The great rebellion of Mahalla-el-Kubra

Mahalla-el-Kubra was not on the itenary of hundreds of thousands of tourists who came to Egypt in April this year to see the majesty of the mysterious Sphinx or the overwhelming wonder of the world - the pyramids of Giza. However, the impress of Mahalla-el-Kubra, a small industrial town located not very far from the Egyptian capital, Cairo, was visible all over the ancient capital. Black dungaree clad security men lazily moving around with their Kalashnikovs, could be seen all over the city trying to neuter any attempts to repeat the violent uprising that took place in Mahalla in the first week of April. The rioting saw two dead and scores injured.
Textile workers in this town were demanding better wages and improvement in their lives, which the authorities had been ignoring for a while. Thousands of people turned up on the streets of Mahalla, burnt police cars and tore the posters and hoardings of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has been ruling the country for 27 years. The government feared copy-cat labour strikes, the kind that overthrew the government in 1952 - hence the overbearing security.
The government machinery went on overdrive and doubled the wages of the striking textile workers. Cleverly, they tried to show the incident as an aberration rather than a manifestation of a deeply infected body politic. In a matter of few days, the happenings in Mahalla were shown away as "food riots" - the kind that hit parts of Egypt in the early part of the year. A google-search classified the Mahalla violence as "food riots".
Images of the earlier food riots had been flashed all over the world where poor people were shown fighting at the Egyptian bread distribution centers. Government spin doctors realised that it was better to show the Mahalla violence as a clamour for food rather than a rebellion against the government, which, through its policies, was perpetuating the divide between the rich and the poor. Food riots, they strategised, could be explained as part of a 'global phenomenon'; this would also allow them to initiate policies that would have been difficult to push through otherwise.