Since September 9, around 1,000 workers are asking for higher wages and their own reference union. The southern Indian state has been an important industrial center for technological production since the 1990s; But – unlike other realities where growth is only economic – social well-being has also grown, especially thanks to policies that do not take into account castes and religions.
Chennai (/Agencies) – For about three weeks, Indian workers at the Samsung plant, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, have been on strike to demand higher wages and recognition of their own union. Around 1,000 workers, out of a total of 1,800, have suspended production, and in recent days the federal government’s labor minister has asked Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin to resolve the situation “quickly and amicably.” , according to stated a source.
The workers earn an average of 25,000 rupees ($300) per month and are asking for this to reach 36,000 ($430) in three years, but they want the negotiation to be carried out by the Samsung India Labor Welfare Union, a recently formed union of their own. .
The Chennai plant is one of the two that Samsung has in India, it mainly produces household appliances and contributes a third of the South Korean company’s turnover in India, equivalent to 12 billion dollars.
Samsung says wages are already high, almost double what other companies in the same area (such as Foxconn and Dell) pay their workers. “Since the factory was founded, the employees have worked without complaints and without a union. But things have gotten worse in the last two years and now we need the support of a union,” one protester told the BBC.
The protests in Tamil Nadu are supported by the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), which in turn is supported by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Several multinationals that have opened factories in India oppose workers joining external unions supported by local left-wing parties, and to prevent their creation they ensure that there is a certain rotation among workers, hiring unskilled young people from rural areas for a certain time, explained some CITU members.
The union revolts that began on September 9 are considered an obstacle to the ambitions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who proposes himself as an alternative to China and wants to triple the production of electronic products to reach $500 billion in six years.
Tamil Nadu is one of the major industrial centers of India. Foxconn, one of the largest companies that produces electronic components for other electronics companies – first of all Apple – invested $1.5 billion in the southern state last year.
Although experts agree While India is still far behind China, which has a long tradition of mass production of electronic products, Tamil Nadu is the first Indian State in terms of number of factories, with almost 40,000 plants. This industrial growth was possible thanks to the application of the so-called Dravidian model, the theory on which local government is inspired, which contrasts with the ideas of Prime Minister Modi, promoter of what is defined as the “Gujarat model”, in reference to the State where Modi was Prime Minister for a long time, and which led to rapid economic growth.
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the party that has been in power in Tamil Nadu for decades, promotes sustainable industrial development and equality among the population as fundamental elements for prosperity. The Dravidian movement, founded in the 1920s, has always supported the dismantling of Brahmin hegemony, the revitalization of Dravidian languages (mostly spoken in South India), the equal position of women in society and the abolition of castes.
Numerous studies seem to confirm the success of this development model: in the early 1960s Tamil Nadu had one of the highest poverty rates and one of the lowest per capita growth rates in India. In 2011 the situation had reversed, with a GDP per capita 2.5 times higher than that of the rest of the country, high enrollment rates in secondary schools and a poverty level of 4.5%, unique in India. The other highly industrialized states of India, Gujarat and Maharashtra (long governed by the BJP) do not present such good socioeconomic data (in Gujarat, for example, the poverty rate is 18%), while the other states of the More socially developed south, such as Kerala, generally lack competitive industries. In 2022-2023 the economic growth of Tamil Nadu exceeded 8%, compared to 7.2% for the entire country.
Specialists consider that what has favored this progress has been a computer policy that began to be applied in 1996 and led the State to be, last year, one of the main exporters of technological products, with a turnover of more than 9 billion dollarss. But not only that: unlike Gujarat and Maharashtra, industrial centers have been diversified and distributed evenly throughout the territory, and are not concentrated in a few large cities.
Tamil Nadu is also the State with the highest number of entrepreneurs from disadvantaged classes, such as Dalits, thanks to resource distribution programs that do not take into account ethnicity, caste or religion of belonging. Likewise, for example, the female employment rate is the highest in the country, thanks to a program that offers one thousand rupees to all girls to continue their studiesregardless of their socio-familial origin.
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