Review: Japanese Management, Indian Resistance

It’s hard to imagine that these interventions aimed to prevent a recurrence of the violence at Maruti’s Manesar factory on 18 July 2012, which led to the death of a manager, Awanish Kumar Dev. Media reports after the incident largely blamed factory workers. The company dismissed thousands and hundreds were arrested. In 2017, 117 of them were acquitted, but many are still struggling to find a job. Even as its former workers languish, Maruti continues to dominate the market and is setting up a new manufacturing facility close to Manesar.

Anjali Deshpande and Nandita Haksar’s book Japanese Management, Indian Resistance pierces the unilateral narratives around the event to present the workers’ point of view. Many of them point out that Dev was sympathetic to their cause; why would they kill him? They claim that Maruti’s bouncers attacking the workers led to the skirmish rather than them thrashing managers. However, this is not a he-said-she-said collage of testimonies. It presents a richly-detailed investigation into the incident.

Beyond that fateful day, the authors explore how Maruti came to be a behemoth and the ramifications its policies and practices have on worker rights. They begin in the 1950s, when cars were mostly imported, putting a strain on the country’s foreign exchange reserves. Many governments tried to locally manufacture an affordable car, culminating in then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s son Sanjay Gandhi setting up Maruti Motors Limited in 1971. In 1981, after Sanjay’s death, Indira Gandhi nationalised the company, which entered into a joint agreement with the Japanese firm Suzuki Motor Corporation. The latter kept increasing its stake and in 2003, the Government of India completely divested its shares in the company.

The book covers vast ground, but seldom gets bogged down in a morass of information. The authors are precise about what they delve into, which makes for an engaging read. For instance, they do not dig into the legal case against the Maruti workers, but touch upon its “obvious absurdities”.

The book sustains interest throughout because the authors intersperse their investigation with many first-person accounts and annotate these. The varied voices and their hard-hitting stories ensure that it rarely gets monotonous. However, the switch between the narratives is abrupt at times and in one instance, the authors introduce new names without any context.

The authors also make no pretence of being “objective”. They write, “The book eschews the kind of objectivity that often works against marginalised, less politically powerful groups. However, if we think of objectivity as truth, verifiable facts, and justice, then this book takes the reader to the ‘other side of the appearance’… It hopes to challenge the perception of Maruti as a success story.” (Edited excerpt). Considering that many reporters presumed the workers were guilty before the legal inquiry and were preoccupied with the incident’s effect on the state’s “investment climate” rather than working conditions in the factory, it is only fair that the authors emphasise the “other side”.

Many policy commentators work with unfounded assumptions while donning the mantle of objectivity. They deride welfare measures for the public, such as subsidised amenities and rations, as “freebies”, but not tax breaks and similar subsidies for industries. The former drains the public exchequer, while the latter creates jobs, they claim without citing evidence, as if it were a universal fact rather than an assumption. However, despite Haryana being a manufacturing hub and the state government promoting special economic zones (where companies receive financial incentives and labour laws are relaxed), its unemployment rate has been the highest among Indian states. In such a scenario, it is important to upend received ideas of objectivity, as this book does.

The authors use the example of Maruti to show how some manufacturers perpetuate an exploitative work environment, often with the collusion of governments and the police. The assembly line’s speed — a car manufactured every 45 seconds at its fastest — meant that workers incessantly repeated gruelling tasks with no reprieve outside the mandated breaks. Many complained that the two tea breaks of 7.5 minutes and a lunch break of 30 minutes were insufficient to traverse the distance to the canteen and washroom (as much as half a kilometre for some) and queue up for tea. There are anecdotes of workers urinating in their pants at the assembly line and suffering from injuries and health complications. Through such examples, the authors emphasise that the 2012 incident was not an aberration; rather, it was an explosive manifestation of long-standing grievances.

The book could have further highlighted why the Maruti employees’ struggle is important for all workers: blue- or white-collar, permanent or contractual. Many benefits that we take for granted today — the eight-hour workday, two-day weekends, workplace safety, and parental leave, among others — are the outcome of protracted struggles by labour unions. All Indian employees can today entirely withdraw their provident funds before the prescribed retirement age because garment worker unions in Bengaluru staged massive protests in 2016, forcing the government to roll back restrictions on its withdrawal. As gig work increasingly replaces jobs and the threat of worker redundancy looms with advances in Artificial Intelligence, unions remain important as ever to safeguard rights and ensure a decent standard of living.

Syed Saad Ahmed is a writer and communications professional.

What do companies generally do if their employees demand humane working conditions and just pay? Try to address their concerns, perhaps. India’s biggest automobile manufacturer Maruti Suzuki, however, had some ingenious solutions. Media reports mention they hired an astrologer to remedy the factory’s supposedly faulty architecture, which would require a series of rituals over weeks to purge the space’s “negative energy”. Perhaps this was not enough, for the spiritual group, the Brahma Kumaris, was also brought in to teach yoga and meditation.

It’s hard to imagine that these interventions aimed to prevent a recurrence of the violence at Maruti’s Manesar factory on 18 July 2012, which led to the death of a manager, Awanish Kumar Dev. Media reports after the incident largely blamed factory workers. The company dismissed thousands and hundreds were arrested. In 2017, 117 of them were acquitted, but many are still struggling to find a job. Even as its former workers languish, Maruti continues to dominate the market and is setting up a new manufacturing facility close to Manesar.

Anjali Deshpande and Nandita Haksar’s book Japanese Management, Indian Resistance pierces the unilateral narratives around the event to present the workers’ point of view. Many of them point out that Dev was sympathetic to their cause; why would they kill him? They claim that Maruti’s bouncers attacking the workers led to the skirmish rather than them thrashing managers. However, this is not a he-said-she-said collage of testimonies. It presents a richly-detailed investigation into the incident.

Beyond that fateful day, the authors explore how Maruti came to be a behemoth and the ramifications its policies and practices have on worker rights. They begin in the 1950s, when cars were mostly imported, putting a strain on the country’s foreign exchange reserves. Many governments tried to locally manufacture an affordable car, culminating in then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s son Sanjay Gandhi setting up Maruti Motors Limited in 1971. In 1981, after Sanjay’s death, Indira Gandhi nationalised the company, which entered into a joint agreement with the Japanese firm Suzuki Motor Corporation. The latter kept increasing its stake and in 2003, the Government of India completely divested its shares in the company.

The book covers vast ground, but seldom gets bogged down in a morass of information. The authors are precise about what they delve into, which makes for an engaging read. For instance, they do not dig into the legal case against the Maruti workers, but touch upon its “obvious absurdities”.

The book sustains interest throughout because the authors intersperse their investigation with many first-person accounts and annotate these. The varied voices and their hard-hitting stories ensure that it rarely gets monotonous. However, the switch between the narratives is abrupt at times and in one instance, the authors introduce new names without any context.

The authors also make no pretence of being “objective”. They write, “The book eschews the kind of objectivity that often works against marginalised, less politically powerful groups. However, if we think of objectivity as truth, verifiable facts, and justice, then this book takes the reader to the ‘other side of the appearance’… It hopes to challenge the perception of Maruti as a success story.” (Edited excerpt). Considering that many reporters presumed the workers were guilty before the legal inquiry and were preoccupied with the incident’s effect on the state’s “investment climate” rather than working conditions in the factory, it is only fair that the authors emphasise the “other side”.

Many policy commentators work with unfounded assumptions while donning the mantle of objectivity. They deride welfare measures for the public, such as subsidised amenities and rations, as “freebies”, but not tax breaks and similar subsidies for industries. The former drains the public exchequer, while the latter creates jobs, they claim without citing evidence, as if it were a universal fact rather than an assumption. However, despite Haryana being a manufacturing hub and the state government promoting special economic zones (where companies receive financial incentives and labour laws are relaxed), its unemployment rate has been the highest among Indian states. In such a scenario, it is important to upend received ideas of objectivity, as this book does.

The authors use the example of Maruti to show how some manufacturers perpetuate an exploitative work environment, often with the collusion of governments and the police. The assembly line’s speed — a car manufactured every 45 seconds at its fastest — meant that workers incessantly repeated gruelling tasks with no reprieve outside the mandated breaks. Many complained that the two tea breaks of 7.5 minutes and a lunch break of 30 minutes were insufficient to traverse the distance to the canteen and washroom (as much as half a kilometre for some) and queue up for tea. There are anecdotes of workers urinating in their pants at the assembly line and suffering from injuries and health complications. Through such examples, the authors emphasise that the 2012 incident was not an aberration; rather, it was an explosive manifestation of long-standing grievances.

The book could have further highlighted why the Maruti employees’ struggle is important for all workers: blue- or white-collar, permanent or contractual. Many benefits that we take for granted today — the eight-hour workday, two-day weekends, workplace safety, and parental leave, among others — are the outcome of protracted struggles by labour unions. All Indian employees can today entirely withdraw their provident funds before the prescribed retirement age because garment worker unions in Bengaluru staged massive protests in 2016, forcing the government to roll back restrictions on its withdrawal. As gig work increasingly replaces jobs and the threat of worker redundancy looms with advances in Artificial Intelligence, unions remain important as ever to safeguard rights and ensure a decent standard of living.

Syed Saad Ahmed is a writer and communications professional.