At 9 am on Tuesday, instead of starting work at the assembly line, men stood in huddles outside several factories in Delhi's Okhla industrial area. It was the first day of a two-day general strike called by 10 central trade unions, planned just months before the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. In the last such major industrial action in September 2016, trade unions claimed 15 crore workers had taken part, including in industrial areas in and around the Delhi-National Capital Region. But on Tuesday morning, in newspapers in Delhi, there was no news of the strike. Instead, front page headlines focused on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government's announcement of 10% reservation in educational institutions and state jobs for the economically backward among the upper castes, reversing the principle of affirmative action for Dalits and the historically marginalised. Santosh Kesri, a migrant from Bihar's Khagariya district, who belongs to a low-inco