In the 60th year of being Independent and the 57th year of being a Republic, a different kind of May Day Story –

27-year-old Ratnamma, a garment factory worker, was forced to deliver a baby on the streets of Bangalore because her manager insisted on her filling out a leave application, despite the fact that she was in severe labour pain. The manager also insisted that no other worker accompany her to the hospital lest the production process be affected. Ratnamma delivered the baby just outside the factory. The baby did not survive.

More recently, 20-year-old Gayathri, another garment worker, was run over by the bus belonging to the same factory she worked, in front of her factory. Two others were also injured in the accident. While most factory workers were shocked at the incident, what outraged them was when the supervisors asked them to move on so as to not affect the production.

Those who are history buffs will recall that it was the dismal conditions in textile factories in the west that gave a fillip to 3 of the most equalising movements of the 20th century:

• Labour Rights
• Women’s Rights, and
• The curtailing and eventual banning of child labour

I wonder if such deaths, or indeed lives, really matter at all a hundred years later. Such stories don’t even make it to the MSM – and if it is not in the media, can it really matter. Afterall, a superstar’s quest to make a ‘manglik’ a non’ manglik (what ever that means) matters more than someone dying because they had a deadline to meet! I can understand deadlines, and i can understand deliverables, and I appreciate the importance of being economically competitive and the bottom line. But, the quest for being economically competitive cannot be at the cost of the individual rights of citizens. And, the comment that ‘they always have a choice to go and work somewhere else’ does not really hold water in a non welfare state. 60 years ….. how much longer?