Noida has been in turmoil for the past few days. This unrest is not limited to just one suburb of the national Capital but it’s being felt in almost all the industrial estates of the national capital region (NCR). Not that the trade unions of the yore have had a phoenix like rise, they are either dead or dormant. There is a new genre which is now organising protests.
As revealed in police investigations, technology has now provided leadership to the skilled to put people together in a WhatsApp group and bring them together ‘for a cause’. Today there is no need for factory gate meetings of yesteryears organised by trade union leaders as people can now come together on the screen of their phone and resolve (without passing a formal resolution) to agitate and protest.
The biggest challenge of such protests is the abstract leadership, which may ignite a protest but fail to give a direction to the demonstration when it spills out of phone screens onto real-time agitation. This is what happened in Noida. The protests spread, there are news from now neighbouring districts of Hapur, because the local intelligence units failed to sound alert on labour crisis.
Thankfully Yogi Adityanath government acted swiftly announcing wage hikes. However, it’s like all the BJP governments in different states and at Centre, still closing its eyes to the trigger for the unrest. In the past one month in these industrial estates there has been labour crisis. What caused the crisis? Black marketing of LPG cylinders caused due to shortage of supply following the Iran-Israel-US war.
When the cost or availability of cooking fuel becomes uncertain, the impact is immediate and severe, as we all witnessed. With fire in the kitchen difficult to keep lighted, many labourers left for villages creating shortage of both skilled and unskilled workers.
This also, in turn, altered the bargaining dynamics. Those who stayed back, lived under the stress to meet rising cost. The agitation leaders gauged opportunity in labour shortage. They recognised the moment as ripe for agitation as the labour lived in the stress of keeping home and hearth going.
So as much we may deny but these labour agitations could easily be seen as West Asia war effect in our industrial estates. Hormuz may be a distant strait but the war around it is causing deep wounds in our industry and trade.
Claiming that we were unaffected by war is no more helping. People need action to mitigate the problems caused by the war. Even if the war gets over, prices in the unregulated market are unlikely to fall. Government(s) has to see reality and find a solution to overcome the labour crisis, which is going to remain for sometimes to come.
Interestingly, a partial model for mitigation emerged within the NCR during the crisis. There are newspaper reports that the Delhi government’s initiative of providing subsidised cooked meals through the Atal Canteen network helped cushion the impact of rising living costs.
By ensuring access to affordable food, such schemes reduced the immediate pressure on household resources, thereby stabilising the workforce in Delhi’s industrial areas. While not a comprehensive solution, it demonstrates how targeted welfare interventions can play a stabilising role during economic stress. Going forward, governments across states need to adopt a more nuanced and forward-looking approach.
First and foremost, there is a need to modernise labour intelligence systems to account for digital modes of mobilisation. Monitoring public sentiment in online spaces may provide early indicators of brewing unrest, but it’s also equally important to ensure the uninterrupted supply of essential commodities like LPG.
Maintaining uninterrupted supply of essentials has to be treated as a priority, particularly in industrial hubs with high concentrations of migrant workers. Welfare measures need to be reimagined for an urban, moving workforce. Schemes that provide food security, temporary housing support, or subsidised utilities act as buffers during crises.
Above all, there must be an honest acknowledgment that not all unrest is externally instigated. They mostly arises from real time crisis that demand attention and redress. External forces come to play when water is troubled. Turbulence in Noida and NCR is less about conspiracy and more about economic distress.
Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice