The working class of India is already under severe pressure due to the contractualization of jobs. Workers anyway migrate from their villages to cities in search of work. But now even place of work is no longer fixed. In search of work, the casual, contract and daily wage workers migrate in search of work.

Burdened by rising prices, non implementation of labour laws, fluctuating wages and uncertainty of work, a new policy of the Modi Govt is out to further beat the working class and that is the CAA NPR NRC policy package. While so many sections are out in struggle against these policies, the working class is, in the main, yet to realize what sort of harassment is in store for it.

There are many assurances from the Modi Govt. He says NPR was conducted in 2010. Yes, but this time the NPR form asks you WHERE your parents were born. No problem, says PM Modi to us, you need not answer and definitely do not need to show documents to prove. Right to a point and a LIE beyond. The form will be filled by a person from the local administration. The same administration, NOT Modi and Shah, will mark some names as “suspicious” and ask them to prove the birth place of their parents. So what, we think. I have a Hindu name. You had that when you had to run around submitting documents for aadhar. You had that too when you decided to give a bribe to get your ration card made as you didn’t have time to stand in the queue every day. So many local issues, disputes, enemities are going to decide whom local authorities are going to demand papers from.

How do you prove where your parents were born, if you don’t have their birth certificates? How do you bring their neighbours to testify if you yourself are 60 years old? What sympathy and support will you get from neighbours when you have been tenants for only two months in this city as you were working at a different site or different city earlier? How are rural labour who have no land to their name coming down in land records to them from their forefathers, going to prove that they are of the earth of India? And what if the land record is disputed? If it has been inundated? If you are from a family whose land was acquired and you grew up as landless in a different part of the state? And what if you are a woman worker, married before 18yrs of age into a family settled in another part of the country?

Does it all sound like a story, a myth. Do not forget that there are 19 lakh people in Assam who are proof that it happens. Modi Shah tell us that this is all a mistake where Hindus are concerned, they can’t belong anywhere else. But that may be true of the Muslim applicants too, that they belong here. That is why CAA is all wrong, it says one religion can be Indian and another cannot be. However the Constitution of India says this is wrong, Indians may practice any religion. That is why CAA must go. This is India where the Hindu named owner loots all workers no matter which religion they belong to; where the Govt underpays or contractualizes all its employees and does not bother if you have a Hindu name. If you are a woman employee, owners pay you less than male employees doing the same work even if their names are Muslim and yours Hindu. The Modi Govt. tried to snatch the right to withdraw from PF accounts. It hit the women textile workers of Bengaluru so hard that thousands were forced to hit the streets to ensure the rule was revoked. Were they all Muslims; if not, then why did the Modi govt try to loot their right this way?

See the situation. Air India, Indian Railways, BSNL are being sold, labour laws are being annulled, our wages and jobs are being attacked. But the only issues which are occupying us are those trying to divide workers on the basis of who we worship, what we eat etc.

Let us expose this.

Say no to NRC NPR NRC.

Let us unitedly fight to defend jobs and rights.