Labour Militancy in Kerala Location: Palakkad, Kerala, India Date: 10 July 2007 Time
: Around 10.00 AM As everybody know, I went for a vacation to India and wanted do house warming function on 15th July 2007. Works were going on in full swing. One side, masons were
working. Painters were doing their jobs. Carpenters were working on doors. Marble workers were working to complete final touches. It is very good to see everybody working together. I only did a small mistake of bringing some of my old
furniture from old house. I arranged a tempo truck to bring them to my new home. Tempo truck guy could load only one coat made of rose wood and two chest of drawers connected to the coat. Tempo truck came to my new home around 10.00 AM. Suddenly 4 people came along with tempo truck. Two guys were wearing dark blue shirt and lungi and other two were wearing violet shirt and lungi. I could not figure out what is going on. I asked my site supervisor about these guys. He explained to me in detail. Any
house hold items you wanna bring to your house using a tempo truck will
be unloaded by these workers. Blue shirt denotes that guy hails from
CITU (CPM wing) and Violet shirt denotes that
guy hails from INTUC (Congress wing). I thought it is great since we
don’t need to find the guys to unload and load them especially I needed
help always since my back pain I am very much aware of. Then the episode started. I asked casually one of the guys who came for unloading my furniture, then to my astonishment he yelled One thousand Rupees. I
searched for a support to keep my body from falling since One thousand
Rupees for unloading a coat and two chest of drawers is not ethical and is not justifiable at all in India. I tried to talk to him for a discount then that workers started yelling at me as I am a culprit of abusing them. I requested them to give me a receipt of this money which I would give since I wanna give them a lesson. Then
these unloading workers started abusing me with stinking words which I
can not mention them here since I can not lower my dignity and my
culture. My site supervisor came to help me at this point and started negotiating with these workers. Then my site supervisor went to their office to negotiate with the secretary of their union. He came back after half an hour telling that they agreed for Rs. 600/- I paid them Six hundred rupees even though I had my workers working in my new home. The guy came to collect the money, after receiving the money had a smile which I can not forget all in my life. That smile was telling me that how I managed to get speed money. I
enquired to my neighbor who is sub editor of a Malayalam daily, who
told me that he did all his transfer of furniture after night 11 PM
since they can not come. Later
I brought a heavy Iron cupboard and one table by a small pick up and I
paid only Rupees 60 (sixty) for unloading since it was after 7.00 PM. I understand the manual labour is very hard and we need to pay sufficiently but not like this happening in Kerala. Really
at the final stage of my construction, I thought I should have built
this house in Tamil Nadu where we don’t have to face such problems by
laborers and bad treatment from offices for approvals. Now I know why some time back, then chief secretary of Kerala, who got transferred from Delhi brought his furniture from there had faced similar situation and got angry on this system.