We are witness today to a new kind of workers power. Collective bargaining has given way to collective action, direct action. A riot form of worker power brooks no mediation of any kind. What is striking is the complete absence of mediation by either unions, labour commissioners, political parties, civil society, courts, activists, NGOs or other notables. Unless of course these mediators are later inducted to control and limit the damage.Take the massive unrest and violent protests in Noida on April 13, 2026. In place of leaders, negotiators and unions, the Yogi Adityanath government in UP has identified “instigators” and “conspirators” as those “behind the protests”. Several wanton arrests have been made. That soon after the government agreed to raise the minimum monthly salary across the board shows the power and rawness of these protests. This must be studied and investigated.The same holds true for violent protests early this year in Panipat in Haryana, Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh, and many other places, reported and unreported. And now in various industries in Manesar, Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad, Palwal and places in Rajasthan. The only question is: where next?In each protest, the authorities have appeared almost immediately, seeking to appease the workers’ demands. This is no doubt a thinly disguised ruse. But the authorities might not have the last laugh this time.In a turn of events of nobody’s making, workers power seems to have arrived. It is as though the long isolation and destitution of workers, particularly contractual workers, from any kind of representation from any quarter has produced a unique and peculiarly advantageous situation. It has finally allowed them to produce forms of organising and action that are outside the ken of anyone except the participating workers. This has given rise to the unique circumstance that no one really knows the “inside story” of how the action and violence of April 13 in Noida transpired.A non-transparent, inner domain accessible only to participating workers has everyone scrambling for information. Hence, no “leader”, “mediator” exists through whom capital and the state can get to know “what are the workers are planning”. No one knows which could be the next spot of unrest and protest.Noida is where all big 24×7 media houses have their studios and offices. Yet they have no clue about the worker action. The motley group of journalists who are on the ground reporting, talk to the workers as though they are aliens – the media has never applied their mind to the category called workers or to production conditions, as they are too busy chasing “talking points”.Worker action has directly spawned from the production and work conditionsThis destitution and abandonment has come as a boon for the worker. Worker action has directly spawned from the production and work conditions. We heard workers in Noida say, “look we are doing these protests, now the management will throw us out”. So the workers have already take their redundancy and contractualisation into account. They are anyways liable to be fired anytime from their jobs, so how much averse can they really be to engage in the riot form which might involve a brush with the law. Hyper-contractualisation itself now becomes the enabling condition for the new form of organising and resistance.Workers alternating as social media influencers reporting directly from supply chains and dumper trucks cannot be ignored. Instagram reels seem to reconfigure the very meaning of virality as they track direct action in the zones of production. The internet’s virtual reality is impossibly bent to amplify real time movement of workers direct action. The Adityanath government is now doing a rearguard action to track “WhatsApp groups” as incubators and planning pods.Vulnerability and precarity are turned into an instrument of struggle. The new forms of resistance are directly mirroring the existing forms of capital. A mass riot in a flash exists in a fitting homologue to capital’s “just in time” production and the “flash sale” of supermarket malls.This is proving to be a re-run of the classic case pointed out by Marx and Engels long ago in the Communist Manifesto: “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” That is, without any “outside” intellectual or organiser, at the most basic elementary level, capital generates forms of workers resistance and sabotage.The narrowing of the mediating and bargaining space has given rise to a kind of an either/or situation.Either these contractual workers are exploited to the bones and fall in line, completely destitute and helpless. Or they implode through direct action and a swarm-like raw power which cannot be subject to any form of restraint and mediation. Till yesterday those shiny glass and steel buildings in Noida were giving peak production for “Make in India”. Next day or next moment suddenly everything is shattered.This is not new in itself. Noida itself was witness to similar type of worker protests in 2013. The added irony was missing, as the government at the time had less claim to muscular discipline and control.Since at least the Maruti Suzuki workers movement in 2012, traditional ideologically-driven labour unions have been pushed to the margins by workers power. Unions have been reduced to doing PR for the workers who take decisions on their own.Workers do not find much value in the “long experience” of trade union leaders who seem to be playing catching up. Workers keeping the veteran activists and union leaders in the dark, keeping them waiting for basic “inside information”, is part of the folklore now. They must prove their worth in order to get access to the “inner domain” of workers action and planning.When needed, the workers will pick and choose or “use” these activists and leaders who are embedded among the professional classes of lawyers, writers, academics. The latter can provide high-profile lawyers to the workers once the riot form gets them indicted under the law.After the Panipat worker unrest, the government is apparently craving for “responsible” unions to come in and get involved so they can get a grip on the unpredictable workers’ actions.Workers for now seem totally fine with direct action and not needing any form of political organising or collective bargaining.What is not clear in all of this is whether this flash direct action is here to stay and for how long. Surely this phase will come to a close. Riot is the worker living his fantasy in real life, which he knows must surely end. We get vital clues here. We get an insight into why one form of resistance is “chosen” and not the other for the same “economic” demand.To say that this direct action is in search of or looking for a new political form of organising, might be presumptuous. I think one should not jump the gun here. One should be able to stay with this situation of flux for some time at least. What looks like direct action might already be the new “form” of political organising. Or it might contain the elements for the new form of political organising. We do not know if the riot is on way to assume the form of an insurrection which would involve other sections of society. Once we see it this way, everything changes.The riot form might itself be the “proper” method of worker power. The worker might not have thought and chosen it. So the word “proper” might not be correct. Riot as a spontaneous but successful method is at least attested by its virality and efficacy. It displays a particular economy of time, resources, bridging distance and communication among workers between industry and cities.This is what unions never understood as they are stuck in the 1970s model of welfare state and social democracy. What they call “neoliberalism” cannot be fought by a throwback to the supposed “golden era” of permanent jobs and social security. That the thought of old-age pensions should inspire today’s younger-than-young workers is a bit of a stretch. Workers are far more advanced. They are moving with the times, and acting and resisting in ways that correspond to the new forms of production, logistics and supply chains.Saroj Giri teaches Politics in University of Delhi and is part of the Forum Against Corporatisation and Militarisation (FACAM).