Off to Dubai

I am travelling again, leaving tomorrow for Dubai where our company is exhibiting at the Arab Health trade fair.

I had been to Arab Health as a visitor last year.

My visit to Dubai last year occasioned a get-together of Rimcollians (alumni of the Rashtriya Indian Military College, Dehradun) based there. There will be a get-together again this time. I also hope to meet Dr Saif Alghais who teaches in the biology department of the UAE University; we were colleagues at the Salzburg Seminar in 1992.

I had been struck by Dubai's uniqueness, as a city that's a market. But I had also been disturbed seeing the large number of Southasian workers, who slept in shift-beds and spent holidays standing in the neighbourhood street junctions and gazing blankly into space as they had nowhere else to go. They work hard and save money in every way so as to have a better standard of living for themselves and their families back home. There are also many educated and professionally qualified Indians living comfortably in Dubai. But I had wondered whether I would have wanted to live in a place where life is defined singularly around personal material pursuits and consumption, and devoid of a relation to the place and the people, of self-expression and human intercourse, with the society, the culture, the public sphere, the civil society... politics.

Protest or perish

There was a protest meeting at Esplanade in Calcutta today, against the political and police repression in Singur and Nandigram, and the forced acquisition of agricultural land by the state on behalf of capitalists. The programme, in the name of "intellectuals", was organised by a coalition of organisations and individuals.

This was a follow-up to the street rally in Calcutta on 12 January.

The demonstration was well-attended. It was heartening to know that there is a substantial section of civil society / intelligentsia who have not enslaved themselves to the ruling party in return for the crumbs of patronage extended by the state.

Speakers urged for a forum to be forged, for protest and opposition, and to articulate and build a movement for alternative and socially just public policy. A people's convention is expected to be held around mid-February.










From Singur to Nandigram -
the new name of resistance.


No more deaths - no more
Singur and Nandigram.

Busy...

I have lots to write about, and share, but I have been busy and preoccupied. My blogging frenzy has also mellowed, and I am able to be detached from my blog. I need to get into a mood-routine to write what I consider meaningful.

Its been 7 months now since I began this blog; my site meter tells me I have had over 15,000 visitors, from over 100 countries. That is most encouraging, so I hope I can sustain my blog-writing and maintain this voice on the web.

Saddam and USA

A friend sent me a link to a video clip about Saddam Hussein and his links with the USA. This is most interesting.

See the video here.

Turn of the wheel

Ten years ago, in the midst of a powerful transformative personal psychological experience, I wrote to my friend Som (whom I like to refer to as "Manjusmriti"): the paradign has shifted.

I remembered that yesterday evening as I realised that an awesome subtle transformation has taken place right now. The wheel has turned for the CPI(M).

After being in power for almost 30 years, and exercising a vice-like grip over life in the state of West Bengal - in a manner unimaginable by anyone not living here - this demon has finally been spat upon. Conquered in the psyche of people. The oppressor has been undone.

What signalled for me this profound subterranean shift was the demonstration by students in Calcutta a week ago, in support of farmers in Nandigram (who revolted against proposed land acquisition), in front of the CPI(M)'s headquarters in Alimuddin Street. Shakespeare wrote that hell hath no greater fury than a woman scorned. If the good Sheikh Pyare had been around in our time he might have written that no scorned woman hath a greater fury than the CPI(M) exposed. Party members - bhadrolok (i.e. "decent" folk), who love to sing ora amader gaan gaite day na (they don't let us sing songs) - ran out to beat up the hapless students.

I spoke yesterday evening to my friends Mrinal Bose and Sumit Chowdhury. Mrinal said this was a profound, pregnant moment, that one could write a novel about this moment. Sumit said a tsunami is coming, that is going to sweep away all those who stand in its way. I also spoke to another close friend, a party member, who told me about a party meeting where a very senior leader had been sent to explain about the Nandigram issue. The meeting room was packed to capacity and the senior member faced terrible flak from grassroots cadres, who attacked him with more fury and venom than the worst anti-CPI(M) baiter; so much so that he had to leave ignominously on the pretext of a pressing engagement.

Well-known leftist intellectuals in New Delhi, all senior academics, had signed a statement expressing their opposition to the path the CPI(M) has embarked upon. Our great intellectually challenged chief minister was asked by his party to write to them explaining his stance, which he did. But the academics have said that this response does not answer their concerns at all.

The CPI(M) has embarked on a propaganda exercise to save face. Street corner meetings are being held. But now large numbers of people are flocking to the meetings and taking the opportunity to question and repudiate; but the face-savers have no answers and have to leave unceremoniously.

Opposition to the CPI(M)'s so-called industrialisation drive is not what will bring anarchy and turbulence to the state. That will simply be the natural consequence of the party's long, long mis-rule, that has devastated the state, and which people silently suffered. But now a mental barrier has been broken - and that's the historic significance of "Singur" - and dissent can no longer be stamped out. No one can do any more harm than what the CPI(M) itself has done. For a long time Bengal is going to be haunted and defined by what the CPI(M) has wrought. It is utterly pointless to talk about "reform" or "caution" now, and expect the party to become "pro-people". Ejection of the CPI(M) is a prerequisite for any real stability.

In 1984, following the assasination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the Congress party led by Rajiv Gandhi won an astounding victory in the general elections, getting more than a two-thirds majority in parliament. Less than three years later, the party was in deep trouble, embroiled in scam after scam. And in late 1989, the Congress was booted out in the next elections. Similarly, less than eight months after leading his party and the Left Front to a remarkable election victory, Buddhadev Bhattacharjee and the CPI(M) have been laid low. There are no opposition political parties in West Bengal, it is like a single party state. But six months ago, no one could have foreseen what is happening now. So the rapidly unfolding situation is going to bring its own results. The people of West Bengal do not need the Congress or the Trinamul Congress or the BJP. The alternative - has to be imagined, articulated and built, by all those concerned about a positive, humane and just future.

There is a great temptation within the party to give a communal twist to Nandigram (where a significant proportion of the farmers are Muslim, and the Jamaat party has been active in organising them). But thankfully some people know that things would then go entirely out of control and backfire on the party. The CPI(M) is in an unenviable situation indeed.

One thing is clear: like a cornered rat fighting for life, the power lust driven CPI(M) is not going to take things lying down. Violence is going to be unleashed. So, whether against them, or by them - we are in for instability and turbulence.

A question marked in red

by Sumit Sarkar

As a lifelong Leftist, I am deeply shocked by recent events in the countryside of West Bengal. On December 31, a group of us went to Singur, spent the whole day there, visited 4 out of the 5 most affected villages which border the land that has been taken over. We had conversations with at least 50-60 villagers. Almost all rushed to us and told us their complaints.

From this brief but not necessarily unrepresentative sample, three things became very clear, because of which the West Bengal government’s version cannot be accepted. One, the land, far from being infertile or mono-cropped, as has been stated repeatedly, is extremely fertile and multi-cropped. We saw potatoes and vegetables already growing after the aman rice has been harvested, some of them actually planted behind the now fenced-in area which the peasants had lost. Two, there is no doubt that the vast bulk of the villagers we met are opposed to the take-over of land and most are refusing compensation. It should also be kept in mind that at best the consent of the registered landholders as well as sharecroppers is being taken. But agricultural production also involves sharecroppers who are not covered by Operation Barga since they have come in later, as well as agricultural labour. Under the government-announced scheme for compensation, such people are not being remembered.

Three, we found much evidence of force being employed, particularly on the nights of September 25 and December 2. We met many people — men and also a large number of women — who had been beaten up, their injuries still visible, including an 80 year old woman.

What the villagers repeatedly alleged was that along with the police, and it seems more than the police, party activists, whom the villagers call ‘cadres’ — which has sadly become a term of abuse — did the major part of the beating up. Clearly, the whole thing had been done without consultation, with very little transparency, and in a very undemocratic manner.

As for the official claims of land being mono-cropped, the Economic and Political Weekly in an editorial of December 23 has pointed out that the last land survey of the area was done in the 1970s which means that the records with the government are backdated. Surely there must be much more investigation on the ground and consultation with panchayats and other local bodies. No one, not even the government, has actually claimed that such consultation has taken place. It was done entirely from the top.

These mistakes, to put it mildly, are being repeated on a much bigger scale in the Nandigram region. This has become far more serious because a much greater area of land is being taken — with the same lack of transparency, absence of consent and massive brutality. Once again, one is hearing reports of CPM cadres engaged in an offensive against peasants. What is happening at Nandigram is a near civil war situation.

The West Bengal government seems determined to follow a particular path of development involving major concessions both to big capitalists like the Tatas and multinationals operating in SEZs. Yet the strange thing is that these, particularly the latter, are things which Left parties and groups as well as many others have been repeatedly and vehemently opposing. No less a person than the CPM General Secretary in the course of last week made 2-3 statements attacking SEZs. The CPM has been at the forefront of the struggles against such developments in other parts of the country.

Surely there must be a search, at least, for paths of development that could balance necessary industrial development with social concerns and transparency and democratic values. Is this SEZ model that implies massive displacement and distress really the only way? If the West Bengal government thinks so, then it also has to accept that the inevitable consequences are going to be a repetition of Nandigram across the state.

This is the price that will be paid by government, ordinary people as well as investors, for this model of development.

Singur blog

I discovered a new blog today, on Singur, Nandigram, and the struggle against land acquisition for special economic zones. Its called Singur: Struggle Against Land Acquisition.

Development has to be for people. And the role of the state must be to facilitate the best interests of the people, and especially the poor and vulnerable. Industrialisation, special economic zones, real estate development, whatever - the bottom line must be empowerment of the people and creation of opportunities for their socio-economic advancement. In a state where the govt under the CPI(M) has only concretised the apartheid system of education, so that the poor and low income perpetually remain lowly citizens, consigned to menial servitude - it is difficult to believe that the party has any concern for the people.

The CPI(M) has no interest in empowerment of the people. In the 30 years it has been in power in West Bengal, it could have done so much, to make a difference. In the 6 years since he took over, the present chief minister could also have done much to demonstrate his intentions. But the squalor and indignity in which slumdwellers and poor villagers live only testify to the apathy, incapability and bankruptcy of the party. Its aim is empowerment of the party, at any cost. And to keep people dependent upon the party, even for basic survival. If people were empowered - then why would they need the party?

I am reminded of Thich Nhat Hanh's poem "The Enemy", in which he asks "if you kill people, then with whom will you live?" The CPI(M) would ask: if you empower people, then over whom will you rule?

So whose heart bleeds for the people? Who dreams of their dignity? Not the govt, or the ruling party, or the bureaucracy, or the police, or the media, or the intelligentsia. Elsewhere in India, callous rulers have been booted out in elections. But the CPI(M)'s "election machine" took care of that here. And of course, the absence of any credible opposition.

Hence, in despair, the people are flailing out, in a destructive frenzy, against the govt and the ruling party. But that is only a plea, to the nation's conscience: please do something, please give us hope.

Who hears?

If for decades you neglect the needs of the people, and they suffer deprivation and indignity while a favoured few exult in wealth and comfort - then any "economic growth" is likely to rest on very unstable foundations. In West Bengal, people seem to be rising up spontaneously in revolt, against the large scale land acquisitions for various industrial projects. It is absurd to attribute such outcomes to the instigation of Naxalites or anybody else. Decades of appalling apathy and moral irresponsibility by the affluent urban folk are to blame for the civil war like riots, looting, vandalism that will surely erupt soon in Calcutta.

That's what I had been thinking after hearing all the sanctimonious decrying of the irresponsible disruption of the brave new Bengal that some believe is emerging under Buddhadev's leadership.


Read Dr Mrinal Bose's story on Singur here.

Epitaph for West Bengal

There seems to be an outbreak of Rip Van Winkle-itis. Now Rudranghshu Mukherjee has written in The Telegraph about the violent cadre brigade of the CPI(M) and the blurring of the distinction between the ruling party and the state. Better late than never.

Are those who make happy deals with the ruling CPI(M) in West Bengal happy about the existence of the party's hoodlum squad? This may help them get their land bounties quickly, but will that monster stop there? Could this hungry animal want to taste their blood tomorrow? What would their plaint then be?

Mukherjee writes about the death of hope. Perhaps he was completely unaware of the reality of daily life in the grassroots in West Bengal, whether in the city or in the village. The common people have been living devoid of hope for at least two decades now; and the CPI(M) is in power on the basis of this hopelessness: it is the sole source of crumbs, to a people whose backbone has been broken and who have been reduced to beggary.

I reproduce Mukherjee's article below.


The time has come to begin writing the epitaph for West Bengal. It cannot also be an elegiac one since those who tried to build West Bengal’s future are profoundly implicated in the destruction of the state and all its potential.

The death of hope may have begun with Mamata Banerjee’s meaningless opposition to plans to industrialize West Bengal. That opposition was fuelled by Maoists whose predecessors in the Sixties had ushered in violence and bloodshed on an unprecedented scale into the politics of West Bengal. Today’s Maoists have acted as the agents of violence. But all this, deplorable as it indeed is, did not precipitate the death.

The death throes were brought on by what happened in the village of Nandigram in the early hours of Sunday morning. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) unleashed its cadre on the villagers to wreak vengeance. A few days before, CPI(M) activists and supporters had been forced to flee the village by people who were angry that agricultural land would be taken away to form a special economic zone. On Sunday morning, the police were nowhere to be seen even though CPI(M) workers had been setting up camps in the neighbourhood, and it was obvious that preparations were on for a bloody retaliation.

There are two very significant questions that need to be asked about Sunday’s events. One is why the police and the district administration made such a despicable showing of themselves. The other is, why did the cadre of the CPI(M) decide to take law into their own hands?

No definite answers can be given to these questions, but past experience provides certain clues to the answers. It is a matter of record that during the rule of the Left Front, whenever the CPI(M) has decided to exhibit its muscle power and organizational strength, the police and the administration have either decided to disappear or have remained as indifferent bystanders. Whether this abjuring of responsibility by the police and the administration is done at the behest of the ruling party or not is a moot question. The answer is probably yes, since there has been a pronounced propensity on the part of the CPI(M) to blur the distinction between the government and the party. The CPI(M) revels in declaring, in a variety of ways, that it is the state. On innumerable occasions, the people of West Bengal have seen during rallies, elections and bandhs, the police being inactive or absent while the CPI(M) cadre went about their business with nonchalance. It is also well known that Lal Bazar (police headquarters) is not averse to taking orders emanating from Alimuddin Street (party headquarters). There is an easy interplay between commissars and cops. So it won’t come as a surprise to learn that on Sunday morning in Nandigram, the police did the disappearing act because they were asked to do so by their political masters.

A part of the answer to the second question is embedded in what I have said in response to the first question. Sunday was by no reckoning the first time that the cadre of the CPI(M) used violence against its opponents. They have done so many times before — Keshpur and Nanur are notable instances. But there are innumerable other instances, minor and major, when CPI(M) workers have used arms and muscle power to settle scores or eliminate opposition. In fact, in a political crisis, violence is the CPI(M)’s preferred mode of resolution. A very senior member of the party, Benoy Konar, expressed this when he said, in the context of Sunday’s confrontation, that his party would answer violence with violence. Over thirty years, such instances of intimidation and arrogance of power have become common. Given the fact that the CPI(M) is a party which is centralized and disciplined from the top, there is always the suspicion that Konar’s incitement to violence has some tacit official sanction.

It is important to understand that the use of terror is part of CPI(M)’s DNA. From the day communists seized power in Russia, they have used terror to suppress dissent, to implement policy and to establish its own power. It is usual to associate the name of Josef Stalin with the use of systematic terror, but the system was actually put in place by V.I. Lenin. The use of terror was ingrained in the Leninist project. Lenin was shameless in the way he used violence to kill, to imprison, to torture. The CPI(M) is a proud inheritor of that legacy. It is thus never shy, if it suits its own interests, to use terror.

This is not to absolve those who started the violence in Nandigram. But in a democracy, the use of violence by a ruling party cannot be justified by the logic of who cast the first stone. The onus was on the CPI(M), as the ruling party, to behave with responsibility even under provocation. Unfortunately, a party wedded to Lenin’s use of terror can be responsible only to its show of power. A group of people, frightened that they would lose their land, as well as some Maoists, went on the rampage. It was clearly a law and order problem and the state administration should have been allowed to quell the violence. This is what the administration is there for. But the CPI(M) chose to act to show its power and to establish control. It thus chose its own terror rather than that of the state.

In choosing thus, the CPI(M) has announced that whatever its rhetoric, it will not hesitate to use violence and its cadre to further its own political goals. It has also declared, perhaps without intending to, that it is not averse to taking West Bengal into another cycle of violence. This attitude is tantamount to the kiss of death for West Bengal. With violence looming, which industrialist will think of West Bengal as an investment-friendly destination? Which investor will feel secure with the knowledge that the CPI(M) will not hesitate to use its cadre power and terror against its enemies? Today the CPI(M) is wooing capitalists; will it do so to-morrow? Faith — that essential ingredient for investment — has been shaken, if not broken. What then is the future for West Bengal when the voice is that of industrialization, and the hand that of terror?

The state is benighted, caught as it is between an opposition that refuses to accept industrialization as the only path to the future, and a ruling party that believes that it can bring economic growth by way of terror.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Reunion

My wife and I had gone to visit our sons at the Rishi Valley School, in Madanapalle in south India. My going was not originally planned, so it was a fortuitous turn that took me there. It was also a surprise for the boys - hence a happy reunion indeed.

Being of a self-effacing nature, I habitually view myself as redundant in every sphere. This chance surprise visit to my sons - made me realise that I am important to them. And that is a big responsibility.

My visits to Rishi Valley have been associated with reading great literature. This time I had carried the last 3 volumes of Osamu Tezuka's 8-volume graphic novel Buddha. I finished reading these. My younger son Rishiraj too completed these during our time together.

An old building near the guest house we were staying in was being demolished. So the Buddha's exclamation on his enlightenment was a constant companion:

"... O house builder, now you have been seen. Never again shall you be able to build the house. All your rafters are broken and your ridge pole is shattered. ..."



Parting from my boys to return home - I was filled with sadness, and was morose all of yesterday while in transit in Bangalore. I picked up Orhan Pamuk's Snow at the airport in the evening and immersed myself in reading. That helped to take my mind away and lift the cloud of sadness.

Back to Calcutta, back to all the millions of things to do and worry about here.

A major refurbishment of our office had been underway. I returned to sit in my "new" room. It feels strange and alien.

Rishi Valley School photoblog

A view of the school campus.


A student making a presentation during the morning
assembly.


Singing devotional songs and chants at the
morning assembly.


Visitors' lounge in the senior school block.


A class in progress.


The school library.


Another view of the library.


'Democracy board' in the senior school block.


A time to relax.


Cave Rock Hill and the sports field.


Games time.


"Marker", the tennis coach, the senior-most
staff member.

Sankranti at Rishi Valley School

A special programme was organised at the Rishi Valley School on the morning of 13th January, to observe Sankranti, the harvest festival of south India.

The party machine

I reproduce below extracts from Saubhik Chakrabarti's recent article in The Indian Express. Finally someone is beginning to talk about such things.

… Bengalis took to communism for some very non-revolutionary reasons. Communist political activity was a means to asserting regional identity. This search for identity was inspired in part by Bengali gentlemanly classes — bhadralok —feeling that they had lost out in independent India to the Hindi heartland’s elite in the competition for the pole position in the national mainstream. And communism was internalised by these educated classes mostly as an ideas package, an attractive, intellectually and morally satisfying alternative to bazaar politics. This kind of communism allowed variegated departures from orthodox praxis. There were and are thousands of “gentleman” communists. The CPM was and is a good host for them. Which is to say, the CPM has never been particularly revolutionary.

… In the CPM of 2006, modernisers and their foes are all prisoners of the machine.

The only area where the CPM in Bengal practised communism has been in electoral politics and institution grabbing. Bolshevik principles of party organisation and mobilisation have been applied for years. In his fine study of Bengal’s contemporary history, Partha Chatterjee estimated that nearly two million CPM cadres were mobilised during an early 1990s election — a staggering number when one considers Bengal’s electorate at that time totaled just over 40 million. And there isn’t a major institution in Bengal — from Calcutta University to Calcutta Police to panchayats — that hasn’t been totally commandeered by the party. The CPM doesn’t practise bourgeois, half-hearted, let’s nominate some of our own chaps strategies favoured by the Congress and the BJP. It remodels institutions to serve the party.

All major leaders — those who support Bhattacharjee, those who don’t, Bhattacharjee himself and those gentleman communists — in the Bengal CPM are implicated in building the machine and are served by it. If the industry issue becomes a critical question in determining the CPM’s future political direction — as agrarian radicalism was in 1967 — can today’s moderates afford to split?

They should. It would be good for Bengal and for India. Bhadralok communists will cheer it. But today’s moderate CPM leaders will confront pure survival questions: will they inherit the machine, can the machine split?

As Uncle Joe, aka Joseph Stalin, would have pointed out, Stalinist structures don’t take well to divisions.

Read responses to this article here and here.

Cadre vs people

I also reproduce a recent editorial in The Indian Express, on the subject of the CPI(M)'s cadre machine.

Look carefully at the battlelines drawn at Nandigram. Look at the lines, and questions on the CPM’s political future suggest themselves. For five days — with the count still on — local villagers barricaded themselves against entry of the West Bengal administration as well as CPM cadres. Restive upon rumours that land was to be acquired by the state for a proposed SEZ, the villagers turned upon the cadres. And in the smouldering remains of the local CPM office can be found the perverse distortions in the way the party operates. That the villagers chose to take up arms against cadres — once unthinkable — is proof of how completely public perception conflates party and state. That they vented their anxiety on the cadres shows how the party machinery is felt to be the coercive arm of government.

Can such a party recast itself, as our columnist today asks, so that its governments can harness the opportunities of globalisation and privatisation? Can it, in essence, reform itself into an internally democratised and accountable version of the European Social Democrats? The need is evident. It will not be enough for the party’s leaders, as Biman Bose, chairman of the Left Front committee, has tried, to put down the tension to a conspiracy by “outsiders”. As Sumit Sarkar, a fellow traveller of the Left, complained in an article in The Indian Express, “cadres” has become a term of abuse today. The point, however, is this. These cadres are not — if they even ever were — the committed footsoldiers of a proletarian revolution, rolling up their sleeves and stirring the countryside toward awareness and empowerment. They are the muscle power the party has at the ready to assert its diktat.

Which is why we do not recommend Professor Sarkar’s advice that the party revert to studied opposition to private investment and initiative. The reality of the brute power used by its cadres to sustain the genteel rhetoric in Calcutta has in any case been exposed. The CPM has the choice to reform itself to the changed political economy of India and become a modern party of the Left. The violence at Nandigram has laid bare the limits of its Stalinist mode of political mobilisation.

Hypocrisy of the CPI-M

by Subroto Roy, The Statesman

Political Collapse In Bengal - A Mid-Term Election/Referendum Is Necessary

For the 1991 Assembly elections, I happened to draft the West Bengal Congress's election manifesto although I was not then or ever a member of that or any other party. There was no Trinamul but its future leader had made her jibe of there being watermelons who were red inside and green outside, aptly in case of a few senior leaders. The manifesto quoted George Orwell's denunciation of communist ruling classes, and was so hard-hitting that the CPI-M's main theoretician came out with a statement he had never read a Congress manifesto that had been so harsh on them; privately, I took that to be a compliment though the Congress of course lost the election. There is no one in Bengal who does not want to see Bengal prosper, and the most candid vigorous political conversation is necessary to discover what in fact is true and what ought or not to be done.

Democratic norms

The functioning of the Basu-Bhattacharjee CPI-M is quite utterly amazing. It deserves to be called such because of the seamless transfer of power that occurred between the two men in November 2000. The Chief Minister in a parliamentary democracy is supposed to have the confidence of the House, yet when Jyoti Basu stopped being CM and anointed Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to succeed him, not even a perfunctory vote of confidence was asked for in the House ~ a fact I brought to the attention of the-then editor of The Statesman who agreed with me it signified the CPI-M's contempt for the parliamentary institution they have been ruling over for decades. By contrast, there is already talk in Britain of an early general election as soon as Gordon Brown takes over from Tony Blair.

It is the same contempt for democratic parliamentary norms that Mr Bhattacharjee and company reveal today in pushing through their diabolical plan to acquire farmers' lands on behalf of their businessmen friends. All of 37% of those voting in the 2006 Assembly Elections voted for the CPI-M. By contrast, 41.2% voted for Trinamul and Congress together. Add also the 11.4% of those who voted for the Forward Bloc, RSP and CPI all of whom though part of the Left Front have been opposing the CPI-M on this cardinal issue. That constitutes prima facie evidence that a majority of 52.6% vs. 37% of voters may oppose the CPI-M’s present course of action. Mr Bhattacharjee heads a Government that is supposed to act not merely in the interest of members or groups of his own party or those who have flattered or financed it, but everyone in West Bengal including those who voted against the CPI-M as well as those who did not vote at all.

Gerhard Schröder dissolved the German Bundestag in 2005 though his own party held a majority there. He did so merely because his party lost a provincial election and he felt that indicated loss of confidence in it at the federal level also. Such is how genuine modern democracies work. In India to the contrary, we have had notorious misuse of the Constitution when State Governments were dissolved merely because they were ruled by parties opposed to that which had won a Union-level General Election. Even so, India remains a Parliamentary democracy at Union and State levels, and the Government of the day may advise the Head of State to dissolve the House and call for new elections to be held. It may do so even when there is no legal necessity to do so, i.e., even when it is secure with a majority of seats. It may do so because a political necessity has arisen for doing so.

If Mr Bhattacharjee is a genuine democrat, as he wishes to convey an impression of being, he should advise the Governor to dissolve the Assembly because the CPI-M wishes to go to the people to seek a mandate for its plans for the State's industrialisation and forced acquisition of farm lands towards that end. The Trinamul, Congress, SUCI, Maoists and others including perhaps the CPI, FB, RSP and others will state their opposition, while he, Mr Nirupam Sen and their party will be able to articulate for West Bengal's voters exactly what they propose to do and why. The CPI-M is adamant its cause is right while the Opposition have been agitating in the streets for months, and miniature civil war conditions now prevail in parts of rural Bengal; worse may be yet to come. There is only one way in a supposedly democratic society like ours to discover what should be done, and that is to dissolve the Assembly and call an election. Both sides will have a chance to articulate their positions to the public, and a vote will be held. There the matter would end. It is the one constructive way forward for the State, and indeed for the nation as a whole. (Alternatively, the Governor could be advised to request the Election Commission to administer India's first referendum on a single agreed-upon question like "The West Bengal Government's industrialisation and land-acquisition plan deserves citizens' support: Yes/No".)

If an Assembly election comes to be called and the CPI-M falls below a pre-set target of the vote-share, say 33%, or the Left Front below, say, 45%, then Mr Bhattacharjee, even if he commands a majority of seats again, will know he has no mandate and that he must stop and reconsider what he is doing. As I have said in these columns, West Bengal's main economic problems are financial, having to do with Rs. 92 billion (Rs 9,200 crore) being paid as annual interest on the State Public Debt in 2004, and this may reach Rs 200 billion shortly. Economic development of the State has precious little to do with private businessmen making small cars or motorcycles or putting up buildings for information technology institutes, as Mr Bhattacharjee and his Government have deluded themselves into believing.

CPI-M 2003 statement

Besides its lack of democratic mandate, what surprises most about the modern CPI-M is its sheer hypocrisy. This is a party whose "Central Committee" in June 2003 in Kolkata condemned "non-Left State Governments" for allegedly "giving away thousands of hectares of land either on sale or on lease at throw-away prices to multinational companies and domestic monopolists", and the Union Government for allegedly issuing "a circular calling for forcible eviction of lakhs of adivasis from the land". The Basu-Bhattacharjee CPI-M is now clearly hoist with its own petard.

Tilak said that what Bengal thinks today, India will think tomorrow. It was not for nothing that he said it. If the CPI-M refers the land-acquisition question to the people in a free and fair election or referendum today, it will set a positive precedent for other States and parties in the country. If instead it pushes forward its current diabolical plans, the example it will have set will be one of initiating a class war in reverse, where the poor shall become poorer and the rich richer. India's poorest consist of those rural inhabitants without land, and Government would have deliberately contributed to their numbers swelling.

Another way to look

by Warisha Farasat

Not much has changed in Shining India for the 138 million (13.4 per cent of the population) Muslims. The Justice Sachar committee was appointed to examine the social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India. It has confirmed the uncomfortable fact that, comparing indicators of socio-economic development, Muslims fare worse than even the scheduled castes and tribes.

Who are the intended beneficiaries of the report? It is a community of millions who nurtured the dream of a ‘secular’ India and consciously made the decision to become Indians. It has been repeatedly brutalized during the communal clashes and has learnt to live with the “justice and trust deficits”. A community that has been used for furthering petty vote bank politics by the right and non-right alike.

The grim statistics speak for themselves. Only 59.1 per cent of Indian Muslims are literate, against the national average of 65.6 per cent. In the premier undergraduate and graduate institutions, Muslim students are only one out of 25 and one out of 50 respectively. As many as 31 per cent of Muslims fall below the poverty line and the community is the second poorest across all groups.

The share of government employment of Muslims in all sectors is extremely low. A mere 4.5 per cent of the employees of Indian Railways — which employs 14 lakh people — are Muslims. In the judiciary, with a dismal representation of 7.8 per cent, Muslims fall below the 23 per cent of the other backward classes and 20 per cent of the SC/STs. The civil services consist of only 3 per cent Muslim officers in the IAS and 1.8 per cent in the IFS . Of the other major departments: 6.5 per cent in education, 7.3 per cent in home, 4.4 per cent in health and 6.5 per cent in transport. After this, dare one talk about their representation in the private sector?

Steps forward

The findings correct some general misconceptions about Muslims. The community is not blamed for its socio-economic backwardness. The low female literacy is attributed to the lack of access to the educational infrastructure of the community in general and its women in particular. In a country where female foeticide is still widely prevalent, the sex ratio within the Muslim community is higher than the national average. The Hindutva machinery constantly propounds that Muslims will soon become a demographic threat. Analysing the available data and the current demographic projections, the Sachar report states that by the end of the century, the expected rise would not exceed 20 per cent of the total population.

Another contribution of the report is its emphasis on the oft-ignored aspect of socio-economic rights. Most earlier reports on the minorities by government-appointed inquiry commissions — such as the Sri Krishna commission — focused primarily on communal violence. This approach overlooked the inherently discriminatory nature of the existing structure vis-à-vis the minority community. The Sachar committee report proposes some concrete steps forward. It suggests affirmative action in the form of limited reservations. It promotes targeted schemes that will provide greater financial support and opportunities for education. Policy initiatives should aim at enhancing access to credit schemes and participation of Muslims in the business of regular commercial banks. Recommendations include recognizing madrassah degrees for competitive exams, and providing hostel facilities for minority students. If the recommendations are implemented, they can go a long way in improving the condition of Muslims.

The political parties must ensure that the recommendations are not lost in quota bickering. The government must not lose this chance to fulfill the commitment made to the minorities years ago at the stroke of midnight.

Worldview, credo

Soham has made a comment on my post "Wrong signals":

"If there are no roads, build the roads. If there is no driving discipline instil discipline. Those are just excuses of the socialists (basically Naxalites posing as NGOs and human rights activists) who are afraid of development. They are like the frogs in the village well and a millstone on Bengal's neck. They know development will mean that the poor will become rich. That's what these socialist elite fear the most. Let the Singur car factory happen. Let the SEZ at Nandigram happen. And let the lumpen, communal, anti national, violence prone elements (Naxalites + Jamaat) lose their face.”

Here’s my response.

Hullo! Thank you for your visit and comment.

I would like to join you in your thinking and endeavours to wish and work well for all the people of India, and in particular the poor.

I believe that the globalisation of the Indian economy has also brought great opportunities for the social and economic advancement of the low income and poor sections of India. I believe that the market system, based on business enterprise and profit is the only means in today’s world, for the efficient taking up of society’s economic functions. I also firmly believe in public policy, knowing that ultimately underlying the market and profit governed society is a set of normative values and choices. I have also tried, through many years, to understand the meaning, incidence, causes and solutions for poverty and disempowerment in India, in Calcutta, and West Bengal, in other specific parts of India, other parts of the world, and also internationally.

Hence, politics and civic life - today in a global society - have to be about the advancing of values one believes in. I also believe that views, opinions and ideologies are also ultimately unimportant, in the face of reality. So if one likes to remain deluded in one’s self-willed false worldview and beliefs, time and the world are only going to pass you by. On the other hand, if one really believes in some things, and feels strongly about this, then one can try to do something, something specific, in some place, with some people. That experience will also bring much learning, through which one’s former beliefs and awareness could even change drastically.

I have no objection to cars and car plants, or to industrialisation, or to roads, or to investments by profit-making capitalists, Indian and foreign. But being a student and teacher of economics, as well as a thinking citizen with a point of view, with some experience in relating to, engaging with, and working in the public domain, and now while also managing a small family enterprise, which manufactures for the global market, in which humble people from disprivileged backgrounds work and have risen in life – I have objections to the conduct of the state govt and the chief minister, and of Tata. As a citizen I think I am entitled to my views, and to expect and demand transparency, accountability, and proper conduct on the part of my govt.

In my posts on Singur, I have expressed and stated my point of view. The articles I have linked to have also cast light on various aspects of the matter, which I felt were important for people to be aware of.

As you mentioned roads – I would like to refer you to an article on this by Sunita Narain. That raises various important issues pertaining to cars and roads, and real costs, and about who pays. Read this here.

Nandigram Special Economic Zone – let it happen, and I hope the state govt will be able to win the confidence of all the farmers who will be displaced, and then do its best to minimise the hardship to be necessarily borne by some for new industrialisation. I feel I too should be subject to personal sacrifices for a public and social cause, and have no hesitation to bear the cost of building a better future for all. To the extent I am able to, I do, out of my own beliefs and will, contribute and work in various ways for the same goal.

I have no objections to your views on socialists, NGOs, lumpens, communalists, Jamaat, Naxalites etc, as I am not a member or sympathiser or apologist for any of them.

So I am sorry if somehow you have been angered by something I do not identify with; hence I have tried to make my own position clear. I would also like to join you in your efforts for realising a better future for all Indians, since that is very dear to me. But if there is a genuine difference between our points of view, because of our differing perceptions, analysis, understanding, vision, experience, normative make-up – then I suppose that is as it must be, and both of us are entitled to our views. Ultimately time will prove whether you or I or neither of us was right.

But I would also actively participate and work for shaping the future that I, and more crucially my children, are going to live with. That will bring success, or a change in one’s views and being, or resistance, or frustration, or personal injury and loss, or failure, encouragement, cheer, dejection, hope, pain; and continuation or withdrawal. And so it will go on as long as one is alive, alive in a civic sense.

Thank you!

Using the Internet to Extend Hegemony

"Using the Internet to Extend Hegemony: A Study of Government Websites in India" a paper by Maya Ranganathan and NagaMallika G, explores the ways in which the Internet is employed by the tech-savvy states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in India.

The article establishes that despite the technical infrastructure and knowhow available, these governments are largely indifferent to the potential of the medium to further democracy. Instead, these governments employ the medium much the same way as they employed and still employ the earlier media of radio and television, totally oblivious to the potential of the Internet to provide the essential public sphere necessary for effective functioning of a democracy.

Read the paper here.

Young people's voices on Singur

Voices, the school students' supplement of The Statesman, today carries two articles by school students in Calcutta on the Singur issue, under the title "Simmerging Singur".

I am reproducing these below.

See also Aseem Shrivastava's article in ZNet here.

Photo: J. Adam Huggins, for The New York Times.

The children take a beating

West Bengal is rife with a huge debate. The event: Building of the Tata Motors factory on viable cropland in Singur.

The conflict: Snatching away of land from farmers and their rehabilitation.

The opponents: Trinamul Congress led by the ever aggressive Mamata Banerjee for the farmers’ rights and CPIM, led by dignified CM Buddhadeb for industrialisation.

That’s the political side of it. Now let us look at what is actually happening: people are being dragged from their houses, beaten up, abused, and those who want to protect them are being persecuted. And somewhere, in the midst of all this chaos, a lone child wails at the top of its voice… Nobody spares a thought for the children of Singur in this political and ideological mess.

In course of acquiring of land forcefully the police arrested nearly more than 60 people comprising women and even children on 2.12.2006. Among them, Jhuma Patra, daughter of Ashok Patra of village Ghaser Veri, Singur, 12-years-old and a student of Class V in Naraharipara Primary School and Soma Dhara daughter of Sanyasi Dhara of same village, a minor were also arrested.

The children arrested were kept in police lock-up with other inmates and were released on the next day on furnishing personal bonds under the total violation of the procedure of Juvenile Justice Act.

At Singur, the attendance of students in the primary schools has drastically reduced in the past four months because of the farmers’ movement against land acquisition. A district primary school board official said the students in the five affected villages were unable to concentrate on their studies. The situation in Singur has created the psychological pressure on students, harming their studies.

More than 2,000 students go to 17 primary schools in the villages. Sontu Kolay studies in Class III of Bajemelia Uttar Primary School. His mother, Ms Sabitri Kolay, an active member of the Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (Agricultural Land Protection), believes her son fared badly in his examinations last month as there was no one to take care of his studies and they are too poor to afford private tutors. Another member, Ms Jharna Langal, of Bajemelia, said that despite being a meritorious student, her daughter, Hoimonti, failed in her half-yearly tests this year. Ms Protima Dey, of Bajemelia, cannot recall the last time her son, Subhadeep, went to school. The Integrated Children Development Scheme (ICDS) too has suffered. Only a few nursery students show up at the ICDS centres in the affected villages.

Two girls, aged 11 and 13, have been put behind bars by local police authorities. According to a Bengali human rights activist, every week there are reports of molestation, rape and murder from the local prison at Chandranagar.

Some of the farmers will get job in the factories. Others will come to Kolkata for a livelihood along with their families. What will happen to their wards then? Will they be able to go to school again? Is this the future for the unfortunate brilliant students of Singur? Or will smiles return to their sad faces again?

The Government taking away land, protests... whatever has happened - and continues to happen - in the Narmada Valley is almost in the same vein as what is happening in Singur. The only difference is that, in case of the Narmada Valley project, protests snowballed into an internationally famous movement after it was found that resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) of the displaced people was insufficient, and that the increasing height of the SSP (Sardar Sarovar Project) started causing environmental degradation. We, Indians often boast of having the lengthiest and one of the best Constitutions in the world - the largest - a democracy where people enjoy certain rights, people have the right to vote and they form the key to constitutional power. The controversy was heightened even more when Medha Patkar, leader of the famous ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan’ (NBA) was denied entry into Singur through the ‘Durgapur Expressway’. Medha however reached Singur, where the villagers complained to her about the barbarity of the police. Forces were sent to Singur to bring back Medha to Kolkata after this incident.

The protests in Singur have attained a political colour. Initially the Congress affirmed their support to the TMC but the moment the BJP stepped into the arena, the Congress declined to continue the agitation. During the British rule, the Indians were never been able to raise a united appeal against the foreign aggressors which mainly resulted due to the presence of so many communities in India. Now also, they are not united enough to raise their voice. It is clear from this fact that the opposition parties are very much concerned about their own selves. They do not care for the betterment of the common people. Mr Ratan Tata has commented he will not retrace his steps and that the Tata Motors factory will come up in Singur. The fight between Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Ms Mamata Banerjee will continue. And poor peasants will have to pay the price. Police will continue to do their ‘duties’. It’s a fight - so let’s see who wins in the end - industries or agriculture, people or the government, and lastly Mamata or Buddhadeb?

In all this, the children take a beating. They are out of the priority list of these people who are in a virtual tug-of-war. The children don’t get to play or study, and unfortunately have to grow up well ahead of their time. Isn’t this unfair and unjustified?

Mamata has flatly refused all public talks with either Tatas or the government. This is unusual. Why not make her problems known to the opposing side? She has threatened boycott of Tata goods and has only budged from her long-running hunger strike after letters from the Prime Minister and the President.

We can only draw our own conclusions. Is industrialisation the only way out or are rights being snatched? The Trinamul has used violence but the Left has been constitutional. Also, what about the children? Will this needless wrangling help them? So many are being harassed daily as pawns in daily altercations between Naxalites and policemen. When will they get peace? Alas, at the moment it seems to be an ever raging war. Questions are many and answers are unknown. We keep wondering what happens to the core of humanity when there is a crisis like Singur. It will go down in history as a time when the adults were so involved in their own egos and unnecessary feuds that the children had to throw away their toys and books and assume seriousness to the extreme. Like the 18-year-old who was raped, then burnt alive.

India is a democracy, the largest democracy in the world, after all.

Sunrita Sen, La Martiniere for Girls
Soham Saha, Mansur Habibullah Memorial School
Anuvab Chattopadhyay,The Heritage School
Esha Pandit, Bidhannagar Municipal School
Aparajita Bhattacharya, The Future Foundation School
Compiled by: Shreya Sanghani, The Cambridge School

Look at that child

In a very short span of time Singur, has turned into prime spoil for all the newspapers. A small hamlet which hardly came under any limelight ever, is now in the spotlight.

It has turned one more cause for the political parties to cross swords with each other. In just one month, two bandhs were called while two had been withdrawn.

The condition for the people there is totally unstable. Starting from deadly ‘lathi charges’ to inhuman murder, nothing seems left to be done. This village in Hooghly which was famous for its fertile land and cultivation of potato is now a “land of chaos”.

Everybody is concerned about the plot of lands and their owners. The newspapers, media and general people, for everyone Singur is an interesting topic to discuss.

But hardly anybody seems concerned about the lives of the children in Singur. What are their feelings? Are they able to continue their studies? How are the children suffering in this situation? I decided to find out and headed for the village.

The Tarakeshwar local had just left Nasibpur and the next station was Singur. I could feel my heart throbbing loud and very fast.

I tried to imagine what ‘the land of chaos’ would look like. But I saw the station seemed quite normal, and the stalls there were open, many people were there.

My inquiries took me to a place just half a kilometre away from Khasberia. On my way I found many school students returning home. Tons of potatoes were spread by the side of the street. It can be called the ‘land of potatoes’!

It took nearly 45 minutes to reach my destination. I spoke to the local people. No, the children in the area I visited are not suffering due to the current turmoil.

Few of the schools were closed on account of winter vacation and the rest were quite normal. Nilanjan Saha and Ajud Mondal are students (15) of Mahamaya School and JMI School respectively and are very regular with their attendance.

No, they were not facing any problems.

But all the students I spoke to want peace again. They demand an end to this situation.

Enough of this ‘give and take’ policy. Everything must come to a desirable conclusion; a satisfactory end for everybody. Let’s also pray for this. And let those sweet innocent faces of children smile forever.

Tridib Bhowmik, Little Star High School

Recovering the Lost Tongue

My dear friend from my childhood, Rahul, has put up on the internet his account of his activist journey from 1983, when he fixed his personal life goals to the cause of empowerment of oppressed indigeneous peoples; in 1985 Rahul began working with the Bhil adiviasis (indigenous peoples) in central India. Thank you Rahul for this labour of love.

Rahul's book reminds me of Frederick Engels' words in the Introduction to the English edition of his Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, in which he wrote:

… It thus became necessary to take up the gauntlet thrown down to us, and to fight out the struggle whether we liked it or not.

This, however, though it might not be an over-difficult, was evidently a long-winded business. As is well known, we Germans are of a terribly ponderous Gründlichkeit, radical profundity or profound radicality, whatever you may like to call it. Whenever any one of us expounds what he considers a new doctrine, he has first to elaborate it into an all comprising system. He has to prove that both the first principles of logic and the fundamental laws of the universe had existed from all eternity for no other purpose than to ultimately lead to this newly discovered, crowning theory. And Dr. Dühring, in this respect, was quite up to the national mark. Nothing less than a complete System of Philosophy, mental, moral, natural, and historical, a complete System of Political Economy and Socialism ; and, finally, a Critical History of Political Economy -- three big volumes in octavo, heavy extrinsically and intrinsically, three army corps of arguments mobilized against all previous philosophers and economists in general, and against Marx in particular - in fact, an attempt at a complete "revolution in science" - these were what I should have to tackle. I had to treat of all and every possible subject, from the concepts of time and space to bimetallism, from the eternity of matter and motion to the perishable nature of moral ideas; from Darwin's natural selection to the education of youth in a future society. Anyhow, the systematic comprehensiveness of my opponent gave me the opportunity of developing, in opposition to him, and in a more connected form than had previously been done, the views held by Marx and myself on this great variety of subjects. And that was the principal reason which made me undertake this otherwise ungrateful task.

Here’s an extract from the introduction to Rahul's book.

Recovering the Lost Tongue is in a broad sense a manifesto of Anarcho-Environmentalism. This is told in the epic story telling style of the Bhil adivasis of central India who are its main protagonists. The tales of their struggles as well as the analysis of these are presented through the life experiences of two of the activists associated with the people's movements - the author, and his wife Subhadra Khaperde. The narrative has in addition a rich mixture of various other stories and histories, ancient and modern, local and global. The stories are all liberally laced with humour. There is also an element of suspense as the plot builds up through the various micro narratives, some personal, some organisational, some mythical and some historical, all woven together into the meta-narrative of the overall struggle against destructive modern development. Finally the tale reaches a very entertaining, well-argued and philosophically uncommon climax.

Despite the fact that Anarcho-Environmentalist movements have not been able to make a mass impact big enough to be able to achieve what they have set out to do, they have succeeded in underlining the crucial need for ensuring environmental sanity and socio-economic justice. Analysing in detail the characteristics of the present dominant development model and the reasons for its hegemony, the book ends by charting out a course to keep pegging at changing it for the better. The ending is a positive one, providing a modus operandi whereby even ordinary people can, singly, or in groups, act to bring about a saner socio-economic and environmental dispensation.

The name of the book is taken from a Bhili fable, as it is a description of the organised efforts of marginalised people trying to speak out against their oppression, which they had previously been suffering mutely in a culture of silence.

Read Recovering the Lost Tongue here.

Photo: Bhil father and son, by Peter Stalker, New Internationalist.

Angels among us

I was to leave last evening to spend a few days with friends. Owing to severe fog conditions in Delhi, flights have gone haywire. Finally, late today morning, I realised that my plans have necessarily to be cancelled.

That also occasioned some reflections, centring on “angels”.

Yves has been writing on angels. See four of his posts here, here, here and here.

The self, and others. Angels exist in the spectrum in between.

Looking out for oneself even at the cost of harm to others, is very common. Putting oneself in difficulty to benefit others, is uncommon.

Angels are exceptions. Angels are crushed and trampled upon and cheated. And so it must be. Yet angels exist, and they never fail to rise again.

Angels confound our calculations. They are part of the miraculous order of things.

A gathering of angels is an even rarer phenomenon. For unless angels exist among common folk, life itself could not go on. Life and creation are too precious to be left to the management of common people. Hence angels walk among us. And thus are the world and humanity protected and elevated.

Angels are uncommon. They are different. Angels are beyond gender i.e. they manifest both genders; as well as neither.

For procreation, male and female are needed. For the sustenance of life on earth, angels are needed.

But angels too have their needs. They are nourished within this very world. And angels are also sustained by the miraculous.

But why do I write all this? Because by my own volition and life’s mysterious ways, I think I have finally come home. No world, no country; only one’s own heart. My own heart is my only true home. And here I dwell only among angels.

New Year

Dear Friends

My best wishes for the New Year to all of you, and to your family members and friends.

May the new year bring you happiness and fullfillment.

I shall be away for a few days, recharging my batteries.