Where Red met Green – IIITH Prof. Radhika Krishnan’s chronicle on Shankar Guha Niyogi

In her much-awaited biography on Shankar Guha Niyogi, Shankar Guha Niyogi: A Politics in Red and Green, author IIITH Prof. Radhika Krishnan deconstructs the visionary brilliance of the Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha founder and thought leader in the Global South, credited with drafting the very first documented environment policy endorsed by a trade union.

Founded by Niyogi as a union for the miners of the Bhilai Steel Plant, the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (CMM), established itself as a uniquely diverse organisation, representing mine workers, factory and agricultural workers across Chhattisgarh.

IIIT Hyderabad Prof. Radhika Krishnan’s biography on Shankar Guha Niyogi published by Orient Blackswan, pieces together the life and times of the famed 1970s trade union activist through Hindi and Chhattisgarhi newspaper articles, speeches and songs from primary sources like the Deshbandhu and CMM archives and multiple visits to the Dalli-Rajhara mines. 

The author, a faculty member of IIITH’s Humanities Sciences Research Center studies how the CMM, in the 1970s and ‘80s grappled with wide-ranging ecological and technological changes in the region, while re-defining the role and scope of the traditional trade union. It presents a refreshing historical throwback to a time when alternative ecological and technological imaginations were emerging from the mines, and factory floor in Chhattisgarh.

Green and Red Imaginations
Through the lens of the Niyogi-led CMM, the author addresses the ideological frameworks, structures and processes involved as red (labor) and green (environment) imaginations came together. She describes an era when workers were challenged “to be part of the process of democratizing technology, of blurring boundaries between the ‘user’ environment”, and an ideological churning that included questions on sub-nationality, ethnicity and identity. By addressing these questions, this book becomes a good read for scholars of environment studies, development, and labour studies.

The origin story
“My Ph.D and my book chose me”, smiles Radhika Krishnan, an electrical engineer from NIT Calicut, who shrugged off the corporate rat-race after Wipro before pursuing her post-doctoral studies at Sweden’s Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies and Shimla’s Indian Institute of Advanced Study. She worked for several years with Delhi-based research and advocacy group Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). At IIIT Hyderabad since 2017, her current work is focused primarily on coal mining.

While working on her M.Phil on mining, a chance conversation with Anil Sadgopal would reveal the topic for Radhika’s Ph.D. “He took umbrage when he observed that I knew little about Niyogi’s ideas around mining”. Surprised and livid, he drew her attention to his published collection on Niyogi and the CMM that had unearthed interesting experiments on iron mining.

“My book is an attempt to recover from that moment of mortification and to actually rediscover Niyogi; and in that process, revisit spaces and see facets about the place that I had no clue about.  I delved more into the vast canvas of experiences and anecdotes. I had the good fortune of working with Rohan D’Souza, my Ph.D advisor who became my friend, mentor and comrade and would constantly badger me from Japan to complete this book.  He understood the significance of Niyogi’s work even before I could; and the political significance of the man, for the environmental and labor movements,” she adds.

A treasure trove of primary sources uncovered
“The irony is that I grew up in the Steel Township of Bhilai where my father was an officer, at a time when Niyogi and the CMM were its peak or charam. But I had absolutely no clue that this was happening since it wasn’t part of family conversations! This changed in September 1991 when Niyogi was murdered, less than 2 kilometers from my house. The event garnered national attention because Niyogi was a trade union leader of some stature. But this book isn’t about that”, notes the author with the slightest hint of guilt. “For all its achievements, class divisions were very apparent in the Bhilai Steel Plant; in the exclusive residential sectors, schools, hospitals, clubs and social spaces for officers, that were different for workers. For me this is a matter of some embarrassment and I start the Acknowledgement section of my book by mentioning this!”

Ardh-mashinikaran – mining a new concept
For the longest time, Niyogi remained a rare trade unionist, whose platform extended beyond wages and better working conditions, to include discussions on ethnicity and inclusivity by organizing contractual workers engaged in the iron mines. This was in the late 1970s when mechanization was just entering the mineral extraction sector and the fear of large retrenchments was looming.

Instead of seceding the intellectual ground to the management, Niyogi grabbed the narrative by directly addressing production, productivity and efficiency. This is where Niyogi becomes an unusual figure, attracting IIT engineers from Bombay and Delhi and social scientists who worked with Dalli-Rajhara miners, living in the union office to reach a technical solution. 

The technical alternative that emerged was Ardh-mashinikaran or semi-mechanization of the mining process. The entire manufacturing and mining process was rejigged to save jobs and to achieve production goals.  Labor cooperatives would handle the mining process and iron ore production, that turned out to be pretty successful for a fairly long time.

24×7 support and an environmental policy
What made the CMM different was the assurance of a 24×7 union; which meant that any issue that impacted its members’ could be brought to the union office; from domestic violence, environmental pollution to forest degradation and even the 1984 anti- Sikh riots.  

In one interesting instance, a union worker’s Adivasi brother whose headload of forest wood was confiscated by the Forest Department became the catalyst for the union to scrutinize issues of rights and justice in India’s environment laws.  It resulted in an environmental policy, possibly the first such document to be penned by an Indian trade union in the 1980s.

Shram – a working class marker for regional identification
The CMM actively encouraged the local Chhattisgariya to take on leadership positions and fight for equal rights and remuneration, as a matter of dignity. While permanent staff at the steel plant were non-Chhattisgariya, the local contractual workers were culturally and economically discriminated. The concept of dignity helped Niyogi’s CMM to re-define a Chhattisgariya as someone who labors in the region and contributes to the land. If your Shram is delivered on this land, you are a legitimate citizen of the land. This working class definition merged regional identity with labor and did not allow ethnic chauvinism to take over.  Two popular examples to drive that point home, alluded to an erstwhile king of the region and an industrialist who were born locally but didn’t labor in the region.

The reader can expect a glimpse into a lost moment in Indian history, into a rare trade union whose workers engaged creatively and brought solidarity between the labor and ecology movements which have traditionally been at loggerheads. The book makes a case that there is a historical precedent where a trade union worked towards better industrial practices, arguing for forest preservation and understanding that their lives and their communities were intertwined with ecological conservation.