Latest Articles on Sanhati
June 13, 2009
India
 The “People’s Movement Left” and Rammanohar Lohia: an evaluation at a time of crisis - Amit Basole, Sanhati |
 Coolies under attack: What to make of the racist violence on Indians in Australia? - Garga Chatterjee, Sanhati |
 Price of rice, price of power - P. Sainath |
 Planning Commission recommends dismantling of Public Distribution System |
 Unicef attacks India’s record on poverty |
 Interim Report of Fact-finding Team on Demolition of VCA in Chhattisgarh |
Bengal
 Hurricane Aila: Pictures from the Sunderbans, and details for relief contribution |
 Lalgarh: Conflicting Aims, Difficult Days - Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri |
World
 Blood at the Blockade: Peru’s Indigenous Uprising |
 Global Recession News |
 EU elections: The decline of social democracy |
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May 31, 2009
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 Gravest displacement, Bravest resistance: The struggle of adivasis of Bastar, Chhattisgarh against imperialist corporate landgrab - Sudha Bharadwaj. Columnist, Sanhati. Journal. |
 Binayak Sen’s release: A critical appraisal through the lens of political economy - Sanhati Statement. Journal. |
 The Travails of Malati - Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri. Columnist, Sanhati. |
 Crossed and Crucified: Parivar’s war against minorities - A PUCL and Kashipur Solidarity Group report. Campaign Literature. |
 A Human Rights Checklist for India - K.S. Jacob. Articles. |
 Javed Iqbal’s open letter to the police after the destruction of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram - Articles |
 Social Security Benefits and the New Pension Scheme - Ratan Khasnabis. Articles. |
 The Social Meaning of Pensions - Michael Perelman. Articles. |
 Financialisation and the Tendency to Stagnation - Bernard de Mello. Articles. |
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May 17, 2009
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India
 Relations of Production and Modes of Surplus Extraction in India: An Aggregate Study - Dipankar Basu and Amit Basole, Journal. |
 Lok Sabha Election 2009: Summary of results |
 Latest arrests under Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act (CSPSA): A look at the draconian law - Sudha Bharadwaj’s column. |
 No country for the brave - The dark heart within the glory of Indian democracy - Bhaswati Chakravorty |
 UCIL plans expansion of Uranium extraction in Jadugoda: EIA/EMP reports unavailable - A report from JOAR |
 India, Suddenly Starved for Investment - A NYTimes Report |
West Bengal
 Sponge Iron Industries in Bengal and Community Devastation - A Nagarik Mancha Study |
 Policies on industrial land and the burgeoning real estate scam - A Nagarik Mancha study |
 Singur update: Life under a brand new Trinamul panchayat - A report from Citizens Initiative |
  Defamed in death - Mandakranta Sen and the scurrilous implications of the CD on Tapasi Malik - Shamita Basu |
ShramikShakti Newsletter: January 2009 ShramikShakti Newsletter: March 2009 ShramikShakti Newsletter: May 2009 |
For older articles, click below.
Lalgarh Movement – Mass uprising of adivasis in West Bengal
July 3: Medha Patkar, Gopal Menon and others arrested in Lalgarh: CRPP statement for release
July 3: Lalgarh: An interim balance sheet - Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri
June 30: From Meena Sardar in 2001, to the quartz mines at Chechurgeria, to Binpur where people die at 40 - Sankar Ray
Lok Sabha Elections 2009
June 29: Verdict 2009 and the Left: Key Issues and the Road Ahead - Kavita Krishnan, CPIML(Liberation)
June 13: The West’s fantasies of a free-market “New India”
May 25: A lesson for the revolutionary Left - Anol Mitra, Sanhati
May 25: Topic CPIM - A few thoughts - Pinaki Mitra, Sanhati. [PDF, Bengali] »
May 21: The Left and Electoral Politics in India - Dipankar Basu, Sanhati
May 19: Enabling Congress to rule the country, CPI(M) goes into “ostrich mode” - PS Ray, Pinaki Chaudhuri - Sanhati
May 19: Wave against big corporate aggression: Incomplete Alienation from the CPI(M) - Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri
May 19: Karat(e) against his own follies - Sankar Ray
Jobless? What jobless! A brief tour through the Economics Wonderland
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati
What we mostly find in India is not open unemployment but underemployment. This is principally because going without jobs is a luxury in a country having non-existent unemployment benefits. Employed kith and kin cannot be of much help either if one is jobless because the wage levels are barely enough to sustain one. However a person doing a job which neither she nor others consider gainful employment should not be counted as employed . Her right to labour and dignity is yet to be realised. As pressure of global capital tightens and the organised sector shrinks, workers are made to take up more and more of such unpaying and hazardous jobs, whose remuneration stagnates as the rest of the economy surges past. All this is perhaps not much surprising. What is amusing is the eagerness with which dominant economic tradition of the day ties itself in knots.
The Morichjhanpi massacre: When tigers became citizens, refugees “tiger-food”
The massacre in Marichjhapi, which took place under CPIM rule in Bengal between January 26 and May 16, 1979, has few parallels in the history of independent India. It holds fair comparison with the Jalianwala Bag massacre perpetrated by the British. The level of police brutality was horrific. The entire island of refugees was put under economic blockade from January, after the Left had come to power the previous year promising to champion the cause of the refugees. The blockade first starved out the population, and then the killings began.
West Bengal Policy Reversal and the Marichjhapi Massacre by Ross Mallick
When tigers became citizens, refugees “tiger-food” by Annu Jalais
Gorkhaland and Lalgarh: dialogues, parallels, and a challenge to mainstream parties
By Koustav De, Sanhati
(1) The Gorkhaland movement: A short background (2) Gorkhaland leadership extends hand of solidarity for Lalgarh movement (3) Exchanging views: A challenge to vote equations (4) The State’s divisive tactics (5) Looking forward
Factory closures and plight of workers: A comprehensive summary of Bengal’s industrial condition
Contents:
Section 1: Abstract
Section 2: Voices from below
Section 3: Sickness Profiles: National Tannery, Kolay Biscuit, Eastern Paper Mill and 14 others.
Section 4: Regional Roundup of Industrial Belts: Eastern fringes, B.T. Road, Dum-Dum Lake Town, Jadavpur-Tollygunj, Taratala, Beleghata
Section 5: Factsheets: Industrial policy summary, Efforts to combat sickness, Survey of 500 sick industries, Rajarhat township, “Excess” industrial land.
Section 6: Summary
Death of small businesses in Bengal and India: a comprehensive study of retail monopoly
By Siddhartha Mitra and Debarshi Das, Sanhati. Translated from a FAMA study
Contents: 1. Introduction: the old versus the new market: the politics of change 2. The attempt to control small businesses 3. How the attack on small businesses has already impacted the rest of the world 4. What is the current situation of small scale retail in India 5. How this is all going to change 6. The death of small businesses and the false promise of new employment 7. Farmer suicides 8. Procuring the crops – the farmers are left out 9. Impact on the environment 10. That is why there is Nandigram, Khammam, Posco 11. Let us walk together
Click here for Bengali documentary on this material, produced by Canvas
A collection of essays on the Mumbai terror attacks, 2008
Click here to read collection [PDF, English, 62 KB] »
(1) Introduction - Shabnam Hashmi and Ram Puniyani (2) Terror: the aftermath - Anand Patwardhan (3) As the fires die: the terror of the aftermath - Biju Mathew (4) Hotel Taj: Icon of whose India? - Gnani Sankaran (5) Why the United States got it wrong - P. Sainath (6) The Monster in the Mirror - Arundhati Roy (7) Counter: Terrorism must not kill democracy - Praful Bidwai (8) Handling queries: democratic responses. Antuley remarks and the aftermath - Ram Puniyani (9) Need for a thorough investigation - Raveena Hansa (10) Terrorism, rule of law, and humna rights - K.G.Balakrishnan (11) Acts of terror and Terrorising Act: Unfolding Indian tragedy - Sukla Sen (12) Our politicians are still not listening - Colin Gonsalves (13) India’s new anti-terror laws are draconian, say activists - Praful Bidwai (14) Terrorism: are stronger laws the answer? - Prashant Bhushan
Forest Rights Act: general issues of implementation and performance of various states
Constant updates on the Forest Rights Act are available on forestrightsact.com
In December 2006, Parliament passed the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act. This historic legislation marks the first time in India’s history that a law has been passed recognising the rights of forest communities. Implementation of the Act is an unfolding political struggle.
1. General issues in implementation across states
2. Detailed updates from various states as of December 2008
The Global Economic Crisis: a five-part study
By Dipankar Basu, Sanhati. This series will also appear parallely on Radicalnotes
The global economic crisis currently underway is, by all accounts, the deepest economic crisis of world capitalism since the Great Depression. It is necessary for the international working class to understand various aspects of this crisis: how it developed, who were the players involved, what were the instruments used during the build-up and what are it’s consequences for the working people of the world. This understanding is necessary to formulate a socialist, i.e., working class, response to these earth shaking events. In a series of posts here on Radical Notes, I will share my understanding of the on-going crisis as part of the larger collective attempt to come to grips with the current conjuncture from a socialist perspective, to understand both the problems and the possibilities that it opens up.
Political Economy of Contemporary India: Some Comments on Partha Chatterjee’s theoretical framework
Dipankar Basu and Debarshi Das, Sanhati. Open for comments.
Sifting through the divergent viewpoints thrown up by attempts to make sense of the recent political history of West Bengal, one is led to the conclusion that the tumultuous events have taken many, if not most, by surprise. With the benefit of hindsight one can probably say this: a combination of an insensitive state power, an arrogant ruling party, lapping-it-up corporate interests, and cheerleaders-of-corporate-sector-doubling-up-as-media orchestrated a veritable assault – a perfect storm. Yet the peasantry, initially without the guiding hand of a political party – indeed at times against the writ of the party – fought on. Through this episode Indian political economy seems to have stumbled upon the peasantry while it was looking for a short-cut to economic growth through SEZs.
Probing the politics of the annual destitution of 4 million in Damodar valley flooding
By Santanu Sengupta, Sanhati. Translated from ShramikShakti Newsletter: August 2008. Open for comments.
The lower Damodar river valley in West Bengal is the home of the Damodar Valley Corporation or DVC, the first multipurpose river valley project of independent India, whose stated aims are flood control, irrigation and generation and distribution of electricity. It is also the site of horrendous annual flooding that has brought ruin to over 4 million people for over a generation. This article probes the disparity between the stated objectives of the project and its performance, and the dangerous politics of big dams that has wreaked havoc on the lives of millions in Bengal.
Statement on Singur from Sanhati
October 12, 2008
Months of unflinching resistance by the people of Singur, especially landless labourers and marginal farmers, against the unjust and violent farm land acquisition by the West Bengal government has finally forced Tata Motors to withdraw its small car project from that area.
A list of exploitative companies in North India, and what they do
This is a small but typical list of companies in the Gurgaon area of North India, which commit flagrant violations of existing labor laws and get away with impunity. Their practices are listed below, in the form of first-person reports from workers, gleaned from Gurgaon Workers News. In most cases the minimum wage for industrial helpers of Rs. 3510 is not paid. If it is paid, then the working-times are way beyond the fixed 8-hours day and 6-days week. In most cases the over-time exceeds the legal restriction – maximum 50 hours in three months - and is paid at single rate, though according to the labour law it should be paid double. Hardly any workers receive the Provident Fund (PF), nor do they get ESI, medical insurance, which they are entitled to by law.
Farewell to the Tatas: Costs and benefits of the Tata-Singur Project, a detailed dissection of the deal
By Dipankar Basu, Sanhati. Open for comments
Costs: the total cost of the Tata-Singur project incurred by the exchequer, and hence ultimately the tax payers, will be approximately be Rs. 3000 crores on a net present value basis when we add up the costs pertaining to the land subsidy, the tax holidays, the soft loan, the real estate gift and the subsidized electricity using an interest rate of 11%. This is about 58% of the total realized industrial investment in the state of West Bengal in 2007.
Responsible corporates? The crimes of the Tatas enumerated
Introduction 1. Helping Killer Carbide - the Dow Chemicals nexus 2. Bypassing Democracy (a) Dictating Indian Policy (b) Holding on to Corporatocracy (c) Business with Military Junta 3. Desecrating Tribal Lands (a) Parched Earth Tactics (b) Chrome Poisoning (c) Luxury Resort in Tiger Country 4. Violence and Massacres (a) Gua Massacre (b) Kalinganagar Massacre (c) Singur Oppression 5. Toxic Dumping (a) Saline waste (b) Hell on Earth (c) Mountains of Waste, Jugsalai (d) Joda Mines (e) Coal Slurry Dumping 6. Hazardous Incidents (a) Founder’s Day Fire 7. Strong Anti-Labour Policies (a) Worker Suicides (b) Sub-contracting and Fostering Insecurity (c) Lay-offs (d) Union busting (e) Killings 8. A Historical Record as Collaborators of British Imperialism (a) Drug Running (b) Empress Mills (c) Fueling British Expansionism (9) Tatas opposed by the people
Hidden Costs of the Tata-Singur Agreement
By Dipankar Basu, Sanhati. Open for comments.
The Tata Group of Companies is one of the largest business conglomerates in India today with about 100 large companies in its fold. With the might of the Indian State firmly behind it, monopoly capital in India has started a move to aggressively acquire foreign assets. This short note examines the true character of agreements like the one `struck’ between the TML and the West Bengal government. It is important to understand how such `agreements’ look like under a neo-liberal regime.
The dislocation of 15 million fishworkers and environmental degradation: an introduction to ongoing changes in Coastal Zone Regulations
By Suvarup Saha, Sanhati. Open for comments.
Coastal Zone Regulations in India are currently being changed and manipulated. It is necessary to examine these changes closely and understand the political and economic currents that motivate them. The 8200 km long coastline of India provides livelihood to 15 million people and is one of the richest environments in the world - changes and amendments in protective regulations thus have widespread effects, effects which are being swept under the carpet by political parties, from the right to the parliamentary Left. This is an introduction to the issue.
Understanding the demand for Gorkhaland : An introductory note
Open for comments
Voices for a separate state of Gorkhaland are once again echoing in the hills of Darjeeling and the surrounding areas. These developments are certainly disturbing for the uninformed Bengalis – they fail to understand why such a picturesque and otherwise “peaceful” place would like to secede from their province. They also feel sad at the thought of losing something so beautiful, something to be proud of. Sometimes, there is the knee-jerk reaction among some of them – a refusal to part with the region. With the state government and the mainstream media purposely continuing to feed on this ignorance and pride, it becomes important to put together a historical account of the developments in Darjeeling and thereby address questions regarding the right to self-determination of the people staying in this region. The hope is that such an introductory account of the evolving situation in Darjeeling would help the democratic-minded people to come to a rational decision.
Tales from the Gorkha region: crimes, oppression, and the fading memory of Baburam Dewan
By Siddhartha Mitra, Sanhati. Translated from ShramikShakti, June 2008
“Son, do not feel ashamed about my death; instead, feel proud of it, because this self-sacrifice of mine is for the greater good of the 6000 workers of the Chongtong tea-estate. We are still able to provide ourselves with two meals a day; but the thought of the frightening situation of the others in the tea-garden is making me unbearably anxious
– these were the words the Baburam Dewan wrote to his son in a letter just before he took his own life.
The ongoing Singur siege: populist, social democratic, and horizontal responses to neo-liberalism
By Kuver Sinha, Sanhati. Open for comments
There is an ongoing siege in Singur, West Bengal, the site of the Tata Nano project. The Trinamul Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee, has demanded that of all the land acquired by the State Government using the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894, 400 acres be returned to farmers who had been unwilling to sell. The Krishi Jomi Jibon Raksha Committee or KJJRC (Save Farmland Committee) is the broad umbrella organization carrying out the struggle. Various civil society groups have rallied behind this call, as have landed farmers, landless labourers, and sharecroppers of the area.
Public health privatisation in Bengal
By Indira Chakravarthy, Guest Contributor.
As a complement to Dipankar Basu’s piece on the “achievements” of the CPM government in West Bengal on the economic and social fronts (http://sanhati.com/front-page/857/), I would like to share a few facts/concerns about the health status of common people in W Bengal. Using publicly available data, Dipankar had demonstrated that West Bengal’s growth story was rather unspectacular when compared to other Indian states. Now, I would like to raise a related but different question: has even this below-average “economic growth” translated into improvements in the social sector for the common people?
A history of the brutal Rajarhat land acquisition, Bengal’s new IT hub
By Santanu Sengupta, Sanhati. Translated from Rajarhaat - Uponogorir Ontorale Arto Manuher Kanna
Rajarhaat, near Kolkata, is Bengal’s new IT hub and a hotspot for real estate investment. Within no time Rajarhat has become the hotbed of real estate investments with companies like DLF, Keppel Land, Unitech group, Singapore-based Ascendas, Vedic Realty, etc. coming in. Land prices have soared. The first phase of DLF’s Rs 280 crore (Rs 2.80 billion) IT project has been operational since 2005 and a second IT park is on the cards. Wipro, Infosys, IBM - all the major IT houses are in operation here, on subsidized lands. A wireless hub is in the offing. Contrasting with Singur-Nandigram, official state versions have given the picture that Rajarhat’s land acquisition from the mid 1990’s onwards has been peaceful. This is an acount of the immense bloodshed that lay behind this acquisition, in a decade when the civil society and media wasn’t interested.
‘Testing’ Time for a ‘Civil’ Nuclear Deal: Reflections ahead of the NSG meet
By P.K. Sundaram, Guest Contributor. August 20, 2008. Open for comments.
India’s desperate diplomacy prior to the NSG meet on August 21-22, 2008 reveals the not-so-hidden truth about the deal – at a time when there is a need for renewed focus on disarmament, India rehabilitates nuclear energy corporates in order to circumvent nonproliferation regime and secure its right to conduct nuclear tests. And it finds supports from the Bush nuclear strategy bent on reducing nonproliferation into counterproliferation.
We have no value - sharecroppers and labourers in the ongoing Singur crisis
Reporting from Singur – Shamik Sarkar, Sanhati. 19th August, 2008. Comments enabled.
It has been over a year and a half that 997 acres have been sealed off by Tata’s fences here. But many landowning farmers have not accepted compensation. In the last week of July, 2008, the Krishi Jomi Jibon Jibika Raksha Committee (Committee for saving farmland, life, and livelihood) gave the call to “outsiders working in Tata’s plant” to leave Singur, “to protect the rights of unwilling farmers, Bargadars, and agricultural workers”. After that, Trinamul leader Mamata Banerjee declared that there would be a continuous blockade of the project from August 24th. The pressure of the movement forced workers who had been coming to the site from outside to stop.
What is the state of workers in the new industrial zones of Tamil Nadu?
This conversation with a worker from Tamil Nadu, appeared in Shramik Istahar, May 2008. It has been translated by Koel Das, Sanhati.
I was conversing with Sudhakarda. Sudhakar Raut, originally from Orissa, used to work in a reputed private engineering factory in West Bengal. He lost his job after being victimized in a lock-out while fighting against the injustice of the factory owner. I met him a couple of days back when he talked about his experiences over the last one year.
Nuclear Deal, ‘National Interest’ and the Indian Left
By P.K. Sundaram, Guest Contributor. Open for comments.
It is the Indian Left’s concurrence, rather than its disagreement, with the idea of a nuclear future (including nuclear weapons) that has made its case weak and inaudible to the larger masses.
Fighting Neoliberalism: Does West Bengal Show the Way?
By Dipankar Basu, Sanhati. Open for comments.
Mindless economic growth through unfettered operations of the “free” market, that is often portrayed in the mainstream media as a panacea for all of India’s economic problems, has now been shown to be seriously flawed as a sensible strategy for economic development. Active, pro-people state intervention through sound policies is essential for making any meaningful dent on the problems facing our country today; and this includes, if historical experience is anything to go by, even the achievement of sustainable, broad-based economic growth. In every known case of successful industrialization and economic development, be it England or Continental Europe or USA or Japan or the East Asian tigers, the State has played a pro-active role in directing investments, mobilizing resources to finance that investment, protecting fledgling industries from undue competition from abroad, and so on; it is, therefore, inconceivable that any state, or the country for that matter, can make that transition without State intervention through effective policies for agriculture and industry. State governments subscribing to this viewpoint would claim to have put this political philosophy into practice, especially the one in West Bengal.
The Indo-US Nuclear Pact and the Hoax of Nuclear Power
The Indo-US Nuclear Pact and the Hoax of Nuclear Power - By Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri
India’s Nuclear History: A Brief Outline
Choosing the Wrong Future: The U.S.-India Nuclear Deal - By Andrew Lichterman and M.V. Ramana
Wrong Ends, Means, and Needs: Behind the U.S. Nuclear Deal With India - By Zia Mian and M. V. Ramana
Liberalism Betrayed? The Maoist Electoral Victory in Nepal
By Saroj Giri, Sanhati. Open for comments.
The workers chanted “Allende, the people are defending you: hit the reactionaries hard.” The mood of the masses was militant. They were waiting for a lead that never came. - Tariq Ali, Allende’s Chile
Is the Maoist victory in the Constituent Assembly elections in Nepal a challenge to the liberal consensus and hegemony or is it its expansion, or worse, its intensification, co-opting the Maoists in the process? It could be either, mostly depending on which way events unfold in the coming days. The ‘meaning’ of the Maoist victory calls for a critical examination even as it promises an interesting and politically salient expose of the intricacies and dangers of trying to beat liberal democracy in its own game. Liberals, both left-wing and right-wing ones, have welcomed the Maoist victory though with caution and sometimes clenching their teeth, as a victory of the ballot over the bullet and a step forward for democracy and peace in Nepal. Those on the revolutionary left have however hardly allowed their pleasant surprise at the results to underestimate the enormous risks of ‘right-wing deviation’ and capitulation that the present path entails for the Maoists.
Corporate encroachment and the Panchayat elections: A rural montage
By Shamik Sarkar, Sanhati. Open for comments.
I. Beliya village, Haruda, and promises of development
II. Singur, its sharecroppers and laborers, and the Opposition
III. Corporate hands in rural Bengal
A brief overview of the Indian poverty debate
By Alita Nandi, Sanhati. Open for comments.
Click here to read the technical version of this article [PDF, English, 120KB] »
In the early 1990s various liberalisation policies had been introduced in India and India had started to experience higher growth rates (compared to pre-liberalisation period). The official poverty estimates published by the Planning Commission showed a decline in absolute poverty levels from 36% in 1993-94 to 26% in 1999-00. The question that became important at this juncture was, “Did the advantages of this high economic growth reach all echelons of society, in particular the ‘poor’?” And so the official reports at this time showing a reduction in absolute poverty levels created a stir. Some old issues about poverty measurement and some new ones were brought into the foreground and heavily debated and discussed. Here I attempt to trace out the key issues of this debate.
Disadvantaged Social Classes in the Panchayat system: Social Democratic Half-truths
By Dipankar Basu, Sanhati. Open for Comments.
In a recent article in Macroscan, Jayati Ghosh (JG hereafter) has argued that West Bengal is a “pioneering state” with regard to panchayati raj institutions and other measures aimed at decentralization of state power in India. The author shows that when one uses the correct index in the analysis, these conclusions vanish into thin air - of the states studied, Maharashtra, for example, outperforms West Bengal in participation of disadvantaged classes in Panchayats, even though it has never had the benefit of a progressive, left-wing government. The author suggests that this may be due to a vibrant culture of grassroots social and political activism, nurtured and led in no small measure by the radical left.
Panchayat Election 2008 results and the future of the CPIM
By Pinaki Mitra, Sanhati. Open for comments.
This article analyses the reactions of the CPIM leadership to the recent election reversals, gleaning from the reactions certain classic maladies of the Party itself. It then looks back at the CPIM’s history of compromises, ending with the dilemmas it now confronts.
Will the “Great Indian Middle Class” show up, please?
By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati. Comments enabled
Where is the “Great Indian Middle Class”? Where are those conspicuously-consuming, frequently-flying, gizmo-toting, big car-driving, globalized offsprings of our jet-setting “new economy”? Don’t we see them all around us: living in highrises with blue-tiled swimming pools, with people living a few miles away getting water once in three days, shopping in glittering malls built on the land of evicted slums, driving around in Toyotas and Chevrolets on roads choked with traffic? From all accounts, and appearances, we have reached the heady days when the Indian middle class has finally arrived. They are the ones who supposedly constitute one of the biggest markets in the world, for whom multinational corporations are falling over one another to invest in India, for whom our governments’ policies are directed, for whom roads and airports are built, for they ARE the “people” of India. This great middle class is our hope, the engine of growth for our economy. So - where is it?
Stages of Revolution in the International Working Class Movement
By Dipankar Basu, Sanhati (Open for comments)
This article attempts to throw some light on the following two questions: (1) How does the classical Marxist tradition conceptualize the relationship between the two stages of revolution: democratic and the socialist? (2) Does the democratic revolution lead to deepening and widening capitalism? Is capitalism necessary to develop the productive capacity of a society? The answer to the first question emerges from the idea of the “revolution of permanence” proposed by Marx in 1850, accepted, extended and enriched by Lenin as “uninterrupted revolution” and simultaneously developed by Trotsky as “permanent revolution”. This theoretical development was brilliantly put into practice by Lenin between the February and October revolutions in Russia in 1917. The answer to the second question emerges clearly from the debates on the national and colonial question in the Second Congress of the Third International in 1920. From this debate what emerges is the idea of the democratic revolution led by the proletariat as the start of the process of non-capitalist path of the development of the productive capacity of society, moving towards the future socialist revolution. Rather than deepening and widening capitalism, the democratic revolution under the proletariat leads society in the opposite direction, in a socialist, i.e., proletarian direction. Promoting capitalism is not necessary for the development of the productive capacity of a country.
Civil Liberties under Attack: The “Maoist” Scare and Mithu Ghosh
Today we are witnessing the sharpest assault on democratic rights since Emergency. And as before, the reason is an upsurge from below, in the current case in resistance to the imposition of neoliberal policies. A most ominous event is the recent arrest, by the police of CPI(M)-led left front government, of Mithu Ghosh, an activist of Sharamik Sangram Committee (SSC) and Krishak Committee (KC), along with a senior leader of Nandigram movement and his son on 12th February, 2008 from Sonachuda, Nandigram West Bengal. An allegation of Maoist link under section 120B, 121, 121A and 153 of IPC was charged.
Rape and its proof – And that’s how life is
An op-ed by Jagori Bandyopadhyay in Anandabazar Patrika, December 13, 2007. Translated by Suvarup Saha, Sanhati.
We need proof. The government does not take any action until there is sufficient evidence to prove the crime. This is how it should be; this is how it is. Plain words. Plain, yet not so simple. The government will act once it has enough evidence to justify its action. Very good. But the journey from accusations to establishment of crime in the eyes of the law is not a trivial process. Can the Government shrug off its responsibility in ensuring that this process, the journey itself, is executed in a free, fair and lawful manner? These thoughts occurred to me as I was listening to the charges and counter-charges that accompanied the accusations of mass rapes in Nandigram.
Land Acquisition Bill and the Panchayet: things to expect and fear. A case study on Salboni
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati
When the government is not in the scene does the acquisition process become hostage to unwilling, ignorant peasants and scheming speculators? Do the entire paraphernalia of political parties, bureaucracy and other institutions simply sit by and let the invisible hand of market decide what goes where? On 11th January, 2007 at a Kolkata five star hotel Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was spouting Shakespeare and Tagore . He had just concluded a deal handing over 4300 acres of government land at Salboni to the Jindal group to set up a steel factory. Jindal group was supposed to acquire a further 500 acres of land directly from the landholders. How did it go? What has been the role of the Panchayat, both as a mediating agency between the industrialist and peasants and as a collective bargaining body of villagers?
Whither Haripur? - Nuclear energy option splits CPI(M) higher-ups
By Sankar Ray
On the issue of whether the nuclear option should be explored to meet power requirements in the future preferentially over coal-fired power generation, mandarins of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the largest Leftist party in India, are more adherents of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost than Stalinist orthodoxy of “democratic centralism”. Nonagenarian CPI(M) polit bureau member Jyoti Basu frequently claims that his party is the most democratic and disciplined of all political parties in India and once a decision is taken following inner-party debate, every party member works for implementing the decision.
A Few Desperate and Concerned Questions
By Ashok Mitra. Translated by Debarshi Das, Sanhati
This article appeared on 18th April, 2007 in the Anandabazar Patrika
We know the history of the last fifteen years very well. National output had had a tremendous rise, capitalists have built mountains out of profits, but employment has not risen. The little rise there was, was in the public sector. In private sector employment has in fact gone down. On what basis therefore is the party leadership claiming that unemployment problems would be mitigated if West Bengal is handed over to domestic and foreign capitalists?
Mahishadal SEZ - Farmers boycott meeting with corporate officials
November 5, 2007
After Singur and Nandigram, the embers of protest have spread to Mahishadal. On Sunday, farmers of Bedkundu — one of the three areas identified for land acquisition — shot down the proposals to part with their agricultural holdings to make way for a ship-building factory to be set up by the Apeejay and Bharati groups.
Flotsam and jetsam - corporate retail and the predicament of the neighbourhood grocer
By D Bandyopadhyay
Those who buy cheap and those who depart from the gainful economic scene are two different sets of people. So the joy of one set and sadness of the other can never be seen together. It looks as though we are becoming too modern, little too fast for the comfort of a few to the utter dismay and discomfort of too many.
The age old kirana shops in each mohalla of urban or rural habitats had been a part of traditional life of any average Indian. My Govinda Kaku (Chacha), the owner of such a shop, in our locality in my childhood was not only a shopkeeper but business adviser to our family.
Titanium or Water? Tata Steel, land grab, and local governments - to Sathankulam, from Singur and Kalinganagar
October, 2007
More than 5,000 people converged this month in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to protest a deal that set the stage for the state government to appropriate almost 10,000 acres of land and hand it over to Tata Steel Corporation, a subsidiary of India’s largest conglomerate. The June 2007 agreement allows the giant company to mine ilmenite in Sathankulam, an agrarian pocket of India’s coastal countryside.
The Betrayal of Niyamgiri - Vedanta mining and the Dongria tribals
The Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) had been working hand-in-glove with Britain’s Vedanta Resources Plc to allow them to take over huge tracts of forested land, inhabited by the Dongria tribals, for open-cast mining in Niyamgiri, Orissa. Now, the Supreme Court, by reserving the judgement on a PIL filed by environmental activists from Orissa on 26th October, seems to haven given the go-ahead to Vedanta. This is again another case of the Supreme Court blatantly taking the side of corporations.
1. October 5, 2007 : Govt backs controversial Vedanta mine plan
2. October 10, 2007 : Tribal trouble adds to Vedanta green tension
3. October 26, 2007 : Betrayal of the Law at the Supreme Court; Taro Karma, Amaro Dharma : by Felix Padel
Globalization and land battles - a West Bengal perspective
By Abhijit Guha
Contents : (1) Introduction (2) Land reforms and decentralized planning in West Bengal (3) The winds of change and the contradiction (4) Marginalization of peasants in the era of globalization in West Bengal - A case study (5) Impact on land reforms (6) Impact on the local self-government (7) Peasants against acquisition (8) Governmental initiative towards resettlement and rehabilitation - an incomplete effort (9) In search of an alternative path to reform
Click here to read this article [PDF, English, 98 KB]
Durga Puja as Protest : Small Traders in West Bengal
By Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri
The four days of Durga Puja signify carnival time in West Bengal. On the main Saptami Puja day, Thursday the 18th of October, a few of us witnessed a tiny act of defiance by the small traders of Nonachandanpukur Bazaar, in Barrackpore, within the area loosely called Greater Calcutta.
Invisible Genocide Of The Poor - PDS, NREGA, MDM and their implementation
By Parshuram Rai, Countercurrents
More than 340 million of Indians still go to bed without food every night .Over 10,000 Indians die of hunger every day and about 40 lakh every year. In other words, every 18 months we are inflicting an “invisible genocide” of Nazi scale on our poor and hungry compatriots.”…
…PDS and NREGS are two most important schemes to fight hunger and ensure food security. But , what is the actual performance of these schemes on the ground ? According to a recent report of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution , “In the last three years, Rs 31,585.98 crore worth of wheat and rice meant for the poorest of the poor was siphoned off from the public distribution system(PDS).
Rizwanur Rehman’s death - a long tradition of Police atrocities in Bengal
This note from Nagarik Mancha traces the long history of police atrocities on ordinary citizens - Ashima Poddar, Archana Guha, Latika Guha, Subhankar Sarangi, Muhammad Alam, Khagen Majhi, Topi Daas, Suresh Barui, Partha Majumdar, Kamal Thakur, and so on - some tortured, some murdered, and almost no justice ever meted out.
How are you Chandmani, after the ‘Change’?
An Eyewitness Report on the present state of Chandmani Tea Estate by Samik Chakraborty
Translated by Suvarup Saha, Sanhati
Do you recall the ‘Chandmani’ saga? It was the year 2003. We were introduced to new jargon by our ‘proletarian’ Left Front government – Satellite Township. A modern township in close proximity to a big city. This project of usurping the land of Chandmani Tea Estate to build a lavish township in the outskirts of Siliguri (in the northern part of West Bengal) and the events that followed soon exposed the true identity of the LF once more. An echo of the recent euphoria of ‘industrialization-development’ that is now centered around ‘Singur-Nandigram’ and the corresponding ‘inevitability’ of forceful land acquisition can in fact be heard four years back in history when Chandmani was ‘CHANGED’.
Sanat Paul, the courts, Nagarik Mancha, and compensation - A Kafkaesque tale
This case profile from Nagarik Mancha tells the story of Sanat Kumar Paul, an unorganised sector worker in 1992. He worked at the ECCO Battery Ltd. of 73 Belgachhia Road Kolkata 700037. He developed Lead Neuropathy from his workplace, and has been looking for justice for over twelve years. Twelve years of joblessness owing to occupational disease means nothing to the system.
In the home ground of the so-called labour movement in India (INTUC, AITUC followed by CITU etc.) a seemingly pro-labour Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1923, promulgated by the British, remains virtually unimplemented in parts for 84 long years. This should be a revelation of sorts.
National Tanneries from Birth to Dissolution - Chronicles of a pro-industrialization, pro-workers government
By Subhendu Dasgupta. Translated by Debarshi Das, Sanhati
1905: Birth of National Tanneries.
1950s: Peak performance of the Tanneries. Its products get global recognition.
1969: Shoe manufacturing division is founded. At that time except Bata, no other shoe manufacturing unit existed in East India.
1970s: Company starts to sicken.
Ranihati - an SEZ silently in the making
By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati (based on a report by Sushanta Bose and Pradip Roy, Shramikshakti, August 2007)
The West Bengal government plans to establish a special economic zone (SEZ) in the Ranihati area of Howrah district. Hindustan Foundries, belonging to the Hyderabad-based Ramoji International corporation is going to be the developer of this SEZ. The government plans to bring the small foundries located in the Dasnagar-Tikiapara area of Howrah into this “foundry park”. Recently, the union government has also given its go-ahead. As a result, around 1000 acres of agricultural land is being acquired for setting up this SEZ, a major part of which is fertile land bearing two crops per year. Various machinations of acquiring the land from the farmers are going on. Reportedly, already 50% of the land has already changed hands from the farmers.
Haldia Petrochemicals and Unemployment in East Midnapore : A Lesson in (Non-) Development
By Dipanjan Rai Chaudhury
A number of well-qualified scientists and teachers in the field of chemistry have repeatedly been pointing out the dangers of pollution and poisoning of air, water and soil from the proposed Chemical Hub in East Midnapore. The whole question needs also to be looked at from a different view-point. What has the Chemical Hub to offer to the people of East Midnapore? The government of West Bengal promises jobs. To build confidence in their promises they point to Haldia Petrochemicals HPCL and its downstream units.
So, it is imperative that one find out what exactly in the field of employment Haldia Petrochemicals HPCL has offered to the district.
What it means to be the Left in Bengal - Of Buddhadeb, nuclear power, agri-retail, and on “changing with the world”
The official Indian Left has perhaps reached a crescendo in its opposition to the US nuclear deal and its condemnation of American imperialism in places as far out as Iraq. May Day celebrations this year called for the usual condemnation of neoliberalism. Perhaps the rhetoric should be eased a bit - Bengal tells a different story! The Chief Minister had the following things to say at the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) meeting in Kolkata on September 17.
1. “Environmentalists opposing nuclear power as a viable option are beginning to sound like fundamentalists.”
2. “We should allow big retail companies like Spencers, Reliance and Wal-Mart in agro-retailing business.”
3. “CII should form a committee to go into details on what should be the government’s policy for land acquisition”
4. “We had committed serious mistakes in the sixties and seventies. The world is changing. We are also changing.”
What Amartya Sen said and what he did not
By Anirban Chattopadhyay. Translated by Debarshi Das, Sanhati
Amartya Sen has made his views on industrialisation in West Bengal known. To him, industrialisation is necessary for the development of the state, it is the only way for income growth. How will industrialisation come about, where will it be located – most of these issues will depend on market, on the requirements of those who are going to invest. For example, investors may like to have their industries set up near Kolkata. To facilitate this some farm land may have to be sacrificed. Otherwise industrialisation will itself get hampered, which would imply a lost opportunity for the people of the state. It even means loss for the farmers. Too many people are dependent on land, resulting in a constraint on their earnings. As long as these additional people are not moved away from farming by means of industrialisation, their lot will not improve.
A Brief History of Workers’ Movements in India, with focus on Bengal
This histoy is by SSKU, an independent, non-party affiliated trade-union working at Hindustan Motors, West Bengal.
What was the working condition of the workers in those days? According to a Royal Commission of Labour, instituted by the British imperialists in 1933, the working hours in all the cotton mills were 13 to 15 hours a day. The report of the Textile Factories Labour Committee mentioned in 1906 that the conditions inside the factories were “inhuman”, the workers had to “put in hard labour” and after the shift was over, “they were so exhausted that a large number of them used to get fainted within the factory premises”. The condition of the female workers was deplorable. Employing of child labour was rampant. The factory Labour Commission of 1908 noted that children in the age group 5-7 constituted a major workforce in most of the factories. 40% of the part-time workers were under-age children. In the jute mills, children in the age group 7-9 used to travel about 4 km in the early morning to reach the factory in time!
Nearly 11,500 Farmer Suicides
Around 11,500 farmers have committed suicide in different parts of India in the last six years, most of them due to their inability to pay debts, says a new study that indicates the problem is bigger than what has been reported so far. The study, carried out by a conglomerate of voluntary groups called the National Social Watch Coalition (NCWC), says that at least 11,387 farmers have committed suicide between 2001 and 2006. The situation has gone from bad to worse in several states, the report points out.
An intimate portrait of Shankar Guha Niyogi, and the arrest of Binayak Sen
I first met Sen in 1986 when Shankar Guha Niyogi, leader of the Chhatisgarh Mukti Morcha (CMM), had invited me to screen ‘Bombay Our City’ to the mine-workers of Chhatisgarh. Niyogi was no ordinary union leader. Originally a worker in the Bhilai Steel plant, his thinking went far beyond the wage-struggle politics of most unions of the day.