New Year Greetings from Dr. A Mathew, Convenor, All India Forum Against Privatisation (AIFAP)
New Year Greetings
Dear Comrades and Friends,
On the Occasion of the New Year 2025, I send all of you heartfelt greetings and wish this year will bring further successes in our common struggle against privatisation of public sector enterprises and attacks on working class. I also wish workers success in their fights for just demands.
AIFAP membership now stands at 116. The member federations, unions and associations are from more than 15 different sectors including Railways, Electricity, State Government Employees, Banking, Insurance, Coal, Petroleum, Steel, Port and Dock, Defence (ordnance factories) and Defence public sector units, Air India, BSNL, Road Transport, Shipping, Teachers and Organisations for restoration of the Old Pension Scheme as well as Joint Action Fronts and People’s Organisations.
The AIFAP website (www.aifap.org.in/www.hindi.aifap.org.in) viewership has crossed 5,00,000 as of January 1, 2025. At the beginning of 2024, it was 3,00,000, which means an increase of 66% in one year. This makes AIFAP the most active and widely seen website in India for struggles of workers.
During the past year, the (AIFAP vigorously contributed to the struggles to oppose privatisation in the Indian Railways, Electricity, BSNL, defence and other sectors.
Indian Railway workers waged a militant struggle against privatisation of manufacture of Vande Bharat train sets at the Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai. The struggle forced the Railway Board to issue instructions to cancel the MOU signed with the private company and place the order on the ICF. This is a victory for the united struggle of the railway employees against privatisation of railway production units. AIFAP organised a National online meeting in support of their struggle and to build the support from workers of other sectors and our members can feel happy to have contributed to the success of the struggle by helping to bring about the unity of the railway employees, by showing their solidarity to the struggle and by giving wide publicity to this anti-worker, anti-people privatisation.
During the last two years, there have been many train accidents resulting in the death and injury of hundreds and thousands of innocent people, railway staff as well as huge damage to property. AIFAP has in each one of these accidents given wide publicity to the root causes of these accidents, namely large number of vacancies in the safety category of Indian Railways, which are deliberately not being filled up, and the inadequate allocation of funds for safety related infrastructure etc.
Many categories of Railway workers, the Loco Pilots, Signal and Maintenance Staff, Station Masters, Train Controllers, Track Maintainers etc have been continuously agitating against their harsh working conditions. AIFAP had organised a national online meeting to support the nearly one month long struggle of the Loco Pilots of Southern Railways who were agitating against inadequate rest and long duty hours. AIFAP also organised a national online meeting to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of the historic Railway Strike of May 1974.
United opposition of electricity employees and engineers all over the country was successful in stopping the passing of the Electricity Amendment Bill 2022 by the Parliament and thus halting the privatisation of electricity distribution. When the government announced the scheme of installation of pre-paid smart meters all over the country, AIFAP organised a national seminar to expose the real aim of the scheme. The smart meter scheme was both anti-people and anti-worker and was meant to make electricity distribution attractive for privatisation. Forty-six organisations, including a large number of AIFAP members came together to jointly bring out the booklet, “Unitdly Oppose Anti-worker, Anti-people Prepaid Smart Electricity Meters – Call by Various Workers’ Farmers’ and People’s Organisations” in Hindi, English and Marathi. Tens of thousands of copies of the booklet have been distributed all over the country to make consumers and workers aware of how smart meters will hurt them.
In November 2024, the Central Government announced the handing over the government owned electricity distribution company in Chandigarh to a private corporate at a throwaway price. Very soon after in December 2024, the Uttar Pradesh State Government announced the plan to privatise two major distribution companies, the Purvanchal and Dakshinanchal Vidyut Vitaran Nigam.
AIFAP has given wide coverage to massive protests to make it a national issue. AIFAP has also contributed to bringing various sections of the Indian working class to support the struggle of the electricity employees of Chandigarh and U. P. against privatisation of their distribution companies.
The attempts to deliberately wreck BSNL in favour of private telecom monopolies continued last year, too. In September 2024, AIFAP had organised a national online meeting against the reported plans of the Central Government to force another VRS on the employees and sell off its vast land assets. This meeting was attended by all the unions representing BSNL employees and helped to unite them to prepare and oppose any anti-worker anti-people plan of the Central Government.
In addition to the above, AIFAP has been regularly highlighting struggles of Defence, Bank, Insurance, Port and Docks, Post, Coal, Steel, Road Transport, Central and State Government Employees.
We can confidently say that AIFAP has fulfilled the objectives for which it was formed and has become a platform which is contributing to strengthening the ongoing struggles against privatisation of public sector enterprises. The struggle against privatisation is a part of the overall struggle of our people against the anti-worker, anti-people policies of the government. These policies are being implemented on behalf of the big monopoly corporates and the aim of these policies is to enable these corporates to grow richer by grabbing people’s assets and squeezing the workers to extract maximum labour with minimum pay.
AIFAP has been built and strengthened due to the active support of all of you. I am sure with your continued active support, it will be further strengthened with more members joining, contributing by way of reports and articles and popularising AIFAP and its website.
With warmest greetings,
Dr. A. Mathew
Convenor,
All India Forum Against Privatisation (AIFAP)
9833387137