Will the “Great Indian Middle Class” show up, please?
April 9, 2008
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
March 25, 2008
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.
Social democracy meets postmodernism: the secret pleasures of being Stalinist
December 26, 2007
By Saroj Giri, Sanhati. Open for comments
We are told that the CPIM is mounting a Stalinist defence of the Stalinist horrors they enacted in Nandigram and elsewhere. Wondered what a possible post-modern defence would look like? Something like Professor Patnaik’s? Perhaps it is senseless to raise such a question. But there are parallels. Does not the Negri-inspired postmodernist transmogrification of imperialism into a cool, decentred, frictionless Empire amount to a defence of imperialism?
Nandigram and the Blind Faith in Industrialization
December 21, 2007
From the June 2007 issue of the Hindi Journal “Samayik Varta”. Comments enabled.
Original article by Sunil. Translated by Amit Basole (abasole@gmail.com).
The events in Singur and Nandigram and before that the struggles in Kalinga Nagar and Dadri have achieved at least this much; the intoxicated ruling class proceeding rapidly on the path of globalization has been slowed down and a debate has been initiated in the country. The government has been forced to rethink matters somewhat.
The Social Democratic Left and its Apologists (open for comments)
December 17, 2007
By Dipankar Basu, Sanhati
Prof. Prabhat Patnaik’s (PP henceforth) recent diatribe against the Left’s presumed intellectual detractors strikes one as decidedly odd. For it is obvious from the very beginning that PP is carefully setting up a straw man to be knocked out with a flourish a few paragraphs down the line. Conflating the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] with the Left, or with what he sometimes refers to as the “organized Left”, and equating a critique of CPI(M) with a negation of politics are the two rhetorical devices repeatedly used by PP to achieve his goal. After glossing over crucial facts, repeating some oft-heard falsehoods and offering his definition of political praxis (to which I agree with minor reservations!), PP discovers messianic moralism as the ground on which the recent critique of CPI(M) rests. With this stupendous discovery PP’s straw man is fully constructed; it remains to knock him down to oblivion and this PP does with his usual elan.
Fear of the Unfamiliar – Responding to Patnaik (open for comments)
December 16, 2007
By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati
A spectre is haunting the CPI(M)- the spectre of the People. All the powers of the old Left (or to borrow their term, the “organized Left”) have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Prakash Karat, Prabhat Patnaik and N. Ram, party cadres and state police.
The first step in the process of exorcism is delegitimization. The resistance of the people of Singur and Nandigram has long been attempted to be delegitimized by attributing it to the so-called unholy alliance of the Trinamool Congress, Jamaat and the Maoists. That is familiar terrain, to brand all opposition as the handiwork of right wing or ultra Left forces, and hence deny it’s political legitimacy. However, what was unfamiliar for the CPI(M) was “so many intellectuals suddenly turn(ing) against the Party with such amazing fury on this issue”. That tens of thousands of common people would accompany these intellectuals, many of them long time fellow-travellers and supporters of the Left Front, out on the streets in a spontaneous show of outrage and protest was something totally unfamiliar to the CPI(M), which has converted “the people” into a fetish. And, Prabhat Patnaik’s essay seems to have been born out of a fear of this unfamiliar.
You are not what you were - Ashok Mitra after 14th November, 2007
November 15, 2007
By Ashok Mitra. Translated from Bengali by Debarshi Das, Sanhati.
Till death I would remain guilty to my conscience if I keep mum about the happenings of the last two weeks in West Bengal over Nandigram. One gets torn by pain too. Those against whom I am speaking have been my comrades at some time. The party whose leadership they are adorning has been the centre of my dreams and works for last sixty years.
The No-spin Zone - Nandigram, facts and myths (ongoing commentary)
November 11, 2007
Nov. 26, 2007 - Ration riots - The Disconnect and the Connections - Debarshi Das
Nov. 24, 2007 - Sushilbabur Maaneboi, or how to tell a Sushil from a Harmad and other exam questions - Cheatsheet by Saikat Bandyopadhyay
Nov. 24, 2007 - The Fig Leaf Falls - Debarshi Das
Nov. 21, 2007- An Autumn of Discontent - Debarshi Das
Nov. 18, 2007: The spark of Nandigram - Debarshi Das
Nov.16, 2007: The CPI(M)’s Harmad Bahini - human shields, rape as a weapon and other parallels with private militias the world over - Siddhartha Mitra
Nov. 16, 2007 - Which side are you on, Mr Bhattacharjee? Neo-liberal games and the cloak of turf war - Debarshi Das
Nov. 15, 2007 - How long shall we sing the TINA tune? Nandigram comes to me as burning torch of courage. - Suvarup Saha
November 13, 2007 - “Bol ki lab aazad hain tere” - Debarshi Das
November 12, 2007 - The struggle of memory against forgetting… - Debarshi Das
November 11, 2007 - Are Maoists the new WMDs? - Debarshi Das
November 11, 2007 - Who is fighting this turf-war, and why sides need to be taken - Partho Sarathi Ray
Penetrating the Retail Sector in Bengal - the Reliance Juggernaut (Blog article, open for comments)
July 31, 2007
By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati
The latest neo-liberal onslaught on the lives and livelihoods of working people in India is taking place in the retail sector. After agriculture, the retail sector employs the largest number of people in India. Of the 40 million people involved in retailing as an economic activity, 0.5 million are in organized retail whereas around 39.5 million people are employed in unorganized retail trade. This includes all sorts of small retailing operations ranging from neighbourhood “mom-and-pop” shops to street vendors to small farmers who travel to cities daily to sell their produce to the small-scale transporters who transport the retail goods. These 40 million adults in the retail sector roughly translates into 160 million dependents, making the retail sector the source of livelihood for approximately a sixth of India’s population. The decade of liberalization, which has seen stagnation in the agrarian economy and large scale job losses in the manufacturing sector, has pushed more and more people into different aspects of retailing in absence of any other opportunities.
Chronological progress of Nandigram case (PIL filed by Association of Lawyers of Calcutta High Court against the State)
July 27, 2007
A reverse chronological background of the case is presented below.
A History of Trade Union Movements at Hindmotors, and the Recent Strike
June 13, 2007
Till 1990, almost 16,000 people worked at Hindustan Motors (HM). Among the unions there, it was CITU (Center of Indian Trade Unions) that was most powerful. As a trade union, CITU was notorious for its internecine fights and factionalism throughout Hooghly district. Towards the beginning of the 90s, the then CITU secretary Maloy Ghosh was murdered by a rival faction near HM station.
Nandigram and the Unravelling of Social Democracy - Blog article (open for comments)
June 12, 2007
By Saroj Giri, Sanhati
Movements against displacement have for a long time been understood in India largely in pre-political terms of an almost natural opposition between an undifferentiated modernity of global capitalism and equally undifferentiated local communities of traditional societies. Kalinganagar and Nandigram, in putting up a tenacious resistance to capital and the state, have however made such viewpoints untenable and call for a political understanding of movements against displacement. Events in Nandigram therefore will be here presented in the light of the decomposition of social democracy represented by the CPIM. The jolt of Nandigram comes at a time when, after long years of social democratic containment of working class movements, the party was just settling down to actively spearhead the march of capital in the state.
Censorship or Democratization? - Venezuela, Chavez, and Freedom of Speech
June 7, 2007
Open for comments.
As far as world public opinion is concerned, as reflected in the international media, the pronouncements of freedom of expression groups, and of miscellaneous governments, Venezuela has finally taken the ultimate step to prove its opposition right: that Venezuela is heading towards a dictatorship. Judging by these pronouncements, freedom of speech is becoming ever more restricted in Venezuela as a result of the non-renewal of the broadcast license of the oppositional TV network RCTV. With RCTV going off the air at midnight of May 27th, the country’s most powerful opposition voice has supposedly been silenced.
Gregory Wilpert contests this view, reporting on the landscape of Venezuelan media, its composition then and now, the nature of RCTV and its role in the coup of 2002. Also included is an appeal of support from Michael Lebowitz and other intellectuals.
Some questions about agrarian structure in contemporary India - Blog article, open for comments
May 15, 2007
By Dipankar Basu, Sanhati (courtesy RadicalNotes)
The first thing that probably needs to be clarified in the study of agrarian structure in India (and other parts of the periphery) is to understand agrarian structure as an articulation of various modes of production under which socially necessary labour is being undertaken. The concept of socio-economic formation, as an articulation of various modes of production, but distinct from the concept of mode of production itself might prove useful here. I feel that this is a very important point that is often ignored in much Marxist theorising.
Once we agree to understand agrarian structure as an articulation of various modes of production, several questions immediately arise. One, what are the various modes of production that are articulated in various forms in India today? Capitalist and pre-capitalist modes. That much is clear and widely agreed upon.
Critique of Frontline article Index of Equity on Land Distribution in West Bengal - Blog article open for comments
May 9, 2007
By Aditi Sarkar, Sanhati
Aparajita Bakshi (2007) in her recent article Index of Equity constructs, in her own words, “a simple index of access to agricultural land” to claim the “socially broad based land reform” achievements by the government of West Bengal. This article professes the great strides that the government of West Bengal has made in achieving equality by enacting its policies of distributing land among the Dalits and the Adivasis.
Equity was measured simplistically as some combination of the fraction of land owned by certain under-privileged groups compared to the size of these groups to the total population. Even if this measure was called land-distribution equity, instead of equity index, it is ill-conceived. It does not, for example, factor in fundamental qualities of the land like soil type, its arability and its proximity to irrigation facilities.
Development and Venezuela - A Story
April 23, 2007
By Saikat Bandyopadhyay, Sanhati - Coutesy Rowak
This essay is a case-study of the nature of development in Venezuela, focussing on the protest of indigenous Wayu, Bari, and Yukpa people against coal mining in the state of Zulia. The issues raised by the opposing sides resonate with the current struggle in West Bengal. The author analyses the role of Hugo Chavez in this tussle, coming to the conclusion that ” Chavez is not claiming that there is only one way to development, and it is scientifically known. He is not prescribing Fukuyama-esque truths, rather he is entering into dialogue, and learning. It is those who have made a spectacle of him at Rabindra Sarobar, adoring him with packed houses, that have learnt their trade from M.T.V. They have learnt how to abstract away the politics, and make lifeless icons for their sordid carnivals and their voting industry, icons who will perhaps soon grace their T-shirts…”
Click to read essay [Bengali, PDF, 7 pages]
From Raichowk to Singur - Notes on Industrialisation
April 23, 2007
By Saikat Bandyopadhyay, Sanhati - Courtesy Axarjatra
This essay starts its journey from a famous presentation by Ashwin Adarkar in Raychowk, 1999, looking at the prescriptions made current in its wake, and moves on to a long, chilling excerpt from “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” by John Perkins. It ends with a meditation on the function of ideology in the establishment of economic truths, and the proactive and reactive functions of the seemingly warring players in this brutal game whose result has been fixed by its very existence.
Click to read essay [Bengali, PDF - 25 pages]
Globalisation of Capital: Some Questions
April 7, 2007
By Debarshi Das, Sanhati (Blog Article, open for commentary)
The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is a known whipping boy of the liberal left. When his bestseller The World is Flat was released in 2005 it was received with usual disdain and ridicule (I found the following review particularly enjoyable: The peculiar genius of Thomas L. Friedman). In the book, Friedman argues that due to advancement in information technology, globalisation has become a practical panacea for us. Here ‘us’ implies all the citizens of the world, not just those living in the first world. The playing field has been levelled so much that it has become flat. What is required is to reap the benefits of globalisation by pushing for greater openness of trade for goods and services and freer movement of capital. Globalisation creates wealth for all the stakeholders, and interconnects them in gigantic supply chains. People all over the world will be keen to maintain the supply chains undisturbed. World peace will thus be attained. There are some who are creating obstacles on this highway to peace and prosperity. Friedman calls them Islamo-Leninists.
The real debate over economic reforms in India
April 5, 2007
By Dipankar Basu, Sanhati
The debate over economic “reforms” in India has been going on for quite a long time now. This long and heated debate has been centered around the effects of what has been called “economic reforms”, a sharp change in the policy regime governing the Indian economy. It might be useful to recall that the policy regime in India gradually started changing right after Rajiv Gandhi came to power towards the end of 1984; of course the change was considerably accelerated after Manmohan Singh, the current prime minister, became the finance minister in the Congress government in 1991. Since then there has been no looking back; whether it is a coalition government led by the centrist Congress or led by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), economic reforms have continued apace. In fact, consensus about the necessity and desirability of reforms is evident across the whole political spectrum, ranging from the right-wing BJP to the social democratic communist parties, CPI and CPI(M).
Factoring Globalization into the virtuous spiral - Partho’s comment on Dipankar’s article
April 4, 2007
By Partho Sarathi Ray
I started following this interesting discussion rather late but would like to make a few layman’s observations. A crucial point which seems to have not been considered in detail in this discussion on the “neo-liberal” economic reforms in India is globalization. What Dipankar has stated about Adam Smith’s observation that “division of labour” being the cause of prosperity of an economic system (by “economic system” I refer to anything from an enterprise to a society or a national economy, better word), is true, because in division of labour lies the efficiency of extracting profit, and for generating the so-called virtuous spiral. Although Adam Smith describes this division of labour as “parts of a complex production process can be separated into different points of production, which may be located in different firms, or even different geographic regions”, he considers this division to still work in a sort of unified economic system, as in a corporation or a national economy.
Nandigram has stood up
March 30, 2007
By Saroj Giri, Sanhati
Everytime in India, large numbers of people, as in Kalingangar, Singur and Nandigram today, stood in a direct and antagonistic relation to capital and the state, a middle class ideology of alternative plans and people’s plans has not just acted to limit the initiative and political character of the movement to the ‘enlightened interests’ of the urban radical intelligentsia but, as a consequence, capital has instead ultimately gone ahead with its own original plans without even any kind of green restructuring. And this happened since the problem is always identified at the level of a particular technology or system of production (industrial modernisation) and not in terms of social relations, not in terms of class and power relations.
A State against the Nation
March 30, 2007
By Somnath Mukherji, Sanhati
It is the case of a state against the nation: a nation of people that get in the way of progress and development; a nation of illiterate, ill-fed, ill-clad people springing up from within this amorphous glob called the masses. How could these people represent civil-society? Are they not engaged in their struggles of daily subsistence? Surely they have not read Marx, Weber, Foucault or the tomes on developmental economics. How then could they decide what is good for them, let alone what is good for the society?
Challenging the current development paradigm - A Discussion Paper from Mazdoor Mukti
March 29, 2007
Issued for discussion and dialogue by Mazdoor Mukti
Know at the outset that the “we” on whose behalf this proposal is being submitted refers to ordinary people, ordinary labourers, employees, students, youth; who are born with no form of connection with any Establishment, who toil and perish; who at most cast votes during elections, apparently to chose our rulers, but are not involved at any stage of national planning; who are not ministers, nor bureaucrats, nor police chiefs, nor leaders of parties engaged in parliamentary politics; not even promoters-contractors-order suppliers who mill around ministers and bureaucrats; not eminent citizens who wine and dine with capitalists as part of the same elite, bonded socially, culturally and economically in multifarious ways. Simply put, we are those who have no say in how present day society runs or will run.