No one except people below poverty line should be allowed to go on strike. Should India have a stringent rule like this? This is a question has be been put before me by one of my friends. I like to respond as under.
Strike is a legitimate right given to employees to safeguard them from the torturous treatment of the employer. If employers are given free hand they will treat the employees worse than their pet dogs and pay their employees as less as possible. To illustrate my apprehension I like to request you to watch the rising trend of prices in all essential commodities and I hope you will definitely realize how much greedy businessmen are in general.
Prices are rising not because of genuinely higher demand or less production but due to unlimited freedom given to traders and manufacturing sector left totally unbridled and unregulated .Under the reformation regime traders are hoarding goods in demand and raising prices arbitrarily. If similarly employers are given complete freedom I think there will worst kind of trouble to all employees which you or others cannot visualize.
However I am of the view that those employees must be stringently punished who take advantage of this strike provision and indulge in dirty politics.
In the current case of strike by Pilots of Indian airlines I would like to say that it was the fault of Airlines management who whimsically reduced their incentive. Any employee in any office or department cannot curtailment in salary in any part of the world. It was the mistake on the part of the management to increase the incentive to such a large extent that the company started suffering loss.
It was the faulty policy of Ministers and the government that aviation is suffering from financial crisis and there is no need to penalize pilots for the same. These politicians first spoil a company than blame the employees. They similarly spoilt bank and insurance sectors, schools and colleges, hospitals and health sector, power and pollution sectors by using these platforms for distributing the fund of the government as charity and spending as per their fancies and giving employment to their kith and kin in these sector and now the same politicians blaming the staff for mismanagement. Indian government blindly followed the agenda of social agenda and now under the same frame work of administration dreaming of earning profit. This conflicting agenda cannot run together at least in the hands of Congress people.
I further like to hope that good sense will now prevail upon Pilots and they will now resume work when the government has retreated from the proposal of cut in incentive. Secondly they committed blunder by resorting to strike or mass casual leave without giving reasonable notice to the management and the users of airlines. They followed the same mistake which government committed by announcing whimsical cut in incentive.
So far as the large chunk of poor people living below poverty line is concerned, they are so much helpless and downtrodden that they cannot imagine of strike to raise voice against the inhumane treatment by local administration or even local resident. At best they can show their anger at the time of election. They may burn the buses, taxis, government building, kill officers or damage public properties in time when torture to them crosses the lime of tolerance.
It is lastly educated and employed class who can think of strike. It is meritorious class who resort to strike when they are disregarded, disrespected and dashed to corners in their salary package for no valid reason.
Last but not the least , any country cannot show continuous development and achieve perfect prosperity until the merit oriented group of working people are happy .As such any stringent rule to ban strike will be counter productive and a suicidal attempt by the government. In the framework of democratic governance one cannot dream of dictatorial rules. There must however be enough control mechanism in the almirah of democratic set up to make it more and more effective and judicious.
Danendra Jain
30th September 2009
CAclubindia
