Jensine Raihan
Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity (PBKMS)
West Bengal, India
I think what was particularly interesting to me was how Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity (PBKMS) has attempted to not only deal with the immediate economic conditions of its members, like working to end starvation and unemployment in the state, but also deal with gender-based violence, religious communal divides, anti-democratic systems, and individualism.
West Bengal is dominated by highly antagonistic party politics, religious-based communal violence, and gender-based oppression. There is regular violence between Muslim and Hindu communities, between party lines, and against women. However, the organization has been able to successfully have members who are aligned to a diversity of parties and religious affiliations. In fact, Muslims and Hindus together, across party lines, often need to challenge the party in power. For example, most members of PBKMS are part of the Trinamool Congress Party, the current ruling party in West Bengal, but the organization has been able to move its membership to challenge the ruling party to demand that concessions be made to rural poor communities. This is notable given that party affiliates rarely work with other party non-affiliates to challenge a party they have pledged allegiance to. Moreover, in a country that’s labor organizations are mostly directed by the party it is affiliated to, the creation and function of an organization like PBKMS promotes profound democratic processes and involvement of regular people in changing their own lives as opposed to engaging in a revolving door of changing party rule.
The organization has not only broken through the division among party members, but also seeks to organize in a way that transforms society. The organizers, from my conversations with them, have a profound understanding that merely changing certain economic policies will not change the oppressive, anti-democratic, and individualistic society we live in. Instead, the organization needs to be engaging members in conversations around the trade-off that exists when an organization is merely involved in immediate economic fights.
I got to sit in on such a committee meeting, where one of the founding members of the organization spoke to members regarding exactly that. He went through the various oppressive characteristics that define our society and fell outside of immediate economic needs. The conversation hinted at the start of developing the foundation of creating with members a political vision of the kind of society the organization wants to build because of its attempt to try to transcend merely addressing immediate economic issues. For me, it is exciting to see this, because I find that organizations can be caught up in their focus on systems that have been created and have a culture of discouraging experiments, which often results in organizations failing the task of fundamentally changing society.