Mirage of ‘China Model’: An Excerpt from Update Publication
August 28, 2010
[H]e (steel baron Lakshmi Mittal’s scion Aditya Mittal) recalled his visit to a plant site in China. A party secretary had accorded him the “red-carpet treatment”, even giving Mittal’s car exclusive access to a highway that hadn’t yet been inaugurated. “Then I get to the plant site, but I don’t see any land. I see houses, lots of houses — a village. And I say, ‘Where’s the land?’ And the party secretary says, ‘Right here. In 90 days, everyone will be gone. - www.dnaindia.com/, 03.02.07
Subverting Our Epics: Mani Ratnam’s Retelling of the Ramayana
August 27, 2010
By Amit Basole, Sanhati
(An earlier version of this article appears in the Economic and Political Weekly, July 17, 2010)
The Hindi language version of Mani Ratnam’s Raavan, starring Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Vikram, Ravi Kishan and Govinda has received generally bad reviews and is a failure at the box office as well. I hear that the Tamil version is far superior, but not having seen it, I cannot be the judge of that. At least for the Hindi version there seems to be a consensus that apart from Santosh Sivan’s cinematography there is not much in the movie to write home about. It also suffers from some common Bollywood flaws such as really bad acting and complete lack of attention to details. Yet, from the social and political standpoint the film’s grafting of the Ramayana on the current conflict between adivasis and the Indian state is well worth thinking about. It is in line with a long tradition of political writing and thought in India that has offered an alternative to the Brahminical version of Indian history. In this review we explore this dimension of the movie.
Citizens shot, village terrorised in Latehar, Jharkhand - A Fact-Finding Report
August 27, 2010
Translated from Hindi by Poonam Srivastava, Sanhati
A fact-finding committee of ‘Citizens against Operation Green Hunt, Jharkhand’ visited Ladi village under block Barwadi of district Latehar of Jharkhand state, on 13th June 2010.
Operation Green Hunt and School Occupations by Security Forces
August 27, 2010
By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati
Click here for a list of occupied schools in Jharkhand and West Bengal [PDF, English]»
Sixty-two years ago, at the midnight of 14th August, 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru declared that finally India would redeem its tryst with destiny, and the country would awake to life and freedom. The Constituent Assembly, where he spoke these words, went on to draft a constitution which enshrined the fundamental rights of India’s citizens, including Article 21A, which guaranteed free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years. To support, and strengthen, this fundamental right, the Indian parliament passed the Right of children to free and compulsory education act, 2009, commonly referred to as the Right to Education act with much fanfare. While the India of multinationals and multibillionaires seem to have gone ahead to fulfill its tryst with destiny, and successive governments claim to be building a “knowledge-based economy”, the adivasi and dalit children, inhabiting the regions of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chattisgarh and the other Indian states which are currently the site of the armed offensive by the state, called Operation Green Hunt, seemed to be headed towards another destiny. For, they are being denied their fundamental right to education, as their schools have been occupied by the security forces of the state.
The Second Green Revolution: A Blue-Print to Control India’s Agriculture - Indo-US Treaty, New Seed Act
August 27, 2010
Written by – Dr. Abhee Dutta Majumdar, Dr. Siddharta Gupta, Partha Sarathi Dasgupta, Mrinmoy Sengupta
Published by – Lokayata Sahitya Chakra, May 7, 2010.
Translated by – Sanhati
From the nineties, India opened herself to the world market. As prescribed by the US based IMF and World Bank, India also undertook ‘structural adjustment’ programme. This had a two-fold effect: on the one hand it resulted in diminishing governmental spending, reduction of subsidies in different social welfare projects, divestment and privatization, while on the other hand it eliminated all hurdles to monopolistic capital to take over the production in the country. The erstwhile regulations were lifted to engineer a new paradigm where capital and product can freely travel across boundaries of the nation state.
Agrarian Change in Eastern India: The View from Bihar
August 27, 2010
By Deepankar Basu, Sanhati
Introduction
In the backdrop of the growing peoples’ movement in the country against the logic of neoliberal capitalist development, Basole and Basu (2009) [available here] had revisited the “mode of production” debate of the 1970s to understand the evolution of relations of production and modes of surplus extraction in India over the last five decades. Using aggregate level data for agriculture and informal industry, which together employ about 94 percent of Indian’s working population, the paper had highlighted key aspects of contemporary Indian capitalism. The analysis was meant to link up with and inform attempts at radically restructuring Indian society in a socialist direction.
Though Basole and Basu (2009) had used several case studies related to the unorganized/informal industrial sector to complement the story emerging from aggregate level data, the paper had failed to do a similar analysis of the agrarian sector. The major lacuna of the paper, therefore, was its failure to draw on micro/village level studies of agrarian change to supplement aggregate level trends derived from sample survey and census data. In this article, we take the first step towards addressing that shortcoming by summarizing crucial aspects of the dynamics of agrarian change in rural Bihar over the last few decades based on three village-level studies.
PCPA vs CPI(M) in Jangal Mahal: Misgivings
August 27, 2010
By Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri
The recent setbacks to the people’s movement in the jangal mahal of West Bengal merit serious thought. The murders of Lalmohan Tudu, president of the PCPA, and Bhuta Baske, secretary of the PCPA in his incarnation as Sido Soren, as well as the encounter killing of other organizers of the movement, cannot be dismissed as ‘inevitable’ setbacks. In practically every case. the information came to the joint governmental forces from local spies, usually CPI(M) or ex-CPI(M) supporters. In the case of Bhuta, a group of people who made a show of leaving the CPI(M) and joining the PCPA seem to be the informants. The organizers of the Jnaneshwari express massacre, detained by the CBI, have been separately alleged to have had CPI(M) and local PCPA links; possibly there were individuals with both links.
West Bengal - A Debate on the support to Mamata Banerjee
August 23, 2010
Protest Against Operation Green Hunt in New York, August 13 2010
August 5, 2010
Press Release
Protest Against the Indian Government’s “Operation Green Hunt” at the Consulate in New York City (3 East 64th Street) on August 13 at 11 a.m.
NEW YORK CITY – Sanhati, and other organizations and individuals, are organizing a protest against the Indian government’s insidious war, named “Operation Green Hunt,” which has been unleashed on the inhabitants of the forested regions of East-Central India. The protest will approximately coincide with Indian Independence Day (August 15) to emphasize that the promises of independence have remain largely unfulfilled for a large section of the population, including the tribal peoples.
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Azad’s assassination: An insight into the Indian state’s response to peoples’ resistance
July 25, 2010
Fact-finding Report on the Singanamadugu Incident
July 12, 2010
The Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sangham (KAMS) has been working for the past three decades in the Dandakaranya (DK) area in seven districts of Maharashtra and Chattisgarh. It has mobilised women against the exploitation of labour, dominance and atrocities by forest officials, managements of paper mills, beedi leaf contractors, and businessmen from the plains. This booklet, published by Virasam Publications, contains a brief history of the activities of KAMS and a fact-finding report of the Singanamadugu incident, which is excerpted below.
Click here to read Booklet [PDF, English] »
The Killing of Azad
July 12, 2010
By Saroj Giri
Azad as a political revolutionary provides us no liberal, left-liberal welfarist alibi to oppose his killing. So much so, it forces so many of us to quietly accept the inevitability of his getting killed – some might even privately say, well, the Maoists valorize martyrdom a bit too much, so can they really complain about Azad’s killing now?! Weren’t the Maoists, believers in violence, asking for it?!
Justice Denied to Tribals in the Hill Districts of Manipur
July 12, 2010
By Bela Bhatia [1]
Around 30 km from Kohima is Mao Gate, the border between Nagaland and Manipur. Mao Gate takes its name from Mao village that falls on both sides of the border and the Mao community of the Nagas that inhabits this region. Though this border area is part of Senapati district, which along with the adjoining Ukhrul, Tamenglong and Chandel districts comprise four of the five hill districts of Manipur, these districts are in fact a continuum of present day ‘Nagaland’ in every sense – topographically, socially and culturally. This southern stretch is now on the other side only due to the arbitrary boundaries that were created by the Indian state that chose to retain the British occupation of the historical political entity ‘Nagalim’ (the homeland of the Naga people) and its division between India and Burma (Myanmar), after its own independence from colonial rule. What was started by the British in the first part of the 19th century was continued and further exacerbated by India during the last six decades.
Hem Pandey’s Encounter Death and Published Writings
July 12, 2010
Click here to read some published writings of Hem Pandey »
Note from Concerned Citizens
Hem Chandra Pandey, a freelance journalist from Delhi was killed on 2 July 2010 along with Azad, spokesperson of CPI( Maoist). He comes from Dewaltal town of Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand.
Detentions in Gujarat: A Brief Overview
July 12, 2010
By Aarti Shah
The mainstream press recently reported that several so-called Maoists were arrested in Gujarat. Yet civil liberties groups maintain that those arrested are actually leaders and workers belonging to a spectrum of political formations and working with the adivasis, slum-dwellers, and so forth. The police, however, appear to be operating on the assumption that these arrests will inculcate fear amongst activists, giving an advantage in the game of psychological warfare. This witch-hunt of the Gujarat police amounts to a systematic effort by the state government to suppress all manner of dissension and opposition.
IITK Migrant Workers Update: Labour Commissioner Visits the Campus
July 12, 2010
By Manali Chakrabarti.
The whole thing started because of the initiative of our worker friends of the Environment Building. For some of us unfamiliar with the case, these are the same set of 27 workers who were thrown out of their jobs even when the Institute’s official committee found that their contractor was actually working in gross violation of labour laws. Incidentally the contractor was awarded several crores worth of new contracts (Rs 25 crores till May 2009). These workers are all working outside the campus now and have taken up the issue of labour laws violations in the Institute almost as a crusade. They filed a complaint against the Institute with the Regional Labour Commissioner’s office (Central) in October 2009. After two rounds of hearing in which the Institute’s representatives actually gave a written undertaking that “there is no violation of any provision of any Labour Law” in IIT Kanpur, the Labour Commissioner (he is the labour commissioner for the entire states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand) could be persuaded to visit the campus. The date decided was May 7, 2010.
The Political Economy of Oil Prices in India
July 12, 2010
A Sanhati Intervention
Based on the recommendations of the Kirit Parikh Committee, the Government of India (GOI) on 25 June, 2010 announced the full deregulation of the prices of two crucial petroleum products: petrol and diesel.[1] Henceforth, prices of these two products will be determined by the unfettered play of market forces and government “subsidies” on these products, which worsen the fiscal situation, will be completely removed.[2] In one deft move, therefore, government control over the determination of the prices of these key commodities was willingly ceded to the magic of the market, presumably to “rationalize” prices and to wipe away losses of state-run Oil Market Companies (OMCs) to the tune of Rs. 22,000 crore.
What’s in a Name? - P is for Political, C is for Criminal
July 12, 2010
By Radha D’Souza
On 11 April 2010, 469 inmates in Alipore Central Jail in Kolkata (Calcutta) in West Bengal went on hunger strike, demanding recognition as political prisoners. The previous April, two prisoners in the district of Cooch Behar went on a fast to demand political status. On 14 September 2009 an unspecified number of inmates in Nagpur, the second capital of the state of Maharashtra in western India, went on a one-day hunger strike to demand political prisoner status.
CRPF violating PESA Act in Jharkhandi villages
June 10, 2010
Struggle of sharecroppers of Sujapur in Murshidabad, West Bengal - an expose of the tall claims of land reforms
June 8, 2010
ShramikShakti, April 2010. Translated by Koel Das, Sanhati
For a long time, we have been hearing tall claims about land reforms in West Bengal. The law was passed back when Siddartha Shankar Ray was the Chief Minister. After the Left Front came to power in 1977, the sharecropper law had also been amended a few times. But the recent struggles of villagers of Sujapur in Murshidabad is evidence to the fact that real land reform does not happen by just passing the law.
The US-China Trade and Currency dispute: A red herring?
June 8, 2010
By Ramaa Vasudevan, Sanhati
The threat of a full-fledged trade war between US and China no longer seems so imminent. The battle over the China’s exchange appears to have been averted. The biannual report on exchange rate which was to be released on April 15th has been strategically postponed once Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, announced his particpation at the April nuclear summit. There has been a mounting pressure to name China as a currency manipulator in this report, and unleash a battery of trade sanctions. The US has stopped ratcheting up the pressure and China has sent out cautious signals that suggested that the peg was just a temporary special measure and it was considering letting the remnibi float up. Ruffled feathers seem to have been smoothed and the strategic summit currently underway, is not raising any diplomatic dust. The euro woes might postpone the loosening of the remnibi peg, but for the time being a truce has been declared.
So what was the storm all about?
The Enchantments of Democracy: Some Notes
June 8, 2010
By Saroj Giri
Abstract: The Maoist movement and state violence as also corporate plunder are often opposed from the standpoint of ‘peace and democracy’, ‘social justice’ and so on. Civil society rightly highlights structural violence but they quite naively oppose it from the standpoint of democracy. However, the armed state, ‘peace and democracy’, and structural violence feed into each other. Thus the Maoists could not have challenged structural violence, silently sanctioned by the armed state, without breaking the legitimizing norms of democracy, peace and order. Peace and democracy needs serious unpacking, if one needs to come to terms with the nature of structural violence – with some urgency now, as none other than ‘Maoist sympathizers’, and not the hawks of the Home Ministry, themselves have revealed the sinister power of democracy: democracy at the service of counter-insurgency. With democracy like this, we don’t need dictatorships, and with sympathizers like these the Maoists need no enemies!
How Capital Turns People into ‘Consuming’ Vampires: An Essay on Daybreakers
June 8, 2010
By G Sampath
Every once in a while there comes a commercial pot-boiler of a film that knocks you cold with its understanding of contemporary politics. It reminds you that filmmaking is not only about camera angles and cinematography and script and direction and acting and special effects and edge-of-the-seat thrills. It reminds you that cinema is also, nay, essentially, about something that camera-enslaved filmmakers tend to forget: thought, and politics.
On the one hand, you have Hurt Locker, a film based on the US occupation of Iraq that deliberately ignores why the US is in Iraq and what it is doing there: zero politics, and all cinema, we’re told. We all know (but won’t admit it) what kind of politics ‘no politics’ means. And on the other hand you have a film, a sci-fi Vampire film, Daybreakers, which stays true to the genre of vampire thrillers and is yet a scathing commentary on the world we are living in. A world where the value attached to the life of a human being is by no means absolute, and is contingent on and directly proportional to the said human being’s ability to act as a consumer.
Three Communists in Gurgaon - Interviews for an Open Debate
June 8, 2010
Gurgaon Workers News, May 2010
The industrial development and proletarian unrest in Gurgaon did not remain unnoticed. We talked to three communists who decided to focus their political activity on the vast landscape of working class formation. The comrades are part of the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist current left of the CPIs, belonging to three different political organisations. We decided to not mention the party names in the individual interviews, based on the experience that way too often the left focuses more on internal ideological quarrels than on the exchange and reflection of practical experience.
SPO’s and Civilians: Or the Great Indian “Police” Trick
June 8, 2010
By Siddhartha Mitra, Sanhati
35 human beings perished in the IED blast near Dantewada on May 14th, 2010. Who exactly died? This article explores the main targets of the attack, the Special Police Officers or SPO’s - the identity conferred on the SPO’s by mainstream reporting, and the politics behind that identity.
The Media and the Victims: Civilians or Not?
News sources across India reported on the Maoist attack at great length, and condemnations by various civil liberty groups poured in. This attack was somewhat different in nature from earlier Maoist attacks, not only because of the number of casualties involved: this was a rare occasion when the attackers had full knowledge that civilians would be among the victims, and because the intended targets themselves were not from the military or the armed forces. The attack that claimed the lives of 76 paramilitary personnel a month earlier did not kill any civilians, and earlier incidents involving Maoist violence on civilian personnel had been claimed to have been carried out in error, with the true targets being personnel in the armed forces.
The Indian Government Should Surrender To The Maoists: An Immodest Proposal
June 6, 2010
The Global University in Crisis-I: Knowledge Struggles in Europe and USA
May 23, 2010
By Amit Basole, Sanhati
This is planned as a two-part article on the politics of global higher education today. In the first part I discuss the Euro-US movements against the University. In the second part I will talk about the Indian higher education context and what the Euro-US movements mean for us.
The University is the most prized product of the capitalist age. It is sometimes thought to represent the highest achievements of modern culture and via a judicious mixture of consent and dissent it provides the intellectual atmosphere necessary for the preservation of capitalist society. As California’s militant student movement puts it, the [modern] university’s history is the history of capital itself. Not surprising then that the fortunes of the university are tied to the fortunes of capital. The protracted crisis of global capitalism, which started in the 1970s, and to which Neoliberalism was the response, resulted in the Neoliberal University that we know today.
The Eurozone Crisis: Macroeconomics and Class Struggle
May 23, 2010
By Deepankar Basu, Sanhati
Introduction
The Eurozone seems to have temporarily averted a serious sovereign debt crisis in its periphery. This sovereign debt crisis had the potential to quickly spread from Greece to Portugal, Spain and possibly even wider afield while morphing into a full-blown banking and financial crisis – with a nearly 750 billion euro bail-out plan [1]. The plan requires European governments to commit about 500 billion euros for emergency loans through a special purpose vehicle (SPV), the IMF to promise another 250 billion euros if the need arises, countries receiving emergency loans to agree to harsh “austerity measures” and the European Central Bank to agree to purchase bonds of member countries. With the real fear of contagion spreading across the Atlantic, the US Federal Reserve has reopened swap lines to provide dollar funding to European banks, again, if needed.
The Lalgarh Movement, the PCAPA and the CPI (Maoist)
May 23, 2010
By Kushal Debnath, Marxist Intellection
The vast areas of Jangal Mahal including Lalgarh have been in the grip of unbridled state terror for the last few months. There is a total ban on any meeting or rally. The media persons also are debarred from entering into those areas. Three villagers were brutally killed by the joint forces on 2nd January last. In the name of arresting the Maoists, witch-hunting is going on in various villages. Very recently a meeting was taking place in the premises of Bulanpur High School organized by a newly formed platform of the peasants called “Chashi Banchao Committee”. The purpose of the meeting was to put forward some demands of the peasants. The Joint Forces encircled the meeting and carried on an inhuman torture on the peasants. Chhatradhar Mahato, the leader of the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), arrested under UAPA was served with the charge-sheet within an astonishingly short time. A few days ago the Joint Forces arrested two members of the PCAPA, but they were not produced in the court. It is suspected that they were killed in cold blood. It can be said, in brief, that the Left Front government, aided by the Congress-led central government has unleashed an unprecedented state-terror in Jangal Mahal (including Lalgarh) to crush the resistance struggle that has been developing in the area for a year.
Contract Workers at IITK: A Response to Commonly Held Misconceptions
May 23, 2010
By Rahul Varman
We at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK henceforth) today are dependent upon contingent workforce for most of the work and services and a large amount of such work has been contracted out. Today the campus, where close to 10,000 of us work and stay, is almost completely dependent on contract workers, whether for cleaning, horticulture, security, messing, civil & electrical maintenance, construction, laying cables, research assistance, the list can go on. By reliable estimates, as the institute has no system to keep consolidated records of such workers, the contingent workforce can be as high as 3000 [1]. Given such a large workforce and given the fact that they work without any framework of rights and responsibilities, we keep hearing of arbitrary hiring and firings, accidents, grievances, signature campaigns, office orders, reports, and so on relating to the contingent workforce, and yet we do not seem to be any closer to addressing the ‘problem’. The present write-up is based on my [2] interaction with various constituencies on the issue during the last 15 years. Over these years of my stay in the campus I have primarily endeavoured to understand the problem from ‘below’ by interacting fairly closely with various kinds of workers. In the process I have also engaged with different constituencies on the issue - students, staff, faculty colleagues, authorities at various levels, contractors and have also been involved with minimum wage monitoring, handling worker grievances officially, etc. In this brief piece I am attempting to understand various aspects of the problem and what can be the possible ways of addressing them as I have understood personally with all its biases and limitations.
Caste and the Census
May 23, 2010
By Gail Omvedt. Also published in Frontier and Forward
“See no caste, hear no caste, speak no caste.” The policy of the Indian elite towards the issue of caste has been that of the three monkeys: one of denial. It doesn’t exist; if it does it is not so bad; it should not be talked about, and those who do talk about it or try to act on it are the ones who are “casteist.” The entire onus is placed on the victims of the system trying to fight it.
Do 600 Million Cellphone Accounts Make India a Rich Country? A Lesson in Economics for Mr. Chidambaram
May 23, 2010
A note prepared by Sanhati members
Summary:
A sizeable section of the poor, predominantly the urban section, does own mobile phones. A mobile phone has become a necessity for the poor because of their very vulnerability and the precariousness of their employment in an unorganized and informal labour market. The very recent surge in poor people acquiring mobile phones has been facilitated by the dramatic reduction in the prices of such services and even a minor increase in prices may drive a lot of such users to give up using them.
As asides, we mention that bizarre anomalies arise if one uses mobile phones as markers of affluence - for example, one concludes that there is no poverty in Delhi. And finally: land-lines are probably a more plausible indicator of the middle class.
Odisha: Poverty, Corporate Plunder and Resistance
May 23, 2010
By Prafulla Samantra, Asit Das
Odisha - An Introduction
Odisha is known for its different aspects in historical periods. It was known for its brave resistance and sacrifice confronting Asoka’s army and ultimately transforming him. Odisha’s literary history, especially its folklores, depicts the glorious tales of its traders and sailing to far off lands like Java, Borneo, Sumatra, etc. It had a thriving trade. It is famous for its temple architecture, traditional culture, music and dance, which includes highly developed craftsmanship and cottage industries. Odisha had a lightly developed silk and cotton fabric industry whose highly skilled craftsmen were working on innumerable village looms. Oriya artisanship is globally famous, including excellent silver filigree jewellery. Odisha has a glorious anti-imperialist history fighting British colonialism.
A Background Note to the beginning of new Civil Society initiative for resumption of talks between the Centre and the ULFA
May 5, 2010
Canal Bank Dwellers: Displacement In The Name Of Development in Kolkata
May 4, 2010
This article has been received from Nagarik Mancha. It is in a continuing series of articles on the mounting displacement of the urban poor in Kolkata, West Bengal.
The Background
The Kolkata Environment Improvement Programme: A Multi-faceted programme of the ADB
Class composition and Labour Casualisation in Gurgaon: New Struggles in a Miserable Boom-Town
May 4, 2010
Written for People’s Resistance, April 2010
Gurgaon, a satellite town in the south of Delhi became the symbol of ‘Shining India’. Many people are dazzled by the glass-fronts of shopping-malls and corporate towers and fail to see the development of a massive industrial working-class behind the facade of ‘post-fordist’ display of consumerism. Together with industrial centres like the Pearl River Delta in China or the Maquiladoras in Northern Mexico the Delhi industrial belt has become a focal point of global working class formation.
A Global Working Class in Local Formation
In the industrial areas of Gurgaon a very particular class composition (1) emerged. Hundred of thousands migrant garment workers work next to the assembly lines of India’s biggest automobile hub and next to hundred thousand young workers sweating under the head-sets of Gurgaon’s call centres. We are forced to re-think our traditional understandings of what ‘workers’ are, how they struggle and how this struggle can become a process of self-empowerment towards self-emancipation.
Adivasis, Mining and Monopoly Capital: Issue 18 of Update Booklet
May 4, 2010
Click here to read Update publication, Issue 18, on Operation Green Hunt [PDF, English, 79 pages] »
Contents
Introduction 1
Adivasis in Central and Eastern India 7
Adivasi People and Forests 11
Mad Rush for Mining and Adivasi People 18
Exploitation: Economic and
Lalgarh in 2002: A Saga of Police Brutality Years Before the Conflagaration
May 4, 2010
The adivasis of Lalgarh of West Midnapore district rose up against police brutalities in November, 2008, in a historic uprising that has been continuing for more than a year now. The police atrocities, indiscriminate raids and brutal beatings, resulting in serious injuries to many people, mainly women, took place in the wake of the landmine blast near the West Bengal chief minister’s convoy, as he was returning from inaugurating a SEZ in the Salboni area. There is a perception that the police atrocities were a result of the landmine blast, and many have even accused the Maoists, who triggered the landmine blast, of deliberately drawing the ire of the police on the adivasis. However, police atrocities have been the reality in the lives of the adivasis in this region for the past decade and more.
As the following series of reports, titled “Inside Midnapore”, by the veteran journalist and Sanhati member Nilanjan Duta, which appeared in the Times of India, Kolkata, in 2002, show, the poor adivasis of jangalmahal have borne the brunt of similar atrocities for a long time. They have been subjected to beatings, torture, molestation of women and false cases, all of which give us a sense of déjà vu today in 2010. And there was no landmine blast which caused these atrocities; it was their demand of simple development measure such as health centres, schools and roads and the basic means for survival, such as proper prices for forest produce such as the tendu leaves and babui grass, and an end to harassment in the hands of forest officials, timber mafia etc. that drew the ire of the state on them. Today, the home minister P Chidambaram and the West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee say that operation Green Hunt, and the operations of the combined forces in Lalgarh, is to pave the way for “development” of the adivasis. We run this series of reports again to remind the readers what the adivasis have got from the state when they have demanded the same development in the past.
Andal Aerotropolis: A Fact-Finding Report
May 4, 2010
Andal, near Asansol and Durgapur, in Burdwan district is the site of another major land acquisition in West Bengal where 3500 acres of land is being acquired to set up the first airport city in India, named as the “Aeretropolis”. The anger of local agriculturalists at the proposed project erupted in the form of a major unrest on 24th March 2010 which was suppressed by brutal police action. We publish a fact-finding report on Andal prepared by the SEZ-Birodhi Prachar Mancha.
Click here for fact-finding report on Andal [Bengali, PDF, 6.5 MB] »
Translated by Siddhartha Mitra, Sanhati
Letter From Peoples’ Commiittee Against Police Atrocities to Association for Protection of Democratic Rights( APDR), Lalgarh Mancha and Intellectuals
May 4, 2010
Hul Johar,
The operation of the Joint Task Force has been continuing for last ten months in Jangal Mahal. In the budget session Mr. Manmohan Singh has declared that for now six thousand jawans are going to be deployed in Jangal Mahal. Mr. Chidambaram has advanced that the deployment will be according to the necessity; if it demands more force to be deployed, it shall be so. This Joint Force along with the C.P.I. (M) Harmads is oppressing the people, destroying their life and property. The administrative authority along with the Chief Minster of W.B. and the Union Home Minister has created the blueprint of attack sometimes in the Righter’s Building and sometimes in Midnapur, Lalgarh or Ghatshila. The war waged by the State and the Central Govt. in the name of “Operation Greenhunt” is directly destroying our lives and livelihoods in jangal mahal. The ultimate objective of the State and the Central Govt. is to loot the immeasurable natural resources of the Jangal mahal and the entire country for the Jindal, Mittal, Tata, Pasko, Sail, Ambani, Birla and other M.N.C.s, killing and obliterating the entire Adivasi population.
March 8, 2010: The Hundred Years Moment
May 4, 2010
By Rukmini Sen
March 8 this year marks 100 years of women’s struggles for a just and egalitarian society. For some of us, who are young and new to the women’s movement and also have a women’s studies background, March 8, 2010 was a time to understand the past and also realize the current issues of concern affecting women in India. It is keeping this in context that I shall compare the leaflets/campaign material to remember March 8 by the Centenary Committee to Celebrate International Women’s Day and the National Women’s organizations both from my current location in Delhi. This is an effort to document the contemporary diverse concerns of women’s groups in the country.
Whither Maoists?
April 28, 2010
By Saroj Giri (Guest Contributor, Sanhati)
Abstract
Congress heavy-weight Digvijay Singh’s attack on the pro-corporate and hawkish Home Minister Chidambaram’s approach to the ‘Maoist problem’ seems to strengthen civil society initiatives calling for talks and dialogue. However in declaring that the Maoists are not really against corporate interests and are integrated in business as usual at the local level, Singh revealed attempts at a liberal-left appropriation of Maoists, in order to settle scores with the Chidambaram faction. If Operation Civil Society is the name for such an appropriation, then this might prove as dangerous for Maoists as Operation Green Hunt. This means that unless they are able to advance the (class) struggle into new areas and new classes, it might be difficult for their ‘correct line’ to stop them from going the way of the Nepali Maoists. Physical liquidation of the Andhra model might be replaced by democratic liquidation.
The Responsibility of Intellectuals - Revisiting Chomsky at a Time of Crisis
April 18, 2010
While there are several attempts to organize and protest, the voices of dissent are sometimes incoherent and disarrayed. In the midst of this, we revisit the classic essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” written by Noam Chomsky which was published by The New York Review of Books on the 23rd of February 1967.
As the Indian state pours in more and more soldiers to fight the war for the multinationals, perhaps voices like Chomsky’s will be an inspiration to walk the streets chanting and unitedly demanding an end to the war, as the anti-war voices had done during the days of Vietnam.
Recent Unrest in Andal, West Bengal: Site of Aerotropolis
April 18, 2010
Click here for booklet on the planned Aerotropolis in Andal [PDF, Bengali]
Andal, near Asansol and Durgapur, in Burdwan district is the site of another major land acquisition in West Bengal where 3500 acres of land is being acquired to set up the first airport city in India, named as the “Aeretropolis”. The Aeretropolis is a concept put forward by US urban planner John Kasarga, which envisages building up a huge urban hub, with all commercial, residential and entertainment entities centered around an airport. Interestingly, there have been very few takers of this concept in the western world, and most of the airport cities in use, or under construction, are in South East Asia or the Gulf. The West Bengal government has adopted this as a major project in its scheme of neoliberal “development”. The Aeretropolis in Andal is being built by a joint venture of the West Bengal government agency HUDCO and a number of large private real estate companies, with foreign collaboration.
U.S. Agribusiness in Indian Agriculture: KIA, BRAI, and the “Second Green Revolution”
April 18, 2010
Analytical Monthly Review Editorial, April 2010.
There are points when long-term trends emerge openly in the present, and a process normally visible only from a distance becomes an unmistakable part of daily life. The displacement (or better dispossession) of rural petty cultivators and producers became noticeable with the adoption of “Green Revolution” expensive technical farming in the 1960s and 1970s, and gathered speed from the time of the neoliberal “reform” regime adopted by the ruling class in 1991. Claims were often made that expanded production for export would create industrial jobs for the masses expelled from the countryside. Such claims were false. Instead vast slum belts surround the cities, and brazen claims of employment gains are falsified by the word “informal” and the misery it denotes. The anguish of this immiserated population echoes with every price rise of foodstuffs, while yet more cultivators are dispossessed.
Stories of Kolkata’s Urban Poor - How are the “rehabilitated” residents coping with their new life after being evicted?
April 18, 2010
Sriman Chakraborty and Shamik Sarkar travels to the rehabilitated colonies and talks to the residents. The reports appeared in two issues of Sangbad Manthan dated 1st and 16th March, 2010. They have been combined and translated by Suvarup Saha for Sanhati.
On both sides of the railway tracks from Ballygunge (South Kolkata) to Budge Budge (suburb of Kolkata) there were several thousand families - the residents of Gobindapur Rail Colony - who were living there for generations. When the railways decided to evict them, about 1700 of these families were ceremoniously rehabilitated in Nonadanga beside the EM Bypass Road. Bapi Mondol of Nonadanga Rights and Public Service Association informed us. The small make-shift tarpaulin shelters that were provided at the very beginning are still all they have. The buildings where they are to be rehabilitated are still under construction.
Krishi Mukti Sangram Samiti, Assam: A brief note and an interview with Akhil Gogoi
April 18, 2010
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati
Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti, in many ways, is an anomaly in Assam. This is a land which finds national attention only in times of blasts, floods, massacres. KMSS breaks the media orientalism and manages to make news. KMSS launches agitations on patently non-exotic issues such as Public Distribution System thefts, construction of big dams in fragile seismic territories, non-implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Rights to Information Act etc. Aside from these issues, the other feature which sets KMSS apart in the political landscape of the state is its non-alignment. KMSS is not close to any political party. And more importantly it does not swear by any tribal, linguistic, religious group. This is something of a miracle in a region almost balkanised by identity politics.
Text of Himanshu Kumar’s speech (March 2010, Kolkata) on experiences in Dantewada
April 18, 2010
On March 9 2010, activist Himanshu Kumar gave a talk in Kolkata at a public meeting organised by Ekhon Bisanbad, speaking about his experiences in Dantewada over 18 years, and about the ongoing “Operation Green Hunt” being conducted to ostensibly root out left wing extremists. The following is his speech, transcribed and edited by Sanhati members Ishita Das and Suvarup Saha.
The Rs. 1500 crore “Maoist empire” or How the Police Plants Stories in the Press
April 16, 2010
By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati. April 16 2010.
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” - Joseph Goebbels
Propaganda is one of the main weapons of the government of India’s Operation Green Hunt. The propaganda war is being waged in order to mould public opinion and turn liberal voices against the enemy, the Maoists. As part of this propaganda campaign, the government has brought out large, full colour advertisements (paid for by taxpayers’ money) in major newspapers which have portrayed the Maoists as “ruthless killers” and as destroyers of public property.
However a more insidious, and clandestine, part of the propaganda war, is to plant stories in the mainstream media in the form of “news”, which the average reader, having faith in the objectivity of the media as the main source of information, will take at face value as the truth.
Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion
April 1, 2010
[In January 2010, leading democratic rights activist Gautam Navlakha accompanied Swedish writer Jan Myrdal to the jungles of Central India, and engaged in conversations with the leadership of CPI(Maoist). In the following essay, being published exclusively at Sanhati, he explores further the various facets of Maoist politics and the socioeconomic and cultural life in the […]
How Shall We Remember Madal Lal Dhingra?
March 23, 2010
Madan Lal Dhingra (1883-1909)
Madan Lal Dhingra was born on February 18, 1883 to an affluent Hindu-Khatri family of Amritsar, Punjab. As a college student in Lahore, he was closely associated with the extremist political activities of Lala Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh. In 1906 he moved to London for higher studies where he came into contact with a group of militant nationalist Indians and joined India House, the hub of Indian independence activities in London. During this period, Dhingra, V D Savarkar and other members of the group were enraged by the execution of militant leaders such as Khudiram Bose in India. In reaction to this, on 1st July 1909 Dhingra killed Curzon Wyllie in London, the political assistant to the secretary of state for India. Dhingra was arrested and after a brief trial he was hanged in England on August 17,1909.
The Incredible Box Kite: Chronicles of travels in Gopalpur-On-Sea
March 23, 2010
By Siddhartha Mitra, Sanhati
In the beginning
“Bhago, bhago, usko leke bhago!” Trilochon urged me. (Run, run with it!)
I ran. The soft sand of the beach gave way under my feet. My right hand was tightly clutching the end of a string, the other end of which was attached to the box-kite.
The Nationality Question has been Ignored - An Interview with Hiren Gohain
March 23, 2010
Interview: Dr. Hiren Gohain (published in ‘Eka Ebong Koyekjon’, Autumn issue,2009, Guwahati). Translated by Soumya Guhathakurta, Sanhati.
Hiren Gohain had been one of the very few brave and clear voices during the Assam movement turmoil (1979-1985). This earned him respect, hostility and even physical assault. His erudition and fearlessness have fruitfully combined with a left orientation to become an indispensable ingredient of the nation’s collective conscience. In this candid interview the professor delves into issues both regional and national: the left’s neglect of the nationality question, trajectory of Assam movement and the rise of semi-fascist nationalism, internal democracy in leftist parties, the present state of CPI (M) and the future ahead. - Ed.
Child Marriage in India: Mapping the Trajectory of Legal Reforms
March 23, 2010
By Ruchira Goswami, Guest Contributor
Upheld and sanctioned by traditional customs, child marriage is still significantly practiced across India.
The 205th Law Commission Report cites significant statistics on the scale of child marriages in India [1]. According to the report, in a study carried out in 1998 to 1999 on women aged 15-19 years, it was found that 33.8% were currently married or in a union. In 2000 the UN Population Division recorded that 9.5% of boys and 35.7 % of girls aged between 15-19 were married. The National Family Health Survey of 2005-2006 (NFHS-3) [2] carried out in twenty-nine states confirmed that 45% of women currently aged 20-24 years were married before the age of eighteen years, with 58.5% in rural areas and 27.9% in urban areas (27.9%) and exceeded 50% in eight states. Only five states of Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Kerala, Goa and Jammu and Kashmir report less than 20% of women married before 18. A Unicef Report prepared for a state consultation on Child Marriage in West Bengal in November 2009 states that over 39.5% of Indian girls are married before they are 18 years and 25.4% of girls are married by the age of 15. West Bengal has the 7th highest percentage of under age marriages amongst all states, where one in every two girls are married during childhood. In West Bengal 56% of girls are married by the age of 18 according to NFHS(3). Districts of Malda, Birbhum, Bankura, Murshidabad, South Dinajpur, Puruia, South 24 Parganas, Nadia and Cooch Behar have the highest incidence of child marriage. The Unicef report significantly mentions that even in the non slum areas in Calcutta where families are wealthier and girls are likely to have better education, more than a quarter of girls are married in childhood. In West Bengal, more than 25% girls are married to men who are ten years older or more. 7% of girls begin child bearing by the time they are 15, 34.8% by the age of 18 and almost 50% of girls are pregnant by the age of 19 in this state. The NFHS-3 findings further revealed that 16% of women aged 15-19 were already mothers or pregnant at the time of the survey.[3] The NFHS(3) stated that more than half of the Indian women in the age group of 20-49 were married before the legal minimum age of 18 compared to 16% of men in the similar age group who were married by 18.The 2001 Census of India revealed that 300,000 girls under 15 had given birth to at least one child.
A Budget for Pranab Babu’s People
March 23, 2010
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati
Elaborating on how in a democratic republic capital exercises its power by means of corruption and by an alliance of the government and the stock exchange, Lenin writes “[a] democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell … it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.” (The State and Revolution, 1917)
Amazing continuity of neo-liberal policy for the last two decades is a testimony that capitalism is getting ever more entrenched in India. Phases of NDA, UF, UPA + Left, UPA sans the Left notwithstanding, each budget has become a familiar exercise for redistributing wealth of the nation to the already-wealthy, thus securing domination of the powerful over the powerless. Strange too is the reiteration of phrases such as inclusive growth. One finds it right at the top of the budget documents: as one of the three priorities of the government. The substance of the budget, of course, flies in the face of this putative priority. Let us see how.
General Strike in Greece
February 26, 2010
By Panayiotis T. Manolakos, Sanhati
Introduction and Pictures
Statement from Communist Party of Greece (Marxist-Leninist)
Statement from SYRIZA
Statement from Communist Party of Greece
What is Neo-liberalism, Practically? - A Picture of Finance Capital, or The Income Pyramid Under Capitalism
February 26, 2010
By Deepankar Basu, Sanhati
The ideology of neoliberalism: trickle down theory of growth and distribution. The reality a tad different: the gushing up of income and wealth. But, in a manner of speaking, we always knew that this is what neoliberalism was all about; we knew, in other words, that the neoliberal turn of the late 1970s was meant to facilitate the flow of income, wealth and power up the societal pyramid, that it was meant to restore the economic and political clout that “finance capital” had lost during the post World War II period. We knew that it was meant to efficiently pump the economic surplus out of the working people and channel it up the income ladder to the top fraction of the capitalist class. That neoliberalism performed this role even more effectively than expected by its hardest-core champions emerges clearly from recent studies of income and wealth trends of the past few decades.
The Independent Film Movement in Bengal: A History of the Super 8 mm
February 26, 2010
This article appears in Canvas: Films of Movement, A movement in Films
Tracing the beginnings
Saumen Guha is the one person who can be undoubtedly attributed the credit of introducing the Super 8 mm format among some interested students in Calcutta. To a large extent, he also initiated the culture of hands-on independent film making in Calcutta in the early 1980s. Saumen Guha is however better known for following up the historic Archana Guha case against the former deputy commissioner of police Ranjit Guha Neogi. Strangely enough, this historic legal battle has an interesting relation to the history of independent film making movement in Bengal.
The Two Month Long Jute Workers’ Strike in West Bengal: Hopes and Despair
February 25, 2010
By Sushovan Dhar
Jute mill workers in West Bengal called off their indefinite strike after signing a tripartite agreement in the presence of the minister in charge of the labour department at Kolkata on February 13, 2010.
The Economics, Politics, and Ethics of Non-violence
February 8, 2010
By Radha D’Souza
The devil’s advocate?
It was a bizarre spectacle, Karan Thapar interviewing Dr. Binayak Sen on CNN-IBN on Maoist violence in India. The subject of Maoist violence, more than any other at present, agitates the powers that be, including the media. The choreography of the debate follows a similar pattern. Invite a respectable person(s) for a “debate” on the issue of violence, lure them into believing they are invited because the media wants to present a contrary point of view; once there, corner the person, prevent them from making their point of view, heckle them if necessary, and somehow wring a statement, even if by slip of tongue, that can be bandied about as endorsement for the military offensive against the Maoists, as a moral justification for the so called “war on terror”. This desperation for moral endorsement from respected citizens like Dr. Sen, is itself evidence of the moral bankruptcy of the powers that be.
Family - A Site of Despair Also: Endorsed through South Asian Domestic Violence Laws
February 8, 2010
The feminist perspective to family is very different from the original male stream sociological discourse on family which considered it as a group of individuals related to one another by blood ties, marriage or adoption, who form an economic unit, the adult members of which are responsible for the upbringing of children [1]. Juliet Mitchel provides the radical feminist understanding of the family.
Annual Chronic Problem in North Bengal Tea Gardens
February 8, 2010
This study, from Nagarik Mancha and NESPON, outlines the causes behind the closure of tea gardens in North Bengal, the demand of workers from the ground, the extent of implementation of schemes like NREGA and the role of NGO’s, and the functioning of Operative Management Committees (OMC) which are often glorified as outstanding workers’ initiatives.
The Almond Workers of Karawal Nagar, Delhi: A Report
February 8, 2010
By Amit Basole, Sanhati.
I live in the United States and often bring almonds as gifts when I visit India. They are cheaper in the United States I say. It seems one reason they are cheaper is because my countrymen process them for two dollars a day, among other places in a locality in northeast Delhi, called Karawal Nagar.
Statement from poets, academics, and activists on Swapan Dasgupta’s death in UAPA custody
February 3, 2010
Swapan Dasgupta, editor and publisher of the Bengali edition of the political magazine People’s March passed away on 2nd February, while he was in the custody of West Bengal police. He had been arrested in October 2009 under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), for allegedly publishing Maoist literature, along with other political activists. Till date, he had not been chargesheeted. As per the official records, People’s March is a legal publication and therefore not a banned literature as claimed by sections of mainstream press.
Dantewada, Dec 14th to 17th 2009: Three days in the cauldron, on the eve of the Padyatra
January 11, 2010
By Amit Basole, Sanhati. Photos by Rudra Rakshit Saran.
“Because God is in favor of equal distribution of everything, so God is a Maoist. Arrest God.” Proclaims Himanshu Kumar dramatically, an impish grin on his face, to reporters gathered in front of him. We are all sitting in the sun outside the rented premises of the Vanavasi Chetna Ashram (VCA). Himanshuji and his co-workers rented this house in Dantewada to continue their work after the Chhattisgarh Government sent a force of around a 1000 men and 4 bulldozers one early morning in May, 2009 to demolish the old Ashram situated in Kovalnar, about 12 kilometers from the district town of Dantewada in the Bastar region of the state. There is a formidable tree outside the house, with a chabutara, a platform built around it. Here Himanshuji sits early in the morning and plies his charkha. He continues dialog about this work and about the political situation in Bastar with people, adivasis, activists, reporters, who come and go.
A Year of Lalgarh
January 11, 2010
By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati. A part of the Lalgarh page.
Lalgarh – the name resonates in the hearts and minds of struggling people all over India: adivasis and dalits, farmers and fisherfolk, workers and students. In West Bengal it has taken its place along with Singur and Nandigram in songs and slogans of resolve and resistance. Wherever people are fighting for their livelihoods and their dignity, resisting the onslaught of state and capital, Lalgarh now provides inspiration and courage. Most importantly, for the long-oppressed adivasis, Lalgarh has already entered the annals of legendary struggles of the likes of the santhal “hul” led by Sidhu and Kanhu, and the historic rebellions led by the likes of Birsha Munda, Tilka Majhi and Chand Bhairab.
Sambhu Singh vs. South City: the battle against corporate retail and real estate in a microcosm
December 19, 2009
By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati.
Since December 25, something is happening in Kolkata which might turn into a major battle against corporate retail and real estate. Many of you, who are from or have stayed in Kolkata, know about the huge South City complex (company logo: Live the way the world does), consisting of the largest mall in Kolkata and a huge residential complex consisting of 4 tower buildings. The complex has come up on the grounds of the erstwhile Usha Engineering works, a factory employing around 7000 people, which was shut down and the land handed over to South City. The workers were all thrown out and their living quarters were demolished.
The Individual Versus the Common in the Recognition of Forest Rights Act, 2006
December 16, 2009
By Sirisha Naidu, Sanhati
On December 29th 2006, the Indian parliament promulgated a legislation to “recognise and vest the forest rights and occupation in forest land in forest dwelling”[1] to adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers, “who have been residing in forests for generations but whose rights could not be recorded”. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, not only recognises individual land rights, which in principle must be jointly registered in the names of the spouses in case of married persons, it also recognizes community rights to use, manage, and protect forest resources. Further, this Act stipulates the conditions for relocation and rehabilitation in “critical wildlife habitations” with the requirement of “free informed consent” from the displaced and the offer of alternative land. The Act, moreover, holds precedence over all other forest and wildlife related laws.
Myriad Legal Meanings of Domestic Violence in South Asian Legal Systems
December 15, 2009
By Rukmini Sen. Columnist, Sanhati.
Domestic Violence is the crime of physical and sexual abuse perpetrated against one family member by another family member. It is a broad term encompassing spouse abuse, child abuse, sibling abuse and an abuse of a parent by a child, abuse of an elderly or handicapped family member. It is an area that has usually been left out of the ambit of public discussion, because the familial space is considered sacred. The UN has only a declaration against violence, which itself makes the issue seem less important.
Panchayat System, Rural Classes, and Agriculture in West Bengal
December 15, 2009
By Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri. Columnist, Sanhati. Translated by Soumya Guhathakurta.
This article, written in 2008, discusses the agricultural policy of the West Bengal government as outlined by Suryakanta Mishra, a CPI(M) leader, in a party journal.
In 2007, an important West Bengal state level leader of the CPI(M), Suryakanta Mishra, has set out to explain the agricultural policy of his party and its government in West Bengal, in a party journal [1].
The article has as usual claimed credit for ‘Operation Barga’ and the distribution of surplus vested land of 30 years ago, soon after the Left Front Government came into power in 1977. And why not? This 30 year old act is still the capital out of which the CPI(M) flogs political return in rural West Bengal. However, it will not be impertinent to point out in 2008 that the economic impact of recording/legitimizing share croppers/bargadars has been called into question by recent research. A sample survey [2] by Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mukherjee found that between 1982-95 production in agricultural holdings in West Bengal had increased by 5% as a result of barga recording, by 6% due to local irrigation projects, by 100% due to credit from the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), and by 500% due to distribution of agricultural ‘mini kits’.
An account of the trip to rehabilitated villages near Dantewada - Part 2: The visit to Lingagiri
December 15, 2009
This page is a continuation of Part 1 of the travelogue.
By Siddhartha Mitra, Sanhati.
Lingagiri: experiences at the first village
I must have dosed off for a few hours. When I woke up, it was just getting light. I quickly showered and got ready, and came down to find Kopa waiting for me on the outside. We took off on his bike right away.
The roads had turned to slush. It was packed mud and stones. The bumpy ride soon banished all thoughts of IED’s from my head, as I was more eager not to take a fall as Kopa sped madly, weaving through the slush and the potted holes. There was a tarred road in some parts, which were great relief.
Sandwich Theory and Operation Green Hunt
December 15, 2009
By Radha D’Souza. Guest Contributor, Sanhati.
The ‘Sandwich Theory’
I was piqued by the phrase ‘sandwich theory’ when I first heard it from Delhi students. They were referring to the views of a section of articulate, influential, middle India in the wake of the controversies over Sadwa Judum in Chattisgarh and now Operation Green Hunt. The ‘theory’, if we may call it that, holds that the Adivasis and rural poor are caught in the crossfire between armed Maoist ‘terrorists’ on the one side and a militarised Indian state on the other (see Report of the Independent Citizen’s Initiative on Chattisgarh for example). It is the duty of middle India, according to the ‘sandwich theory’, to ‘rescue’ the hapless Adivasis and rural poor from the armed combatants. Both combatants have ulterior motives: the Maoists wish to take political power through the barrel of their guns, and the India state wishes to grab Adivasi lands and natural resources and hand them over to corporations, foreign and domestic. Thus, the ‘sandwich theory’ sees middle India as the saviour of the nation as envisioned in the Indian Constitution. The apparent neutrality of the theory is appealing to many. Equally, many are uneasy about ‘sandwich theory’ not least because it frames the question as one of ‘violence versus non-violence’ and forces them to given a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer with little room for debate (e.g. NDTV, ‘The Buck Stops Here’ 23/09/09, 07/10/09, 20/10/09). The privileged statuses of the proponents of this theory, the positions they occupy in academia, media, institutions of governance, and such adds to the scepticism of privilege that many even in middle India have developed over the years since Independence. Although there is widespread opposition to Sadwa Judum and Operation Green Hunt, their understanding of it divides middle India. The ‘sandwich theory’ merits reflection, therefore.
Falta SEZ in West Bengal - A fact-finding report on workers and environmental impact
November 26, 2009
By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati
This is a report on the Falta SEZ, the first SEZ of India, located around 55 kilometres from the heart of Calcutta city in West Bengal.
A Citizens’ Report Card on Special Economic Zones
November 24, 2009
Summary by Panayiotis T. Manolakos, Sanhati.
The Citizens Report Card on Special Economic Zones (CRC-SEZ) is a report continuing the radical articulation of people’s dissent over special economic zones (SEZ). This report presents much useful quantitative and qualitative information on SEZs, and as such will be of interest to concerned citizens, social activists, political workers, organic intellectuals, and academicians.
The SEZ has been significant throughout the history of capitalist development. For example, an early avatar of the SEZ was born with the “putting-out system” during the early phase in the capitalist development of England. In that historical context, a section of the merchants in certain towns realized that various regulations of the guilds were prohibitive with respect to their economic interests. Therefore, the merchants evaded the regulations of the guilds by adoption of a policy of sub-contracting into the countryside. Raw materials were distributed to rural households for the production of textiles. The putting-out system enabled the extortion of surplus into the coffers of early capitalists by means of non-compliance with “burdensome” regulations. This capitalist policy has been re-born in a variety of forms throughout the capitalist period, including the SEZ Act (2005).
An account of the trip to rehabilitated villages near Dantewada - Part 1: The visit to Munder
November 24, 2009
By Siddhartha Mitra, Sanhati
This travelogue was written in October 2009, following a visit to rehabilitated villages near Dantewada, Chhattisgarh. The first part is on a visit to the village of Munder. The account will be continued in the next update.
“Spots”, I said.
I meant stains, but I said spots. Easier to understand.
“Chai se,” he said impassively (From tea). Evidently, he did not think much of them. And thankfully he did not prefix his reply with a “Sir”.
“Yeh chai se?”, I stared at him, incredulously.(These, from tea?)
Without arguing any further, he took the bed-sheets away; presumably to change them.
Analysis of Classes in India: A Preliminary Note on the Industrial Bourgeoisie and Middle Class
November 24, 2009
By Deepankar Basu, Sanhati. (Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
In a previous paper [Basole and Basu (2009)] an attempt to begin an analysis of social classes in contemporary India organized around the idea of economic surplus was initiated, by revisiting the 1970s mode of production debate. The focus in Basole and Basu (2009) was on the rural classes and the unorganized industrial and service sector workers. In this paper, I extend that analysis by shifting attention to the classes that had been left out in Baole and Basu (2009): the industrial bourgeoisie and what might be called the middle class.
The dangers are great, the possibilities immense: On the current political struggle in India
November 8, 2009
By Saroj Giri. Nov 8 2009. First published in Monthly Review.
”
What made Spence dangerous to the bourgeoisie was not that he was a proletarian nor that he had ideas opposed to private property but that he was both.
” — Peter Linebaugh [2]
‘Poorest of the Poor’ and Politics
It is always easy to criticize and dismiss an argument in its weakest formulation. Attacking the policies of the security-centric Indian state establishment, particularly the Home Minister, today does not need much daring. So let us instead take the benign, almost humanist utterance of the Prime Minister in his address to state police chiefs in September 2009: don’t forget, he said, that the Maoist movement has support among the poorest of the poor in the country. Those on the left opposing the impending armed state offensive often invoke this quote from the PM to buttress their point about how these are really poor people, innocent civilians and ordinary villagers who will suffer if the offensive is undertaken. [3]
Unemployment as a choice
November 8, 2009
By Deepankar Basu, Sanhati
What is of course interesting is that the school of macroeconomics popularised by Professor Mulligan’s distinguished colleagues at the University of Chicago and elsewhere known as the Real Business Cycle (RBC) view of macroeconomics does not even recognize the existence of unemployment. In case you have missed that, let me state it again: for the RBC view of macroeconomics, unemployment, as we understand that term, is a fiction; it does not exist. So, how does this strand of macroeconomics view the fluctuations of employment that goes with the typical business cycle? Here is the story they tell.
Labour’s right to run the State
October 22, 2009
By Dipanjan Rai Chaudhuri. Columnist, Sanhati. Reprinted from Frontier, Autumn Number 2009.
Part I. Is there new ideological content in “Maoism”?
Part II. People to Exercise Economic Power
Legal regulation on surrogacy and reaffirming motherhood: Conflicts and Contradictions
October 21, 2009
By Rukmini Sen. Columnist, Sanhati
Surrogacy is proposed to being legalized and regulated in India. According to the Black’s Law Dictionary, surrogacy means the process of carrying and delivering a child for another person. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica defines ‘surrogate motherhood’ as the practice in which a woman bears a child for a couple unable to produce children in the usual way. The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilization and Embryology or the Warnock Report (1984) defines surrogacy as the practice whereby one woman carries a child for another with the intention that the child should be handed over after birth.
Primary Accumulation qua Development Terrorism
October 21, 2009
By Panayiotis T. Manolakos, Sanhati
The origins of capitalism, Marx maintained, are often legitimized as a mythology about the past. Such legitimation takes the form of a creation myth for the capitalist mode of production. If the primary accumulation is a matter for the present, however, constituting the principal contradiction of capitalist development, at least in certain zones, then the ruling classes require a mythology and a policy to legitimize their expropriations of the people’s property. Such a mythology denies the people their property rights in the forms of access to agricultural land, forests, and the commons. The ideology and practice of these dispossessions and its correlates take the form of developmental terrorism, as Amit Bhaduri has observed.
Statement against Government of India’s planned military offensive in adivasi-populated regions: National and international signatories
October 12, 2009
Sanhati (www.sanhati.com), a collective of activists/academics who have been working in solidarity with peoples’ movements in India by providing information and analysis, took the initiative to bring together voices from around the world against the Government of India’s planned military offensive in Central India. A statement and a background note were drafted in consultation with Indian activists, and duly circulated for endorsement.
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Failure of economics to failure of capitalism? : A summary and new perspectives on the Great Recession
September 21, 2009
By Deepankar Basu, Sanhati.
On a visit to the London School of Economics last year, the Queen of England, expressed surprise at the apparent failure of the economics profession to predict the financial crisis and the Great Recession that came in its wake. “Why did no one see this coming?” asked the Queen to Luis Garicano, a professor of economics at LSE. Garicano’s colleague and economist Tim Besley and eminent historian of government Paul Hennessy stepped up to the task and attempted to answer the Queen in a short letter [PDF] written to her on behalf of the British Academy. In the letter they concluded that “the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.”
Maoists, the boycott of elections, and violence: A debate
September 21, 2009
Participation in electoral politics has always been a hotly debated topic among the Indian radical left organisations - this was reignited during the recently held Lok Sabha elections. Sumanta Banerjee, in an article published in EPW (May 2009), discussed issues related to the boycott of elections and in that context analysed the politics of CPI(Maoist). In response to that, an article written by by Azad, a spokesperson of the CPI(Maoist), was received by various media sources and journals in August 2009, addressing several questions/criticisms raised by Sumanta Banerjee. Both commentaries are published below. - Ed.
In his Commentary in the Economic & Political Weekly, Issue No 18, Vol 44, dated May 2, 2009, Mr. Sumanta Banerjee, who came into renown for his book In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India (1980), makes an attempt to analyse the boycott call issued by the CPI(Maoist) in the recently-held Lok Sabha elections based on the Interview by Azad, the spokesperson of the Central Committee of CPI(Maoist), which had appeared in its Maoist Information Bulletin No 7.
Decriminalizing homosexuality in India - A step forward….but
September 21, 2009
By Rukmini Sen. Columnist, Sanhati.
The writer teaches sociology of law at National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.
2nd July 2009 is a significant date for anybody who follows social movements and its interface with the legal system in India. The Delhi High Court passed a judgment to the popularly known Naz Foundation petition decriminalizing homosexuality in India. It declared that insofar as S 377 criminalizes consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution. (Para 130 Page 105 of judgment) Certain observations may be made by reading the 105 page judgment.
The situation in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh today
September 21, 2009
This article presents a summary of the current situation in Chhattisgarh, and also has a translated leaflet from the recent rally of BSKSS in Bastar.
By Sudha Bharadwaj. Columnist, Sanhati
This article is written on behalf of Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (Mazdoor Karyakarta Committee), C/o CMM Office, Labour Camp, Jamul, District Durg, Chhattisgarh.
The Government of Chhattisgarh admits that […]
Healthcare in India: Features of one of the most privatised systems in the world
September 1, 2009
By Pinaki Chaudhuri, Sanhati
In India, the healthcare industry is dominated by private capital and its growth spiral is almost unregulated. On the other hand, 65 per cent of our population does not have access to modern medicine. It is even worse if one looks at the rural/urban divide : about 80 per cent of doctors, 75 per cent of dispensaries and 60 per cent of hospitals are located in urban areas. Since the process of liberalisation kicked in, the health infrastructure provided by the government has almost broken down. The overall private-public spending on healthcare is very little - it accounts for 4.8 per cent of India’s GDP. Of this, 3.6 per cent is contributed by the private sector and only the balance 1.2 per cent by the Government.
Despite such bleak conditions there is hardly any co-ordinated public demand for revamping the healthcare sector so that proper services are equitably accessible to all segments of the population. In such circumstances, it is instructive to revisit two in-depth studies (published in 2006) which can help us to get a better understanding of the situation in India.
Report on a recent mass rally against land acquisition in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand
September 1, 2009
By Manali Chakrabarti, Sanhati.
Main yehan Nandigram bana doonga (I’ll make this a Nandigram)
This is what the Deputy Commissioner of Hazaribagh, Mr Vinay Chaubey, said on the 8th of August 2009, to a group of villagers in Arahara village, in the state of Jharkhand, who have been refusing to part with their land for compensation. The heavily armed police cover gave credence to this arrogant assertion.
The 2009 Budget and the Political Economy of the Indian state
August 16, 2009
By Ramaa Vasudevan. Guest columnist, Sanhati
The present regime is caught between exigencies of continuing to roll forth the neo-liberal juggernaut that has allowed the corporate elite to reap a bonanza of profits and the recognition that the pernicious impact of these policies is fomenting deep distress and discontent amongst the working poor. The union budget is in a sense a signal of policy direction and provides some critical insights into the political economy of the Indian state. The crucial question is whether the budget reflects any shift in the neo-liberal tide with a genuine attempt to address the inequities of the recent economic growth process.
Hating Mayawati’s statues – a story of false concerns and true fears - an inquiry into the elite mind
August 15, 2009
By Garga Chatterjee, Sanhati. August 15 2009
Mayawati, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and unquestionably the most popular living Dalit leader of India is at the center of a controversy. She is building immense statues to Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar, Manyavar Kanshi Ram and to herself and in the process generating much resentment among the English-speaking public as well as her political adversaries.
Figures ranging from Rs. 1000-2000 crore have said to have been allocated towards these constructions and have resulted in a veritable outrage among certain sections of the society. Who is outraged and who is not, why the outrage and what does that tell us about the outraged?
The first summit of the fastest growing developing economies (BRIC) - An economic critique
July 14, 2009
By Sushovan Dhar. July 14, 2009.
The first-ever summit of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) took place at Yekaterinburg at Russia on 16th June 2009 calling for a more diversified international monetary system (BRIC refers to the fast growing developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The acronym was first coined and prominently used by Goldman Sachs in 2001.Goldman Sachs argued that, since they are developing rapidly, by 2050 the combined economies of the BRICs could eclipse the combined economies of the current richest countries of the world). The core focus of the meeting, attended by President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chinese president Hu Jintao and Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva was to improve the current global financial situation, to discuss how the four countries could collectively work better in the future and to reform the financial institutions. At the end of the summit, the BRIC nations suggested the need for a new global reserve currency that is ‘diversified, stable and predictable’.
Amlashol: Unkept promises of development and lessons for Lalgarh
July 7, 2009
It was only five years ago that a village in the Jangalmahal of West Bengal hit the headlines – Amlashol. Today, another part of the Jangalmahal called Lalgarh is receiving lavish promises of development in the wake of a massive revolt. “Rapid implementation” of developmental schemes is being promised to the people of Lalgarh.
It is necessary to study Amlasole’s journey – because five years ago there too the government had promised a plethora of developmental schemes, in the same manner.
The Dark Side: A Political Travelogue through Orissa
June 29, 2009
By Shubhranshu Choudhary. Columnist, Sanhati.
Traveling through cut-off villages near Balimela reservoir, to parts of the Dandakaranya forest and the Niyamgiri hills, the writer encounters villagers who have been paying the price of “India’s economic miracle”. His guide-book promises a great place for scenic beauty and adventure water sport - he finds instead darkness, hospitals five hours away, aluminum behemoths displacing tribals with impunity - and growing mutinies.
Lalgarh Movement – Mass uprising of adivasis in West Bengal
June 28, 2009
Feb 23 2010: The Silda attack: Understanding the role of the EFR camp in reoccupation strategies
Feb 23 2010: Lalmohan Tudu and two others murdered by CRPF
Jan 11 2010: Lalgarh - An account from Forum Against Monopolistic Aggression (FAMA) [PDF, Bengali] »
Lok Sabha Elections 2009
June 27, 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 (also appeared in Guruchandali.com). [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
The Maoist “Problem” and the Democratic Left in India
June 22, 2009
By Saroj Giri. Guest Contributor, Sanhati. June 22, 2009
This article studies what the author calls the “frustrating predicament” of the dissident Left in India upholding so-called democratic spaces: “non-violent social movements have reached a dead-end, NGOs are “paltu shers” (caged lions), and yet Maoists cannot be politically supported, even though “they are the only people able to make a dent” “- ed.
Maoism in India: Panic or Panacea?
June 19, 2009
By Nandini Chandra. Guest contributor, Sanhati. Paper presented at Left Forum 2009.
This paper seeks to place the present panic over Maoism in India in perspective through a consideration of the interlinking lenses of the state, media, civil society and the official/mainstream “left”. It starts with examining the gaps in P. Sainath’s dedicated reporting on rural misery, as expressing certain key features of official left ideology, starting with the cult book Everybody Loves a Good Drought (1996). It moves on to an exploration of the political context in which the National Commission Report on Maoist affected states (2008), authored by independent civil society activist-experts emerges. In its sympathetic approach to the Maoist menace, the report surely departs from the official Left position and yet in its skewed understanding of the problem, it remains deeply consonant with it. Finally, it points to the dangers of the merging of state, media, and civil society interests and what implications this has for a class based understanding of the rural masses.
The “People’s Movement Left” and Rammanohar Lohia: an evaluation at a time of crisis
June 13, 2009
By Amit Basole, Sanhati
Simplifying matters somewhat at the present juncture three significant streams of Left political practice can be identified in India: first, the Communist Parliamentary Left or what Dipankar Basu has termed the Social Democratic Left (SDL) which includes the CPM, CPI and their allies, second what may be termed the Communist non-Parliamentary Left (CnPL) which includes CPI (Maoist), CPI (ML) and smaller Maoist Parties and third, the People’s Movement Left (PML), sometimes called the “non-Party Left,” which is also largely non-Parliamentary (though for reasons different from the Maoist Left). PML includes various organizations belonging to the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) and other related movements (such as the anti- caste movement, the new farmers’ movements).
Coolies under attack: What to make of the racist violence on Indians in Australia?
June 13, 2009
By Garga Chatterjee, Sanhati. June 13, 2009
The shocking racist attacks on an young Indian student in Australia might bring flashbacks of such assaults meted out to another young man named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi aboard a train in South Africa, more than a hundred years ago.
Gravest displacement, Bravest resistance: The struggle of adivasis of Bastar, Chhattisgarh against imperialist corporate landgrab
June 1, 2009
By Sudha Bharadwaj. Columnist, Sanhati
I don’t live in Bastar, and I am not an adivasi.
But I have been active in the working class movement of Chhattisgarh for the past 22 years, a movement which became legendary under the charismatic leadership of Comrade Shankar Guha Niyogi. And I strongly feel that understanding what is happening in Bastar today is of the greatest significance not only to us in Chhattisgarh, but to all those who want to understand imperialist onslaught and corporate land grab, particularly in the resource-rich adivasi areas; for all of us involved nationwide in the anti-displacement movement which is day on day becoming a fierce life-and-death struggle against all odds; and in fact for all of us in the peoples’ movements who are faced with the abysmally criminal failure of democratic institutions and shrinking democratic spaces on the one hand, and growing repression on the other.
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