High Drama But Low Voltage

The battle was lost much before it ended. For, there couldn’t have been an army more divided than the upseb strikers. Nor more confused. Some said they were battling for "post-reform service conditions", some saw the 11-day strike as a war against privatisation, others said it was a strike to preserve ‘swadeshi’ against ‘international conglomerate mafias’. And yet others claimed to be strugglers for causes more bizarre...

"This sarkari bid to trifurcate will get three mukhiyas (chiefs) in an electricity board where our constitution had provided for only one," declared an orator before protesters in Lucknow’s Hydel Field Hostel, the site of the agitation, "One mukhiya would’ve been equal to all, three won’t be. If the reforms go through, different people will get different amounts of electricity. It’s inequality!"

Blundering through thus, the protesters appealed for public support for their cause. "The small bribes we take to fudge your bills will seem a pittance compared to what you’ll have to cough up," argued meter tester Kanshi Prasad. This logic-gone-awry finds echo among other agitators. Says meter reader Arvind Srivastav: "The public that calls us chor is dacait itself. They bribe us. Everybody in India is corrupt, the most corrupt are our ministers." A bunch of ‘upseb housewives’ add to the grouses against that source-of-all-evils, The Indian Politician. Reasons Veena Mittal, a upseb senior assistant engineer’s wife: "Transfers to good departments and livable cities have to be bought off ministers."

It’s stunning just how matter-of-fact the confessions to rampant corruption are. What shocks more is that most employees in the board see themselves as cornered into malpractice. Yet don’t think any restructuring might make a difference.

Any ideas then how not to ‘reform’ but change? Says cellphone-toting Babbo Avasthi of the Vidyut Karamchari Morcha Sangathan: "The vigilance police adds to the frauds. Let us do their jobs. Like more responsible brothers are asked to keep a check on those less responsible in a family."

Difficult, this, considering that the ‘family’ Avasthi talks of seems so fragmented. There’s strife even among the 12 unions in the strike. The engineers’ unions are impatient with those of the workers for not fighting for a cause larger than ‘service conditions’. The workers’ unions badmouth the elite concerns of the engineers.

"Rubbish. We stand united," says Shailendra Dubey, leader of engineers’ union Abhayanta Sangh. "Those who talk of divisions indulge in unofficial carping." He sees the strike’s outcome as a success for the unions because it has put ‘corporatisation to test’. Because corporates won’t pay for farmers’ subsidies, arrears of other governmental departments or electrification of 60,000 powerless villages. "We’ve ensured that UP won’t be the end of the debate against senseless privatisation."

But many even in the engineers’ union don’t share this perception of victory. Senior assistant engineer Varalika Dubey, who has researched the problems that plague upseb, is distressed: "Professionals like me are unhappy with the deal. We rushed into it under tremendous public pressure because we were looking like harassers striking work." Also, says she, there are rumours of workers’ union leaders having been bought off: "It’s clear that the issue of privatisation will recur in a year. We better start preparing for another strike."