New Delhi, Nov. 8 -- Few episodes have altered Mumbai's economic geography as profoundly as the infamous 1982 textile strike. What began as a wage dispute under Datta Samant, a doctor-turned-union leader with a gift for mass mobilization, ended up redrawing the city's skyline.

The confrontation between labour and capital broke the spine of India's traditional trade-union movement and cleared the ground, quite literally, for Mumbai's shift from an industrial hub to a property and financial capital.

Born on 21 November 1932 in Devbag, now part of Maharashtra's Sindhudurg district, Dattatray "Datta" Samant's journey from medicine to labour activism began in the working-class neighbourhoods of 1960s Mumbai. After doing his MBBS from G.S. Se...