude the ability to do other stuff too, and imho helps maintain a base for further action.

#11
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
I wasn't complaining about it for India, it's just hard to judge the relationship between client networks, government policy and more sincere progressive commitments, especially since they interrelationships are always confusing. The direction that power is flowing is hard to guess overall and I don't like attributing radicalism to people who might not see themselves that way.
#12
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
I sort of have this on the mind because someone pointed out the other day that if you ask the average Democrat in the USA they will say they like both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and think Obama was a good president, and if you ask them if Biden and Sanders have similar policies they will agree. So I still see people say things like "Sanders showed 13 million people were open to the idea of socialism" which is mostly irrelevant. The depth and commitment to progressive stuff is very easy to exaggerate when large numbers of people participate in something.