The perception that trade unions are detrimental to industrial growth, and then the growth of the nation, is quite common in India. The Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s recent remark that links industrial underperformance with trade union activity is just a reflection of that general perception. The decline of trade unionism in India, particularly in its erstwhile stronghold of West Bengal, is not a natural economic evolution but a deliberate political project. The historical strength of unions in sectors like jute and tea once provided a robust mechanism for worker rights. However, over the past decades, the very concept of unionisation has been demeaned as “industrial sabotage.” The national unionisation rate has plummeted to a mere 6.3%, with a marginal 1.8% in the private sector. The weakening of unions has direct consequences not just for job safety but also for workers’ physical safety. For example, a unionised shop floor is one where workers can collectively demand fire audits and safety gear without the fear of immediate termination. It is in this context that we need to see the devastating inferno that tore through a warehouse complex in the Nazirabad area of Anandapur in Kolkata on January 26. The charred remains of 29 people have so far been recovered, many so badly burned that DNA testing became the only viable path for identification. This tragedy serves as the terminal point of a trajectory defined by the bypassing of factory regulations, the exploitation of a surplus labour force, and a political environment that has branded worker protections as an archaic, damaging “leftist” relic. The company’s subsequent offer of Rs 10 lakh as compensation to some, is a post-facto settlement that acknowledges the price of a life while avoiding the structural reforms that a union would have mandated.The anatomy of regulatory evasionThe Anandapur fire was a disaster of choice and comes amidst rising concern over cost optimisation at the expense of human life.Investigations following the blaze revealed that the warehouse of a momo chain Wow! Momo, along with an adjoining decorator’s godown, had been operating without a mandatory fire licence and possessed no formal fire safety clearances. This evasion of the law is facilitated by the strategic placement of industrial units in “grey zones.” The Nazirabad area is part of the East Kolkata Wetlands. Operating in such ecologically sensitive areas often involves secret deals with law-enforcing institutions, despite it being widely known that such factories cannot exist on such eco-sensitive zones. The presence of highly combustible packaging materials and food supplies meant that once a fire started the warehouse became a furnace. For a company as big as Wow! Momo, the absence of basic fire safety is indicative of a business model that prioritises brand optics over operational ethics. The 23 fire extinguishers on-site was quite plausibly incapable of dealing with the fire in the absence of structural safety measures. Labour overflow as a catalyst for rule-bypassingThe ability to maintain such hazardous work environments is fundamentally enabled by the crushing overflow of labour in West Bengal and India at large. The state’s industrial landscape is characterised by labour informality, which leaves the labourers entirely outside the protection of formal labour laws. This surplus of desperate and often migrant labour creates a dynamic where the individual worker is perceived as replaceable.In a labour-surplus economy, the minimum wage at which one would accept a work is always in a downward spiral. This results in labour arbitrage, where companies often keep on squeezing the costs of labour as a valid mechanism to compete with their products in the market. When a warehouse is packed with workers sleeping on-site, the company effectively captures 24 hours of the worker’s presence without providing the requisite housing or safety infrastructure. The overflow of labour acts as a buffer against regulation. For example, if one group of workers complains about the lack of a fire exit, there are hundreds of others waiting at the gate, driven by an average household income that hovers around a mere Rs 11,015 per month.This reservoir of the dispossessed allows companies to bypass factory rules. In West Bengal, economic stagnation is so profound that the growth rate of net fixed capital in the formal sector was recorded at a staggering negative 147% between 2011 and 2017. In such a desperate climate, any entity that provides even the most precarious of jobs is treated as a benefactor rather than a regulated employer.Crony capitalism and the startup hero narrativeThe rise of startups illustrates the fusion of the startup hero mythos with the mechanisms of modern Indian crony capitalism. Institutional proximity to power provides a halo effect that shields their operations from the scrutiny that a smaller, less “connected” business would face. Crony capitalism in the 21st-century Indian context manifests as the state’s promotion of national champions. Consequently, businesses get preferential treatment in policy frameworks and environmental clearances under the guise of national growth. The disconnect between the billionaire lifestyle of the startup elite and the reality of their workers is glaring. One of the most successful psychological manoeuvres of neoliberal capitalism in India has been the framing of worker rights and labour protections as “Left-party propaganda.” In West Bengal, this is particularly potent. The 34-year rule of the Left Front is constantly invoked as a period of “industrial decay caused by militant unionism.” This historically constructed memory is weaponised to suggest that any demand for safety or fair wages is an attempt to bring back the “dark days” of industrial stagnation. This sentiment has been carefully cultivated among the middle class. Consequently, when a tragedy like the Anandapur fire occurs, the discourse is quickly steered away from labour rights toward “accident” or “bad luck.” The reality, however, is that the “Shining India” and “Vibrant Bengal” narratives have entrenched a “K-shaped” growth model. In this model, corporate profits grow by over 22% annually, while employment increases by only 1.5%. The top 1% of the population now owns 40% of the national wealth, a historical high that exceeds inequality levels in the US or Brazil.Furthermore, the Wow! Momo issue cannot be divorced from the broader gig economy model that underpins its delivery success. The transition from “employee” to “partner” is the ultimate sleight of hand in modern capitalism. By classifying workers as independent contractors, companies bypass almost every social security obligation. While one-third work over 14 hours per day, their needs are hardly met, making them frequently the people having no other option.The gig model is critical to capitalism because it effectively creates a “just-in-time” labour force that can be switched off during a strike or a slowdown. During delivery strikes, platforms simply increase incentives to break worker solidarity, using data and algorithms to identify which workers are most desperate. The human cost of this flexibility is seen in the high rates of anxiety, physical exhaustion, and the absence of any long-term financial security for the millions of young Indians entering this workforce.The choice of the Anandapur wetlands for a warehouse is a metaphor for the broader tragedy of the commons in India. The wetlands have been the kidneys for the city, yet they are being steadily encroached upon by real estate and industrial interests. This encroachment is often facilitated by local promoters who act as intermediaries for big capital.When Wow! Momo leases a facility in such an area; it is participating in the destruction of the city’s ecological safety net. The fire in the wetlands was not just a fire in a building. It was an assault on an ecologically sensitive site that should never have been built on. The lack of fire safety is thus a secondary crime to the primary crime of illegal construction. By the time the authorities “find” an illegal warehouse, it has already been gutted by fire, and the victims are already in the morgue. The silence from the leaders and a general festive mood with the bookfair that was ongoing at that time despite such a tragic incident reflected the undeniable distance between consumers and labourers. It is a microcosm of the modern Indian economy: a shiny exterior concealing a hollowed-out interior of regulatory bypass, labour exploitation, and cronyism. The workers who perished were the collateral damage of a system that views worker rights as a nuisance and fire safety as a luxury.The startup revolution in India has too often been a revolution in finding new ways to circumvent the laws that were designed to protect the weak. As long as businesses are allowed to operate in wetlands without fire licenses, and as long as partners are denied the right to unionise, the Indian republic will continue to see its citizens incinerated in the name of growth. The idea that the Left damaged the work culture must be replaced by the recognition that an unregulated work culture is a death trap. The only way forward is a radical re-centring of labour dignity, environmental compliance, and the dismantling of the crony networks that allow companies the right to have the last word while their workers can say nothing at all.Suman Nath teaches anthropology at Government General Degree College, Keshiary, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal.