Workers’ Movements

The earliest factories in India appeared in the 1860s, but they were not part of an independent industrial revolution. Colonial trade was designed to extract raw materials from India and sell British-made goods back to the colony. Factories were therefore concentrated in the port cities of Calcutta (Kolkata), Bombay (Mumbai), and later Madras (Chennai). Tea plantations in Assam had already been established in 1839.

In the early colonial period, labour was extremely cheap because the colonial government did not regulate wages or working conditions. The state actively ensured a supply of labour for the tea plantations, often through coercive methods.

Though formal trade unions emerged later, workers did protest from the beginning. Their early actions were more spontaneous than sustained — they were not yet organised into permanent unions. Some nationalist leaders also drew workers into the anti-colonial movement.

The First World War led to an expansion of industries in India, but it also brought great misery to the poor. There were severe food shortages and a sharp increase in prices. This triggered waves of strikes:

• In September and October 1917, there were around 30 recorded strikes in the textile mills of Bombay.
• Jute workers in Calcutta went on strike.
• Workers at the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills (Binny’s) in Madras struck for higher wages.
• Textile workers in Ahmedabad struck for a 50 per cent wage increase.

The first trade union in India was established in April 1918 in Madras by B.P. Wadia, a social worker and member of the Theosophical Society. In the same year, Mahatma Gandhi founded the Textile Labour Association (TLA) in Ahmedabad.

In 1920, the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was formed in Bombay. It was a broad-based organisation that brought together diverse ideological groups:

• Communists, led by S.A. Dange and M.N. Roy
• Moderates, led by N.M. Joshi and V.V. Giri
• Nationalists, including Lala Lajpat Rai and Jawaharlal Nehru

During the last few years of British rule, the communists gained considerable control over the AITUC. In response, the Indian National Congress chose to form a separate union — the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) — in May 1947. …