(On the 17th of this month, 77 of the 147 workers accused of violence at the Maruti Suzuki plant in Haryana nearly three years ago were granted bail. The 2012 arson, which killed the company's human-resources manager and injured many others, eclipsed the stories of the workers' year-long struggle for a union and better working conditions. In this reportage for our latest quarterly Labour and its Discontents, Anumeha Yadav traces the lead-up to this unrest – and its aftermath. More web-exclusive articles from this issue here in the days ahead.)
On 23 February 2015, the Supreme Court of India granted bail to Sunil Kumar and Kanwaljeet Singh. The two are among 147 workers of Maruti Suzuki India Limited (MSIL) in jail since July 2012, after a senior manager died in arson at the car manufacturer's plant in Haryana, on the outskirts of Delhi.
The workers' repeated strikes over a period of a year preceding the arson and rioting at the factory had found their way into the news cycle, where questions related to labour are usually articulated as a question of creating jobs, or improving the 'business climate'. Maruti Suzuki is no sweatshop. A job at MSIL, India's largest automobile manufacturing company, was coveted by the workers' peers. What then were they resisting exactly? Financial press tracked the dip in the company's market share in India from over 45 percent to 38.9 percent as the workers, most in their twenties, struck work thrice that year. The workers' grievances, first articulated in 2011 as a demand for an independent union, seemed almost beyond comprehension to the management. In July 2012, the conflict took a violent turn as a senior manager died and several others were injured in an incident of arson. There were more than 2000 workers in the factory at the time. The police rounded up and arrested 147 workers over the next few days from their nearby rented rooms, and homes.