Faridabad Majdoor Samachar: A working class journal
Industrial workers across Delhi-NCR find their voices in the Faridabad Majdoor Samachar
A ten minutes’ walk from the Escorts-Mujesar metro station – the last stop of Delhi Metro’s Violet line – is the unassuming office of Faridabad Majdoor Samachar (FMS), the Hindi monthly workers’ journal documenting the lives and times of industrial workers across the National Capital Region.
The office is hidden in a narrow lane between rows of houses. But as one enters through the low doorway of Jhuggi number 3, it’s suddenly a different world. The door opens into a small room with a cluster of plastic chairs, and low wooden tables lining the cream-coloured walls. The plaster has peeled off at some places. Up on the wall, there is an artwork inspired by daily lives of industrial workers.
It is in this room that the editorial agenda of the 34-year-old FMS is set. Conceptualised and born in 1982, initially FMS was a Left-leaning paper, focussed on workers’ activities in the factories in Faridabad. The objective of the paper was to organise a political party of the working classes. The paper made its debut as a single-page broadsheet priced at 25 paise. Since then, it has reported on labour uprisings, revolts against company managements, police action, trade unions etc..
The paper once used to have a column titled “Marxism” but they eventually did away with it. “Over time, it was felt that there was a need to speak in a language that is understood by 95 per cent of the population. As a conscious decision, use of words like Capitalism, Imperialism, Socialism and Marxism stopped in the paper since 1993,” said the editor of FMS, a man in his sixties, who does not want to be named.
There were efforts to explain those terms in longer sentences or paragraphs which the common worker could understand. It was in 1993 that the paper was made completely free to reach a wider target readership. The editor further explained, “By 1998, we started questioning whether there was any need to ‘teach the workers’. It was felt that there was rather a need to learn from the workers about their life and how they cope with tough circumstances. As a result, after 1998, workers’ voices found more importance in FMS.”
Over time, “taalmel” or “coordination” emerged as the most important word for those at FMS. The vision was to forge taalmel between workers of different factories in the industrial area, and eventually between workers of different industrial areas. As disillusionment with trade unions, and political parties grew, what was left was taalmel amongst the workers – a mutual exchange for benefit of both parties.Even today, it is taalmel that ensures the smooth running of FMS. There are no edit meetings, no reporters – contrary to what one would imagine.
“We rely on conversations with workers to find out more about what is going on in the factories, their homes, and lives,” he said.
In every edition, in a column called “Saajhedaari”, the paper invites readers to collect 10-20-50 copies of the monthly, requesting them to distribute among colleagues, neighbours and friends. The paper invites workers for baat cheet (informal conversations) to share stories from the shop floor, or life in general.
For example, the July edition of the journal has a story from Apex Security in Delhi:
The guards are made to work for 12-hour shifts. There are no weekly offs. After deducting the amount for ESI and PF, for 12 hours of work every day for 30-31 days, the guards in Delhi get paid Rs. 14500. The company gives them two shirts, two trousers, and a pair of shoes every year.
“We do not use names of those who give us anecdotes. Only names and addresses of the factories from which the stories come are printed. Confident of anonymity, workers come forward to share their stories,” said the editor. The August edition of the paper has stories of 12-hour long shifts, autocratic management, delayed or truncated salaries, workers denied of overtime benefits, smelly workshop floors, bribe-taking supervisors, revolts and a worker being arbitrarily dismissed when he complained about bribes.
FMS encourages workers to visit its Faridabad office on Sundays. If that is not possible, then there are other ways of sending anecdotes, pictures, videos, or audios through WhatsApp, phone, and even email. One such voice in the latest edition of FMS is 22-year-old Babloo Singh. He works for Orient Electric in Faridabad as temporary worker. Singh hails from Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh, and three generations of his family have been working in Faridabad. Educated up to the tenth class, Babloo has worked in five different factories till date. He is relatively young compared to other workers, but has no hope for a better life – free from 12-hour shifts, alternating day-night shifts every week, squalid working conditions, and meagre pay.
Asked if he would want to return to his ancestral village, he said, “The conditions are even worse there. Whatever land we have there is not enough to sustain the whole family. Otherwise, why would people leave the villages for the cities to work in industries?”
An anecdote narrated by Babloo has been published in FMS and he is visibly excited about it. He said he likes reading the paper, and even distributes it to colleagues. “It tells me more about brothers in other factories facing the same conditions. Hum akele nahi hain. Yeh sochke accha lagta hain (It feels good to imagine that we are not alone in this),” he said, smiling wryly.
The method of circulation of FMS is another experiment in taalmel. Currently, the paper is circulated in the industrial areas of Faridabad, Gurgaon (Udyog Vihar), IMT Manesar, and Okhla Industrial Area. Editors of the paper station themselves at key locations, nearby factories, or railway stations through which thousands of workers commute every day, and distribute copies to interested workers.
“More than 80 per cent of the2- 2.5million factory workers in Faridabad, Gurgaon’s Udyog Vihar, and the Okhla Industrial area are temporary. They do not exist in the company’s records, and could be asked to leave any day. Besides, there is a huge difference in the pays of permanent and temporary workers. The system is very arbitrary and is not designed to look after the interests of the workers,” said the editor, explaining the paper’s distribution priorities.
The current circulation of the paper, said the editor, is about 16,000 copies a month. He claims that the paper aims to highlight the real voices of the workers. “It is different from event-based mainstream media, where one jumps from one event to another – to avoid talking about the real issues,” he said.
Since the paper is distributed free, it depends on voluntary monetary contributions from “friends and workers.”The paper is online, where an English version is also available. “The translation is done by a friend free of cost, and so is the work of putting it up online,” he said.
In the age of big advertiser-funded media, FMS stands out as an example of what can be achieved when there is collective effort and taalmel.