Bhagat Singh Reigns in the Hearts of Indian People

Pattabhi Sitaramayya, official historian of the Congress had noted that there was a time during the freedom struggle when “Bhagat Singh’s name was as widely known all over India and was as popular as Gandhi’s.” In the 60 years since Independence, India’s ruling class has done its best to erode that popularity and efface Bhagat Singh’s spirit, if not his name, from public memory. ‘Official’ memory recorded Gandhi-Nehru as the architects of Indian independence, and Bhagat Singh and his revolutionary comrades, as well as other figures of militant nationalism like Subhas Chandra Bose, were represented as ‘fringe’ elements of the mainstream nationalist pantheon. But it’s now apparent that despite the lack of official neglect in the textbooks and other forms of recognition, it is Bhagat Singh’s memory that has triumphed in the hearts and minds of Indian people.

The Left, of course, has always spoken of the tremendous goodwill and love commanded by Bhagat Singh. But this time, it’s not any Left leaflet, but respondents to a poll conducted by a mainstream weekly, India Today, through its website and SMS, who overwhelmingly voted for Bhagat Singh as the ‘Greatest Indian’.

The poll, which ran for three weeks, asked respondents to make a choice amongst ten shortlisted ‘greats’. India Today informs us that a total of 18,928 votes came in, and Bhagat Singh is far ahead with 6,982 votes (37% of the votes), Subhas Bose second with 5,193 votes (27%). Gandhi is a distant third with 2457 votes (13%); Patel with 8%; JRD Tata, 4%; Indira Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, 3%; Homi Bhabha and Nehru, 2%; and JP Narayan, 1%.

It must be said that India Today’s shortlist itself had its biases and omissions: a glaring instance is the omission of Ambedkar. Within the available choices, however, the results are quite revealing. Bhagat Singh and Bose together account for 64% of the votes; all the rest put together are confined to just 36%. While such a poll is no scientific study, and we know little about the social or economic profile of those who chose to respond, still, it does seem to indicate a trend. Apparently, for the respondents, the appeal of the shades of revolutionary and militant nationalism represented by Bhagat Singh and Bose is far greater than that of those who are ‘official’ India’s heroes. When people think of ‘greatness’, of a vision for change, the Sangh Parivar has not a single figure that comes to mind, and the ruling class-approved figures are left far behind: only figures on the Left, like Bhagat Singh and Bose, fit the bill.

What accounts for this enduring appeal? It appears that radical nationalist figures answer the burning questions in people’s minds, and are more in tune with their aspirations, than those more favoured by the ruling class. It is no doubt an awareness of Bhagat Singh’s rising attraction and popularity that accounts for the fact that Hindi cinema has so often returned to this figure in the past few years. It is this, too, which probably has impelled Indian Parliament, finally, to decide to install a statue of Bhagat Singh in Parliament.
But even while they accede to this popular demand, India’s ruling class is trying its best to rob Bhagat Singh’s legacy of its true revolutionary content, and of his identity as a Marxist and communist.

While Left MPs who had mooted the idea of the statue suggested that Bhagat Singh be depicted in a hat, Congress MP and Minister M S Gill insisted that he be represented in a turban. Parliament is now said to have decided to depict Bhagat Singh in a turban. Behind the hat-turban debate is a deeper debate: will Bhagat Singh be remembered by the religion of his birth, or by his beliefs and his actions as a declared atheist, a committed communist revolutionary, whose writings proclaim his having given up religious beliefs, rituals and symbols? Rather than recognizing Bhagat Singh as a revolutionary, M S Gill declared that he was a “Sikh martyr”. Gill is said to have fumed, “There is a sudden attempt to appropriate Bhagat Singh. If the statue was of Subhas Chandra Bose, would we ask whether he should be in uniform or not?” Precisely, Mr. Gill. Bose would and should be depicted, not in Bengali dhoti, but in uniform in keeping not with the identity of his birth, but with his chosen political role as a leader of the INS. By the same token, Bhagat Singh ought to depicted in keeping with his political beliefs and revolutionary actions: disguising himself in a hat to escape the colonial police; flinging a voice bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly along with Batukeshwar Dutt in order to “make the deaf (the elected representatives) hear” the voices of protest against draconian laws.

Gill, by accusing the Left of trying to “appropriate” Bhagat Singh, is actually revealing his own politics of appropriation. M S Gill and the Congress wish to curry favour with the Sikh community by claiming credit for installing a “Sikh icon’s” statue in Parliament. The RSS, too, not so long ago, proposed Bhagat Singh for the Bharat Ratna – they too sought to appropriate Bhagat Singh for their own politics. Both Congress and Sangh Parivar vigorously attempt to deny Bhagat Singh’s revolutionary ideology and politics, and in the process they try to distort his memory and his legacy. But these ruling class representatives, and Parliamentarians, can be sure that however much they try to stop their ears, Bhagat Singh’s legacy will resound in their ears “make the deaf hear”! •

CONTENTS

COMMENTARY

New Mineral Policy 2008 2

Quota Verdict 3

CPI(M) Coimbatore Congress 5

SPECIAL FEATURE

Democracy in S Asia

Nepal Mandate 8

Post-Poll Pakistan 12

Bhutan Polls 13

FEATURE

Price Rise 14

Sixth Central Pay Commission 18

DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS

Convention on Draconian Acts 21

STF Terror in UP 22

SC Reprimands on Salwa Judum 23

WORKING CLASS 24

REPORTS 29

INTERVIEW

David Barsamian 32

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Editorial:

The challenge of shaping a new Nepal begins now…

See: The challenge of shaping a new Nepal begins now…

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 National Mineral Policy 2008

After much deliberation, the UPA government has finally released the National Mineral Policy (NMP) 2008. This policy has been in the offing for quite some time, and considering the magnitude of the issues at stake, it was eagerly awaited. However, the NMP 2008 has come as an anticlimax, since it is amazingly devoid of clarity and detail.

It is important to understand the background of this policy. India’s considerable mineral resources are being coveted not just by the Indian industry, but increasingly by foreign capital. The battle for prime mineral ore is so intense that we sometimes even see corporates vying for the same piece of land and subsequently waging a protracted struggle for it (like for instance West Chiria mines in Jharkhand and Rawghat mines in Chhattisgarh).
If corporates are battling it out, state governments of the mineral-rich states are falling over each other in their attempts to become more “investor-friendly” than their competitors. The Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa governments in particular are offering all varieties of sops to entice investors away from their rivals. In this process, they have essentially become agents of corporate houses.

The devastation that mining has wreaked in mineral-bearing states of course needs no elaboration. Whether it is large-scale displacement of tribals, or devastation of water, land and forests, the story is all too familiar. The massive profits that mining entails do not reach state governments, let alone the people who lose their lands and livelihoods to mining. The royalty that companies have to pay state governments for extracting minerals is around 2-3 per cent of the price that minerals fetch in the market! Sometimes the loot is even more criminal, as in the case of iron ore, where the royalty paid is actually less than 1 per cent of the market price.

These are some of the burning issues connected with mining activity, and one would expect a National Mineral Policy to address them. However, the NMP 2008 is characterized by either silence or ambiguity on most issues of importance. For instance, NMP 2008 has thrown in words like “sustainable development”, “restoration of ecological balance” and “stakeholder interest”. In other words, all the vocabulary demanded by the World Bank and the like. There is however no substantial backing of these grand sounding claims. For example, this is what the NMP 2008 has to say about displacement, rehabilitation and compensation:

“Special care will be taken to protect the interest of host and indigenous (tribal) populations through developing models of stakeholder interest based on international best practice. Project affected persons will be protected through comprehensive relief and rehabilitation packages in line with the National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy.”

Therefore, the NMP 2008 has almost completely ignored the demands that have been raised connected with relief and rehabilitation. What after all is a “model of stakeholder interest based on international best practice”? Who decides the “best practice”? On what basis is this decision taken? The non-seriousness of NMP is made clear from the very next sentence, where all pretence of “international best practice” and “stakeholder interest” is thrown to the winds, and the good old National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy (NRRP) is brought back. The NRRP has been severely criticized on several grounds for its inability to ensure adequate compensation for the project displaced people, and what the NMP 2008 is suggesting, after all the tall talk, is maintaining the status quo!

On mining in Scheduled areas, the NMP 2008 only says: “In grant of mineral concessions for small deposits in Scheduled Areas, preference shall be given to Scheduled Tribes singly or as cooperatives.” The policy has not even tried to ensure that the spirit of the original central Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act (which was drastically diluted by most state governments to the extent of making it largely ineffective) is translated into reality.

Equally interesting is the coy treatment of an important issue like royalties due to the state governments. This is only place where the word royalty finds a mention: “The fiscal dispensation will generally aim to ensure that adequate compensation is forthcoming to the state in return for the concessions it grants.” Again, there is no concrete attempt to correct the glaring difference in market price and the royalty due to the state.

On the controversial issue of mineral exports, the NMP 2008 has largely gone with the mining sector, since it has agreed to their demand of a no-holds-barred approach to exports. However, though the policy is unclear and reticent on some key issues, it has a definite focus. Firstly, there is a strong push for more mechanized, less labour-intensive mining, where the industry will largely depend upon “skilled” labour with a high level of technical competence.

Secondly, the policy is a blueprint for large-scale privatization and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in mining. These trends are not new, but NMP 2008 proposes to substantially increase the existing scale of privatization. For the first time, prospecting and exploration of ores has been opened to venture capital in a big way: “the private sector would in future be the main source of investment in reconnaissance and exploration.” Risk investment in survey and prospecting, joint ventures and Public Private Partnerships are the clear mandates of the policy.

The UPA government will soon introduce amendment bills in the Parliament to give effect to the NMP 2008. Key issues like fixing royalty are said to be resolved by the Union Cabinet. However, NMP 2008 makes the UPA’s policy directives clear: Displace tribals and the rural poor from their lands and livelihoods while securing the occupation of mining companies, mechanize mining and create jobs for mining engineers, geologists, geo-physicists, geo-chemists and geo-instrumentation specialists, and ensure that the wealth from mining is reserved for corporate houses.

Radhika Krishnan

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 On the Supreme Court Verdict on OBC Quotas in Higher Education

The Supreme Court (SC) finally gave its verdict, after nearly two years and 25 hearings, over the petition filed against the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006 on 10 April 2008. The five-judge bench upheld the Constitutional validity of 27 per cent Reservation in IITs, IIMs and other Central Educational Institutions(CEIs) for Other Backward Castes (OBCs) thus giving a legal justification to the pursuit of social justice principles. The four judgments were unanimous about the validity of the 93^rd Amendment Act and also on the skimming away of the creamy layer but they also show a fair amount of disagreement on reasons behind it as well on the ambit of the institutions where the judgment would apply.

The petitioners in the case had advocated that that the Reservation for OBCs was part of a vote catching mechanism and that identification of Socially and Educationally Backward Classes for reservation on the basis of caste was not allowed in the Constitution which seeks to achieve a casteless and classless society. This ridiculous claim of caste-does-not-exist-because-upper-castes-don’t see-it attitude was justly rejected by the judges.

The judgment now increases the chances for a greater democratisation of CEIs and students from backward classes can now seek pathways to social and economic mobility away from the rigidities imposed by caste. The UPA government was pleased with the timing of the judgement which had earlier been reserved in November 2007. But the crisis created by its inflationary policies might deflate its claims of triumph.

It is apparent that for the Act to become fully functional a few more years will have to go by. Institutions are now claiming un-preparedness to deal with the increased student intake due to the mandated increase in overall seats (to ensure that general seats are not curtailed), and are seeking to stall or stagger the implementation of the Act. Besides there are also institutions waiting for a minority status (which are exempted from the Act as they are governed by other parts of the Constitution) and have proceeded to go for a stay order from the Court so that they don’t have to implement the Act. It is evident that there is a long haul ahead and the Act which took years to materialise after prolonged struggle, may take more time for its implementation without the intervention of students groups in hastening the process within their respective universities. The reluctance of IITs and IIMs is already well known.

The exclusion of the creamy layer finds two different reasons in the judgements. While the Chief Justice of SC puts it down to the earlier decision of the nine Bench judgement on the identification and exclusion of creamy layer in the Mandal judgement as being a strong enough reason, Justice Bhandari suggests exclusion on the general principle of equality. However the judges have had differing opinions on what constitutes creamy layer though all have gone by the notification in Reservation for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes in Civil Posts and Services under the Government of India.
The differences arise on how backwardness is interpreted. Two judges note that caste alone does not compose class hence the criteria for creamy layer cannot be caste alone but also poverty, social backwardness and economic backwardness. Two other judges propose that backwardness cannot be estimated without removing the creamy layer. Still another judge recommends that the ‘creamy layer’ should include children of past and present MPs and MLAs. The problems presented by the definition of creamy layer are apparent. For instance, the social and economic status of MLAs and MPs varies from party to party. If someone from a Most-Backward-Caste has been an MLA for a brief while does that mean that with one stroke of a few years in office they would wipe away the historical educational-social deprivation that weighs on them? The vagueness of even trying to generalize on such basis can’t be lost on anyone engaged in real politics.

Steps to further democratize and increase the social base from within which the Reservation of OBCs takes place is indeed welcome. It is also necessary to put mechanisms in place such that the more dominant and assertive communities do not corner the benefits at the cost of other backward groups. A periodic review to assess the backwardness level of communities are also necessary to increase the effectiveness. But it must be kept in mind that reservation is a social policy and by imposing individual-family-centric criteria, the very thrust and breadth of the policy is likely to be being undermined.

In the Mandal judgement Rs 1 lakh is presented as the income that puts a person in the exclusion range, now even if that is increased to Rs 2.5 lakh as per the proposal, there are several confusions associated with it. First, in the absence of free and compulsory education up to the senior secondary level, it is only families with a stable source of income that could possibly send their children to a CEI for education. Second, the decision to make the family income as a unit of measurement for backwardness does not take into account the number of dependents, the unpredictability of rural agrarian incomes and lack of cultural capital (simply put, the attitude, aptitude, the skills to succeed in academic institutions where all these are overvalued but which are inherited from the family and community as legacy over generations.) Moreover it is not as if imposition of these criteria would democratize access to IITs and IIMs and other central institutions further. It is far more likely to lead to non-fulfilment of the quota by fair means and removal of a large section of the potential beneficiaries. This is not surprising considering the cultural capital, investments and coaching required to get into these institutions. It is quite perplexing that while backwardness is a combination of social-economic-educational factors, the economic criteria alone could be thought of as a means for imposing the status of a creamy layer, and educational levels of parents alone could become reasons for being deemed a member of the forward class. One of the judges has even suggested that possession of a graduation degree ought to amount to ‘educational forwardness’! A definition of creamy layer that results in excluding graduates is quite unacceptable. After all, central universities ‘of excellence’ are places where students arrive for post-graduate and research training and simply by fulfilling the eligibility for the university, the students from the backward classes would forfeit the benefits of quota! Anyway, the UPA government has chosen to move ahead, taking the Mandal I Judgement as the basis for fixing creamy layer.

There are various suggestions that it is up to the Government to accept or not. For instance, more than one judge has suggested fixing cut-offs, five or ten marks below the cut-off marks of the general category; one has even added that in the case of unfulfilled quotas, the seats can lapse to the general category. This suggestion, if accepted, could end up subverting quotas entirely. One is aware of how fulfilment of SC/ST quotas is routinely thwarted, and in post-graduate admissions in AIIMS, the Courts have had to take note of cases where SC/ST seats have been left empty even when the SC/ST candidates have far higher marks than general category candidates who have secured admission.

There are also recommendations on expansion of free and compulsory education at primary and secondary level. Considering that the UPA government has diluted the Free and Compulsory Education Bill and dismissed the Central Advisory Board of Education’s (CABE) Universalisation of Secondary Education Report by not setting a time limit, it is highly unlikely this fundamental recommendation will be implemented.

A significant percentage of the expansion in higher educational institutions is in the private sector. Yet four of the five judges left this matter open as these institutions had not approached the Court while one judge observed that getting private institutes within the ambit would violate the fundamental right to carry on an occupation. Private institutions have grown on the strength and subsidy of public money. They have got subsidized land, tax free incomes, teachers trained at subsidized rates, water and electricity at non-commercial rates – yet when it comes to implementing social policies, the neo-liberal state is loth to demand social responsibility! While no one is discussing this, in the meantime, once again the opinionated classes ranging from a “Lord” Meghanad Desai to run-of the-mill management trainees and columnists with a recipe for all occasions have started proposing that school education has to be strengthened and that the private sector has to be bolstered. The private institutes are the preserves of the rich, the elite. These are places preserved for the creamy layer of forward classes. Why is there a delay in opening up these places for scrutiny?

It must be remembered that reservation is a mechanism prescribed by a liberal society for providing equal opportunities to all without undertaking fundamental systemic changes. For reasons of the ‘efficiency’ criteria, such a society would like a wider talent pool, not restrained by the caste and race of the person. However it is true that in the absence of radical measures that attack the very roots of dispossession, reservations alone cannot offer paths of social or economic mobility to all. However, they are a means for ensuring that some groups are not forced to run the race for employment and education in a liberal society with the shackles of historical deprivation. It is a small measure for ensuring that socially and educationally backward groups that have been historically marginalised from education get a chance to break out of their traditional occupations and enter new paths of social mobility. Everyone within a backward scheduled caste/scheduled tribe community may not move up but that is also because even the best of liberal societies do not allow everyone to move up in the social mobility ladder. True economic criteria would be to ensure free education to all sections irrespective of their backgrounds - but that is not going to happen within the scope of ruling class policies in our society. Till then there can be no cause to delay, stall, or subvert implementation of the quotas.

Radhika Menon

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West Bengal in Coimbatore

See: West Bengal in Coimbatore – on the 19^th all India congress of CPI(M)

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Democracy in South Asia

(In the past three months, three of India’s neighbours have gone to polls. The high point, of course, is Nepal, which witnessed a historic triumph against the monarchy and a republican upsurge led by the CPN(M). Lal Bahadur Singh from Liberation and Ashok Kumar from Lokyuddh were eager observers of Nepal’s polls; in this feature, the former comments on the Nepal election experience. Bhutan’s polls, conducted by its King, presented a contrast. And while Pakistan’s polls brought Musharraf’s nearly decade-old regime to an end, its new Government continues to face grim challenges. Farooq Tariq, Spokesperson, Labour Party Pakistan, writes on the post-poll situation in Pakistan. – Ed/.)

See: The challenge of shaping a new Nepal begins now…

See: Royally Regimented Polls in Bhutan

See for a longuer version of this article: Pakistan after the General Elections

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 Curb the Prices or Quit!

Even as the prices of all essential commodities soar sky-high, the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister tell us that inflation is here to stay. According to these high priests of economic liberalisation, rising prices only reflect the global market reality and it is not fair to expect the Government of India to have any control over international market forces! In other words, the gospel of globalisation tells us to bear with the ‘inconvenience’ caused by rising prices today and wait till the market chooses to relent!

While the government tinkers with wholesale price figures, and the capitalists and traders calculate their enhanced profits, the aam aadmi continues to get increasingly impoverished with every passing day. It is officially acknowledged that three out of every four households in India live on a daily per capita expenditure of Rs. 20 or less. When prices of everyday food items escalate, many of these families are actually pushed down from chronic malnutrition to semi-starvation or worse. Rising prices are their one-way ticket to destitution.
The government invokes the market mantra to justify the upward movement of prices of essential commodities. This is nothing but a complete abdication of the basic tenet of governance. No elected government can be allowed to leave the people at the mercy of a marauding market. It is the job of the state to make sure that the people have access to the basic necessities of life. We have had enough of the farce called the “Targeted Public Distribution System”. To protect the masses from the onslaught of soaring prices, the UPA government must universalise the PDS and expand its coverage to include all essential articles of consumption including sugar, pulses and edible oil.

All sections of the working people who have to sustain themselves on the basis of daily wage earnings or a low salary income are hit hard by rising prices. Real wages are defined only in terms of the purchasing power of the wage-earner. In order to ensure that real wages do not fall below a minimum level, every wage formula is supposed to provide for a variable component known as dearness allowance. It is another matter that the quantum of dearness allowance always falls far short of the actual impact of price-rise. But Railway Minister Laloo Prasad would like us to believe that the current spate of price-rise is actually a response of the market to the pay-hike announced by the Sixth pay Commission!

The ministers can have their own fancy theories and hypotheses, but the government cannot avoid its responsibility to ensure that minimum wages keep pace with the prices. Economists often wax eloquent about the need to maintain some kind of parity across different sectors of the economy and different segments of the working people. If the market maintains parity by demanding the same prices from different segments of consumers, the government too must ensure parity in matters of minimum wages. The Sixth Pay Commission has recommended a minimum monthly pay of about Rs. 6500 for central government employees. Why can’t the same minimum level be ensured in every sphere of employment?

The government has a readymade answer as to why it cannot provide for a minimum cushion to protect the people from the ravages of the market. It says it has to abide by the so-called “Fiscal Responsibility and Budgetary Management” Act. If it is the Act that comes in the way of ensuring basic necessities for the masses, why can’t Parliament repeal the Act it has made? And if the government is indeed so handicapped in matters of budgetary resources why does it not make a beginning by doing away with the huge tax exemptions handed out to the corporate sector. The government that allocates only Rs. 16,000 crore for rural employment ‘guarantee’, gifts away ten times that amount as exemptions. Add to it the whole range of hidden corporate subsidies (in the form of ridiculously low royalty rates for minerals, for instance) and the bogey of resource-constraint instantly vanishes into thin air!

More often than not, price-rise is a man-made disaster, and the real guilty is the government which instead of managing the disaster compounds the misery of the masses by hiding behind the veil of the market. A government that cannot check prices and guarantee jobs has no business to stay in power. Let us once again raise the battle cry “Dam Bandho, Kaam Do, Nahi To Gaddi Chhod Do”.

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 Inflation Deflates UPA’s Aam Aadmi Claims

Barely a month ago, Congress and its UPA allies were waxing eloquent about the debt waiver “New Deal” for the Indian farmers. But even as the reality and scope of the debt waiver came under question, the ugly face of inflation reared its head. And this time inflation is not something that will yield to token announcements, which government is making aplenty.

In India, inflation figures are at their highest level since November 2004. The wholesale price index-based inflation rate, which soared to 7.41 percent year-on-year in the week ending March 29, has marginally declined to 7.14 percent by April 05 against an expectation of 7.19 percent. Data released on April 17 shows prices of metals and food articles rising most strongly. The biggest hit has been taken by the poor since the food prices have a larger weight in the inflation indices.

Soaring food prices are leading to protests and near riots all over the world, especially in Asian and African countries like the Philippines, Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique, and Senegal. Mainstream economists describe the global food crisis as a food “shortage”. The diversion of food grains towards fuel (ethanol) has been cited as a factor in the current crisis (and our own Finance Minister P Chidambaram has spoken with pious concern about the skewed priorities of ‘some countries’ which prefer to divert food to fuel cars and an affluent lifestyle when the world’s people go hungry).

While it is true that diversion of foodgrain for biofuel may be a factor, the fact is that there’s enough food: the problem is that it’s out of reach of the poor! World Food Program Executive Director Josette Sheeran recently remarked about Sub-Saharan Africa, “We are seeing more urban hunger than ever before. Often we are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it.”

Today, there is more food available per capita than ever before in the world. It is estimated that if the total amount of food available in the world today is apportioned equally between all the people on earth, we can give each person at least 4.3 pounds (nearly 2 kg) of food in a day: two-and-a-half pounds of grains, beans and nuts, one pound of fruits and vegetables and another pound of meat, eggs and milk. Yet one out of the six billion people in the world go hungry. This hunger is not caused by food scarcity, but by a glaringly unequal system of distribution. UN statistics tell us that in a span of nine years, the income ratio between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% of the world population has widened from 60:1 to 74:1. The overall consumption of the richest 20% is now 16 times that of the poorest 20%.

Our government has sought to wash off its hands from its failure to keep food prices down by saying that it is a global phenomenon and much of the inflation is actually ‘imported’, much in the same vein as corruption was once said to be the global phenomenon. Well, if inflation is imported, so has growth been imported all these years! After all, our governments abandoned the security net needed for feeding world’s second population; crippled the PDS in the name of avoiding diversion of food grain; and on the other hand granted a bonanza of SEZs and numerous tax holidays to big industrial houses, ostensibly in the name of generating high growth. Industry was in boom due to US consumer demand which, aided and encouraged by big financial institutions in living beyond their means, fuelled demand for manufactured goods. Only the subsequent collapse of housing prices in US led to a slowdown in demand. Eventually the US Dollar has depreciated making it difficult to export.

This short-term crisis comes on the top of long term neglect of agriculture with stagnant food grain yields and minimal expansion irrigated area and slowing down of fertiliser use in last 15 years. For a long time Government did not see the need for increasing investments in the farm sector. Public sector investment in agriculture has been declining since 1990-91 and the share of agriculture in gross domestic capital formation has dropped to 15 percent from around 25 percent.

Technology input measured as the yield potential of new varieties of paddy, wheat, maize, groundnut and mustard/rapeseed has been growing at NIL per cent since 1996-97 as against an average growth rate of yield potential from 1980-81 to 1996-97 of around 3 per cent per year. The net result is that the food grain production has not increased fast enough for us to achieve self-sufficiency.

Weakening of the public procurement system was accompanied by a free rein to domestic and foreign corporate players to procure and trade in foodgrain and other agricultural commodities. Compounding the problem is the rampant speculation in food related commodities and even in other commodities like crude petroleum, which the Government did nothing to curb. In the name of commodity hedging and trading, the speculators and hoarders are having field day.

In the face of present crisis, Government has taken half hearted measures to minimize the impact of price rise by reducing the rate of taxes and duties on food stuff. Chidambaram keeps warning of action against cartels in the steel and cement sectors. But Minister of State for Steel Jitin Prasada has declared, the very next day, that “there are no cartels in steel”! These meagre measures and empty threats in the name of checking price rise are neither effective nor sufficient.

While the food prices are up, the price rise in steel and cement in construction sector has made it impossible for the genuine householders to own a house. At the same time price rise translates to profit for the rich and propertied, and the Tatas, Jindals and Mittals enjoy a huge explosion in profits with the boom in steel and construction. In this ‘rising’, the India rich are breaking into world’s top rich list, gobbling up enterprises in India and abroad, appropriating the land of the poor, and colluding with politicians to claim to the mineral wealth of the poor, even as in contrast, that 77% of Indian people live on Rs. 20 a day, and are denied even the barest safety nets of PDS rations.

It is the Government’s policies of liberalisation that are squarely responsible for the soaring prices – and the UPA Government can prepare to meet the fate that its predecessor the NDA regime did if it refuses to prioritise the poor and protect them from the price rise which is its own ‘gift’ to the nation.

Girish Ghildiyal

BOX:

What is commodity trading?

In real life, agricultural products being high in volume cannot be transported easily across geographical regions. This puts limits on the geographical reach of seller, i.e., the farmer, and the buyer. Further, given the time gap between sowing and harvesting, there is lot of uncertainty at the time of sowing about the price which the crops will yield. In theory, commodity exchanges seek to address these problems. They aide in what is called ‘price discovery’, by the means of placing buying and selling rates of commodities across length and breadth of the country on one single platform.

Commodity exchanges also enable what is called ‘futures trading’ which is discovery of price for future, i.e, the price at which one wishes to sell or buy goods say 3 months hence can be settled today itself. As a number of buyers and sellers keep on entering trades on the ‘spot’ and for futures, the influence of local middlemen decreases, and both sides get a fair price. This is supposed to enable the farmer to know rates applicable.

However, in a market where genuine hedgers are minuscule, and speculators dominate, the very rationale for the market — price discovery and price risk management — loses relevance. There is neither genuine price discovery nor real price risk management.

BOX:

US led boom - and now inflation

The current surge in commodity prices is a direct result of the easy money policy that led to the asset price boom in the global economy. The consumption-led boom in the US had its origins in the easy money policy. While the people in US got credit at very low interest rates, the demand for assets such as housing surged. Due to the high demand the prices of housing soared. Against the increase in prices of their homes, people were encouraged to take more loans for consumption and thus borrowed more for consumption. Once the demand for housing came down, the home prices collapsed and the loans taken earlier were no b afloat. The expansion in liquidity due to rate cuts has led to a huge amount of money chasing commodities, pushing up their prices.

BOX:

Surviving on Rs.20 a Day….

… When inflation crosses the 7 point mark and human labour becomes cheaper

According to the Report of the National Commission for Enterprises in Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), 77% of Indian people have less than Rs. 20 a day to spend. Many studies have shown that the poor all over the world (especially in rural areas) spend 70% of their meager income on food. When prices shoot up, the rural poor are forced to spend almost their entire income to secure the bare minimum of food – and yet remain hungry and suffer malnutrition.

Even before the latest spurt in prices, a daily wage worker, a member of this vast 77% of India’s population, would have made ends meet with great difficulty. Now, the rocketing prices are nothing short of back-breaking: prices of food and other essential commodities have soared by more than 40% during the last few months.

With Rs. 20 in hand, let us take a trip to the market, to see how far we can stretch it to accommodate the most modest daily needs of a human being. (The calculations are a layman’s estimate of average daily minimum consumption based on an approximation of prevailing prices.)

.	Rate	Daily approx. Consumption	Daily expense
Flour or rice	Rs. 16 per Kg	350 gm.	5.60
Mustard oil	Rs. 70 per Kg.	40 gm	2.80
Dal	Rs. 50 per Kg.	50 gm.	2.50
Green vegetable	Approx. Rs. 20 per Kg.	200 gm.	4.00
Potato	Rs. 8 per Kg.	100 gm.	0.80
Onion	Rs. 8 per Kg.	100 gm.	0.80
Garlic	Rs. 80 per Kg.	5 gm.	4.00
Green Chili	Rs. 40 per Kg.	5 gm.	2.00
Tomato	Rs. 20 per Kg.	50 gm.	1.00
Milk for two tea	Rs. 24 per lt.	50 ml	1.20
Sugar	Rs. 18 per Kg.	20 gm.	0.36
Tea	Rs. 200 per Kg.	10 gm.	2.00
Fuel	.	.	Approx. Rs. 10 per day
Soap & tooth powder etc.	.	.	Approx. Rs. 1 per day

These expenses on food and fuel for just one person comes to around Rs. 38 per day. Now imagine, if he or she falls ill and needs a painkiller or an antibiotic?!

And how is a person earning less than Rs. 20, to pay for clothes? A roof above their head? Children’s education? Local transport? Add all of that and it is certain to come to more than double the amount of Rs. 38.

Remember, this estimate is a rough one, based on very minimum, and does not fulfill all requirements scientifically; otherwise it would have been much higher. Moreover, for a family of four this amount would treble!

The aam admi on the shoestring budget of Rs.20 will just have to go without a meal or two… or can eat cake?

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Appeal To Subscribers

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 Sixth Pay Commission Recommendations:

Behind the Hype of Hefty Increase

Recently, there has been much big media hype about two packages of the UPA Government: the loan waiver for farmers and the other one was the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations. The UPA Government, getting more and more alienated from the aam admi, sought to project these two schemes as its gift packages to the people. At the other end, rightwing ideologues, the articulate neo-liberal lobby, cried themselves hoarse that these packages were a drain on the country’s coffers and came out with gloomy predictions.

The Sixth Central Pay Commission (SCPC) recommendations are shown to be granting a hefty 40 per cent pay increase to nearly 45 lakh Central government employees. What exactly has the Sixth CPC recommended?
The existing minimum basic pay is Rs.3050. The basic pay plus dearness allowance for those in that scale on January 1, 2006 stood at Rs.5763. Now they are offered Rs.6760. This is nowhere near a 40 per cent increase.
The annual aggregate cost to the exchequer due to the pay increase is shown to be Rs.12561 crore. The CPC admits that a large savings on pensions and a small one on training will bring down the package by Rs.4586 crore and reduce it to Rs.7975 crore. But even this will vanish into thin air if the government’s gains due to reduction in holidays are taken into account.

It has avoided meeting the legitimate expectation of Rs. 10000 as minimum pay by speciously linking it up with the plight of the BPL households! And surely there is no noble objective in merging Group D with Group C. This amounts to abolition of Group D posts as Group D jobs will be outsourced.
It is falsely stated that the ratio between the lowest and the highest salaries will be 1:12. The babudom at the level of secretaries will get Rs.90000 per month plus their fancy cars and posh bungalows. The heads of IRDA and TRAI will get Rs.3 lakh per month. The higher you move in the hierarchy, the fatter will be your pay packet. And there is an undisclosed/not-fully-disclosed unlimited “pay band" for secretaries over and above Rs.3 lakh per month of disclosed income!

The loss to 38.41 lakh pensioners would be Rs.4044 crore. But the CPC, with all the cruelty at its command, offers a heavenly gift to the pensioners by prescribing that they would get higher pension at the age 80, 85, 90, 95 and 100.

Holidays have been slashed; CCA done away with; new recruits and pensioners will not get Central Government health care. They will be thrown to the insurance sharks, while the CGHS is cast aside.

There would not be any bonus. An arbitrary, subjective, budget-neutral, performance-linked incentive would be the substitute.

The Central government has accepted the concept of a minimum pay for its employees in principle. Why not the same yardstick be applied to anganwadi workers, ASHA workers and paramedics, parateachers, noon-meal workers and the like, working under various names in the Central as well as State governments? If the need for ‘parity’ between corporate salaries and senior Government employees is felt, why not parity for minimum wage earners across all sectors?

Let’s take a closer look at the SCPC Report:

The Sixth Central Pay Commission (SCPC) Report begins with a dubious reference to the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Acts as if these acts supersede the largest employer’s responsibility towards its employees, the employer which is supposed to be the “Model Employer” adhering to a Fair Wage Policy. It is strange that the final report of the Sixth Central Pay Commission doesn’t even hint that these “Responsibility” Acts are more relevant to cut down more than Rs.2 lakh crore tax concession handouts to the corporates and the rich so as to silence the pink press which has already started squealing about the “unbearably huge” burden of Rs.12561 crore which in their “considered/informed” opinion is a “disaster” that would “wreck” the economy though the so-called election-eve “sops” – which the employees have rightfully earned with their sweat and toil – accounts hardly for one-twentieth of Chidambaram’s tax concessions every year.

The Terms of Reference of the Commission itself clearly says, “C. To work out a comprehensive pay package for the categories of Central Government employees mentioned at (A) above that is suitably linked to promoting efficiency, productivity and economy through rationalization of structures, organizations, systems and processes within the Government, with a view to leveraging economy, accountability, responsibility, transparency, assimilation of technology and discipline”. In order to “suitably link” the so-called “steep hike” to “efficiency” and so on, the SCPC Report would be referred to a small group of handpicked bureaucratic Shylocks from the topmost layer of Secretaries who would soon come up with their own “Charter of demands” to extract their own “pounds of flesh” from the unions/employees in the form of conditionalities: and the real “negotiations” would start armed with ESMA and reactionary court decrees!

The SCPC’s recommendation of ‘de-layering’ should not be mistaken as some de-bureaucratisation. This is only to drastically cut down the promotional avenues of the hard-working employees. The existing 35 pay scales have been replaced by just 4 “running pay bands” containing 20 “grades” – new arbitrary categories. The exalted Secretaries have been placed in an altogether different new scale as they above all are entitled for unlimited riches! Adjust the so-called “hefty” hike with the eliminated opportunities for promotion, and the hike would not look as hefty as the bonanza which the top layers got. In other words, if you eliminate layers in a running scale, you will run into very unpleasant surprises!

The hypothetical 40% is the maximum one can possibly get in terms of total emoluments including superannuation and all other indirect “benefits” (like what they call “total cost to the company” in the private sector) after replacing the rule-based (legally-bound contract of negotiated wage agreement uniformly applicable to all under all circumstances) with a discretionary “Performance-based Incentive” system very difficult to measure and subject to the discretion of bureaucrats and a patron-client system based on their munificence.

The V Pay Commission recommended a 20% hike but the UF Government had bowed before the employees’ assertion and agreed to a 40% hike. The V Pay Commission also recommended 50 percent DA merger with the basic pay which however was done only belatedly in April 2004. In any calculation for fresh pay increase supposed to commence from Jan 1 2006, the basic pay reckoned should include this 50% DA merger of April 2006. For some reason, the SCPC has chosen not to include this April 2004 DA merger in the pre-revision basic pay to arrive at this magic figure of 40 percent hike! It is for the employees to calculate how much they have been robbed off as the government did not really stick to the 40% benchmark for pay increase on the actual pre-revision pay scale but fraudulently excluded the merged DA into calculation to arrive at this Magic 40/Manipulated 40! And how much more they would have got if the SCPC had really taken a 100% pre-revision pay scale including the 50% DA merged in April 2004 as the base for calculating 40% increase and recommended such an increase!

The Fifth CPC recommendations were implemented sometime in 1996 and the SCPC should have been constituted well before 2001 and new revision in pay scales should have come into effect in 2001 as the Fifth Commission itself had said that its recommendations were valid for 5 years, and it also recommended a constitutionally-mandated permanent pay commission whose new recommendations/pay revisions would be automatic. But the SCPC recommendation would come into effect only from Jan 1, 2006. That is, after 10 years instead of five. If you adjust the partly notional and partly manipulated 40% increase for this real loss, where would be this mythical 40%? It would in fact be less than 20%! The SCPC itself (2.2.18) explains that the annual increase for the lowest three pay bands would be 2.5% a year. Even if worked out at a compound rate for 5 or 10 years, and calculate the net percentage increase in salaries for employees and the per capita increase for each employee in absolute terms per month, this 40% would drastically come down to reveal this cruel joke of a “hefty” 40% hike!
Rationalising the bloated government bureaucracy is an altogether different agenda; why make the “Rationalisation” of the irrational bureaucracy the central agenda of a “Pay” Commission? To whom is the Pay Commission ‘pay’-ing obeisance?

Performance-related Incentives and Variable Increments are nothing but stratagems to pit employee against employee and drive them into hard, piece-rated slave labour without commensurate remunerations.

Flexibility is another anti-employee device. Flexiwork will mean that the employees would be at the beck and call of bureaucrats. The SCPC talks of flexibility across the pay bands which means the “chosen ones” would jump over the heads of others making a mockery of the principle of seniority and institutionalise favouritism! Worse still, “flexibility in appointments” is well-known – it’s what the BJP-run governments are already practising with the appointment of RSS elements in key posts. And the worst of all “flexibility” – lateral movement between public and private sector – signifies a higher form of PPP (Public-Private Partnership!); the government employees would henceforth do the bidding of Tatas and Ambanis and Uni Levers and Microsofts through “flexible lateral movements”.

The Terms of Reference to the SCPC themselves call for “harmonising the Central Services with the demands of the emerging global scenario.” What does this mean? The Report is wilfully blind to the global scenario in which the Indian government employees are getting lesser than what many of their Sub-Saharan and SAARC counterparts are getting. Indian wages are not to be harmonised with global wage standards but only with the rulers’/imperialists’ version of globalisation.

The SCPC talks of the “capacity of the Government to pay” but how come this “capacity” never crops up when corporates get their bonanza in terms of tax concessions? The Terms of Reference also unjustifiably invokes the principle of the capacity of the State governments to pay, to decide the pay scales of Central government employees, as if the fiscal imprudence of the States are due to “high” State government salaries patterned after the SCPC’s recommendations. The actual fact is the salaries of the employees of well-performing and financially viable States would henceforth be constrained by the SCPC stinginess. More than that, the SCPC has cleverly compared the pay scales of some select low- and medium-pay PSUs and cleverly avoided the so-called “high-wage islands” or categories of PSU employees like ONGC, EXIM Bank etc., and even ignoring the fact that the pay scales of some PSUs are already so low compared to the private corporates/MNCs that they have suffered more than 70% “attrition” rates in high-skilled/high-qualification categories!

While the Capacity to Pay is supposed to be very limited, the Capacity to Squeeze the employees is apparently unlimited! The enhancing of the Capacity to Squeeze comes packed in many attractive/high-sounding words like making the bureaucracy into a “modern, professional and citizen-friendly” entity but the Terms of Reference themselves made is amply clear that this is not a Pay Commission but a Restructuring Commission mandated to “rationalise” the bureaucracy by squeezing out their sweat and blood in a very “rational” manner.

In fact, the SCPC Report says that they were duty-bound to link the pay package of the employees with not only rationalisation but also with “simplification of systems and processes” (as if employees’ salaries had any bearing on bureaucratic systems!),

For fixing need-based minimum salary at the entry level, the commission has taken the consumption unit (family) of new entrants at three – far below the average household size in the 2001 Census.

Legitimisation of fixed-term contracts is the in-thing. The whole lot of government employees can be reduced to the status of contract labourers/para employees like ASHA or anganwadi workers with this single stroke. Though the point 1.2.6 of the SCPC Report talks of it “for selected posts, particularly those requiring high professional skills”, it has not categorically limited this fixed-term contracts to such posts only. Nor has it set out who would decide such recruitment, at what level and for what posts. The existing employees can also be converted into such fixed-term contract employees with a lollipop of salaries comparable to the private sector, with the clear proviso that such employees would “not be entitled to any other benefit”. The legendary job security of government service would be a myth henceforth.

The SCPC “assures” the employees that they would retain the existing option of two-promotions in 24 long years of service – average one promotion after 12 long years of stagnation/condemnation to the same scale with the limited satisfaction of limiting running scale at the same level – but there is no assurance the “promotion” means the next pay band as it could be the next grade in the same pay band as well and hence only marginal increase in pay benefits. Band-aid in place of higher pay band!

The apparent “concession” of relaxation of 33 years of service as eligibility for 50% last pay is nothing but a green signal to kick out employees under VRS well before 33 years as that is a major deterrence for opting for VRS at present. As with the whole SCPC Report, this specific also comes as a small carrot to facilitate the big stick! A very generous concession of a higher rate of pension has been offered by the SCPC to the retired employees after they cross the age of 100!

The hikes in transport allowance and wards’ education allowance are supposed to be “realistic” [1.2.22]. But the SCPC has cleverly avoided scores of suggestions for linking them with routine quarterly fuel price increases, or even fee structures fixed by the governments for private professional courses, travel distance and so on.

Not just privatisation but corporatisation of “certain” unspecified services has been recommended/virtually mandated by the SCPC in Point 1.2.23!
After giving a banal and selectively one-sided account of fiscal position at the Centre, the SCPC speaks of state finances and gives projections on the possible impact on the States without any recommendation on making it mandatory for all States to implement the same SCPC recommendations on pay hikes from the same cut-off point of Jan 2006. If States are in a mess the pay increase chances of Central employees should also be messed up.

The employees’ movement must beware against those who persuade them that the Report is a “good package with some bad aspects.” The report itself underlines the holistic nature of the recommendations. In spite of the media hype and euphoria, in spite of the noise over the “hefty” package, the fact is that a bullet cannot have “good” and “bad” sides!

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 Citizens’ Convention Against Draconian Acts

The Forum for Democratic Initiatives, Delhi, organized a Citizens’ Convention titled ‘Undeclared Emergency? Special Security Legislations and the Making of a Police State’, in the backdrop of various State governments clamouring for Special Security Acts. Though the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has enough provisions to deal with law and order issues, these Acts are being increasingly invoked to deny the arrested persons bail and extract confessions from them. This is even as the third Police Commission of India has already observed that 60 per cent of all arrests in India even under ordinary laws are unnecessary.
The laws include Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (ULAPA) 2004, as well as various state specific legislations, which have been used to crack down on political dissent including the Chattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005, Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), the AP public security Act, the Bihar Police Act. In Uttar Pradesh, the Mayawati government has recently brought in the Uttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Act (UPCOCA).

The FDI convenor, Radhika Menon presented the concept paper for the Convention. Delhi University teacher, Dr Ujjwal Kumar Singh, said that ‘special’ measures like detention and torture were being made ordinary and acceptable through these Acts. Praful Bidwai, senior journalist, spoke about the Chattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 and how it was complementary to the politics of Salwa Judum. The history of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), in the North East was summed up by Bablu, a lawyer from Manipur. Dr Bhagat Oinam, teacher from JNU, spoke of how some of the insurgent groups in the NE in the name of which the Army justified its presence reportedly had identity cards issued by the Army itself. The situation in Uttarakhand where the BJP government is eager to present a Maoist threat in order to corner anti-Naxalite funds offered by the Central Government was presented by Girija Pathak, CPI(ML) leader from Uttarakhand. He pointed out that in the face of high profile cases routine assaults on trade unions gets forgotten but it these that which allows the normalization and introduction of Special Security Acts. PUHR activist Manoj, presented the emerging crackdowns in Uttar Pradesh on specific religious communities as well as that of the poor. Film Maker Sanjay Kak who has made a documentary on the perspective of the Kashmiri people towards the political issues in the state said how in Kashmir and North East, there already was a military State. Writer Arundhati Roy explained the predisposition of the police and judiciary to interpret such Acts according to political convenience such that even a Convention like this one could be declared illegal. Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan spoke of how even the ordinary liberal foundation of Indian democracy was being undermined and said that a mass civil disobedience was called for. The report on the Bihar Police Act and political crackdown in Bihar sent by Ashok of the Lok Yudh editorial board was read out. Lalit Batra summarized the paper on legal violations by the police in West Bengal sent by Amitadyuti Kumar of APDR. FDI co-convenor, Manisha Sethi highlighted a newspaper report of the wrongful detention and torture of a Kashmir University student in Tihar Jail without the police presenting any evidence. Senior journalist Jawed Naqvi pointed out that for the poor and the deprived there was already a state of Emergency, it was just that the media was silent about it. A message by Illina sen, wife of medical doctor and PUCL activist Binayak Sen, who has been detained in solitary confinement in Chattisgarh under ULAPA 2004 and CSPSA 2005, was read out. A number of people from different walks of life participated in the Convention and stayed back for the discussion after the Convention. Pranay Krishna Srivastava, PUHR member and Jan Sanskriti Manch General Secretary summarized the proceedings and presented resolutions on a range of issues which the house passed.

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 STF Terror in UP: Communal Witch-Hunt

In the name of nabbing those guilty of blasts at Varanasi or the serial blasts in Courts in the State on 23 November 2007, a communal witch-hunt is being whipped up in UP, and the victims are innocent young Muslim men; both those living inside UP and outside. The PUHR in UP along with the Delhi-based Young Journalists’ Association had undertaken several fact-finding trips to places where so-called terrorists have been arrested, and held People’s tribunals and People’s Courts at Allahabad, Jaunpur and Kunda in order to bring the truth to light through testimonies of the affected families.
On 22 December, the STF claimed to have arrested two terrorists – Tariq Kasmi and Khaled Mujahid – at Barabanki railway station with RDX, Pakistani phone numbers, maps, etc... Tariq, they claimed, was the HUJI Chief of UP. Based on information provided by Tariq and Khaled, they claimed to have nabbed the ‘master mind’ of the serial blasts – ‘Raju Bangali’ (Aftab Ansari) – as well as two Kashmiri youths from Kishtwad in Jammu. We already know that the ‘master mind’, Aftab Ansari, proved to be quite innocent and was exonerated within a mere 22 days (see Liberation, March 2008)!

24-year-old Tariq Kasmi, a hakim by profession, was picked up in broad daylight off the street on 12 December 2007 between 12.30-1 in the afternoon, and whisked away in a white Sumo without a number plate. The police refused to lodge an FIR of abduction, only of ‘missing person’. The police eventually claimed to have arrested Tariq and Khaled on 22 December from Barabanki station, but admit that no public witnesses were available from the crowded railway station; only police witnesses. In a letter sent from Lucknow jail through his relatives, Tariq tells of communal abuse and threats of ‘encounter’ killing.

29-year-old Khaled Mujahid was picked up on 16 December near his own home in Madiyahun (Jaunpur) while he was eating chaat at a shop. In the Jan Adalat held by PUHR at Jaunpur on 15 April, many local people came forward to testify that they had witnessed Khaled being picked up in front of their eyes on 16 December at the chaat shop.

Khaled had lodged complaints with the local thana, NHRC, DM, SP and DIG of being watched for 6 months. After Khaled’s arrest, local papers quoted police officials saying that IB had been watching Khaled for 6 months. The question is: how could Khaled have managed to bomb Courts in November if he had been so closely watched by the IB?

In a letter written from Lucknow jail, Khaled said he was threatened with an ‘encounter’ killing, to avoid which he agreed to confess to involvement in the blasts. He was stripped naked, hung upside down and beaten, and asked to name any Kashmiri whom he knew. He named Sajjad, a former classmate at Deoband.

The climax of the STF script was the arrest of Sajjad ‘Kashmiri’ and Tariq ‘Kashmiri’ (their actual names are Sajjadur-rahman Wani and Mohd. Akhtar Wani and neither use the tag ‘Kashmiri’, but both were beaten into declaring that name in front of the media). Perhaps the STF felt that no terrorism story could be complete minus some Kashmiri villains. Sajjad, son of a poor worker, was arrested from his village in Kishtvad district of Jammu on 22 December. He writes that Khaled apologised to him when he met him in Lucknow jail, for having given his name to the STF.

The stories peddled by the Special Task Force (STF), intelligence agencies and police are riddled with gaping holes: yet the terror continues and innocent young men suffer degradation and torture in jail and the stigma of being branded ‘terrorist’.

Shahnawaz, Rajeev

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 Disband Salwa Judum and Other State-backed Private Militias

At a Chief Ministers’ Conference on Internal Security last December, PM Manmohan Singh described “left-wing extremism” as the “single biggest security challenge” in the country; and referring to Naxalism as a “virus”, he had asked state governments to “choke” Naxal infrastructure and “cripple” their activities. Undoubtedly, the most celebrated state-sponsored endeavour claiming to “choke off” and “cripple” Maoism has been the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh. The Salwa Judum, projected as a ‘spontaneous’ uprising against Maoists, has Congress MLA and leader of the Opposition Mahendra Karma for its proclaimed leader and gets full backing from the security forces and the State Government. This vigilante force has relied on barely concealed coercion of the local tribal villagers, and has resulted in large scale displacement (an estimated 50,000 villagers are living in relief camps), human rights violation including rampant rape by security forces, and a virtual civil war situation in the tribal population of Bastar. Recently, on March 31, while hearing a PIL filed by a team of independent observers against the Salwa Judum, the Supreme Court expressed remarks amounting to severe reprimand to the Governments extending support to the Salwa Judum and other similar vigilante armies. Interestingly, despite the fact that the Administrative Reforms Commission, headed by Veerappa Moily, had recently recommended the disbanding of Salwa Judum, the UPA Government represented by Additional solicitor-general Gopal Subramanian joined the Chhattisgarh Government of the BJP in stoutly defending the Salwa Judum in Court. The UPA Government claimed that the reports of atrocities on tribals in Salwa Judum camps and in the name of curbing Maoism were ‘exaggerated’, and defended the Judum by citing several instances of ‘village defence committees’ in other regions of India, where Governments arm civilians to counter terrorism and insurgency. One must recall that the Home Ministry had several times in the past years advocated that other states replicate the Salwa Judum model in the name of countering ‘Naxalism’.

The Supreme Court Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justice Aftab Alam, however, rejected such arguments. Terming the arming of private militias by Governments to be illegal, it remarked, “You (state government) cannot give arms to somebody (a civilian) and allow him to kill. You will be an abettor of the offence under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code.”

If one follows the letter and spirit of this Supreme Court remark, therefore, there are grounds to prosecute Mahendra Karma and the Chhattisgarh Government for abetment to murder, on the grounds of their open advocacy and support for the Salwa Judum! And it is not just the Government and the Opposition that are in partnership in backing Salwa Judum, it is the corporates too. In Chhattisgarh, the Salwa Judum has been promoted parallel to the large scale acquisition of land by corporates in this mineral-rich region of Bastar. The first public meeting of Salwa Judum on June 4 2005 reportedly coincided with the signing of a MoU by the Chhattisgarh Government with Tata Steel to set up a steel plant in Lohandiguda in Bastar. Essar is also setting up a steel plant in Dhurli/Bhansi region of Dantewada. Both Tata and Essar have also demanded lease and mining rights for the iron ore reserves in Bailadila. According to an annual report of Dantewada district collector, Essar has contributed to establish the Salwa Judum relief camps as model villages. This implies that the land originally inhabited by these tribal villagers will eventually be ‘left’ to the corporates to be exploited for their mineral wealth! The land earmarked for the steel plants in Lohandiguda, Dhurli and Bhansi all fall under the fifth schedule; thereby land acquisition requires permission of the gram sabha. There are reports that police and representatives of Tata and Essar joined forces to ensure ‘compliance’ by the villagers, deploying Section 144 and preventing any free gathering of the gram sabha! Clearly, the ‘public-private partnership’ represented by the Salwa Judum encompasses the State Government, political parties and corporate houses, with grabbing of tribal land being a top agenda.

The linked agenda is also of course the clamping down on all dissent by branding all voices of opposition or people’s movement as ‘Maoists’ or ‘terrorists’. The Chhattisgarh Special Security Act has a remarkably vague and one-size-fits-all definition of a ‘banned organisation’, allowing it to target virtually anyone. The arrest and incarceration of Binayak Sen and others who took up the issue of human rights violations by the Salwa Judum is the prime instance of this Act in action. On May 14, Binayak Sen will have been in jail for a full year; another bench of the Supreme Court unjustifiably refused to order bail for him. Recently, the DGP of Chhattisgarh declared that the martyred workers’ leader Shankar Guha Niyogi had been a Naxalite. Since Niyogi was murdered in 1991 by hired guns at the behest of Chhattisgarh industrialists and mafia, his political opinions or leanings are quite irrelevant; obviously the only point of such remarks is to provide a pretext to crack down on his organization, the CMM. The CPI(ML) too has been at the receiving end of accusations of ‘Maoist links’ - by the police in Orissa and by a senior Home Ministry official and head of the ‘Naxal Task Force’ at a recent press conference in Lucknow. Clearly, in the name of ‘choking off’ Maoism, the Indian State and governments of all hues intend to choke off all manner of mass movements, especially those which challenge the wholesale sellout of land and resources to corporate houses and MNCs!

Of course, the Public Private Partnership of the Salwa Judum variety is not restricted to Chhattisgarh alone. In Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and the North East, ‘village defence committees’ armed by the State have been deployed as vigilante forces in the name o fighting ‘terror’ and insurgency, (in the North East, surrendered militants’ too have been regrouped as private militias) and the track record of these outfits too has been one long trail of human rights violations and brutalities against people. In Bihar, the Ranveer Sena, despite being a banned outfit which carried out massacres of agricultural labourers and dalit poor, received tacit support from a range of political parties and the Governments which termed it a ‘spontaneous’ reaction to Naxalism (the selfsame argument being peddled in Judum’s case). Needless to say, even after the horrific massacres like Bathani Tola and Bathe, no ‘VDCs’ were ever suggested to defend the labouring poor from the Ranveer Sena! And recently, the Nitish Government put an end to the Justice Amir Das Commission just as it was due to submit its report indicting several Bihar politicians for their support to the Ranveer Sena! Clearly, vigilantism and private militias as a concept to defend villages from ‘terror’ are sanctioned by Governments only when they define ‘terror’ as coming from Left-wing groups. Mass massacres by the Ranveer Sena do not constitute ‘terror’ in the vocabulary of the State, and while those accused of supporting ‘Naxalism’ are to be ‘choked off’, those who patronized and funded the Ranveer Sena will escape prosecution!

It remains to be seen how far the Supreme Court will go in actually issuing directives against the Salwa Judum, and also how the State and Central Governments will respond to the Supreme Court reprimand. There is a move to set up a Salwa Judum-type formation in Maharashtra – and the SC ought to issue a suo motu directive stalling it immediately. All democratic forces must, in light of the SC comment, demand immediate scrapping of the Salwa Judum and all such private militias and VDCs in other parts of the country, and prosecution of all those who patronize and attempt to legalise such militias. At the same time, we must remain vigilant against attempts by the State to interpret the SC remarks to further arm itself with direct repressive powers in the form of fresh draconian legislations and other measures.

Kavita Krishnan

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 Struggles of tea garden workers in Assam

Sipped with lime and honey in expensive china by manor dwellers and savoured in tiny chipped glasses with milk and sugar by commuters in Indian railway stations, Assam tea is a household name for most lovers of the brew. However the story behind the cultivation, plucking and processing of tea leaves in the plantations is one of exploitation and untold hardships for the toiling workers who are the singular reason that this industry is one of the pillars of the Assam economy, and in making the entire Northeast Indian region the largest tea-growing region in the world.

Across the many plantations in Assam, most of which are situated in the upper parts of the state, the condition of the tea garden workers is nothing short of abysmal. Adivasis brought in as indentured slave-labour from Central India by the British form the vast majority of the workers, with the rest consisting of other local tribal communities, as well as Nepalis, Bengalis, Oriyas and so on. Even today, the working conditions today are a far cry from the regulations of the Plantation Labour Act brought out in 1951 to protect the interests of workers in plantations, who form the single largest organised sector workforce in Assam and the entire Northeast region numbering anywhere between 8 to 10 lakhs depending on the season.

Babloo, Signus and Ranjit, all workers in Mornia Tea Estate in Lower Assam, complained that they had to drink bitter-tasting, hard water from pre-existing wells, when in fact they’re supposed to receive drinking water either through taps or tankers from a public water source. Late wage payments were another huge problem, with some workers receiving their wages as late as 3 to 4 months after the due date. Garden workers received around Rs. 1400 per month on paper, but portions were cut from that for shelter repair (which hadn’t been conducted in over 10 years), canteen facilities (non-existent), and educational facilities (again non-existent). This translated to a real wage of about Rs. 45 per day, far lesser than the prescribed daily minimum wage of around Rs. 54. They further said that Provident Fund had been cut on a monthly basis from their salaries, yet since 2000 no retired worker had received gratuity from PF. When asked about this, management simply shifted the blame to their predecessors. The school was in a decrepit condition and the only education the children received, when they weren’t working, was from the local church.

Further up north in Nagaon, workers said that the little benefits they did receive in earlier times were rapidly getting eroded over the years. This included rations, free medicines at the hospital in Kandoli Tea Estate (which has now been downgraded to a dispensary), money for firewood at Sagubhai Gardens and many others, all of which have disappeared with further and further deregulation measures in favour of capital in the post-liberalisation era. AIALA leader Arup Mahanto pointed to the nexus between management, police and corrupt union leaders as one of the crucial reasons for the deteriorating situation. Indeed, 4 of the 5 workers interviewed had been suspended and dismissed due to their attempts at mobilising workers, and all 4 now try to eke out livelihoods by working in the even more exploitative stone-quarry industry or selling firewood, while trying to fight a legal battle to get reinstated. Women, who are the backbone of the tea industry and the large majority of the workforce, are in fact preferred as labour because most managers feel that they are particularly suited for garden work and easier to exploit.

Discussions with progressive labour activists, tea garden workers and even upstanding labour department officials reveal the factors contributing to this situation. It is amply evident that post-liberalisation, labour has taken a real beating with the state often kowtowing to capital’s demands for further deregulation.

Furthermore the tea industry has been passing through a crisis with the free import of low priced tea and reduced exports being among its main reasons. This has again affected labour in a harsh manner, with managers increasingly using contract labour, thus reducing benefits, in order to ensure continued profits. Plantation owners across India have refused to accept responsibility for social costs citing the crisis in the tea industry.

A senior labour department official in Assam, who has witnessed numerous violations of the Plantation Labour Act in the tea gardens he has inspected said that one of the main reasons owners feel emboldened to neglect labour welfare as per law is that even if prosecuted a case can drag on for years in courts, hardly easy for the working poor to deal with. And in the off chance that a verdict favouring labour is given, the punishment meted out for violations of the act is far too mild, usually a nominal fine that is hardly a financial hit for the owner of a tea plantation.

The same labour department official testified to the corrupt nexus between tea garden owners and state officials including even high ranking bureaucrats, former Assistant Labour Commissioners, as well as many judges. He said that some of the maximum corruption occurs with respect to the Workman’s Compensation Act that guarantees compensation for workers in case of injury or death. The tea garden owner, in what is nothing short of cold criminality, just figures out that it’s cheaper to bribe both the labour department official and the judge rather than pay the worker his due compensation. And then there’s always the fallback option for the business owners: the political bigwigs whose campaigns are funded by these very big businesses.

The third and possibly most changeable factor contributing to the exploitation of tea garden workers is the corruption and complete pro-management functioning of the Assam Cha Mazdoor Sangh (ACMS) affiliated to the Congress-backed INTUC federation. ACMS has a complete hegemony over the labour scenario in the tea gardens of Assam, and essentially run as the on-the-ground labour controlling wing of the garden owners.

In the Mornai Tea Estate, the president and general secretary of the local union (from ACMS ) didn’t even know about the Plantation Labour Act 1951! While in Kandoli Tea Estate, the ACMS unit was instrumental in teaming up with managers as well as the police and orchestrating the dismissal of numerous workers who were struggling to get compensation for the family of one of their dead fellow-workers in addition to fighting for better medical benefits.

In direct contrast to the ACMS is the much smaller and infinitely more valiant Assam Sangrami Cha Shramik Sangh (ASCSS) which has led numerous struggles and won some important victories in the few tea gardens where it has a base. And while one didn’t see a single woman in any of the meetings with ACMS unions, all the ASCSS meetings had at least a third of the participants being women. In addition, all of the ASCSS unit leaders had a good understanding of labour rights as well as the need to tackle issues of self-exploitation among workers such as patriarchy, alcoholism, and sectarianism.

Subhash Sen, veteran trade union leader in Assam and leader of the ASCSS pointed out that it was under the tenure of former Deputy Health Minister, Pawan Singh Gatwar, a former Vice President of INTUC and leader of ACMS, that hundreds of tea garden workers died of gastroenteritis and malaria, with nothing being done by the ministry. Sen further outlined the need and plans of the ASCSS in trying to break this hegemony of the ACMS and build a genuinely progressive movement that yields positive results for workers in the long-run.

However launching a struggle in the tea gardens of Assam that can break the state-owner nexus as well as the hegemony of a corrupt, derelict union is no easy task. The courageous militancy shown by the members and leaders of the ASCSS in many struggles is a step forward, one of many that needs to be taken, but a hopeful sign nevertheless.

Sriram Ananthanarayanan

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See: Interview with a Maruti Trade Unionist in Gurgaon on the eve of May Day

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See: Construction Workers in Delhi March Against Price Rise

See: AICCTU National Council Meeting Towards 7^th National Conference

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RYA’s Open Letter To The Speaker Of Lok-Sabha

Revolutionary Youth Association (RYA) Punjab wrote a letter to the Speaker, Lok Sabha, demanding that Parliament initiate an open debate on the ‘Life, Contribution and Though of Shaheed Bhagat Singh’. Accusing Parliament of trying “to honour him as a character of history, so as to avoid honouring him as an ideologue, as a visionary of a socialist India instead of the India which the ruling class has built”, RYA demanded that Bhagat Singh be depicted in Parliament with Batukeshwar Dutt, in the pose of throwing voice bombs; the slogan “Long live revolution”, and “Down with imperialism” be inscribed on the statues in all Indian languages; and the statues be inaugurated on 8^th April of coming year, the day when the revolutionaries threw the bomb in the Parliament.

AIPWA Team Meets Women Agitating in Patna Remand Home

An AIPWA investigation team comprising Meena Tiwari, Prof. Bharati S Kumar, Shashi Yadav and Anita Sinha visited Patna-based Remand Home on April 3, where women had been on hunger strike for the last 3 days demanding speedy trial of their cases. The administration, instead of heeding their just demand, summoned the police which resorted to a lathi-charge, forcing them to break their hunger strike. Only 3 months back, there had been an incident of lathi-charge in the home when the husband of some detainee came to meet her. He was dragged inside the home and beaten. When the girls protested, they too were beaten. On that occasion, one lady constable had complained that girls from the Home are taken out to ’serve’ the big-wigs. When AIPWA leaders inquired about it the officials said that the complainant had been removed immediately and the Government had constituted an inquiry committee which had submitted its report to the Government. The detainees told the investigation team that despite proof that they had become adult they were forcibly kept here in the name of being minors. There are pregnant women, children and their mothers too in the home but there is no arrangement of doctors. There are neither fans nor cots in the Home. Despite tall claims of women empowerment, the Chief Minister and the State Women’s Commission are least concerned for these hapless women. The ‘reform home’ has been converted into a prison. AIPWA has demanded action against the officials responsible for the lathi-charge, speedy trial of the cases and other reforms in the Home. Meanwhile, after the AIPWA intervention was widely covered in the press, the High Court too has intervened and summoned the women detained under the charge of (love) marriage despite being minors.

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 Hisab do-Jawab do Rally in Jharkhand

Under a scorching sun on April 10, masses of people thronged the CPI(ML) Rally at Ranchi, spiritedly raising the questions of plunder, state repression and corruption in Jharkhand and demanding ‘Accountability and Answers’ (Hisab Do Jawab Do) from the ruling Madhu Koda Government. The Rally was marked by the participation of a substantial section of tribal people and rural women. The rally began with a minute’s silence in memory of all the martyrs.
Addressing the people as the main speaker, CPI(ML) General Secretary Comrade Dipankar said that from the very inception of Jharkhand, there had been a struggle between two distinct political currents in the State – one, of loot, repression, divisive politics and corruption in favour of the corporate; the other, of united resistance of all oppressed and marginalised people. The latter is represented in the struggles and sacrifices of CPI(ML) activists and leaders like Comrade Mahendra Singh in defence of democracy and the rights of citizen’s in Jharkhand.

The previous NDA Government as the first Government of the State, had shot dead tribals in Tapkara and then Muslims in Ranchi on Eid day, making clear its agenda of land grab, state repression, and communal fascism. Asking the UPA constituents in the State, the Congress, RJD and the JMM to stop playing ‘Opposition’ when they themselves were behind the Government, Comrade Dipankar challenged them to pull down the Government and call for elections. MLAs of Congress, JMM, RJD and Babulal Marandi all colluded to get the Director of Ambani’s company - from Delhi - elected from Jharkhand for the Rajya Sabha through the backdoor. The UPA govts of the State and Centre speak of the aam aadmi but they work for Ambani and America.

Comrade Dipankar said that Jharkhand’s people are forced to migrate in search of work and face xenophobic assaults in other states, even as NREGS is turned into a mockery of employment for the poor. The Jharkhand Government is busy signing MoUs in the name of industrial development with the Jindals and Mittals. Existing industries in Jharkhand are actually being finished off by the UPA and NDA governments turn by turn, while the richest mineral resources are gifted away to big companies without any benefit to the people, and Governments plead lack of resources for running welfare schemes!

Addressing the Rally, Comrade Bahadur Oraon, CC member of CPI(ML), said that the CNT and SPT Acts intended to safeguard tribal lands are being openly flouted, and those who resist are subjected to rape, repression and massacre. Tribal people are being cheated by the range of ruling parties. He appealed to all segments of tribal people to spread this awareness and associate with the revolutionary current of CPI(ML).

One of the main speakers at the Rally was Comrade Jayanta Rongpi, CC Member of CPI(ML) and former MP from Karbi Anglong. He said the Congress and UPA, be it in Jharkhand or in Assam, had shown its true face on the question of tribal welfare. When tribals of Jharkhand origin who had been living in Assam for several generations demanded recognition as tribals, they were stripped and paraded naked in the State capital of Guwahati. It was the CPI(ML) which was the first to reach out to the victims of that atrocity – not the self-proclaimed ruling class messiahs of Jharkhand’s adivasis. While the BJP and Congress are united in promoting the interests of the industrialists at the cost of the tribals, the CPI(ML) was at the forefront of the battle for the adivasis’ rights to land, forests and water.

CPI(ML) MLA in the Jharkhand Assembly Comrade Vinod Kumar Singh said within the Jharkhand Assembly, CPI(ML)’s was the lone voice raising the issues of Turia Munda’s suicide due to non-payment of wages under NREGS, or the police brutality that killed Ramzan Miyan on Muharram day, nor of the questions of the right of Jharkhand’s people to its resources. The CPI(ML) is the only true Opposition in the State, both within the Assembly and out on the streets.

Others who addressed the Rally were Comrade Shubhendu Sen, CPI(ML) Jharkhand State Secretary, Comrades Janardan Prasad and Rajaram, CC Members of CPI(ML), Comrade Ibnul Hasan Basroo, CC member CPI(ML) and State’s incharge of Inquilabi Muslim Conference (IMC), prominent cultural personality Dr. B.P. Kesri, AICCTU National General Secretary Comrade Swapan Mukherjee, and RYA leader Rajkumar Yadav. Prof. Sambhu Badal of Vinoba Bhave University recited the poems penned by him dedicated to Comrade Mahendra Singh. Office secretary Comrade J.P. Minz presented a 15-point resolution which was unanimously adopted by the Rally.
In the run-up to the Rally, an ‘Ulgulan Chetna Rath’ by a team of cultural activists had campaigned all over the city. The Rally was made colourful by the performances by many cultural teams: Anjam, Jagaran, Mashal, while the Panchpargana unit of Jan Sanskriti Manch and Sengel cultural team presented a Chhau tableau on the suicide of Turia Munda (see photo) and JSM’s Singhbhum unit presented a tableau depicting Birsa Munda in battle against today’s agents of imperialist loot: Jindal-Mittal-Tata etc... The entire Ranchi city was decorated with gates erected in the names of revolutionary martyrs of the Jharkhand movement.

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 CPI (ML) 8^th Bihar State Conference

The 8^th Bihar State Conference of CPI(ML) was successfully held in Bettiah, Western Champaran from April 14-16. Though W Champaran has been an old centre of our work, this was the first time a major state level programme was ever held there. Comrades of Western and Eastern Champaran were involved in the Conference preparation – a challenging task, given that there are very sharp contradictions with feudal forces in Bettiah, who tried to prevent traders and so on from cooperating with the Conference. For the conference, Bettiah town was beautifully decorated with Party flags and banners. Around 17 gates were made welcoming the delegates. The successful organizing of the Conference has given a boost to the Party’s profile and prestige. It will provide an impetus for further expansion of Party work in this region.

Delegate elections were held amidst much enthusiasm, and 492 delegates were elected from 24 districts. In all, 593 delegates were to participate; however 562 delegates ultimately did participate in the conference, representing more than 50,000 Party members. More than 100 delegates were participating in a State Conference for the first time. Compared to the last Conference, the number of delegates from student-youth and peasant front doubled this time, while the number of worker-employee delegates trebled and the number of women delegates increased by 50%. During this period, Party membership too registered an annual increase of 10,000. The number of branch committees nearly doubled (from 1300 to 2500) and their stability reflects the functioning of organizational network at the grass-root level.

The conference venue was dedicated to the memory of Comrade Yogeshwar Gope while the conference hall was named after the martyred peasant leader Comrade Shafayat Ansari. Inaugurating the conference, General Secretary Comrade Dipankar said that CPI (ML) was the real inheritor of all peasant movements in Champaran, before and after independence. Terming the Communist victory against monarchy in neighbouring Nepal as a victory of democracy and people’s assertion, Comrade Dipankar called upon comrades to create a similar mass upsurge in Bihar also.

A 7-member Presidium comprising Comrades Rameshwar Prasad, Pawan Sharma, Ramadhar Singh, Meena Tiwari, RN Thakur and Dhirendra Jha conducted the proceedings of the conference wherein more than 70 delegates expressed their views. The Conference was addressed by Politburo Members Comrades Swadesh Bhattacharya and Ramji Rai as well as Central Observer Comrade Janardan Prasad

The conference dealt in-depth with the functioning of Panchayat representatives, the issue of making the movements against Nitish Government more broad-based, militant and consistent and the issue of expanding as well as strengthening the Party. The political-organisational report presented in the conference emphasized the need for imparting a leftward orientation to the mass movements erupting against Nitish’s farcical claims of good governance and development. It noted that Nitish had replaced Laloo-Rabri’s catch-phrase of ‘social justice and secularism’ by World Bank-inspired idioms of ‘good governance and development’ which were equally hollow. In the name of good governance, feudal-police-bureaucratic rule had been imposed and in the name of development, corruption was prevalent everywhere. Though there are officially no SEZs, land grab by the back door is rampant.

In the concluding session, Comrade Dipankar called upon the delegates to strengthen the Party ideologically and to ensure its all-round expansion by intensifying political initiatives. He stressed the need to make the oppositional role of our Assembly and Panchayat representatives still more concrete and consistent. He also called upon comrades to impart a new context to the land struggle and organize the peasants under the banner of our peasant association on the issues of land grab by government, comprehensive agricultural development and land reform.

The conference resolved to intensify initiatives for student union elections and campus democracy against the prevailing campus anarchy. It called upon RYA to establish its identity at state level by intensifying initiatives on the question of employment. The conference approved plans to organize women in its fold on a large scale by recognising the new churning among working women, their increasing participation in public life, their increasing assertion on the question of their dignity and rights and their heightened anti-establishment consciousness. Assertion of the women delegates and panchayat representatives from among women was a notable feature of the conference.

The Conference resolved to intensify our preparations for impending elections, keeping in mind the new contours of constituencies carved out through delimitation.

The Conference elected a 45-member State Committee which in turn reelected Comrade Nand Kishore Prasad as State Secretary. Twelve new members were inducted in the new State Committee.

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Assembly Gherao in Tamil Nadu

In Tamil Nadu, the CPI(ML) held a massive Assembly Gherao on March 27, raising the burning issues of the toiling masses of the state. All over the state, the party took up a vigorous campaign in the three months towards the Rally. The demand for 2 acres of land for the rural poor, an election promise of the DMK government, is a burning question in the rural parts of TN, and has been thrown to oblivion by both opposition and ruling parties of TN including the official left. This demand, championed by CPI(ML), drew the rural poor to the Rally in large numbers. Thousands of urban and rural poor rallied on the demand of 5 cent home-stead land in many parts of the state particularly in the western districts of TN. An intensive signature campaign was held on the issue of rights of trade union recognition, in which 1.5 lakh signatures were collected by Pricol workers and workers of Solidarity Forum of Poonamallee and Tiruvottiyur. Hyundai workers also took up a SMS campaign and collected 1000 SMS on the demand. A convention was organized by the Tiruvottiyur Solidarity Forum demanding that trainees involved in direct production be regularized. There were efforts on the part of the government to disturb the Gherao preparations and mobilization. Permission was denied; comrades who set out from Tirunelveli toward Chennai to participate in the Gherao were arrested and detained in Tirunelveli itself; a bus owner in Pudukottai was threatened by the local police and he returned the advance paid for the vehicle booked for the trip to Chennai; comrades of Tuticorin were prevented from entering into the railway station; the vehicles of Tiruvallore comrades were blocked on the way to the Assembly and so on. In spite of all these disturbances, on 27^th of March, more than 7000 urban and rural poor gathered in Chennai to vigorously assert their demands.

The colourful rally was led by Comrade Balasundaram, State Secretary, and Comrade N K Natarajan, SCM, flagged off the rally. As the gathering was not allowed to proceed toward the Assembly, a demonstration was held near the Assembly when the Assembly was in session. Comrade S Kumarsawamy, PBM, Comrade Swapan Mukherji, CCM and General Secretary AICCTU, Comrade Shankar, CCM, Comrades Janakiraman and Gunasekaran, SCMs, addressed the gathering.

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 In Conversation with David Barsamian

(Armenian American independent broadcaster and activist David Barsamian was in Pakistan and India recently. All those inside the US and outside who mistrust the ‘embedded’ and corporate-funded media count on Barsamian’s Alternative Radio broadcasts. Liberation interviewed Barsamian while he was in Delhi. The entire transcript can be read on www.cpiml.org; excerpts below.)

LIB: How do you see the contenders for US President? How most people who were on the streets against the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq see McCain, Hillary and Obama?

DB: I don’t think the US elections will change much. I think that’s the case with elections in most countries.

People think Bush and Cheney are arrogant and stupid, and many mistakes were made in the Iraq ‘war’. It’s called the ‘war in Iraq’, not the ‘invasion and occupation of Iraq’ as it rightly should be called. I ask them - what if Bush and Cheney were smart?

Obama says the Iraq war is a ‘mistake’ - I say it’s a crime, for which those responsible should be held accountable. The contenders for President are all simply discussing tactics – of how to run the empire. It’s all cosmetic, all they’re doing is a little ‘tinkering’, a little superficial change here and there. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo etc... have deeply eroded the legitimacy of the US posture of benign democracy, and there’s a sense of the need to restore that legitimacy.

Hillary keeps saying she’s against the war in Iraq, but every time she got a chance, she has voted to spend money to continue the occupation! There’s a good technical word for what Hillary is doing: hypocrisy! Speaking out of two sides of your mouth!

LIB: What about the issues of race and gender that are involved in this contest?

DB: Well, in my opinion, Hillary is no feminist; she has not had anything to do with the women’s movement. But her spin doctors have told her to play on that angle – the fact that it’s historic – she would be the first woman Presidential candidate, etc... She’s telling women, I’m paving the way for all of you...

Obama calls himself black, but he’s not really all that black - and I don’t mean the colour of his skin. I mean that he’s no Malcolm X, he’s not even Martin Luther King. But race is a huge issue in US society. Obama has a Muslim grandfather, his middle name is Hussein; he’s been called ‘Osama’, and it’s been insinuated that he’s really Muslim, and so on. You still have white supremacists. Can never tell what might happen, the US is a very violent society.

With Hillary, people are also uncomfortable of perpetuating political dynasties. You had Bush1, then Bush2; now it might be Clinton1, and Clinton2, and people aren’t too happy about that. In Obama’s case, he has a lot of energy, and that is communicating itself and getting a response.

Another scenario is that Bush may bomb Iran in order to tilt the elections in favour of McCain. Because Mc Cain is a warrior; the professional jehadi; there’s not much difference between him and the Taliban. Unlike Obama or Hillary, he doesn’t dress things up.

LIB: Your latest book is on the US gameplan of ‘Targeting Iran’?

Iran has always been in the neocon gun-sights – it’s an original member of the Axis of Evil. Unfortunately India has been playing along with the US, to its great shame, voting against Iran twice at the IAEA, and now also not doing anything on the gas pipeline, which is in India’s economic interests.
Iran has always been the main target of American imperialism - Afghanistan and Iraq have been sideshows. They had no idea that Iraq would give them so much trouble: a ‘cakewalk’ is what one neocon said it would be. So this was a big shock to them because the main goal was Teheran – to conquer Iraq and then from Baghdad move on to Teheran. And now they’re stuck in Afghanistan for seven years, 5 years in Iraq – no end in sight. So the big neocon project of reshaping the map of the Middle East has now collapsed.

LIB: Suppose they were to attack Iran now, how would it go down with the American people who are already restive about the situation in Iraq? Would it really help them win an election?

DB: Well, if there were to be some incident where many Americans are killed and they say the Iranians did it, then, you have again the causus belli – to avenge the death of those martyrs.

LIB: You were in Pak recently – how is the new Govt. seen by those who had been in the pro-democracy movement? And what kind of equation might develop between the US regime and the new Govt.?

DB: Well, the Americans are very worried about Yousuf Gillani, the new PM. Because under Musharraf, they had basically carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. Musharraf was their typical kind of puppet who was being paid off to say the right things, talk about moderate democracy. Billions of US dollars have just disappeared in Pakistan.

That movement in Pakistan is very interesting because it was represented by lawyers, you know lawyers are not exactly working class people, they’re very privileged. Their interests were attacked by Musharraf and they were the vanguard of the movement. There was a lot of unhappiness with Musharraf, and there was also a lot of opposition to Benazir’s deal that was brokered by America with Musharraf. And the deal that she struck to allow herself, her husband Asif Ali Zardari and her party workers blanket immunity from all criminal charges really irritated a lot of Pakistanis.

The US is using Pakistan very cynically for its own purposes, and now they’re worried about Gillani, because he has been saying some things that might indicate that Pakistan may not be so “flexible” in allowing America to do whatever it wants.

Pakistan is an extremely fragile state right now, it’s barely functioning. There are huge problems of potable water, load shedding for 10-12 hours on end, in major metros like Lahore, Karachi. Musharraf has now become a liability for the Americans; I think his future will be in Miami, Florida, a designated area in the US for former dictators, generals and other despots... Musharraf had also adopted the World Bank regimen, under his Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz (whose nickname is ‘Short-cut Aziz’!) because he was selling everything off. One of the reasons there is no power in Karachi is that he sold the publicly owned electrical company to a private corporation that’s only interested in making money, not in providing the service.

Pakistan is in a critical situation because of US policies. It has always privileged the military over any other sector in the country – and this goes back to the very birth of the country. Pakistan was highly cultivated as a military outpost of the American empire. Immediately it becomes a member of CENTO and SEATO, Pakistani troops were sent to Jordan to kill Palestinians, they used Pakistani pilots to fly jets in the Saudi air force. They were part of what Chomsky would call the local cops on the beat. You had Turkey, Iran under the Shah, Israel, and Pakistan: non-Arab actors controlling Arab space. This has seriously impeded civil society in Pakistan. The joke is that most countries have a military - in Pakistan, the military has a country! They’re the biggest economic force in the country. They’re the biggest realtors – they own real estate, cement factories, banks, even breakfast cereal, tissue paper... There’s a very good book by Ayesha Siddiqa that just came out called Military Inc.: the first detailed study of how deeply Pakistani military has penetrated all aspects of society.

Why has the US been so agitated about Pakistan and the possible fall of Musharraf, and now this new Government? Right now the new Government is in a honeymoon period. People are willing to give Gillani a lot of space because he has huge problems. Two things he did very quickly that got a lot of public support: under Musharraf there had been a ban on trade unions; he lifted the ban. And under Zia-ul Haq, from 1984 till 2008, there had been no student unions. He lifted that ban. When I was in Islamabad a few weeks ago, trade union leaders were meeting there, openly rather than in secret, for the first time.

Bush is now seen as one of the worst Presidents in American history (and there have been many really terrible ones), and he knows it, he can see the public opinion poll: 25%, 26% approval rating. So I think he feels the only thing that can save his name and his reputation (because he’s obsessed with history) is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. So that’s why there’s all this attention on Pakistan, because they think he’s there. They think, if he can get bin Laden, then Iraq, Afghanistan, everything else will be forgotten, and he’ll be vindicated. This is a huge motivating factor.

LIB: With the Maoist win in Nepal, and so much uncertainty and instability in Pakistan, what’s going to be US strategy in South Asia?

DB: The long term enemy of American imperialism, from their point of view, is China. Al-Qaeda is a sideshow. If you read their documents, it’s all about China. They’re not talking about al-Qaeda’s navy or air force or economic policy – it’s, how shall we put it, a non-state actor, it doesn’t have state apparatuses. There’s a concerted effort to recruit India into a systematic base that will encircle China all the way up to Kashmir and around up to the North East, and that’s the long-term strategy. And if India goes along with that, I think it’ll be a huge mistake.

I think what’s going on in Tibet may be a result of some kind of operation to destabilise China, to embarrass it internationally towards the Olympics (and it has succeeded). Not to say that Chinese policy in Tibet is a model, but the CIA through the 1950s and 1960s had operations going on inside of Tibet. I think America might see Nepal as more of an ideological threat; I mean, rather than an economical or political threat, it’s more of an idea – an idea that might spread. I think they see India as the major force in South Asia. They’re banking on New Delhi to be the local cop on the beat, to manage the region, take care of any problems here and there. •