IN the wee hours of the Republic Day, the country woke up to the horrific tragedy of the charring of workers at the Nazirabad warehouse complex in Anandapur on the southern outskirts of Kolkata. As of January 29, the death toll had climbed to 21, with charred bodies recovered. The latest information in the media suggests that the death toll has gone up to 31. That the initial figures were a blatant underestimate was clear from the fact that on January 29 itself, nearly 28 workers were still missing. The devastating fire engulfing the warehouse, which acted as a makeshift night shelter, was outrageous. The most criminal dimension revealed that migrant workers from adjoining districts of West Bengal were in fact locked in from outside while they were sleeping in the night, and died of asphyxiation without finding an exit route.
These workers were employed in the Wow Momo production facility, which is a nationwide brand for selling momos – an increasingly popular snack food. The incident brings out the chilling reality of modern day slavery, which underlines the predatory practices of such brands. It needs to be understood that these are not simple accidental deaths, but outcome of an institutionalised system of murder from inhuman practices for super-profit. It displays a complete disregard for regulated working hours, overtime compensation and right to association. By denying workers their social security protections, including their fundamental right to ESI and provident fund, their families have been left without any tangible safety net. This also resulted from informal workers operating in sweatshop-like reality, where they are forced in death traps devoid of fire extinguishers, emergency exits, and basic ventilation. Therefore, the tragedy is an institutionalized murder as a result of absence of infrastructure and norms which define the operational parameters.
The gravity of the tragedy did not stop there. The authorities did not lift their little finger to bring the perpetrators to book. Even after the passage of a considerable period of time, the owners were not arrested. The state government did its best to conceal the scale of the tragedy by cordoning off the area of occurrence.
Undoubtedly, the TMC-led state government and their active complicity in facilitating corporates to blatantly violate environmental stipulations, and encroachment of landfill sites and internationally designated wetlands recognised as Ramsar site, has contributed significantly to the tragedy. Meanwhile, the state Labour Department’s criminal apathy in conducting mandatory inspections and fire audits converted the site to a veritable minefield for workers. Obviously, the state Labour Department must be held accountable for such institutional murders!
However, to presume that such appalling conditions for workers are limited to West Bengal alone would be completely misplaced. The same conditions for work and devastating reality of occupational health remain in most of the states, as obviously there is an all-pervasive environment of apathy, if not animosity, towards the workers. It is an overwhelmingly class question.
As if to buttress this reality of antipathy to the working class, on January 29, the Chief Justice of India, in the Supreme Court itself, while hearing the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed in Penn Thozhilalar Sangam vs Union of India blurted out, “How many industrial units in the country have been closed thanks to trade unions? Let us know the realities. All traditional industries in the country, all because of these jhanda unions, have been closed all throughout the country? They don’t want to work. These trade union leaders, they are largely responsible for stopping industrial growth in the country.”
The words were harsh, unambiguous, and manifested the overall anti-working class environment in the country. Were the poor migrants, who were forced to work with the pittance of wage and the death trap-like sweat shops in the Wow Momo facility, slogging away because ‘they don’t want to work”?
It is sorry to state that Justice Surya Kant was betraying his class prejudice, because the animus with which he spoke blinded him to the factual reality. The Labour Bureau's reports on ‘Industrial Disputes, Closures, Retrenchments, And Layoffs in India’ are the most comprehensive and objective sources of data industrial stagnation. The Bureau’s data reveal that there has been a significant decline in industrial disputes, reaching a seventeen-year low in 2023, with only 30 disputes reported by September 2023. This is in stark contrast to 2006, when the highest number of disputes went up to 432, followed by 421 in 2008 and 389 in 2007.
On the other hand, the phenomenon of industrial closures, both legal and illegal, would reveal that the incidents of closures are much higher in states where unionisation is visibly weak or minimal. It is also interesting that in a recent written response in Lok Sabha, the Union Government stated that 2,04,268 private companies were closed over 5 years due to amalgamation, conversion, dissolution or being struck off under Companies Act, 2013. Further, the figures of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India also vindicate the nature and reasons for the closure of the industry and the percentage of recovery of debts by Public Sector Banks.
Therefore, the CJI is completely off the mark. It is not the industrial disputes involving trade unions that forced industrial units to close down. On the contrary, it is the internal crisis within the current neoliberal order and the unbridled concentration and financialisation of the economy, which affects the MSME sector most severely, and the productive sector as a whole, that have resulted in these closures.
The recent Economic Survey, as well as the Budget review and projections, also underline the reasons for the crisis of industry – the absence of aggregate demand in the economy, which is making the situation untenable for industries. The sharp inequality and a state of jobless growth of the economy is driving workforce to a state of despair. The Anandapur tragedy is symptomatic of this tragic state of affairs. The Executive, instead of recognizing this reality, is trying to ensure that there are no collective protests, collective bargaining and protection in terms of social safety net. In fact, this is an ideal situation where the judiciary, as a countervailing organ, should come out formally to protect the fundamental rights of workers enshrined under Article 19 (1) (c) of the Constitution, which guarantees citizens freedom of association and unionisation.
With the new Labour Codes being notified, the dice gets further loaded against the workers, going into overdrive to provide a comfort zone for corporates and extinguishing every possibility of collective protest and bargaining. The question is, shall we condemn our workers to die like insects, devoid of a decent human existence?
(February 04, 2026)
