Photoblog from India #10

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Communist Party of India General secretary A.B. Bardhan poses in his office in Delhi in front of a portrait of Ho Chi Minh. Che Guevara hangs on the other wall. Bardhan, a spry 82 years young, was reelected general secretary, at the CPI's 20th Congress last month in Hyderabad. Bardhan was busy at work when we stopped by on Saturday at 5 p.m. The Indian workweek is six days, MOnday through Saturday. And for many -- like Communists and shopkeepers -- the hours are long. Going from early morning until 8 - 10 pm.


The Communist Party of India owns a six-story building in Delhi. On the first floor is a canteen and kitchen where party workers and volunteers can eat. This comrade works in the kitchen.


Part of the sign outside the Communist Party of India's national office located in Delhi.


Comrade Shivaraj R. Biradar, assistant editor of the party's Karnataka
state newspaper, Kembavuta, poses outside the mass meeting hall newly built at the Bangalore district office. There are 22 electoral districts in the state of Kanartaka and the CPI has organization in 17. Kanartaka is one of the four states that make up South India. The other three are Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Total population in South India is some 180 million.


The Communist Party of India is organized in every state of India. Here is the district office in Bangalore, the capital of the South India state of Karnataka. The office is in a very working class/poor area of the city, far away from the skyscrapers of the new IT office buildings.


Neighborhood kids, caretakers and residents pose outside a nursery school next to the Bangalore CPI office.


Walking up and down the street at the district office of CPI many children were excited to get their picture taken.


Across the street from the CPI's district office in Bangalore are many scenes like this one. People set up their homes in any way they can often living in tents or small shacks among the stones, dirt and dust. This woman is working in her outdoor kitchen where woodfired ovens hold black kettles where moms prepare the meals for their families. With no running water or other facilities, women and men carry huge jugs from a central water pump to their homes.


Some 10,000 young people wearing red shirts volunteered to lead the Communist Party of India-Marxist's massive procession through the streets of Coimbatore, April 3, ending at the stage and rally grounds. Two girls center pose for a photo amidst the marching band.


CPI-M rally


Centre of Indian Trade Union members and CPI-M party members greet the international delegates at a garment factory park in Tirupur, near Coimbatore.


The head of Vietnam's delegation stands with the Indian workers and comrades.


The billboard greets the international delegates from the Center of Indian Trade Unions. "Long live international working class solidarity" it says.


Bundles of cotton sit to be cleaned and processed into thread at this Tirupur factory.


"Labor-saving" technology and machines have been the biggest cause of massive job loss or the new phrase "jobless growth" in industrialized countries. In India, this new industrial revolution creates jobs but not on the same scale as the first industrial revolution. In this Tirupur mill only 150 workers produce millions of tons of material.


Watching these young women work I could only think of the history of our own working class and the young women of New England who left their farms to work in the mills.


One of 50 young women workers places spools on the massive machine.


The German and Italian-made machines at this Tirupur factory process millions of tons of cotton and is the 21st century spinning wheel.


Beautiful faces behind the masks.