ON THE AFTERNOON of 29 January 2025, a large gathering of former workers from Maruti Suzuki’s automobile factory in the industrial model town of Manesar, in the northern Indian state Haryana, lounged in the sun outside the revenue administration office. Some cooked chapatis on a makeshift stove and others discussed a demonstration planned for the next day. The leaders in the group had chosen 30 January – the anniversary of Mohandas Gandhi’s assassination – to hold a protest march. They expected some 10,000 contract and non-permanent workers to join them from across the country.
More than 500 permanent workers had been summarily dismissed from Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar factory in 2012. These workers had been fighting to be reinstated and compensated ever since. At the end of January 2025, more than 50 of these workers were 147 days into a sit-in demonstration. The unregistered Maruti Suzuki Asthayi Mazdoor Sangh, or Maruti Suzuki Non-Permanent Workers Union, had issued a call of “Manesar Chalo” – Let’s go to Manesar – for 30 January to bring together non-permanent and contract Maruti workers from across the country for a show of strength against the company’s management, which had been unyielding for 12 years.
On 18 July 2012, Ram Kishore Manjhi, a supervisor at the Manesar factory, had allegedly hurled a casteist slur at Jiya Lal, an assembly-line worker, leading to a row between the workers and the management. Tensions were already high as the Maruti Suzuki Workers’ Union (MSWU), which had been registered a few months earlier, had been demanding increased pay, better working conditions and improved facilities for contract workers, and its demands had been ignored for four months. The incident with Lal and a verbal altercation in the management’s office escalated into serious violence, resulting in a fire at the Manesar plant and the death of a general manager, Avanish Kumar Dev. Maruti Suzuki’s management issued immediate dismissal notices to all the workers on the shift – 547 permanent employees and approximately 1800 temporary workers – irrespective of whether they were present on that day.
For more than a decade, the Maruti workers who had had nothing to do with the violence, who had been acquitted in the associated criminal case and who claimed to have been unfairly fired, had fought for reinstatement and recognition of their labour rights. Over time, many had given up on reinstatement or redress, and had gone on to less secure and less lucrative jobs. But many joined the renewed protests in 2024, which carried on into early 2025.