The recently ended four-day strike by The International Airports Authority of India (IAAI) employees evoked a lot of aggressive reaction and diatribe against the workers participating in it by the media and the other protagonists of the neo-liberal economic consensus. The strike which saw the participation of more than 20,000 airport employees was able to partially cripple the flight operations in the country with varied effects in different parts. It was called off on Saturday, February 3^rd following a written assurance by the Government that there would be no job loss due to modernization and the privatization of the Delhi and Mumbai airports and also there would also be no victimization of those who participated in the strike.

The strike was called in protest against the Government of India’s decision to allow private ownership in two of the biggest airports of India in the name of modernisation: New Delhi and Mumbai. The issue assumed controversial proportion with the Government’s decision to modernise the airports through private agencies and hand them over controlling stakes on a revenue sharing basis. IAAI was bypassed on the whole issue and contracts were awarded to private parties on the basis of biddings. In this context it is important to note that until the formation of the International Airport Authority of India in 1972, all civil airports in India (except the princely states before independence) were built and maintained by the Central Public Works Department. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, CPWD engineers carried out the upgradation of the four metro airports on their own, much to the astonishment of experts of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. After the formation of the IAAI, its engineering wing developed enough expertise to stand up to any international competition.

However, in the modernisation of the New Delhi & Mumbai airports IAAI has been completely bypassed and the Rs. 5,200 crore (1.16 billion US$) contract has been awarded to two companies Hyderabad-based GMR, in association with Frankfurt-based Fraport AG for modernising Delhi airport and ,GVK along with South Africa Airport for modernizing Mumbai airport. It is important to note the fact these parties will not merely carry on the work of modernisation as third party contractors rather they would be investing in the project and would recover the money by having controlling stakes of the airport once the project is completed.

The employees of IAAI backed by the left parties opposed the moves of the government leading to the strike. The opposition is on two grounds. First, the modernised airports will see a reduction of 40% of the existing workforce. The employees fear losing their jobs in an environment where unemployment is on the rise, and the state which had earlier limited roles in providing employment and social securities through jobs in the Government and Public-Sector is rapidly shaking off this responsibility. Though the government, in order to persuade the employees to call off the strike assured that there will be no loss of jobs, various people including political parties call it mere lip service and pointed out the inability of the government to fulfil its commitment as the consortia involved in the modernisation process reiterates that they would not need more than 60% of the workforce once the project is completed and upgradation of the existing system done, and nevertheless, the controlling stakes of the airports would then be in their hands rather than the government. So the question is not merely of the unfortunate 40% who would lose their jobs, these jobs would sealed forever in a context where unemployment is a serious menace to the society. It is also noteworthy that the productivity of labour would increase considerably (as the consortia estimates a much higher rate of profit, with a lower workforce) and with real wages staying in their current levels the rate of surplus-value extraction will be higher on a phenomenal scale. Since, the profits will be pocketed by the consortia there is no chance however of this amount being channelized for any social priority.

Secondly, the trade union and left party opposition is against the handing over of existing profit making non-private sector infrastructure to private corporations. They say that if the government can build roads and bridges there is no rhyme or reason about its inability to build airports. IAAI employees state that they have been demanding the modernisation of airports in the country in the last eight years and their Joint Forum even had submitted a plan to the government. They question the reasons for not allowing the Airport Authority of India to bid for airport modernization and also feel that if allowed, IAAI can build much better and more transparent world-class airports than private companies. The privatization is not a necessity as getting the modernisation done through some private parties (as third party contractors), which would have been the case, does not necessarily mean privatisation of the airports themselves The moves by the government raises a lot of suspicion as it contains a lot of indicators to suggest that this privatization is not a singular act and it will open the floodgates for the future which will not only witness the privatization of the next two major airports: Kolkata & Chennai but will also make IAAI redundant and dismantle it, as Mumbai and Delhi airports are the biggest profit-making airports in the country and much of IAAI’s activities centre around it and these also contributes to significant revenue to the organisation. The move will also have larger implications and flags-off a new age as it will be followed with the privatization of existing ports, roads, bridges and private capital will be allowed to take over virtually all sectors of the service providing infrastructure thereby practically dismantling the state and public sector.

This process(privatisation) has been gaining ground since the late 80s, ever since the international financial institutions, namely the IMF, World Bank, and the GATT (subsequently the WTO), along with the US Treasury department, have been promoting a vicious “free market “ policy. Privatisation of all state sector economically viable units, along with destroying the fiscal power of the state and the promotion of the interests of multinational corporations is key to the policy. There are stages in this process. First comes a structural adjustment programme. It constitutes a means for taking over the real assets of indebted countries through the privatisation programme as well as collecting debt-servicing obligations. The privatisation of state enterprises is invariably tied to the renegotiation of the country’s external debt.

The global institutions step in and demand budgetary austerity, devaluation, trade liberalisation and privatisation. This identical recipe has been applied across the world in over 100 countries, and the result, globally, has been disastrous. Debtor countries forego sovereignty in many ways, they lose control over fiscal and monetary policies, the Central Bank is reorganised, the Ministry of Finance becomes de facto independent of democratic institutions and tied to the global agencies, state institutions are deliberately made to collapse, and a parallel government bypassing civil society is created. Countries that do not conform to the performance targets of the IMF and the major private banking institutions like Citicorp are blacklisted.

While adopted in the name of democracy and good governance the IMF imposed structural adjustment and liberalisation policies require the strengthening of internal security and the constant upgradation of political repression. Good governance and multi-party elections are parts of the IMF window dressing. Yet the hijacking of the economic agenda makes a mockery of that election. The possibility of building the national economy is denied and destroyed. The European language media of the country concerned, as in India, are simply purchased by global capital, so that among the educated elite (to start with) voices of dissent are totally shut out. The internationalization of macro-economic policy transforms countries into open fields and national economies into reserves of cheap labour. The key to this is debt management. Countries are not able to pay off their debt. Through “financial engineering” and the careful art of debt rescheduling, repayment of the principal is deferred while interest payments are enforced, bankruptcy is averted by “new” loans that just enable them to pay off the interest (not the principal) arrears on the old loans, and so on. Rescheduling is done only when the debtor country agrees to the policy conditionalities attached to the loan agreements. The central objective is to allow multinational capital resulting from vast accumulations during the expansive phases of the economy and which had been increasingly lying idle to get into sectors which had been hitherto been outside its purview. One area where profits are totally ripped off is in infrastructure building. It is the IMF that decides which infrastructure is worth building and who will build it. The handing over of infrastructural development to private foreign companies involves only a transfer of the wealth of the South. They do the actual work through sub contractors of the country concerned. It is in this frameworfk that the struggle against the privatisation of Indian airports needs to be viewed.

Of course, the airports are a classic case of natural monopoly, given the dimensions that govern the business. The capital cost of building an airport is very high. Unless airport operators can be guaranteed that traffic will be stable over a long-time horizon, it would not be possible for them to undertake the massive investments that are necessary for building airports. The fact that airports need a substantial area of land in large and heavily urbanised locations not only for building runways, aprons and other such facilities, but also because they are required to maintain large tracts of open spaces, imposes heavy costs on an airport project. Such investments ensure that the barriers to entry for a new airport operator remain high. And it is for this reason that governments have traditionally maintained and run airports across the world. Very few cities in the world would have the traffic that would warrant the construction of two or more airports. This means there is little scope for competition among airports because the barriers to entry are high. It is in the light of the above observations, the governments attempt to portray “privatization” as a means to ensure free-market competition appears as a deception. Proponents of the privatisation move in India have argued that the IAAI’s assets will not be sold to the private partner, and that the facilities are only going to be leased on a 30-year term. However, they conceal the fact that the prospective leaseholders are poised to acquire the power to make monopoly profits.

The rationale of privatising the two airports, which were generating 65 per cent of the IAAI revenue, raises serious questions. The IAAI had the wherewithal for modernisation of the airports and could anytime raise funds from commercial banks or markets, as did private players, to meet any shortfall. All that was needed was proper autonomy to help the IAAI unleash its potential. The IAAI employees who went for the strike and were much abused by the media for such acts and portrayed as elements opposed to modernisation were in fact demanding the modernisation of the airports for the last eight years.

One event that stood out like a sore thumb was the apology tendered to a meeting of Indian industrialists by CPI(M) leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee for the agitation. This, as well as related events, placed side by side with CITU and CPI(M) leader M.K. Pandhe’s strong criticism of the Central Government, indicates a sharp conflict in the CPI(M) between those who want to retain a left wing social democratic orientation and those who have an openly Blairite, pro-imperialist orientation.

The struggle itself did not succeed fully. But it showed that workers are waking up from the mythical anti-fascist line into which they have been led ever since the Babri Masjid destruction and the arguments about soft-peddaling agitations against “secular” right wing bourgeois governments. But the divisions within the mainstream left makes it difficult to organise a counter campaign by alternative media and propaganda channels, explaining that it is not only the responsibility of the IAAI employees to protest and oppose the project; everyone must feel concerned and rise up on this issue as the effects and implications of this move will be disastrous on their lives; trade-unions, political parties, civil society organisations and every other section of the populace must join hands to thwart these attempts; the struggle is too important to lose.