Trade unions as Opposition

Even if the Narendra Modi government had scored straight ‘A’ for performance in each of the last three years, India would still need a strong and effective opposition. A democracy is incomplete without one. In the event, we are facing serious threats to our national ethos as a plural, liberal society, of which the murder of Gauri Lankesh is but one example. An effective opposition has become a pressing need.

It is not just the imbalance between the numbers on the treasury benches and those in the opposition in the current Parliament that causes unease. It is the timbre of the men and women arrayed on both sides. Through the first three Lok Sabhas, the numerical disparity between them was even wider. Back then, the ruling party always had more than 360 MPs on its side.

Today, the BJP has 282, and the entire NDA 336. But in the 1950s, it was led by a person who nurtured the institutions and norms of democratic governance with care and conviction and ensured that India remained a democracy even as almost every newly independent country around it fell under a dictator’s rule. Jawaharlal Nehru could never be a threat to our fledgling democracy. So, the overwhelming majority of the ruling party under his leadership was never a cause for worry.

But, in the last three years, the spirit of our Constitution, particularly its secular and federal underpinning, has been seriously damaged. Vigilantes ravaging citizens without fear of retribution by the law, creative freedoms being stifled, cultural institutions being emasculated, state governments being toppled – the portents are not comforting. And this agenda is driven by a vast, focused, insidious machine that our effete political opposition is unable to counter.

The opposition, though it has a higher headcount than in the first three Lok Sabhas, is effectively weaker, because throughout the 1950s it had in its ranks stalwarts who commanded respect, as against the pygmies who sit on those very benches today. Democracy, despite greater numerical difference between the two sides, was considered safer then. And because the opposition is weak and inept, the government has been able to cover its foreign policy failures, rising unemployment, demonetisation blunder, farmers' suicides, slowing economic growth and attacks on dalits and minorities with an aura of success. It is getting away too easily with it all.

Today, we have a vacuum in the opposition space in Parliament and outside it. The Congress party is in terminal decline and persists with a leader who has defied the Peter Principle and risen above his level of incompetence, and is generally considered his opponents' best asset. The party itself has gone into rigor mortis even before being formally declared dead. The different Janata-Samajwadi formations have tried to coalesce before, and this time, too, their efforts to unite are floundering on the rock of personal ambitions, corruption and nepotism. Most regional parties stand discredited for the same reasons. AAP peaked too fast and messed up the follow through. That leaves the two Communist formations who still do not know that there is a world beyond dialectical materialism.

And because the formal political opposition is so weak, India desperately needs some other institution or organisation that can act as democracy’s sentinel.

Fortunately, there is political life outside Parliament – in the media and in the public domain. But whoever picks up the banner of the opposition should have certain attributes. It should have a pan-India presence, be well organised, be willing to put up a fight to protect our secular and democratic ideals, and not be driven by personal greed or ambition, or any dynasty.

There is only one institution in India that has these credentials — the trade unions. Fighting for labour rights is their principal activity, but that does not prevent them from taking up other national issues. Here, we are concerned only with their capability and inclination to provide the sinews to the civil society to resist onslaughts on our liberties and secular values from any quarter. Cutting across lines of religion and caste, they are ideally placed to do so.

There are numerous instances the world over of labour unions spearheading political struggles outside legislatures. Dr Mpfariseni Budeli of the University of South Africa lists several African countries where trade unions took prominent part in the anti-colonial movements. However, she adds, as many regimes established shortly after independence oppressed their own people brutally, “trade unions remained active underground and became the only opposition to government…(they) allied with other organisations to oppose the one party or military regime and demanded democracy and respect for human rights. In many countries, trade unions became political actors for democratic change."

It was a labour union, Solidarity, which stood up for political rights in Poland. Starting as a protest, in the Gadansk shipyard, against rising food prices in the 1970s, it took on the might of their country’s Soviet-backed government. In the 1980s, several other unions merged with it and, under the leadership of Lech Walesa, it morphed into a broad social movement, bringing the Catholic church and a host of anti-Soviet elements into its fold. After Poland got rid of the Soviet yoke, Walesa even served as the country’s president for one term. Even Gandhiji used the struggle for labour rights – as in the case of salt workers – to further the cause of our freedom.

The opposition parties have let the nation down. But there is space for affirmative action even outside the legislatures. This is where the trade unions can step in and, without getting into the electoral fray, help uphold the values that form the bedrock of a secular, democratic society.