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Pompilai Orumai, the purportedly apolitical organisation of women workers at Munnar’s Kanan Devan tea company, whose "jasmine revolution" created a new wave in Kerala’s labour movement, has helped the United Democratic Front to secure the Munnar garam panchayat governance.
The Orumai won two seats at the 21-member panchayat council in the local-body election held last month. While the Congress-led UDF got nine seats, the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front secured 10 seats. In the election for the panchayat president held on Thursday, the Orumai voted for the UDF candidate, thus helping the UDF retain the gram panchayat rule. R. Karuppa Samy was declared the winner.
The Orumai was formed after the spontaneous upsurge of women workers, mostly tea-leaf pickers, at the Tatas-controlled Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Limited who struck work for nine days demanding 20 per cent bonus. Over 5000 women workers had, in a spontaneous show of anger, stumped the conventional trade unions, whose leaders had alleged colluded with the management, and won their demand. The women’s strike had won national headlines and created excitement among the workforce on the tea plantations across the country. They also took part in the agitation for higher wages.
Coming as it did, the agitation was immediately followed by the local-body elections. The women workers whose thousands of votes were critical in many wards in Munnar gram panchayat, put up their own candidates in two wards and they won. After the agitation was over, the women’s movement was crystallized into an organization called Pompilai Orumai with Lissy Sunny as the president. Sunny later told the media that Orumai voted the UDF only because neither the UDF nor LDF could secure a majority and it did not want the uncertainty to go on.
However, while the Orumai had to battle all conventional trade unions such as the pro-Congress INTUC, pro-CPI(M) CITU and the pro-CPI AITUC, it was the pro-Left unions—AITUC and CITU—that had created more troubles for it. This probably was the main reason for the Orumai support for the UDF in the panchayat president election.
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