Coal Miners’ Strike, India, 2019
August 30— “No miner will cross the picket lines! This is a war, and our survival is on the line.” So declared a coal miner in India as over 2.7 million coal miners prepared to shut down the industry. Coal India Limited (CIL) is a giant government-run corporation that produces 85% of India’s domestic supply of electricity. CIL’s production is the world’s second largest, with an output of 600 million metric tonnes (MT) annually.
Every day since July, at least 800,000 workers have been striking as a warning to CIL. There may be a complete shutdown of the industry on the 30th of September.
That 600 million MT of coal is lifted by nearly 2.7 million coal miners. Nobody escapes the harsh reality of injury from backbreaking heavy loads. Nobody escapes the continual breathing of fine dust that leaves them with permanent damage and often death.
Miners’ unions are opposing government plans to open coal mines to private companies. They also want employment security, pension funds and health benefits. The government’s plans to privatize and open markets to international companies will threaten job security.
The International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) wants to lead workers to free themselves from wage slavery. The union leaders’ plans are to continue this terror of wage slavery. Freedom from wage slavery means that we will have to seize the mines and machinery from the bosses. This will require millions to wage armed struggle.
We will wage this struggle based on communist politics: smash borders, eliminate money. In communist society, mining will not be the work of 2.7 million workers and carbon-based energy will have a much smaller role. Instead, we will encourage hundreds of millions to participate in all aspects of necessary work, under the safest possible conditions. Production will no longer run on the bosses’ need for profit.
Mobilizing Masses for Communism: Fifteen Thousand Copies of Red Flag in Six Languages
ICWP collectives in Chennai and Bengaluru are beginning to organize small groups to reach out to the miners. In Chennai, an autoworker comrade has friends who are coal miners in the northeast state of Bihar. We gave him copies of the Hindi edition of Red Flag. Communication takes time because of the large distances. But this comrade has told us that his friends are reading our literature.
In Bengaluru there is an ongoing conversation with garment workers who are now actively working with health care workers. We are distributing Red Flag in six different languages that local people understand. These translations have opened a new front for the party.
The garment workers in Bengaluru have been mailing the Marathi edition to comrades in the industrial state of Maharashtra. This is the most militant area, where the history of mining goes back to 1825, when the British installed railroad lines in Mumbai.
Since the pandemic, our party has been expanding recruitment among workers in garment and auto, our new friends in Bihar, and now miners.
Comrades in India are distributing 15,000 copies of Red Flag in six languages. Workers are distributing them in the large concentration of workers in the areas near auto and garment factories. Some are taking dozens of papers for co-workers, friends, and neighbors.
This distribution is just starting, but we expect to reach our goal of distributing all our 15,000 printed copies here. Stay tuned for our next report. And make plans to increase the circulation of Red Flag everywhere!
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