India faces nationwide strike

NEW DELHI, Thursday (AFP) - India braced for labour turmoil Thursday as the Congress-led government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh faced the first nationwide union strike against its economic reform policies.

The 24-hour walkout called by unions affiliated with the government's communist allies marked the Left's latest pressure tactic to block moves to further liberalise Asia's fourth-largest economy.

The unions' communist allies provide crucial parliamentary support to the government elected in 2004.

"The strike will be in all industries - airports, banks, insurance. There will be a virtual shutdown of many, many sectors," M.K. Pandhe, president of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, said Wednesday.

He said close to 40 million state employees could participate in the strike, including those working in government offices, airports, railways, insurance firms, oil companies and banks.

The unions have put forward 16 demands that include halting stake sales in profit-making state-owned firms, opposing foreign investment, tightening hire-and-fire laws and boosting savings interest rates for pensioners.

"This will be just a warning for the government. Unless the government undertakes a comprehensive review of its policies, we will call for a much bigger action - we may go for longer stikes," Pandhe said.

It was uncertain how many workers would heed the strike call.

But the government drafted contingency plans Wednesday to deal with expected disruption at the nation's two busiest airports - New Delhi and Mumbai.

Some 20,000 employees of the Airports Authority of India, which manages the airports, planned to join the strike to protest government moves to privatise the New Delhi and Mumbai airports, the Press Trust of India reported.

"Necessary steps have been taken to ensure that all flights operate with full safety measures," Civil Aviation Secretary Ajay Prasad said.

In western Maharashtra state, whose capital Mumbai is India's financial hub, at least 2.5 million people including those working at the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, will join the strike, a union official said.

"The aim is to bring Mumbai to a standstill," said Viswhas Utagi, joint secretary of the All India Bank Employees Association.

Communist-ruled Kerala and West Bengal were also expected to be hard hit.

Kolkata, West Bengal's capital, would face a "total work shutdown," said Shyamal Chakraborty, a leader of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions.

The government, seeking to walk a tightrope between pro-poor and pro-investment policies, has said economic reforms are key to boosting growth and paying for its ambitious social welfare plans.