India’s Massive Mobilization on July 9th was Hollowed Out by Reformist Leadership

May 20th’s Delay

The general strike of July 9th, 2025, was originally scheduled for May 20th. Though it was delayed, the strike still involved hundreds of millions of workers across India. The Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and Federations (JPCTUF) decided to postpone the strike following “Operation Sindoor” on May 7th. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s military provocation against Pakistan brought the two rival nuclear powers in South Asia to the brink of all-out war

The Federation’s capitulation to anti-Pakistani nationalist fervor strengthened the Modi government’s grip. This furthered its agenda, both domestic and foreign, in pursuit of predatory objectives against the workers.

The Stalinists’ Organizational Structure

The JPCTUF comprises 10 trade union bodies and several sectoral federations. Among the largest and most politically influential are the two main federations led by Stalinists: the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), aligned with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), affiliated with the Communist Party of India.

The strike on July 9th was a direct response to the Modi government’s intensified assault on the working class. Workers protested against longer working hours, precarious employment, privatization, the dismantling of public services, and legislation that would introduce new obstacles to trade union organization, which would make most strikes illegal.

The Stalinists placed all the emphasis on privatization. They aimed at portraying the recent history of the Indian trade union movement since the Rao government’s 1991 “liberalization” as a struggle simply against market reforms. Rather than struggling against the lengthening of the working day that affects all Indian proletariat, these ultra-opportunists exclusively mobilized the public sector employees, the base of their clientelist political power.

Yet, the private sector workers who went on strike were motivated by the fight against the extension of their working day from 8 to 12 hours!

This is particularly significant when we consider that it directly attacks the historic eight-hour day; an achievement won by the international working class through decades of bloody struggle.

The other demand that could have unified the entire Indian proletariat is the struggle for substantial wage increases. After all, the central concern for the strikers is inflation and the deterioration of the purchasing power of their wages.

Strike Chronicles

According to the strike organizers, 250 million workers took part, the same as in 2020. The strike involved large sections of the working class, distinct from the religious and caste divisions incessantly promoted by the ruling class and its political representatives. Some interesting sectors involved: civil servants, employees of India’s still-extensive public-sector enterprises, workers in the globally integrated manufacturing industries such as automotive, and, to a lesser extent, the informal sector.

Industries such as coal mining, steel production, banking, postal services, and public transport were severely disrupted. Some car manufacturing plants, including an Ashok Leyland plant in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, had to be partially shut down. Others, Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai, reported high levels of “absenteeism,” slowing down production lines.

In Kerala, where the state government is run by the CPI, daily life was paralysed. Though Kerala State Road Transport Corporation promised buses would operate normally, they too were disrupted.

In West Bengal, where the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government promised to break the strike, several districts broke into violent clashes between strike supporters and the police and TMC thugs. According to news reports, more than a thousand strike supporters were arrested. A TMC spokesperson defended the state crackdown, calling the strike “hooliganism disguised as protest.”

In Gurgaon, thousands of workers from the automotive, construction, banking, healthcare, and childcare sectors marched from Kamla Nehru Park to the post office and held a rally.

In Assam, tea plantation workers went on strike en masse and organised demonstrations across the state.

In Tamil Nadu, public transport and auto-rickshaw services were suspended. In Chennai, the capital and largest city, the manufacturing centers of Coimbatore and Tiruchirappalli were stopped. Numerous bank and insurance branches closed and car production halted.

In Jharkhand, the strike paralysed all operations of Central Coalfields Ltd. and Eastern Coalfields Ltd.

The main office, as well as all 450 branches and regional offices of the Jharkhand and State Gramin Bank were closed. Neighbouring Bihar also shut.

In Maharashtra, workers walked off. This caused the automotive, pharmaceutical, and engineering companies to report reduced production, disruptions to just-in-time production, and blackouts. In the western part of the state, a strike by workers at the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company disrupted power supply to the industrial regions.

Banking and insurance services across Uttar Pradesh ground to a halt. Some 270,000 electrical workers walked off the job in protest of the planned privatisation of the state-owned distributors PVVNL and DVVNL.

Only in West Bengal, Odisha, and Bihar were rail services occupied by protesters. Railways were largely unaffected by the strike otherwise. This distribution of impact reveals the limitations of Indian trade unionism, which is still concentrated in the state and partially stated owned sectors.

Support for the strike varied sharply by region, secondary to union density and regional class composition. Districts with large public-sector workforces turned out strongly, while areas of large privatized industries saw weaker participation.

Nationalism Remains Strong

The contemporary Indian trade union movement shows a detrimental contradiction in the current phase of the subcontinent’s class struggle: the capacity to mobilize hundreds of millions of workers paired with absence of the revolutionary political leadership. This is no accident, but the result of trade union leadership that is structurally reformist. Such leadership is embedded within the capitalist system rather than committed to its revolutionary overthrow.

There is nothing new about the labor movement bowing to bourgeois nationalism during military crises. In 1999, during the Kargil War, union federations shelved scheduled mobilisations to align with the Vajpayee government’s rhetoric. After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the JPCTUF similarly pushed back the December general strike, citing the “need for national unity.”

More recently, during the Pulwama-Balakot crisis in February 2019, the trade union federations systematically avoided any criticism of the Modi government’s military policies, focusing their opposition exclusively on economic issues. The statement issued by the AITUC on February 28th, 2019, is emblematic. While denouncing “anti-worker policies” in detail, it completely omitted any reference to military escalation and its costs for the working class.

The strike on November 26th, 2020, which according to official estimates involved over 250 million workers, was the largest trade union mobilization in world history. However, the demands remained limited to immediate economic issues, systematically avoiding any criticism of imperialist and militarist policies.

The public sector recorded participation rates of over 70%, with particular intensity in banking, postal, and railway services. The Reserve Bank of India estimated economic losses of over €3.5 billion, mainly concentrated in the state and public-company sectors. The participation of agricultural workers, organized through rural associations affiliated with trade union federations, was significant. Over 200 million agricultural workers took part in the demonstrations, which blocked the main rural transport routes.

In the private sector, union membership stayed below 30%. Simply, the unions have little influence in the most dynamic areas of capitalist accumulation. This sectoral distribution is not accidental but reflects the parasitic nature of Indian trade unionism, concentrated in the state sectors and unable to penetrate the strategic areas of the modern capitalist economy.

Break off from Trade Union Opportunism or Remain Paralyzed

It is not a lack of strength that paralyzed the Indian proletariat, but its leadership. Faced with enormous capacity for mobilisation, the trade unions chose the path of conciliation. July 9th showed the working-class army was ready to fight but lacked leadership. The trade union bosses’ avoidance of confrontation during the military crisis confirms their integration into the bourgeois state apparatus.

The systematic separation between “economic issues” and “political issues” is the very structure of opportunistic trade unionism. The complicit silence in the face of war and nationalism shepherds the proletariat into bourgeois legality and constitutional patriotism.

Within this strategy, rhetoric against privatization plays a central role in preserving the capitalist order. Trade union leaders and reformist left-wing parties denounce the selling off of the public sector and call for a return to state management of services, presented as “fairer” or “pro-worker”. But this opposition is deceptive.

The state, whether it manages or privatizes, remains the bourgeoisie’s state. Defending public enterprise means defending another form of the same exploitation, under the direct control of the state. Public ownership of the means of production, without the overthrow of bourgeois power, is not emancipation: it is state capitalism.

There is no such thing as “bad” capitalism in private hands and “good” capitalism in state hands. Incidentally, it’s the “good” hands that keeps wages low and extends the working day to 12 hours! The state is never neutral: it represses, exploits, militarizes, and arms itself. Instead of denouncing this basic truth, trade unions act as guarantors of social peace, calling for better administration of capital. In doing so, they bind the working class to the fate of the national economy and to the reformist illusion that the system can be corrected.

The working class does not defend the state, its assets, or its economy. It defends only itself, its autonomy, and its revolutionary organisation. Every economic struggle, including the struggle against privatisation, is futile if it isn’t subordinated to the destruction of the bourgeois state and the capitalist mode of production.

Either a Break with the Piecards or Class Sterilization

It must be clearly stated that the Indian working class will not be able to advance as long as it remains tied to the existing trade union federations and their opportunistic leaders. No democratic illusions or economic rhetoric can mask this reality. The official trade unions have become instruments of containment of the proletariat, not of its emancipation.

We must break away. Break away from compromised trade union structures, break away from opportunistic leaderships, break away from the bigwigs who speak in the name of workers but act as guardians of the bourgeois order. Only this way will it be possible to rebuild, on internationalist and communist foundations, a political leadership worthy of the strength shown on July 9th.