30 Apr 2015

Mexican Government Scholarships for Foreign Students

Brief description:
On behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID) invites foreign citizens who are interested in studying for a specialization, master’s degree or doctorate, conducting graduate or postdoctoral research, or taking part in an undergraduate or graduate-level academic mobility program, to participate in the 2016 Mexican Government Scholarship Program for International Students.
Scholarships are not granted for direct Ph.D. programs (combined M.A. and Ph.D. programs), distance learning programs, open or online education.
Host Institution/Eligible Programs:
The following institutions and academic programs are included at this link.  The following academic programs are NOT eligible for scholarships: business administration, plastic surgery, accounting, marketing, dentistry and advertising, and related areas.
Number of Scholarships:
Not specified.
Target group:
The scholarships are offered to students from these countries.
Scholarship value/inclusions:
The scholarship includes monthly stipend, registration fees and tuition, health insurance, round-trip international airfare, and transportation to and from Mexico City.
Read the complete scholarship benefits at the 2016 Scholarship Terms and Conditions (link found below).
Eligibility:
Requirements for all applicants:
• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD Degree, as required by the program for which the scholarship is requested.
• Minimum grade point average of eight (8.0) on a scale of 0 to 10, or the equivalent, for the last academic degree received.
•  Be accepted to or currently enrolled in a program at one of the participating Mexican institutions.
Application instructions:
No applications will be accepted directly from the applicants. The entire scholarship application process must be done at the Mexican or concurrent  embassy for the applicant’s country. Applications for the scholarships will be accepted until 31 August 2015.
It is important to read the 2016 Scholarship Terms and Conditions and visit the official website (link found below) for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.
Website:

Deutsche Bank: Union trades jobs for speculation

Gustav Kemper & Peter Schwarz

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest financial institution, announced a fundamental shift in its strategic orientation on Friday. Deutsche Bank is now concentrating on international speculation—or investment banking—and substantially diminishing its business with smaller customers.
Postbank, with 14 million customers and 15,000 employees, which was taken over by Deutsche Bank between 2008 and 2010, will now be sold once again. Of the 750 subsidiaries of Deutsche Bank, a third will be shut down, costing between 5,000 and 7,000 jobs. The bank is aiming for an increase in the after-tax return on investments from 3 to 10 percent.
All 10 employee representatives on the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank AG, above all Verdi union leader, Frank Bsirske, agreed to the decision. They therefore take on direct responsibility for the destruction of thousands of positions, including jobs outside of the Deutsche Bank itself.
Once Postbank is sold, the job cuts will start there as well. Stefan Krause, the executive board member responsible for the reorganization, emphasized that both a public offering and the sale of the bank to a competitor are possibilities. The remaining small shareholders, who still own 3.2 percent of Postbank stocks, will be “squeezed out” with a forced settlement.
Commerzbank, the Spanish Santander Bank and the Dutch ING Group are currently among the interested buyers, all of whom have access to their own distribution networks in Germany. If they purchase Postbank, this will lead to a further consolidation of local branch offices with corresponding layoffs. The business at branch offices is in any case viewed as less profitable due to online banking and the low interest rates of savings accounts and other services.
Verdi did not stop at giving its blessing to the job cuts. The union also organized a cynical farce in order to sabotage any opposition.
In the first half of April, Verdi organized a strike vote of the concerned Postbank employees. The union arranged a vote on the demand for a contractually-guaranteed protection against dismissal until 2020, as well as a wage increase of 5 percent. Ninety-five percent of the membership voted to strike. On April 20, Verdi called an indefinite strike, but only at selected locations.
On Monday, three days after their vote to destroy thousands of jobs, Verdi made the surprising announcement that it had reached an agreement with Postbank. It was evidently part of the deal that included the agreement to the mass layoffs. Postbank agreed to the protection against dismissal, but just until June 30, 2017, not 2020.
Postbank negotiations chief Ralf Stemmer praised the agreement, saying, “In this way, the Postbank employees will get the needed stability for the upcoming process of change.” In reality, it is not the employees who are getting “the necessary stability,” but Deutsche Bank and its shareholders.
Postbank will be sold by the end of 2016, long before June 30, 2017. The agreement is meant to ensure that the sale negotiations go forward undisturbed. Once Postbank has a new owner the agreement will no longer be binding.
In addition, the agreement is supposed to keep the employees quiet while their coworkers at Deutsche Bank are being laid off. Verdi is quite consciously playing the employees of the two banks against one another in order to prevent the emergence of any opposition to the layoffs.
Moreover, the protections against dismissal will not prevent Postbank from cutting jobs. The agreement only forbids layoffs for operational reasons. It will still be possible for the bank to leave vacated positions unoccupied and pressure employees into “voluntary” layoffs.
The agreed wage increase also benefits the bank. Instead of 5 percent for 12 months, Postbank employees will only receive a 2.1 percent increase starting in April and an additional 2 percent in one year, for a period totaling 27 months. Union secretary Christina Förster called this an “acceptable compromise.”
To call this a “betrayal” by the union would be an understatement. Verdi is an integral component of company management that has taken on the task of duping employees, playing them off against one another, and intimidating them.
One reason for this is all-pervasive corruption. The union and supervisory board functionaries receive salaries, attendance fees and various other forms of compensation that is many times greater than the pay of a typical bank employee. This is, however, not the only reason. Verdi’s behavior demonstrates above all the bankruptcy of the nationalist perspective on which all unions are based.
For the German ruling elite, which is once again striving for a leading role in Europe and the world, Deutsche Bank plays an important strategic role. It is the only German bank with international standing.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the flagship newspaper of the German financial sector, stated it clearly: “For political and strategic reasons, the German companies that play a leading role in the world need a partner bank that can accompany them everywhere. Therefore, one should not leave business in the capital markets to the American banks alone.”
When the current top management of Deutsche Bank—president of the supervisory board, Paul Achleitner, and both presidents of the executive board, Anshu Jain and Jürgen Fitschen—assumed their posts three years ago, they announced their goal of transforming the institution into a leading global universal bank and one of the biggest banks in the world. They have failed at this. While Deutsche Bank is one of the leading banks worldwide involved in speculative investment in loans, currencies and derivatives, measured in terms of market value, it barely makes 50th place.
One reason for this is its small equity share. With its ratio of equity to balance sum of 3.4 percent, Deutsche Bank does not achieve the ratio of 5 percent that the big American banks, and soon European banks, demand. For this reason it is trying to sell off its private customer branch.
Because of the low share prices it is also difficult for the bank to get its hands on new capital. The €12 billion that it raised in two capital increases have been completely absorbed as a consequence of the criminal activities that led to the global financial crisis in 2008 in which Deutsche Bank was heavily involved. The bank has had to pay out in legal disputes, accept losses from toxic assets and pay fines for fraud or manipulation all over the world.
Last week, Deutsche Bank was told by American and British authorities that it would also have to pay out $2.5 billion because of its role in the manipulation of the Libor interest rates. Anshu Jain, who is now head of the executive board and was at that time responsible for the investment branch, openly admits to his role. “The behavior of these people was reprehensible and I was their leader. One cannot make excuses for that,” he said at a press conference.
Now bank employees have to pay the price for the criminal activities of the bank while Verdi stifles any resistance. Verdi and all other unions view the world completely from the perspective of the German corporations and banks. In the struggle for profits, export markets and influence, the unions stand firmly on the side of management.

Britain’s super-rich have doubled their wealth since 2009

Robert Stevens

The annual Sunday Times Rich List reveals that the UK has more billionaires per head of population than any other country. There are now a record 117 billionaires among the country’s top 1,000 richest people.
The total wealth of just the billionaires on the list is a staggering £325.131 billion. Within the space of a year, the top 1,000, as a whole, have increased their total wealth by 5.4 percent to a record £547.126 billion. Last year, the figure stood at 104 billionaires and £519 billion—one third of the country’s GDP.
The Rich List, first published in 1989, but in its 18th year in its current form, is always an underestimation of the wealth of the super-rich as it includes land, property, assets, and significant shares but excludes cash in bank accounts.
This year’s list reveals the extent to which the global financial elite ensured that the world’s population has been forced to bear the entire burden of the 2008 financial crash. In the years since, the super-rich in the UK have more than doubled their wealth, which stood at £258 billion in 2009 (an increase of 112 percent). The number of billionaires has grown by 12 percent in the last year, by 172 percent since 2009, and, as the Sunday Times notes, they “are far wealthier than many of them dared to hope seven years ago”.
The list, writes the Times, “confirms that Britain is more attractive to the global super-rich than any country except America. There are so many billionaires based here now, they outnumber those in mainland China, whose economy is four times larger than ours.”
It notes, “Mainland China is home to 115 sterling billionaires, who are collectively worth £24bn less.”
It continues, “Although the United States has the highest overall number of sterling billionaires of any country at 384, Britain’s smaller population means it boasts more per head than any other country in the G20 group of the world’s biggest economies—one billionaire for every 547,000 Britons, compared with one for every 833,000 Americans. London, where most of Britain’s billionaires are based, has more than any other city—80—who enjoy a collective wealth of £258bn. The capital’s nearest European rival, Paris, has just 21.”
The Times ’ front page article on the Rich List began “Recession? What recession? Britain’s super-rich have powered through the economic crisis and are now more than twice as rich as they were in 2009 when the economy was on the rocks…”
In the same period workers, pensioners and young people have suffered the impact of brutal austerity, with tens of billions of pounds slashed from public spending. In comparison, the income of the super-rich only fell once during that period (in 2009 when it fell by 37 percent to £258 billion) and their wealth is now growing at a record rate. The Sunday Times notes, “The rise has been greatest in the past 12 months. You need £100m to get on the list this year. That is £45m more than in 2009 and £15m more than last year…”
Vast amounts of the wealth accumulated by the super-rich are the product of speculation and outright criminality, with London being one of the world’s leading centres of financial swindling. The Sunday Times notes, “Most of the billionaires based in London are from abroad, but choose to live or base their businesses in the capital. London is a magnet for the super-rich because of its low taxes (for now)… The rise in the wealth of the top 1,000 is so sharp this year thanks to booming stock markets. Both the FTSE 100 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have hit record highs in the past 12 months.”
The rapid emergence of this layer is illustrated by the fact that the queen, who was listed as the richest individual in 1989, is now not even among the top 300. The Times notes that although her wealth increased by £10 million this year to £340 million, she represents “old money.”
The richest individual on the list is the Ukrainian-born and Harvard-trained Len Blavatnik, who has investments in industry, music, and media, and is worth £13.17 billion, up £3.17 billion on 2014. Among the firms Blavatnik has investments in is LyondellBasell, one of the oil refinery companies with which workers in the United States were recently involved in a bitter struggle.
In the case of individuals such as Blavatnik, who made his initial fortune by participating in the pillage of the nationalised state assets of the Soviet Union following its dissolution in 1991, the adage of Balzac that “behind every great fortune there is a great crime” was never more apt.
Forbes article last year noted, “In the history of Wall Street there haven’t been too many moneymaking machines quite like LyondellBasell, which has seen its shares return 500 percent since it emerged from bankruptcy four years ago. And that’s been especially lucrative for Blavatnik, 57, who cobbled the company together, saw it fail and plunge into bankruptcy court, and then doubled down on the same assets, personally investing another $2.37 billion in LyondellBasell the second time around. His investment is now worth more than $10 billion, generating $8 billion in mostly unrealized personal profits.”
The World Socialist Web Site noted, “These vast sums have been made through the brutal exploitation of oil workers facilitated by the [United Steel Workers] and other unions in the global industry.”
Another oligarch, placed at number four on the list, is the Uzbekistan-born Alisher Usmanov, who owns a stake of almost 30 percent in the leading London Premier League team, Arsenal FC. Usmanov is worth £9.8 billion, even though the value of his mining and other interests fell by £850 million over the past year, partly because of the West’s sanctions against Russia and collapse of the rouble.
So rich is this miniscule layer of parasites that servicing their whims is a lucrative industry in itself. The Daily Telegraph commented on Ten Group, “which has two million high-net-worth members worldwide” and “has spent around £36.5m of its clients’ money in the past 12 months.”
Reading the media’s commentary, one is left with the distinct impression that they consider the existence of this fetid, anti-social layer to be so entrenched and “normal” that it is barely worth discussing anymore. The BBC’s article on the list totalled just 270 words.
In its front-page article, the Sunday Times itself refers to a “wealth gap” that “has become a chasm.” But the gap it refers to is the disparity between the number of billionaires in the “capital and the rest of the country”! It commented that “there are only 37 billionaires based outside London and their collective wealth is £67bn—£191bn less than the London total of £258bn.”
The grotesque levels of wealth recorded in the Rich List speak to the enormous gulf between the super-rich and everyone else. But that is no longer considered a subject of journalistic comment.

Major shake-up in Saudi monarchy

Patrick Martin

In the biggest shake-up in Saudi Arabia in many decades, King Salman, who assumed power only three months ago on the death of King Abdullah, has fired the crown prince and the foreign minister, moving figures more closely tied to Washington into top positions.
The crisis atmosphere in ruling circles was expressed in the timing of the changes, announced in a communiqué issued at 4 a.m. local time in Riyadh, the capital city.
The 79-year-old king removed his 69-year-old half-brother, Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, replacing him with his nephew, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who is the interior minister and head of security for the regime. He will be the first member of the generation of grandsons of the Saudi kingdom’s, Abdulaziz ibn Saud, to be placed first in the line of succession to the throne.
Mohammed bin Nayef has emerged as the strongman of the regime, spearheading crackdowns on both Islamic fundamentalists opposed to the ruling family, and dissidents of every kind, from liberals to the Shiite minority to the vast immigrant workforce that performs most of the country’s labor.
Perhaps more importantly, from the standpoint of the internecine struggle within the dynasty, the 55-year-old prince has no sons, making the position of deputy crown prince that much more important. Here Salman chose his own son, Mohammed bin Salman, who is only 34 years old, jumping him ahead of hundreds of more senior princes of his generation.
Mohammed bin Salman was named secretary of the royal court and the defense minister when his father succeeded to the throne in late January. In the latter position, he is responsible for both theaters of war in which Saudi armed forces are engaged: the bombing of Yemen, which could become a ground invasion; and the bombing of ISIS targets in Syria, where warplanes from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf monarchies play a role in support of the predominately American military operation.
Press reports suggested that Prince Muqrin, who formerly headed Saudi intelligence operations, was removed at least in part because of opposition to the ongoing Saudi military campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
King Salman also removed Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal, a 75-year-old prince who has held the position for 40 years (he took office when Gerald Ford was president of the United States, Leonid Brezhnev headed the USSR, and Mao Zedong ruled China). His replacement is the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, 53, who is the first non-member of the royal family to hold the position since 1962.
The new occupants of the top offices, Mohammed bin Nayef as crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman as deputy crown prince, and Adel al-Jubeir as foreign minister, are all known for their close ties to US imperialism. The new crown prince is US-educated and has made frequent trips to Washington for consultations on counter-terrorism operations.
He is identified with a more aggressive and interventionist Saudi foreign policy throughout the Middle East, heavily backing the Egyptian military junta of General Sisi, and joining with it to demand the destruction of the Muslim Brotherhood, the conservative bourgeois party that ruled Egypt for one year before the 2013 military coup, whose offshoots play a significant role in many Arab countries.
The two princes will also retain their positions as interior minister and defense minister, respectively, further cementing the ties between King Salman’s wing of the royal family and the security forces. In a further effort to bolster the regime, the king ordered a bonus of one month’s salary paid to each member of the armed forces and the security police.
King Salman foreshadowed the latest changes immediately upon taking the throne in January, when he abolished more than a dozen advisory councils established by his predecessors and consolidated authority into two new councils. Prince Mohammed bin Nayef was named head of the Council of Political and Security Affairs, while Prince Mohammed bin Salman was named head of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs, effectively sharing top-level executive power within the kingdom.
The rapid elevation of the younger prince is tell-tale sign of the decay and crisis of the reactionary Saudi regime. Mohammed bin Salman is one of a handful of the 600 princes of his generation to be educated entirely within the country. He is variously reported to be between 27 and 35, and has no military experience, but heads an agency that was the third-largest purchaser of weapons in the world, behind only the United States and China.
The Saudi press has promoted him heavily as the leader and director of the current intervention in Yemen, a campaign of glorification that has set the stage for his elevation to second in line for the throne. It was Mohammed bin Salman who met Yemeni president Abdurabuh Mansur Hadi at the airport in Riyadh, when he came to seek continuing Saudi support after Houthi rebels forced him to flee the country.
As secretary of the royal court, as well as defense minister, the prince controls access to his 79-year-old father, King Salman, making him the focal point of palace intrigue. There is little doubt that he is also the focal point of animosity from the disfavored branches of the royal family, which have on more than one occasion resorted to violence to settle disputes over positions of power and control of the vast wealth of the oil-rich kingdom.

US economy stalled in first quarter

Andre Damon

The US economy grew at a rate of just 0.2 percent in the first quarter of this year, marking a sharp slowdown from the previous quarter, in which the growth rate was 2.2 percent.
The mounting signs of an economic slump in the US prompted the Federal Reserve to downgrade its view of the US economy in its latest policy statement, issued Wednesday. The Fed declared that economic growth had “slowed during the winter,” whereas its previous statement claimed that growth had “moderated somewhat.”
The first quarter gross domestic product figures, released Wednesday by the Commerce Department, were far lower than even the meager 1.0 percent growth rate predicted by economists. It was the slowest quarterly growth for the US economy in a year.
The fall-off in economic activity was led by a collapse in business fixed investment, which fell by 3.4 percent. Exports plunged by 7.2 percent, compared with an increase of 4.5 percent in the fourth quarter. On the whole, government spending shrank, led by a fall of 1.5 percent in state and local spending.
The collapse in investment takes place amid a speculative frenzy whipped up by the trillions of dollars injected into the financial system by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. Mergers and acquisitions are occurring at a near-record pace, while US corporations, sitting on a cash hoard of $1.4 trillion, have engaged in share buy-backs and dividend increases to further enrich their wealthy shareholders.
These record mergers, acquisitions, and share buy-backs have been accompanied by mass layoffs.
* On Tuesday, helicopter maker Bell Helicopter announced 1,100 layoffs at its facility in Lafayette, Indiana.
* On Friday, Pennsylvania-based software developer Unisys announced plans to slash 8 percent of its global workforce, including 1,800 workers in North America.
* On April 24, pharmaceutical company Procter & Gamble announced that it would eliminate up to 6,000 office jobs worldwide. Since 2012, the company has slashed more than 20,000 office and manufacturing jobs.
* On April 20, United States Steel Corp. issued layoffs to 1,404 employees, concentrated mostly in Texas. Since June, the company has announced plans to eliminate 7,800 US positions, according to the Pittsburgh Business Times.
* That same day, oilfield services company Halliburton said it had cut 9,000 jobs, amounting to over ten percent of its workforce.
* On April 16, Halliburton's rival Schlumberger announced another 11,000 job cuts, on top of the 9,000 it implemented in January.
The negative figures follow the announcement by the Labor Department earlier this month that the US economy added only 126,000 jobs in March, the smallest job growth since 2013. The March figure was half the number predicted by economists.
Since the beginning of the economic "recovery" in 2009, the US economy has grown at an average annual rate of only 2.2 percent, compared to an average growth rate of 3.2 percent during the 1990s.
Beyond the collapse in business investment, the negative growth figures for the first quarter were the result of a confluence of factors, each pointing to the precarious state of the US and global economy.
Worldwide demand for US goods remains stagnant amid a global slump, with the International Monetary Fund declaring this month that “potential growth in advanced economies is likely to remain below pre-crisis rates, while it is expected to decrease further in emerging market economies in the medium term.”
Weak demand from overseas has been compounded by the ongoing rise in the value of the dollar, shrinking demand for US manufacturing exports overseas.
Oil prices, meanwhile, have fallen by more than half over the past year, prompting tens of thousands of layoffs in the US, particularly in high-cost hydraulic fracturing operations.
US corporations in recent months stepped up their demands for the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates near zero in order to lower the value of the dollar and prop up their profits through cheap credit.
Speaking in San Francisco earlier this month, US Fed Chair Janet Yellen stressed the need to be “patient” in raising rates, while Fed officials lowered their estimate for where the federal funds rate will be at the end of this year to 0.625 percent, sharply lower than their December estimate of 1.125 percent.
In its Wednesday statement, the Federal Reserve hinted at a further delay in rate increases this year by downgrading its view of the economy while eliminating any reference to a specific timetable for raising rates.
Last week, William C. Dudley, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, made clear that the Fed is seriously considering pushing back its plans to raise interest rates till next year, declaring that “hopefully” economic growth will pick up enough for the Fed to raise rates this year.
The continuation of near-zero interest rates will not bring about any meaningful increase in investment and hiring. Rather, it will sustain the massive run-up of stock prices, which have tripled since 2009, further enriching the financial oligarchy at the expense of the working class.
The financial elite has made no effort to hide its appreciation for the Fed’s easy money policies. Earlier this month, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who funneled trillions of dollars in government funds to Wall Street in the post-2008 bank bailout, announced that he had been hired by Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel LLC. On Wednesday, bond trading firm Pimco announced that it had simultaneously hired Bernanke as an adviser.
Bernanke’s multi-million-dollar salary at these posts amount to a payoff for services rendered.

Labor's Pioneering Role In This Subcontinent: An Introduction

Farooque Chowdhury

Pioneer: With heroic struggle and unforgettable sacrifice labor played a pioneering role in this sub-continent's struggle for independence from colonial rule. Labor's undeniable leading role is also there in making the society humane and democratic. In areas and at times, labor struggled alone for the causes in this land. But it's a march to progress for all.
Labor's struggle for liberation from all forms of bondage and backwardness should be inscribed bright in the pages of history. Only many epics can recite labor's historic struggle in this land. But labor's role and sacrifice goes unsung. 
Contradiction between labor and capital began the moment capital enslaved labor. From Peshawar to Yangon labor had to enter into struggle for survival, and for making circumstances and situations humane and democratic. It's a part of humanity's journey to emancipation.
The struggle spanned from the loco sheds in Rawalpindi to textile mills in Ahmedabad to coal pits in Jharia to jute mills along the Hooghly River to tea gardens in the Dooars to streets in Kolkata to factories in Narayanganj andRangoon. The struggle, obscure and seemingly insignificant initially, took varying forms: composing songs, passive, peaceful, go-slow, active, forceful, desertion, going back to villages, wearing Khadi, the hand-spun and hand-woven cloth, and Gandhi cap, strike, general strike, standing by barricades, and unfurling flag of mutiny on navy ships. Labor's rising in the sub-continent led Lenin to write: “In India, too, the proletariat has already developed to conscious political mass struggle – and, that being the case, the Russian style British regime in India is doomed!” (“Inflammable material in world politics”, 1908) This conscious political mass struggle was mainstay in the sub-continent's struggle for independence from the colonial British rule.
Plundered: The colonial rule was nothing but plundering a land – about 1,800, 000 square miles or more than twenty times the area of Great Britain (Simon Commission, Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, vol. I, Survey; also, James B. Alcock, Historical Atlas of the British Empire and Commonwealth); the colonial rule was nothing but chaining a people – 318,942,000, or about one-fifth of all the humans in the world at that time. (Simon Commission, op. cit.) And, with the plundering and chaining the people the colonial masters were unashamedly happy and shamelessly proud. About the land, Lord Curzon wrote in his “Problems of the Far East” in 1894: “Just as De Tocqueville remarked that the conquest and government of India are really the achievements which have given to England her place in the opinion of the world, so it is the prestige and the wealth arising from her Asiatic position that are the foundation stones of the British Empire. There, in the heart of the old Asian continent, she sits upon the throne that has always ruled the East. Her scepter is outstretched over land and sea. ‘Godlike', she ‘grasps the triple fork, and kinglike, wears the crown.'”
The land was rich in resources. Clive, as he was quoted in the Indian Industrial Commission Report 1916-'18[henceforth IICR], found Murshidabad in 1757 was “rich as the city of London,” and was “possessing infinitely greater prosperity than” London. Bernier, as he was quoted in Lectures on the Ancient System of Irrigation in Bengal and its Application to Modern Problems by Sir William Willcocks in 1930, found Bengal was “richer than Egypt”. The IICR said: “[T]he industrial development of this country was at any rate not inferior to that of the more advanced European nations.” In 1908, the commission's chairman Sir Thomas Holland noted in his Sketch of the Mineral Resources of India the “high quality” iron, copper and brass in the sub-continent that “gave India at one time a prominent position in the metallurgical world.” The American Technical Mission noted iron ore in Singhbhum, Bastar, areas in the Central Provinces: about 800,000,000 tons; coal reserves in Assam, Bengal, Berar, Bihar and theCentral Provinces [now, the name is changed]: about 80 billion tons; bauxite reserve: about 250,000 tons, manganese ore: about 30% of the world output. Rich soil and abundant water resource and cheap labor made the land lucrative. [Pramathanath Banerjea in his A Study of Indian Economics (1911) also provides a description of the resources.] “Civilized” imperial rulers plundered the land. Their income, profit and prosperity stand as witness to the plunder.
Path with Steel: Following predecessor Lord Hardinge's 1848 minute on construction of railways in India, as Madan Mohan Malaviya tells, Lord Dalhousie prepared his Railway Minute in 1853. (Speeches and Writings, 2013 (1918)) In the minute, the Lord, the father of telegraph in India, foresaw commercial and social advantages. With railways, Dalhousie's biographer William Hunter says, the Lord planned not only to “consolidate the newly annexed territories of India by his railways, and immensely increase the striking power of his military forces at every point of the Empire,” but also to use the “railway construction as a bait to bring British capital and enterprise to India on a scale which had never entered the imagination of any previous Governor- General.” In the plan, adds Hunter, “Dalhousie had from the outset a vigilant eye to the mercantile aspects of his railway routes.” The rulers knew “[g]reat tracts [were] teeming with produce they cannot dispose of. … England is calling aloud for the cotton which India does already produce in some degree, and would produce sufficient in quality, and plentiful in quantity, if only there were provided the fitting means of conveyance for it from distant plains, to the several ports adopted for its shipment. Every increase of facilities for trade has been attended … with an increased demand for articles of European produce in the most distant markets of India; (Sir W. W. Hunter, The Marquess of Dalhousie and His Work in India, Rulers of India Series) Sir Rowland Macdonald Stephenson's Report upon the Practicability and Advantages of the Introduction of Railway into British India was published in 1845, 12 years prior to the First Indian War for Independence, and the formation of railway companies followed. The colonial rulers, England, “the unconscious tool of history”, as Marx described in “The British Rule in India”, began stretching railways: Howrah to Hooghly, a 24 miles of rails; to Raniganj, a coal county, a 121 miles of steel path. Railway and telegraph lines began their journeys in Kolkata and Mumbai in 1856. By 1858, rails rolled from Howrah: 200 miles. It jumped to 5,000 miles by 1869 in the sub-continent, to 25,000 miles by 1900, and to 35,000 miles as the World War II began ravaging the world. The 1880s saw the construction of the Jubilee Bridge over the Hooghly River. “The railway system”, Marx assessed in his “The future results of British rule in India”, “will … become in India truly the forerunner of modern industry”. And, with modern industry, a new class emerged: the industrial workers.
Fund allocation for construction of roads in the northern parts of the sub-continent was started from 1830. The total length of roads reached 9,000 miles by 1852. The roads increased capacity to transport commodities, about 10 times.
In 1861, the colonial rulers issued an order on reclamation of degraded land. It was issued to encourage cotton cultivation. Cotton supply to the British Isles from America decreased due to American civil war. Mumbai textile mills made wide expansion in 1863-1866. Bailing, shipping, marine insurances companies, 46 in number, came up in Mumbai during the period.
The East India Company exported the first consignment of jute in 1793: 100 tons. The first jute mills came into existence in 1855, and by 1869, 5 jute mills were operating with 950 looms. By 1910, 38 companies exported more than a billion yards of clothes and more than 450 million bags. By 1939, the number of looms increased to 68,377. (Samita Sen, Women and Labor in Late Colonial India, The Bengal Jute Industry, 1999, and WorldJute.Com)
In 1834, Lord Bentinck submitted a proposal to the East India Company Council of Directors on the possibilities of tea industry in the sub-continent. The first tea consignment from Assam sent as a sample to London in 1837 found a ready market. Tea plantations began journey in the Brahmaputra valley in 1859, and the tea industry expanded. Tea plantation in Sylhet was established in 1857, the year the First War for Independence began, and in the Dooars, it was in 1874. By 1868, the area under tea plantation in Sylhet went up to 2,050 acres, and it expanded to more than 71,000 acres by 1900. Tea export to Britain went up to 13 crore and 70 lakh (10 million = 1 crore and 1 hundred-thousand = 1 lakh) pounds by 1900. Speculation with land suitable for tea plantation began during the latter half of the 1800.
The 1894-1914 was the period of establishment of mining industry in the subcontinent. In 1895, 3 million tons of coal was extracted.  Railways, jute and textile industries, engineering and foundry workshops, rice mills and brick kilns increased the extraction of coal. Extractable and exploitable all areas were exploited only to enrich the colonial masters. And, massive hunger was visiting the land. 
People Starved: Famines, as is cited in Romesh Chunder Dutt's Open Letters to Lord Curzon on Famines and Land Assessments in IndiaThe Cambridge Economic History of India, B M Bhatia's Famines in India: A Study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India With Special Reference to Food Problem, 1860–1990, Mike Davis'Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World, David Hardiman's “Usury, Dearth and Famine in Western India” (Past and Present, 152), ravaged the land: the Great Bengal Famine (1769-'70), the Chalisha Famine (1783-'84), the Skull Famine (1791-'92), the Upper Doab Famine (1860-'61), the Orissa Famine (1865-'67), the Rajputana Famine (1868-'70), the Bihar Famine (1873-'74), the Great/South Indian Famine (1876-'78), the Indian Famines (1896-'97 and 1899-1900), the Bengal Famine (1943-'44). These were only a few among many others. The famines claimed their toll: millions of lives. Dutt mentioned “sad record of twenty-two famines within a period of 130 years of British rule in India.” (op. cit.) And, citing C. Walford's “The famines of the world: past and present” (Journal of the Statistical Society, 41(13) 1878) Mike Davis mentioned “31 serious famines in 120 years of British rule” (“The Origin of the Third World”, Antipode 32:1, 2000)
However, there was an opposite reality. Citing D. Rothermund's An Economic History of India (1988) and Dutt'sOpen Letters … Davis finds, “[b]etween 1875-1900 — a period that included the worst famines in Indian history — annual grain exports increased from 3 to 10 million tons; … this quantity equaled the annual nutrition of 25 million people.” (ibid.) Davis adds: “[B]y the turn of the century, India was supplying nearly a fifth of Britain's wheat consumption at the cost of its own food security.” (ibid.)
Payment: And, the imperialism was extracting its avania, tribute: dividends, interests, commissions. The sub-continent, writes Marx in Capital (vol. III), had to pay millions of pounds “in tribute for ‘good government,' interest and dividends of British capital, etc., not counting the sums sent home annually by officials as savings of their salaries or by English merchants as part of their profit …” The imperial filch had “noetic” causes: financing imperial expeditions, invasions, wars, and payments for mutiny! “Already saddled with a huge public debt that included reimbursing the stockholders of the East India Company and paying the costs of the 1857 revolt, India also had to finance British military supremacy in Asia. In addition to incessant proxy warfare with Russia on the Afghan frontier, the subcontinent's masses also subsidized such far-flung adventures of the Indian Army as the occupation of Egypt, the invasion of Ethiopia, and the conquest of the Sudan. As a result, military expenditures never comprised less than 25 percent (34 percent including police) of India's annual budget, and viceroys were constantly searching for creative ways to purloin monies for the Army from other sections of the budget, even the Famine Fund.” (Mike Davis, “The Origin …”)
And, massacres and killings including the Amritsar massacre led by General Dyer were frequent while the sahibs and memsahibs were busy with playing polo and having picnics.
And, there were incarceration and banishment of and gallows for freedom fighters. Many they were. There were Bhagat Singh and Surja [mostly spelled Surya] Sen, and Khudiram, one of the youngest revolutionaries in India, a youth of 18 years 8 months and 8 days, and Bagha Jatin and many Bhagat Sings and many Surja Sens. There were Pritilata and Matangini Hazra. Netaji, our Subhas Bose was there. There were the Kayur comrades. They “consulted none but own conscience, conspired with none but own duty.” (Note of Madan Lal Dhingra, quoted in J C Ker,Political Trouble in India, 1973)
Precedent: And, there was the poverty-stricken people, pauperized population, and laboring multitude, an emerging class of working people interacting with capitalist production in the sub-continent. It's, as Marx sarcastically coins in Theories of Surplus-Value “another wonderful prospect”. (Part II, vol. IV of Capital) “[T]he labouring class has to bear all the ‘temporary inconveniences' – unemployment, displacement of labour and capital …” (ibid.) The laboring class in the sub-continent bore all the “temporary inconveniences” capital was “gifting”. “If the history of British rule in India were to be condensed into a single fact, it is this: there was no increase in India's per capita income from 1757 to 1947” (Angus Maddison, Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run, 1998, quoted in Mike Davis, “The Origin …”) An imperial “great success” story it was. And, now, the former masters without sense of honor shamelessly preach the people in the sub-continent! They claim it's their duty to democracy! And, pitifully, they have dependents and disciples! Masters have sense of humor.    
The average income in the sub-continent was “just enough”, write Professor K T Shah and K J Khambata in The Wealth and Taxable Capacity of India, “either to feed two men in every three of the population, or give them all two meals in place of every three meals they need, on condition that they all consent to go naked, live out of doors all the year round, have no amusement or recreation, and want nothing else but food, and that the lower, the coarsest, and the least nutritious.” From 1872 to 1921, the life expectancy of ordinary Indians fell by 20 percent, writes K. Davis inPopulation of India and Pakistan (1951), and Mike Davis comments on the “development”: “[A] deterioration in human biology probably without precedent in the subcontinent's long history”. (“The Origin …”)
The population, to survive on that income, had to “forget” health care and education. The Report on an Enquiry into Working Class Budget in Bombay [Mumbai] compared budgets of Bombay jail inmates and Bombay working class member: 1.42 lbs.-1.69 lbs. of salt, cereals, pulse, etc. and 1.51 lbs. respectively. The annual cost of maintaining an Indian prisoner was about three times the Indian agriculturist's income, estimated the Banking Enquiry Commission. “[I]n most industrial centres [in the sub-continent]”, the Royal Commission on Labor in India (1929) [also known as Whitley Commission] found, “the proportion of families and individuals who are in debt is not less than two-thirds of the whole. … [I]n the great majority of cases the amount of debt exceeds three months' wages and is often far in excess of this amount.” In Mumbai, the Textile Inquiry Committee (1937) found, “91.24 per cent live in one room tenement and the average number of persons residing in each such tenement is 3.84. The approximate floor space available per person and tenement is 26.86 and 103.23 sq. ft. respectively.” The Whitley Commission Report found: About one-third of the Karachi population lives in a room at the rate of 6-9 persons while 73 per cent of the Ahmedabad working class population lives in one-room tenements.  Other industrial centers were no exception. An investigation by the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Union found: 5,660 of the 23,706 tenements had no provision of water. “Indian labour is content with a very low standard of comfort.” The IICR found: “The worst type of chawl [workmen's dwellings] consists of a two-, three-, or four-storeyed building, with single-room units either placed back to back or separated by a narrow gulley two or three feet wide, usually traversed by an open drain. The rooms, especially those on the ground floor, are often pitch dark and possess very little in the way of windows; and even the small openings which exist are closed by the inhabitants in their desire to secure privacy and to avoid the imaginary evils of ventilation. The ground floors are usually damp owing to an insufficient plinth; the courtyards between the buildings are most undesirably narrow and, therefore, receive insufficient sun and air. They are also very dirty. Water arrangements are insufficient and latrine accommodation is bad, though the latter is being steadily improved. A most insanitary smell hangs round those buildings. … (There were cases of] three families occupying a single room …” The commission exposed the fact: “The cheapness of living in India is a powerful weapon in international competition”. It was capital's competition at the cost of human souls hundreds of thousands in number.
“[B]ut”, the commission found, “it is of little avail if the labour is inefficient and unorganised.” So, there is a great opportunity – organize these limbs and muscles in an efficient way – to have a higher profit! And, to organize the limbs is to regiment labor, shackle it.
The colonial crown's acts were nothing but savage. “There is no end”, Lenin wrote, “to the acts of violence and plunder which goes under the name of the British system of government in India. Nowhere in the world – with the exception, of course, of Russia – will you find such abject mass poverty, such chronic starvation among the people. The most liberal and radical personalities of free Britain, men like John Morley … become regular Genghis Khan when appointed to govern India, and are capable of sanctioning every means of ‘pacifying' the population in their charge, even to the extent of flogging political protesters.” (op. cit.) In the face of the savage power, labor in Indiastood firm. “In India lately,” wrote Lenin, “the native slaves of the ‘civilised' British capitalists have been a source of worry to their ‘masters'. (op. cit.) It was the “native slaves”, unorganized, unaware, inexperienced in its initial days.
The wage “slaves” were coerced or allured out of their villages with the power of starvation. “[B]etween the years 1921 and 1931 the number of industrial workers employed in establishments of more than 10 workers rose from 2.6 million to 3.5 million. In the intervening decade, and especially in the last two and a half years of the war with the large increase in heavy war industry, this number has rocketed by leaps and bounds. … [T]he industrial proletariat numbers [were] far more than the 5 million estimate of 1931. To this core of true industrial workers must be added about 20 million handicraft workers who work in places employing less than 10 people. These are wage workers and constitute a reserve for the industrial working class. … In addition to this there [was] an agricultural proletariat … approximately 130 million.” (Ted Grant & Andrew Scott, “The road to India's freedom”, Workers' International News, vol. 5 nos. 3&4, presumably June 1942) A part of the “slaves” were being mobilized by capital in newly established factories and mills with regimentation and rule.
Children of these “slaves” were not even allowed to stay beyond the tentacles of capital. “If the children of workers are provided with education under tolerable conditions of life, a new generation of workers will grow up, who will learn to regard mill work as their fixed occupation.” (IICR) So, there's arrangement for perennial supply of labor! And, they were already there. “Children between the ages of 9 and 14, generally known as half-timers, are employed in mills for six hours a day …” (ibid.) Long ago, Marx found the fact in the home of the imperial masters as he quoted the 17thJanuary, 1860 issue of Daily Telegraph: “Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or four o'clock in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven, or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly horrible to contemplate….” (Capital, vol. I) The sub-continent was chained by capital. So, why should capital spare children of wage slaves in the sub-continent? Yet, capital teaches “civility” and “humanity”!
Pack: From the very beginning the property owning classes related to industry and commerce were organized: the British Chamber of Commerce – in 1834 in Bengal, the Bombay Mill Owners' Association – in 1875, the Duars Planters' Association by the European tea planters – 1878, the Indian Jute Mills Association (during formation, it was Indian Jute Manufacturers' Association, and the renaming was done in 1902) – in 1884, Ahmedabad Textile Mills' Association – 1891, Indian Tea Planters' Association – 1918. Sugar, mining, engineering, paper, etc. found similar organizations within a short period. The Indian Chambers of Commerce was in close relations with the Indian political leadership dependable to the colonial rulers. Deep impact of the relations between this political leadership and economic interests, writes C B Kumar in The Development of Industrial Relations in India, by these types of organizations were felt at latter stage. During the World War I, the British colonial rulers got assistance from the Tata's iron, steel, cement and hydro-power establishments. It was a business of mutual benefit – comprador serving its master and the master blessing the comprador. “Only moneylenders, urban merchants, and a handful of indigenous industrialists seemed to have benefited consistently from India's renewed importance in world trade.” (Mike Davis, “The Origin …”)
Pathfinders: At the same time, new industrial centers were turning into centers of protest and resistance. The industrial workers in the sub-continent waged struggles in its economic and political interests, and for the country's freedom from colonial chains. For more than a century, the struggle, part of class struggle, was waged in waves. The working people, it's found:
(1) On occasions, established command over situation. Working people, in one such occasion, smashed colonial administration in Sholapur, an industrial center, in May 1930, and established their administration for days. It, the Sholapur Commune, was crushed only with imposition of martial law there. Thousands of textile mills workers stood there in barricades. Mallappa Dhanshetty, Shrikisan Sardar, Qurban Husain and Jagannath Shinde, four leaders of the commune were hanged on January 12, 1931. Bombay [now, Mumbai] experienced similar rising after mutiny in the Royal Indian Navy. Workers were in control of the city. The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny in Mumbai on February 18, 1945 that spread from Karachi to Kolkata involving 78 ships, 20 shore establishments and 20,000 members of the navy was an example of the working people's struggle that put them in command of a situation although the initiative was lost due to failures of varying types. Mumbai went into total strike with the initiative of the working people, andfrom February 18 to 22, the imperialist British government gunned down more than 400 workers.
(2) Set examples of peaceful protests. In Peshawar, soldiers – peasantry, as Lenin found, in uniforms – defied command and didn't open fire on people, deserted their rank, joined protesting people, and suffered rigorous imprisonment. It was during the Peshawar Uprising in 1900 that witnessed blood of hundreds of commoners. And, it was M K Gandhi, who repudiated the rebel soldiers although the armed rebels followed Gandhi's ahimsa, non-violence and the path of peaceful protest. The rebel soldiers, workingmen, didn't use their arms, and suffered rigorous imprisonment.   
(3) Never resorted to terrorism, conspiratorial approach, individualistic adventurism although a part of enlightened middle class temporarily practiced the method. The labor's non-resorting to conspiratorial work is a show of its strength. Resorting to conspiratorial work, it should be mentioned, is an infantile approach. Resisting/defying capital was begun by the emerging class itself since its very early days, and that was not through conspiracy and terrorism. The emerging class gradually resorted to collective resistance.
On the contrary, it was the capital owning classes and their political cohorts and suppression-machine that were ceaselessly resorting to conspiracy, terror, violence, armed assault. Laws and courts of law were used against the working classes although it was unremittingly propagated that law and its court were impartial. There's instance of court of law fined trade union, which was trying only to raise and realize justified demands of its members – industrial workers, and thus the court stood against labor. The position compelled the working masses to resort to forceful resistance. Labor always resorted to collective resistance after only a few resistances at individual level at its initial days. The practice – collective approach – was praxis of democracy within its sphere, and in its struggle for survival.   
(4) Stood against imperialist power. On occasions, it was the working class that raised the banner of resistance against imperialism before any other class in the sub-continent could initiate the job. It opposed unjust war. The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in its Lahore session in March 1923 adopted a resolution calling on not to participate in unjust wars. And, the class paid for the resistance. In this stand, and in opposing capital, labor was not waiting for leadership from other classes. At later stages, other classes, especially the local bourgeoisie felt its urgent need to win over the labor, and took initiative to sit on the leadership of labor movement. Gandhi got involved with labor strike in Ahmedabad in 1918. He later took part in directing trade union that, at later stage, evolved into Gandhite TU. Congress in its Nagpur and Kanpur sessions adopted resolutions and program asking its provincial committees, other organs, leaders and workers to organize labor into TUs and to send Congress propagandists and organizers among the labor. It took vigorous steps to take hold of leadership of the AITUC. C R Das said in Congress'Gaya session: We, the Congress, are already too late about labor; workers and peasantry will get detached from us, build up their organization, and will bring class struggle if we fail to reach them. The labor and peasantry have to be brought to our control if Congress likes to stay free of this situation.           
(5) Stood by national struggle for independence. Swadeshi movement found labor by its side. Native rulers in princely states, Marx observed, were most formidable obstacle on the path to advancement of the sub-continent. (“The native states”, July 25, 1853, New York Daily Tribune) Labor struggled for democracy in the princely states. Labor was in solidarity with broader society as it took active participation in the broader society's political struggle for independence. Labor raised its banner of resistance during the Red Fort Trial of Indian National Army (INA) members in 1945. Its role and participation along with students and other sections of the mass in Kolkata protesting the trial was heroic. At its initial days, labor lacked political program, a natural consistency. The political program developed gradually as labor was gaining knowledge from political developments and from its fights against capital. At the Kolkata Congress, 50,000 workers demonstrated with the slogan: An independent socialist republic of India.
(6) Established alliance with peasantry. It was established, among other places, in Jalpaiguri by tea plantation workers in the 1920s. Labor expressed solidarity with the revolting peasantry during its Chouri Choura trial although Congress leadership abandoned the Chouri Choura-peasantry that followed Congress' call for mass upsurge.
(7) Stood against communalism although capital and its politicians tried to spread poison of communalism in the camp of labor.
(8) Stood for dignity. On occasions, labor struggled for recognition of its union as its representative, which is identified by a number of labor historians as question of dignity.
(9) On occasions and in areas, organized it on its own. Organizations and leadership from among the ranks of labor emerged, on occasions, through its fights in factories and mills.
(10) With its struggles, confirmed class struggle as the key to social advancement. With its struggle, thus, labor carried forward the historic task of advancement in the sub-continent. It carried on the task since its days of inception. No other class in the land has embarked on this task as labor. In this task, labor held high the banner of equity, equality, equitable distribution, people's control over all public resources, and the task of smashing of capitalism, imperialism and remnants of feudalism.
Power Unleashed: On the contrary, labor had to face all the adversaries and force capital and the state in its command could unleash and heinous tact these could adopt:
(1) Brutal force, murder, killing, massacre, treachery, coercion, threat, surveillance. State resorted to its freedom in using firearms in the face of labor's justified collective protests/resistance/demands. At those moments, labor had nothing but gravels, bricks pieces, and on one or two occasions, parts broken from machines to protect it. Even, labor's minimum demands for a better working condition, an essential for regeneration of capital, were initially denied, brushed out, unheeded, gagged down. Capital and state felt scared with labor's most primary moves, with labor's search for recourse in its roots in village life and in its spiritual practices, with slightest signs of labor's very primary initiative for education (organizing library) and amusement or spiritual practices (organizing puja, prayer). The state, as is claimed by revolutionary theoreticians of proletariat, was always faithful to its duty: serve capital, and very naturally, administrative machine, law and courts of law were nothing but drumbeaters although a lot of theoreticians always propagate and demand non-partisan administrative machine, which is not only an illusion, but a damn lie also.
(2) Spreading of confusion and communalism in the ranks of labor, forcefully keeping labor isolated from broader society, collaboration between capital and its political representatives that posed as leader of the masses, taking hold of leadership. On occasions, political leadership tried to keep labor away from participating in political activities. But labor thwarted those ill-efforts.
(3) Unemployment, competition, burden of decreased profit, illiteracy, uncertainty, starvation, indignity. Capital was always using hunger to force labor capitulate. Capital was reducing wages while its profit was rising. During boom in economy, capital intensified its exploitation of labor, and burdened it during period of bust. Capital increased working hours as it got hold of electricity. Kolkata jute mills workers had the experience. Holidays on occasions of religious festivals including eidrathjatra and Annapurna puja of followers of Islam and Hindu religions respectively were not allowed by capital. Labor had to struggle for full day's leave with pay on the occasions of these festivities. The Kolkata labor repeatedly had the experience for years.  
Perseverance: But no conspiracy, no threat and terror, no murder and killing, no imposition of boundary by law and force could deter labor in its fight for a better life – a life with freedom and dignity, a life with safety and security, a life with opportunities to pursue humane excellence. In waves of strikes across industry and across the land, labor spread its movement with loss of millions of working days in the sub-continent, and at times, compelled capital and its state to surrender. In areas, labor turned market places into staging ground for mobilization and resistance. There's instance that a library evolved into a TU and a typed newsletter of a few hundred copies had to be printed in larger number for distribution around the land. 
It took years for a red flag to appear in a labor procession in this sub-continent; and at a time of triumph, labor was spreading its message with red flags on a locomotive engine that was moving from place to place. It was labor's moment of victory in the sub-continent-wide struggle of railway workers in 1946.
Embryos of trade union almost simultaneously came into being in more than one place in the sub-continent as it was organizing on its own although an assumption prevails that TU activities began in a single area. The pattern – simultaneous – is meaningful.
Labor's movement in the sub-continent supports the claim, to put it briefly, reality shapes ideas. In its initial days, labor in the sub-continent was tied to ideas and culture of its old home: village, and ghosts and ill-spirit, etc. Many of its faiths were ancient. To get free from exploitation, a part of labor, in its initial days, in the sub-continent sought help of gods that lived eternally somewhere in forests and hills. It even imagined Kaiser as a god, who had the capacity to free labor from the clutches of feereengee, the eengrej, the English, the British colonial rulers, and its collaborators. It should not be imagined that all old ideas and concepts evaporated the moment labor interacted with machine, with modern production process, with capitalist production. But new ideas, concepts, method, style, imaginations crept in. Those might be partial, might be mixed; but old ones were coming into conflict with new ones, and giving in to the new.
In areas, because of type of production, labor was kept isolated from broader social community/towns/villages; they had to work in small groups; even one group of workers were isolated from other groups, and the groups were smaller in number. Effective and organized forms and methods of protests, other than falling sick or deserting work place, were unknown to labor in the area. It was difficult for news of political and social developments in the broader society to reach labor in the area. Political leadership at national level, at times, even, was not taking initiative to reach the labor there. But that didn't permanently kept labor away from organizing collective struggle. It's a meaningful signal to comprehend.   
But with perseverance, labor learned. On the path to learning, mistakes were there as were failures. Successes also raised their victorious flags. Successes were teachers as were mistakes and failures.
Responsibility for failures in political struggle and political development, for failures to foil onslaught by forces of reaction and retrogression, for fratricidal bloodbath engineered and instigated by capital in no way falls on labor, a young class not developed fully at that period, as at no moment in the history of this sub-continent labor was in full control of political situations, which was always developing through competition and conflicts. Labor's contending classes were older, stronger, having more interactions with science, finance, diplomacy and geopolitics, modern knowledge, and with other countries, and were politically more organized, matured and powerful.  The class in collusion with imperialist rulers, and standing opposed to labor was more matured than all other classes in the sub-continent. Labor, despite its inexperience, weaker organization, and theoretical incompleteness, stood against backward, reactionary political ideas and activities, and stood for progress. A historical responsibility it was. Labor always stood for fraternity and solidarity. No other class in the sub-continent can make similar claim throughout the period.
Forms and methods of protest, resistance and struggle that emerge in spheres of society depend on prevailing reality, which is a historical growth. Politics can't escape the reality as it can't bury prospects also. Adopting appropriate strategy and tactics takes time. At times, initially obviously, resistances and barricades may crumble down as those initially can't overpower relevant process. But despite failures and temporary crumbling downs the clarion call for a humane life and humane dignity remains alive. It's one of the teachings by labor in the sub-continent. “[W]e have to work very hard to … preserve the dignity of human beings as creatures with the ability to reason and choose. Resistance lives! As we say in IndiaInqilab Zindabad!” (Amiya Kumar Bagchi, “The Parameters of Resistance”,Monthly Review, vol. 55, issue 3, July-August, 2003)