New Axis, New Terrain, New Milieu

Activities of workers hired through contractor companies in Honda two wheeler factory in Manesar, India:

The November issue of Majdoor Samachar was getting ready to be published.
We received and added the following message from a worker hired through a contractor company from inside the Honda factory on 5th November: “In A-shift during the lunch break at 11:30 a.m., workers did not go to the canteens. They gathered at one place in the factory. Euphonic-cacophony! Production stopped in the factory. The B-shift came in the factory. A-shift workers did not leave the factory. Outside the factory 250-300 workers and inside the Honda factory thousands of workers gathered at one place.” After the permanent workers left the factory, 1500 workers hired through contractor companies stayed put inside the factory. They stayed for 15 days. This brought to the fore with amazing clarity, the changes that have taken place during these twenty five to thirty years. It is very important for all workers and even important for a widespread arena. Therefore, despite it taking more space, we are publishing the excerpts from the aadaan-pradaan (conversational exchanges) that had taken place between November 5th to the 28th:

*November 7th: Temporary workers of Honda bike and scooter plant are sitting together inside the factory.

Yesterday, Honda management tried to start production through permanents, company casuals, apprentices, and staff. (Company casuals are workers who have been working for years in the Honda factory and who are made temporary for two more years before being made permanent workers). Only 50 vehicles in a day. Through a notice, the management had called all of them in one shift today. Permanent workers decided to stay in their own departments and refused to work on the assembly lines. Assembly lines shut down.

# Notice from the Management to suspend production on November 8th and 9th.

# Work suspension notice provides a pretext to the permanent workers to not come to the factory tomorrow and day after.

# Tomorrow and the day after, the management and the government together could do something to throw the temporary workers out of the factory.

# Solution...together only.

Now whether inside or outside the factory, the immediate task seems to be to think and prepare to defeat what is likely an imminent attack by the company and the government.

# This is not a do/die struggle. Like waves of the ocean, advance-recede, again and again, repeatedly, continuously. It behooves to have conversations regarding paths to exhaust the power.

# Company and the government are scared. They are disconcerted. Their weakness is symbolized by their preparations.

All of you temporary workers’ self-confidence is something fantastic. It behooves all to stay calm. Discussions at length on everyone's suggestions are indispensable.

# The atmosphere has changed. The environment needs to be changed further.

This is neither a struggle for honour nor a do/die struggle. This is not something to be negotiated across the table.

Table and negotiations have become irrelevant. They have become obsolete. They have become meaningless.

Everyone knows this.

To advance and to recede like waves. To spread your ideas, views and practices. This is the time for workers of one factory to become workers of thousand factories.

The company and government's consternation will increase further.

# It seems bankruptcy is covered under the garb of honour.

*November 8th: Now food and water of all the workers sitting inside has been stopped.

# No one is being allowed to enter the company premises.

# Blocking the entry today is a defensive step of a frightened Honda management.

Unable to understand what is going on, Honda company has done this to instigate the thousands sitting inside the factory and those workers sitting outside the factory. Provoked workers do something so that power can go in for police action.

The lesson learnt from 2011 experiences of Maruti Suzuki Manesar factory workers is to not get provoked. The workers did not get provoked even when their fellow workers who were called in for talks were arrested.

In October 2011, when the factory was de-occupied for the second time, a Maruti worker shared this about the time spent sitting together in the factory: "We, who had been working together for years, felt during those seven days as if we were seeing each other for the first time. We conversed a lot. We sang. We danced. Those were the best days of our lives." And, the Maruti management had to back down, conceding concessions after concessions.

For the temporary workers gathered in Honda factory, the factory is now their space. Lots of conversations. Lots of rest. Sing to your heart's content. Compose new songs. And do convey your songs and conversations to us outside.

Enjoy. It's a time for jubilation. These are moments of joy. Let’s make this time and these moments more memorable.

The Honda management does not know what to do.



*November 9th: Tonight, at around 8:30, workers sitting inside the Honda Factory were given biscuits, snacks, bread, and juice.

# Tomorrow friends, do come from 11 to 12 o'clock to encourage these casual brothers and if you can cook at home then do bring food so that there is no let-up in our brothers’ movement. …Beedi to smoke…

# Increasing discussions and support for workers firmly sitting inside the factory


*November 10th: Dear Associate, due to prevailing I R situation in the plant operations have been suspended and plant will remain closed till further intimation. ---A Honda manager


# What does this mean?

This means that the company does not know as to what it should do. The management had suspended the production for two days thinking that by 8-9-10th, you will mellow down.

# What does it mean next?

The new and significant difference from Maruti Suzuki 2011-12 is that thousands of workers hired through contractor companies by Honda management are together determining the turmoil. There is no basis for representatives-demands-negotiations-agreements to maintain the status quo. This is a new terrain.

*November 12th: Today, November issue of Majdoor Samachar was available near the power house in Sector-3 of Industrial Model Town Manesar from 5:30am to 9:30am. 1800+500+250 copies amongst workers in many factories in IMT Manesar. Then we met workers sitting outside the Honda factory.

Thanks to the Honda workers who met us joyfully, said what they wanted to say, heard us, discussed. It was a good example of aadaan-pradaan (conversational exchanges) for us.

Thanks to those Honda workers also who tried to see to it that the November issue of Majdoor Samachar is not read by Honda workers. They must have had their reasons for this.

After meeting Honda workers it seems that:

Some sections are troubled by the zest and enthusiasm of workers firmly entrenched inside Honda factory.
Their trouble seems to be that this can go on for long if the workers sitting inside the factory are not in distress.
The management had shut down the canteens and kept the firmly entrenched workers in the factory hungry for 24 hours.
The fear became overwhelming that the situation could worsen if the workers sitting inside were kept hungry. The union of Honda permanent workers came forward and made the food available to workers hired through contractor companies sitting inside the factory.
[Propaganda that 2500 workers sitting inside the factory had begun fast unto death. And, the Honda union stopped supply of food.] To see to it that no food enters the factory from any side, some from amongst the workers hired through contractor companies and sitting outside the factory were put up as additional guards.
The tested method of creating an emergency is being tried in the Honda factory. Due to an emergency situation the bad solution had to be accepted is a raag heard ad nauseam.


Laughing. Singing. Dancing. Seeing joyful workers, the bosses sweat.

More the solution is deferred, the position of workers hired through contractor companies will get stronger. The discussions amongst workers in thousands of factories in IMT Manesar are providing them strength. It behooves to further expand these relations.


*November 13th : Forcibly keeping workers sitting inside the factory hungry to create an emergency has advanced. Inside, three workers have fallen ill. Leaders by beating the drum of “thousands of workers inside the factory on fast unto death” remind of the deceptions in the war epic Mahabharat.


*November 14th : At 2:30 in the night, one worker fell sick and was sent to Employee State Insurance hospital.

# Those who are against you, their very plan is to create an emergency situation. Have discussions amongst yourselves. Is it in your favour or is it in the company’s favour to keep you hungry?


# Instead of being serious, this is the time for laughter and singing. The company’s emergency plan will get bogged down.

Worker’s joy is distress for leaders and officers.


# The B-shift going to the factory and the returning A-shift of the workers hired through contractor companies in Maruti Suzuki Gurgaon factory showed great interest, curiosity, hope and enthusiasm in the turmoil created by workers hired through contractor companies in the Honda factory from 5th November.


*November 15th : The conspiracy to create an emergency by keeping the workers hungry for a quick resolution collapsed the moment it was revealed. Milk-bread-bananas are being given to workers sitting inside the factory.


*November 17th : I am standing outside Honda. Spoke with a few workers about giving food inside. They said that they are giving food which is just sufficient for survival… they are just trying to exhaust the workers inside.

# 1) Honda Manesar factory workers hired through contractor companies sitting inside Honda Manesar factory since November 4th and 5th are not complying with anyone's consent.

They are not sitting inside because some leader told them to.

They are not sitting inside because some court ordered them to.

They are not sitting inside on the instructions of some representative.

In fact, workers hired through contractor companies cannot have any representatives.

There being absolutely no space for negotiations, in these circumstances such workers take collective decisions based on their thinking and understanding.

It seems to be a new terrain. This is absolutely different from the tussles going on in the world to keep the status quo intact. Workers hired through contractor companies sitting inside Honda factory and staying firm seem to be a part of attempts to bring about real changes in society

2) Those who want to throw out the workers hired through contractor companies sitting inside the Honda factory since November 4-5th, are scared.

In whatever they think of doing, they at once see more harm and they also become aware of big danger.

Thousands of factories being next to each other. Millions of workers being close to one another. In the capital and surrounding area, ten million factory workers, together.

The government's hands are tied. If they use the police, there is a possibility of the situation getting out of control. Millions of workers close to one another can make the situation explosive in minutes. What can the army do?

Honda management does not know what to do? What can the bouncers do?

Workers hired through contractor companies very well understand and recognize the Honda factory permanent workers’ union and its leaders. But for "support", what else can the leaders of various shades do?

What can the courts do? Today violation of laws is common in the "rule of law" and adherence to laws is the exception. Hence, the courts keep deferring by giving date after date. And, it is common to not implement court rulings.

3) The position of the workers hired through contractor companies sitting inside the factory is getting stronger with each passing day. The position of Honda company is becoming weaker and weaker with each passing day.


*November 18th : It is necessary to say this.

Government, labour department, and all the unions in Gurgaon region (including the Honda union) have for the present, rescued Honda company stuck in a dead-end. There is no longer any need to say anything about the assurances of leaders and officials.

In Honda Manesar factory, the workers hired through contractor companies de-occupied the factory. Removed the management's control over the factory for 13-14 days. Workers created a space for themselves. This experience requires lots of discussions. Now, the point is to increase workers' own space. The point is to create workers own space beyond a factory's walls. This is the time to create and spread the space in many factories, in the whole industrial area. Workers hired through contractor companies in Honda factory have shown a glimpse of this.


*November 23th : Read the special notice of Honda Manesar management. A few things in this context:

In Faridabad, from 1990 to 2000, many such notices were seen. The process was somewhat like this:

After the notice, representatives warm-up. Conditions unacceptable. Will not sign.
No entry into the factory. Sit outside.
On the one hand it is an illegal lockout and on the other hand it is an illegal strike.
At that time some major transformation was underway in the production process. Or demand in the market had fallen greatly.
Indefinitely outside the factory. Wither.
Restructuring by the company. Or declaration of bankruptcy, selling of assets.
Workers obtained extremely small amounts of their legal dues from the courts.
It seems that this process is again at play. But now workers are alert. So, this process will not be effective.
The new methods that workers have adopted : collective, spreading, staying put at workplaces, and shutting out the language of negotiations.

Good times are ahead.

*November 24th : Greetings. Attaining success is becoming difficult. Six persons of the union have also been suspended by the management. Result is not in sight. Unable to understand what lies ahead. Offers from contractor companies. Some have broken ranks which is terrible.

# When you people were inside the factory, Honda management was very weak.

After you people came out of the factory, the scale tilted in the favour of Honda management.

At such opportunities in the future, it behooves us to think about means-methods to stay for longer periods in the factory. Now, it behooves us to reach out to workers in other factories in IMT Manesar. Your experiences of 15 days inside the factory need to be spread in the entire industrial area.

Managements are scared by two things. One is when workers do a ‘sit-in’ inside the factory and second, when workers spread their experiences and ideas. Spread what all you did in the last 15 days. This is your force.

*November 25th : Sitting inside and outside the factory for 15 days, workers hired through contractor companies in Honda Manesar factory became an axis. Support and opposition revolved around them.

It seems that a new terrain got constituted/was constituted. Temporary workers, casual workers, workers hired through contractor companies constituting the axis seem to be a new phenomenon. When it is said that "the workers have taken things way ahead," then it can be said to be an expression of this new.

Workers, who have come out of Honda Manesar factory, after sitting inside for 15 days, are getting rid of their tiredness. They are acquiring energy. Becoming strong and robust, they will take the phenomenon greatly forward. In every industrial area, temporary workers will further speed-up the transformations.

The new terrain has come with new questions. No one knows now what the paths are.

By the factory sit-in, the 1500 workers have answered many questions with amazing and astounding clarity. The old questions have become passé.

The new terrain needs a new thought.New questions and widespread aadaan-pradaan (conversational exchanges) seem to be a primary necessity.

••• [After signature by each worker on the conditions as per Honda management’s directions, permanent workers entered the factory from 25th to 28th November.]

*November 28th : From 6:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., we were near the power house in sector-3 of IMT Manesar in conversations with workers of different factories. Then with a little apprehension we decided to meet the Honda workers on our way back.

Now sitting outside the factory, the workers hired through contractor companies had to be searched a little.

The moment we met them we were elated. Workers who were inside the factory from November 4th to 18th met us with enthusiasm.

One worker: Stepping out of the factory was falling in the pit.

A number of workers: The moment we came out of the factory, we became weak. The scale turned in company’s favour and the management removed us from the factory gate. We have been made to sit in this far-away empty plot covered by trees.

Workers took the copies of the November issue of Majdoor Samachar and started distributing it themselves. This refreshed the memories of November 12th, when some people at the factory gate had tried to stop the circulation of Majdoor Samachar amongst workers sitting inside and outside the factory.

The demonstration on November 27th organized by the Trade Union Council of Gurgaon at the district administration’s head office and the assurances given there were brushed aside by the workers by mere mention of Honda union president's “two hundred percent assurance” of result on behalf of this Council on 18th November, within two days of the workers coming out of the factory.

Regarding prolongation of sitting out and weakening the workers: unlike workers of other places, we Honda workers will not become weak vs Honda workers have not come from the moon.

Discussions in some groups regarding increasing the strength of workers:

Conversations on paths to transform one factory's workers into workers of thousands of factories.

Mention of sitting at six-seven locations instead of the one presently in IMT Manesar.

Regarding the sit-in at a very important place, some details of the experience of Honda Tapukara factory workers sit-in at Jantar Mantar in Delhi were shared.

Experiences in Faridabad, and in Okhla Industrial Area (Delhi), of workers of one factory taking their experiences amongst workers of thousands of factories by writing on cardboards were discussed.

Discussion regarding 30-40 Honda workers standing during morning shift hours with their written cardboards along roads at 6-7 places in IMT Manesar from where large numbers of workers go to the factories.

It seems that the 1500 workers hired through contractor companies who sat in the Honda factory for 15 days have the capacity to take things very far.

Effervescence | FMS #376

FMS#376 || Faridabad-NCR || October 2019

A cup of tea, please. Have you brought my ten copies?

Your copies are here. A little ginger in your tea?

Companies do what suits them. What’s all this reading going to do?

Shift ended at two last night. Some left in groups. Some of us stayed back and slept inside the factory. I dreamt. A rhinoceros was chasing me. I turned back; it smiled. It was walking slow as a tortoise.

The rhino must have read the paper!

Don’t know. But yes, it has slowed down. Some brake was in play.

The ten copies I take bring a warm complexion to conversations around me. Minute observations of living find a weave; they leaven. This in itself is a value.

If we withdraw these from our conversation — representation, power games, and lamentation — how do we sound?

That’s just it. To take this question, and to experiment and create new milieus — this in itself is a value.

This value you are speaking of, it shows on the shop floor. In the gaps when irritation from work ebbs a little. When the concentration that work demands eases a little. An effervescence enlarges.

A sparkler!

Sometimes in one. Sometimes among a few. Sometimes in many. Sometimes in all. Sometimes a relay.

What spreads?

What is it?

It is that of which you were speaking just now. When we withdraw representation and fluctuation of power from conversation. When we try to touch that which seems far.

What happens then?

You know it. Interest, selflessness, self-interest, harm, purpose…

…Sermon. Aim. Success. Failure.

Is this conversation about the irrelevance of all these?

Of their having become incompatibles?

Oh! It’s like when you question purpose and aim, you are accused of being powerless and delusional.

So, not as much about being out of joint as this is about moving in parallel.

What you are all discussing is something I have been quite preoccupied with, I should say. It’s something I keep trying to figure out. I do many thought experiments to frame it. Make many models to comprehend it.

So share some, friend.

Like breathing. We draw in. We exhale. You can discuss quality here — the quality of air, the quality of the breath — but not the aim of breathing. To ask about the aim of air and the aim of breath would be bizarre.

That’s an intriguing formulation. It’s simple. It's persistent. Always there. Daily. With everyone. In parallel with everything. Expressed. But accepting this as thought comes with obstacles.

Those moments in which we are joyful and overflowing with laughter, are called distracted, wasted time. And sometimes we repeat this admonishment as if it were our own thought.

Wasted time is a formulation of management. The importance of a regime of time too is a formulation of management. Misers! It is miserly to give such qualities to time. To set time in only two values. And then they spend their days measuring waste and use.

They count breaths. Good breath. Bad breath. Good good breath. Bad bad bad breath.

Ha ha! A calamity has befallen thought!

Why should we get trapped in this measure?

Don’t! Don’t get tied down. The outcome of this stingy measure is fully apparent everywhere today.

True. We all know this. It is the kernel of our everyday critiques of management.

Now is our time to live our parallel lines, with an effervescence, with a liveliness, with a fullness of expression and resonance with each other. Qualities not measurable.

And as always, my tea has turned cold!

fms Nov 2019 by baatein1 on Scribd

Roam, Zigzag Some More | FMS #375

Friends, this month 36,000 print copies were taken by readers to create their own milieus. We welcome your contribution to address this growing demand.



FMS#375 || Faridabad-NCR || September 2019
Stillness too has a noise.

Meaning?

Friend, ask not what it means; start a duet.

Hah! That’s a new spin.

(Laughter)

How far will asking the meaning of a thing take you?

First you will try to infer how many are being referred to. Then you’ll ask what the event was. And then you’ll want to know what came of it. That’s it, thought circles back to where it started from.

We bind our curiosity. A compelling argument, my friend. We cocoon ourselves.

Roaming is important. Circular paths are boring. Roam we must, so why not start at a tangent.

And then zigzag some more. Change the vehicle now and then. Slow down a little. Describe the route. The breeze too, sometimes. And blow in the wind a bit. Some fantasy. Some joyful halts.

So let’s roam then. Let’s start with this amazing intuition, this gift from our friend here: Stillness has a noise. Let’s go!

Wait! One question. You’re saying we all have intuition. And the insights from intuition can feel like they are without analysis and consideration.

She’s also saying that this intuition loses it force and joy when pressured by a demand for elaboration.

Ok so let’s travel. I’ll start. One screaming project manager. Five quiet workers. Some time passes. Fifty quiet workers. Some more time passes. Hundred and eighty quiet workers. Some more time. Three hundred and fifty quiet workers. Project manager goes crazy and runs out of the gate, screaming all the way. All workers stay still.

It starts with a few words: ‘Why did you bring it?’ Everyone looked at each other. Time dissolved. Everyone slowly started gathering around the production manager. Time stopped. We were two hundred and fifty. We were all silent. Electricity coursed through our bodies.

We see each other for the first time. Again.

These days signatures are being demanded on forms that say, ‘I am leaving work of my own free will’. We are all silent.

There is a noise in this stillness.

We were called to a job with personal phone calls. We were assured a yearlong tenure. Fifteen days into the job, and some were told to leave. One month on, some more were told to leave. Forty-five days, and some were again told to leave. Two months, some more. We are four hundred now, and we are in conversation. We will sit inside the factory. And we’ll talk with each other freely. And we will be still.

We were quiet. We were listening to music. It was very hot outside. In Saudi, the temperature soars to 50 degrees. Buses were sent. Threats were made. Requests were made. Assurances were given. Police fired in the air. We were five thousand; we did not come out. We were listening to music. Chicken was slow-cooking in large utensils.

When four, or five, or seven and eight of us finish the night shift and step out, we talk a lot. Like floodgates have opened. All kinds of stories. Some experienced, some heard. And a whole lot of forecasting.

And many, many kinds of intuition inter-lacing sentences. Sources are many. From places very many. And from strangers unknown and unnamed.

Let’s keep playing.

FMS October 2019 by baatein1 on Scribd

Unprecedented Confusions

FMS#373 || Faridabad-NCR || July 2019

Did you see the video?

Which one? The one you sent with the line "to increase your confusion"?

Yes. Isn't your workplace becoming somewhat like that?

Yes, something like it is happening. But the dexterity of the workplace in that video was of a different order.

Arre, at least show us the video!

I’m sending it. But let me quickly run you through it. It’s a PCB board making factory. The thing is, they make with precision, dexterity, and automation, thousands and thousands of boards, but they also make customised, unique, single boards with the same precision.

Raju keeps telling me about his circuit boards and sometimes shows me complex designs. I should tell him to have them made there. That’s possible, isn’t it?

Should be. Anyone can send a design from anywhere. They test it, make a board, and send it back.

So where’s the confusion?

What I understand is that along with doing our work in factories and workshops, we keep tinkering with, probing, and exploring technical objects.

It has been so for long, long years.

True, true. Our Autopin settlement was built by us over so many years. So at least for that long, we have.

The city itself is built that way.

Actually, much of the videos that circulate are self-made, self-learned, peer-gained.

Looks like it’s Raju-time! It’s a capacity, his confidence, becoming visible to all. He is happy, we are happy. So where’s the confusion?

The language that makes the world of work familiar and known no longer holds that world. Robots, artificial intelligence, automation, computation are changing the contours of how we work.

Work itself is getting confused!

And within this atmosphere, everyone's inner Raju is emerging stronger.

And the way we all are knitting, mending, binding, stitching the world together is probably unprecedented.

Amidst this then, we have two kinds of confusion. A joyful confusion and…

And an astonishing confusion.

FMS_373_Jul2019 by baatein1 on Scribd

Beyond the Bounds of Certain and Uncertain

FMS#372 || Faridabad-NCR || June 2019

Can we agree that the question of ‘what life will be’ is always an open question?

For everyone?

Yes. Open for everyone, at all times.

So are you saying that nothing is certain?

Well done friends! What a cool conversational gambit. My lemonade seems warm in comparison!

There you go again, trying to sidetrack our conversation with irony. This isn’t about certainty, surety, uncertainty, unpredictability. Something else is at stake.

Ok. See life beyond ideas of certainty and uncertainty. So then, how else? Ok, the future is open. I agree intuitively with that. And then?

We do see each others’ ferment. Sometimes it feels like we are all engines. Whenever we see even a small dip in another’s ferment we ask, where is your spirit? What is making you feel discouraged?

Well, my friends mostly tell me I am as if in a space shuttle.

Well, we can see that. You never have an air of despondency hang over you. A thought strikes me: To keep open the question of what life will be, is something that needs nurturing between and practice by all.

You’re saying that asking another about the loss of their engine-fury comes from a shared terrain of intimate affinities.

And where does this shared terrain come from? I’m not asking rhetorically. This question really does crop up in my mind often, navigating the places that we do, with their uncountable people and millions of practices.

It’s an elegant and large question. A mystery, a riddle. The kind that gets flush with new tides of energies with every incident.

How?

Don’t you feel that, on the assembly line, all of us could swing to a un-predictable rhythm—resonating with each other, unknown to each other—at any time? In a strange way we feel it, we can even claim that we know it, and sometimes we even speak it. This is probably what keeps the question, ‘what life will be’, open.

You might find this a bit out of context here. But do listen. In the factory in Manesar, I feel very cold while I work, even in this heat of May. The new machines, the new robots — they seem to need 16 degrees to be stable, otherwise it is said that there will be havoc. We are given training in yoga to help us adapt to new robot ways. And when I come out at the end of the day, friends say it’s all fun for you, you don’t have to sweat. And I say that I’ve done too high a production, too high.

So, what is this about?

The story is that I am really confused. Work is changing. The design of work, the way of work is changing. The logic of wage doesn't register in any meaningful way. What’s the calculation based on, I don’t get it. I do work equivalent to my wage in about one minute, maybe two.

What you are saying? Are you talking about possibilities? Are you saying the radius of our conversation is limited? Are you saying the ground has shifted?

What I’m probably saying is that the word ‘life’ itself has to be thought differently.

FMS_372_Jun2019 by baatein1 on Scribd

Confidence of Many

FMS#371 || Faridabad-NCR || May 2019

Listen to this message I received: A heat wave courses through our factories this summer. Battles overflow from shopfloors onto streets. In one factory, permanent workers and supervisors were beaten up by temporary workers. Police. Permanent workers concede not to pressurise temporary workers when they refuse work. Day before yesterday, the MD circulated a memo to the staff: “It’s not right to issue dismissals with immediate effect. A 15-day notice should be given, so alternative work can be sought.” This is when till now the attitude has been to issue prompt dismissals at 2 AM!

Wah! An excellent description of today's milieu. There's a sense of current fluctuations in temperature around productivity.

We all sense these fluctuations. But describing them requires a certain observation and focus.

In a way this message expresses our collective achievement.

What do you mean?

There’s an image of many in the message. There’s a clamour. Collisions. Decisions. Changes. This is what collective is. And I say achievement because it has a confidence, a confidence of many.

This capacity — taking sharp decisions, taking decisions quickly — is an attribute of the new generation. Their idea of time is different. Perhaps the hold of institutions and organisations has weakened.

My neighbour works with an old insurance agent. He was laughing and telling us how today young people want policies lasting only five or ten years, no more. They tell him, who knows what lies ahead. Earlier people used to hear him out on 25 and 30 year policies.

There's one more angle to the liveliness of this message. It has a whiff of 2011 and 2012. The debates and arguments on time and pressure. We understood so much, when for ten days we de-occupied factories of the management’s control. We listened to each other, saw one another.

So in the last ten years, you’re saying, these debates and discussions have taken on new guises and seeped into daily, common conversations?

Yes. Everywhere, this fluctuation, this shift in temperature appears as an intonation, an accent, a shade in conversations. Such-and-such a thing happened in this factory. That thing happened in that factory. This happening and that occurrence, in this locality, in that city, in that region — these appear in the expanse of conversations. They make milieus.

It’s where the elan of this message comes from.

Fms May 2019 by on Scribd

The Making of Intimate Affinities

FMS#370 || Faridabad-NCR || April 2019

Today was amazing. Talked a full 54 minutes on the phone.

How come you managed that kind of time in duty hours?

There’s been a salary delay. So we all decided not to appear for work. A few hours, and we’re getting messages that salary is ready for disbursal tomorrow.

So simple. No tension. Enjoying the luxury of hour-long conversations. Is this for real?

Dost, I am now 24-years-old. Have been working for about eight years. The most effective acts are those which are made in a collective way with the expansive elasticity of freedom. This much I’ve understood. Like todays’ decision of not going to work. The salary delay was going on for a week. Will give half. Half later. Very irritating. So we all decided to withdraw for a day.

Now! When did this step become so simple! Word spreads between 1500 co-workers, a decision gets made, and acted on. And all this within a shift change? Remarkable.

This is no surprise. It’s common. We’ve done this many times. Ask any worker from any factory. It could be a 100-worker workplace or a 15,000-worker workplace. I bet that rare would be a worker who has not been part of at least one such moment. Rather, many times will be the norm. One can keep thinking the why’s and how’s of this, but no one can deny that it happens.

But you are also saying that this step is without tension. Rather, that it is with degrees of freedom. Are you saying that underlying this is a shared understanding of precise effects through minimum effort?

Listening to all of you it strikes me that these steps bear a deep impulse — an impulse of commoning and the making of intimate affinities.

Say more?

We sense it most in moments such as these. That’s why when you talked to your friend on the phone, you listened. Didn’t interrupt. Weren’t restless to have your own advice heard. This capacity is drawn from the commons of intimate affinities.

Yes, the conversation went very well. She shared the upswings and downswings of the last five years — her decisions, her promises, her doubts, her resolves. Yes, true, I did listen with care and patience. If this is because of an intimacy that comes from commoning, where else would we sense it?

Well, like when someone hums a tune and everyone picks it up?

Aaha! So the tune is important? That’s dangerous.

Agreed. If the tune comes hemmed in within a boundary, it does strike a suicidal blow. It exhausts.

Yes, if seen as boundary just of place. But if considered in the flow of time? Small acts, their repetition, their murmurs change the course, intensity, and recognition of the act itself.

Acts repeat. They appear here, then elsewhere. They get heard in another somewhere. They are borrowed here and there. They allow a discarding of other acts. They travel around and emerge somewhere as new, exciting. No one is held up on a pedestal in this viral process of commoning.

They are disobedient.

Of commands!

Irreverential of pedestals.

Heretical.

These affinities, these intimacies of commoning emerge in the force of our acts that persuade us out of the hold of commands.

When we push commands and pedestals away, to the edges.

This is also a way of seeing human experience.

This cannot be lived through or thought in sad or mourning ways. These are to be felt and lived with exuberance.

Fms April 2019 by baatein1 on Scribd

What's the Issue?

FMS#369 || Faridabad-NCR || March 2019

Who says, “What’s the issue”?

“Issue”, meaning?

Hello, I don’t know any issue.

Ooh! Issue means a case, an event. Some can be big. Some are small.

So, what’s your issue?

Speak softly. Issue is serious and ears are trained.

Relax. The sounds of these machines will keep our voices hidden from surveilling ears.

I’ve heard that they do ear exercises.

That’s their issue. How to keep ears alert.

These machine-worshippers never care for machines. Sounds will keep on growing.

It’s a circle. Alertness of ears. Sound of machine. Wear and tear of ears. Sound of machine rising. More alertness needed from ears. And on and on.

So this is your issue?

No. This is the issue that haunts cruel intelligence.

Aah! Speak softly. Electricity is gone; the generator will be on soon; speak then. But, what’s your issue?

Accident report. I’ve started understanding what accident report is. It’s crucial to get a written version. When an accident, do two things. One group, quick, go help. And the other group, go get the accident report written. Take copies.

You’ve thought a lot on this. So it does not remain an issue for you then.

What is issue? A kind of a knot? A complex knot? Or something else?

In my understanding, when we say ‘issue’, it’s about some kind of a dispute. Like if there’s a dispute about an accident.

Disputes are many. So are we swimming in issues then?

Softly please! This is interesting indeed. You will ask, why? Well, many disputes are contingent, they are relevant at the moment they are occurring. They have opposing sides, wrestlers and spokespersons.

Are you saying that some disputes becomes issues, and recede from us?

That’s their doubleness. Fluctuations of disputes stay within us in many formless ways. But if they are within us, the question becomes, who needs, who propels the turning of disputes into issues?

What I gather is that giving a form brings in a degree of control, a sense of being in power. It gives a perforated world an artifice of legibility.

But along with it an image of a collective gets created too.

Agreed, a collective image emerges. But this image is always a blur. The transformation of our world is rapid. Issues bubble up, and quickly dissipate. Some do reap short-term advantage from this momentariness.

The collective image is perforated; underneath it flow lively, alive, robust disputes with “no demands”.

We keep taking steps, acting, and do not articulate any demand. This happens in our workplace, in many workplaces, all the time. This confuses the management, makes it fearful.

Our self-confidence grows.

fms March 2019 by baatein1 on Scribd

It’s Musk; What Boundaries?

FMS#368 || Faridabad-NCR || February 2019

Just look at this video meme I received.

I too have something to show. You go first.

It’s a video that 70,000 years ago humans started walking from a place in Africa. They kept walking. Kept spreading, kept going, and reached many different places. They’re still walking. And now stand at 7 billion.

Wow! Mine is connected, kind of. There are deer that keep roaming, walking, running in search of the source of an intoxicating fragrance. Everywhere they go, they can smell it. Their search takes them to many places. This fragrance comes from a gland within the deer themselves. And so it is that they find this fragrance everywhere they go.

What’s intriguing is that humans resent the roaming of deer, keep them circumscribed within reserved and demarcated zones.

By the way, humans have a big problem with walking. They keep producing boundaries. All kinds of boundaries that occlude time horizons.

Nicely said. ‘Time horizon’. Heard this after so long. I’m also liking the ease with which both of you were talking about 70,000 years. It brought in an elegant ‘time shadow’ to the making of the seven billion that we are today.

Hello, why are you continuously checking your phone? What’s up?

An ordinary urgency. A message from our work group that tomorrow we’re all not going for duty. We do this between us around once every 10 to 15 days. It keeps pressure on the management.

It’s the same in the factory next door. Workers do this collective not-reaching once in ten days. They say it’s the most ordinary and easiest form in which to keep acting. It builds tremendous force.

It has fragrance, spreads fragrance!

Yesterday we all got entangled in a puzzle. This discussion on musk that you’re having makes me feel that you’ll enjoy it.

Well. Go on then. It’s always fun to hear puzzles on fragrance.

A friend was describing how the slayer-worshiper, cruel intelligence imposed a fine on a bright young woman. She has this beautiful quality of generously listening to each and every one, and also of speaking with care. Gives time. Gives attention. Is a friend who cares for all.

Where is the riddle?

A puzzle is in the making. The fine imposed on her was because of these very attributes. The management argues that, since they are the ones giving wage, only their well-being should matter and no one should be distracted by, or into, any other form of well-being.

Oh, I get it. The question you are asking is, what is the extent of the wager of wage?

Yup! What’s wage for? It’s not given as charity. There’s an exchange with work done. Lots of work, less money. Then from where this command of boundaries?

Many a time, work stops. We work, you pay wages, then why this abusive language?

A clash with boundaries is on at all times. No, let me reframe that — It’s through collisions that boundaries get made, extended, and broken. In a strange way we are boundary worshippers. And we also get claustrophobic with boundaries.

Meanwhile, humans continue in a state of walking. They are spreading. They are mixing in unimaginable ways. We walked from a small place in Africa and spread to become a few billion. How can you say we are boundary worshippers!

Think about it. If the deer did not get into a search of the fragrance of musk, they wouldn’t have roamed the world. Instead, they’d have got stuck in one place, would have got fat, immobile, and unrecognisable as deer.

Well said! When my grandmother would say of someone that they emit the fragrance of musk, she was giving great regard to these qualities, of searching and roaming, in that person.

Fms February 2019 by baatein1 on Scribd

New, Renew, Anew

FMS#367 || Faridabad-NCR || January 2019

A friend of ours routinely bursts out while working on the line: It’s soaring, it’s soaring, it’s soaring, it’s soaring, it’s soaring!

Doesn’t that just drive the managers insane?

They never confront him on it. Sometimes all of us join in. It’s soaring, it’s soaring, it’s soaring, it’s soaring, it’s soaring!

Increase, increase, increase! That’s how managers get their promotions. How are they going to stop such a chant.

Soaring is such a good word. Like it has both desire and the fulfilment of desire.

It has character; it has abundance. A song bursting with qualities of life.

It does suggest resources, and their measures.

And an astonishment too, that amidst today’s excess of wealth, living is such an effort.

It’s also a question of the attributes of resources for living. What kind of drains, what kind of a toilet, what kind of places to dance in, what kind of a shared oven, what kind of tea shop, what kind of seats in a bus.

Means and reserves become expressed. Like time emerges as a resource.

Now whose resource is time?

It’s a resource in production. And duty time! Machines must run nonstop on their fullest speeds. What is time here if not a resource?

There’s another way of going about this. Listen. Time is both fertile and fallow. We need time to be both, and we want both.

It has been said a long, long time ago, that the qualities of life of a place can be discerned from how much time that place gives to refining and recombining itself, and how much time it spends sustaining and mending itself.

There is a place in our neighbourhood that thrives with festivities in someone’s life, every day.

A friend of mine says that cruel intelligence keeps trying to block off the celebration of life. She has a fascinating observation that this society is made up of—she calls them wadh-pujak—worshipers of those who kill, who slay. Justice, reasoning, and dissonance do not sit well with cruel intelligence.

The ways to quell justice and dissonance are many. Cut wages, issue a fine, suspend, get someone roughed up, squash their spirit, kill them. That's a slayer’s discourse.

This is a language for separating a part of yourself, making it other, and killing that part.

A student asked herself a beautiful question. ‘How is it that I can bring others into my thought only in the language of question and answer? Why can I not imagine an equality of exchanges?’

You know that thing about time that we were just taking about? That is where the problem lies. The world is made unequal in the partition of time itself.

You succumb to a language of questions and answers when you see another only as if circumscribed in maintaining their life.

And when you conjure another as if they are in search of refinement of life? Then it becomes a possibility of a conversation.

It’s soaring, it’s soaring, it’s soaring, it’s soaring, it’s soaring.

fms January 2019 by baatein1 on Scribd

When Fullness Clashes with Expanse

FMS#366 || Faridabad-NCR || December 2018

Okay, so you’ve had your favourite snack! Samosa!! Time to share a thought.

Come on. Thought about what?

Let’s carry on from where we left.

Collision of scenarios?

Yes. In the collision of scenarios, which scenario stays intent on dispelling all others?

That which ambushes and diminishes our capacities and our words, arises from within us.

Within us? Hm. You mean we are the medium of our own dissociations?

In calling us the medium, I’m not trying to insult or imply guilt. I’m merely trying to point to the squeeze and restraint in the reproduction of life itself.

I’m lost. Are you saying that reproducing life is itself becoming against life?

We are all part of a grand debate. There is a tense relation between life and its renewal. The debate itself is old, but today it has a ferocity that is unprecedented.

Hello! Hope all of you are not nose-diving into some catastrophic account of life?

Not at all. The question of how to sustain life is within us all, and is lived in varying intensities. And this “us”? It is large. Very large. It’s boundless.

It’s possible. Reminds me of when some of us used to stand with placards at gates of different factories and on street corners to talk with others. Thousands passed through us. That feeling is still there—a feeling of a surge of who we are. And it grows. Keeps growing. It flows into a vast expanse.

Yes, this feeling does carry on inside.

Life is a mysterious interlacing of this unbounded expanse, and our measured ways of trying to fill it. Much of the mind is spent debating and balancing the weights of these.

Sometimes a feeling takes over that the time we allocate to expanse is shrunk in the exhaustion of attaining fullness.

I would disagree here. Search of fullness? You mean eating, sleeping, and work hours? Do keep in mind that these acts are themselves cooking on a slow fire. A search for fullness can tear apart many of the compromises we abide by.

Well, I meant a sense of security. Yes, sleep. A feeling of the heart. A strutting of the limbs. Stretching of the mind. These call to themselves too much attention. They leave very little to enjoy the expanse.

Friend, why get so despondent about fullness and sustenance? Check your mobile phone. See how much expanse you live in at each instant. And you still despair?

Oh this is serious. I seem to have diminished and shrunk the expanse I inhabit, through my own speech!

Did we all not start with this very question?!

Speaking of mobile phones. Some management has made a business model out of holding the mobiles from us, when we enter our workplaces. We are only allowed to use their information systems.

This is cruel intelligence. This crudity is a threat to life. We are in a daily clash with it.

Agreed!

Fms December 2018 by baatein1 on Scribd

Allow Scenarios to Collide in the Mind, and Feel the Joy

FMS#365 || Faridabad-NCR || November 2018

Sorry I didn’t come by yesterday. Everyone had stopped work; it was a bright milieu.

At the construction site?

Yes. We stopped work for two days at the beginning of October as well. This is how it is going to be. It will step up. Let’s see. The matter seems complicated.

Does it at all seem to be moving towards any remedy? Any screws coming undone?

It’s important that work is stopped from time to time. If this happens often, in many places, it will create a momentum. Conversations will gain in confidence.

Here today, again somewhere tomorrow. Yet again elsewhere. Then there, and there. Everywhere!

For a few hours here, then again there, and for a day there, and two days here.

It’s like we are composing a song. And many people are part of the making.

This is not an unusual occurrence. It happens all the time. Feel the fervour, the passion. Pass it to one another with words, through messages.

The construction site where you work is immense. That a rhythm pulsates through thousands together is beautiful. It is there in other work places too. I feel one rhythm calls to another, quietly.

Agreed. Too much calculation and weighing of things is a vortex; it sucks in and removes from the conversation what was thought, how it was shared, how everyone moved together, stayed together. All that remains is the language of results.

Yes. Results, and despondency. These two keep chasing one another. And they turn the depth of experience into an abyss.

Yes, agreed. Imagine. Thousands of work spaces. A turbulence of flows and fluctuations everywhere. And everywhere, work suddenly at a standstill.

Everything is quiet. The management leaves the factory. All walk away from their work stations and break into a dance. Where is room for disappointment here? How will results be measured?

Friends who have grown up around coal mines describe a scene. Fires burning everywhere. A fire always flows beneath the surface of the earth.

Incredible. My neighbour is from the hills. He cooks such good meat. He beautifully describes a scene. When it rains, small, cascading waterfalls join each other. As if they will melt the mountain. It’s frightening. And it is also exhilarating. As if you are yourself water that can melt a mountain.

Disappointment! Where? A measuring of results—how? Allow scenarios to collide in the mind, and feel the joy.

I think the mind always conjures scenarios. We must think about how it is only certain scenarios that become foregrounded. I believe all scenarios jostle and are in battle with each other. We inhabit this battle of scenarios.

Yes, scenarios are leads into large terrains. They highlight forces. Our inability to see one another as forces is our biggest shortcoming.

I agree, but disagree. I do think we recognise force in each other. We are quick to sense and respond, after all, to the negative and deactivating force in another. But we are really, so very slow to recognise the other forces—the activating forces creating new values.

There is a way. Let’s just do away with all three—the hero, the anti-hero, and the zero. And let’s call on the uncountable sparks, debates, intelligences, velocities, and practices from different scenarios.

And what about those other scenarios—the ones that make these resplendent scenarios disappear?

Those? They are samosas. Fry them.

November 2018 by baatein1 on Scribd