:: Saturday, May 17, 2003 ::

Women Agricultural Labourers' Struggles: Some Key Issues: Contending with the Double Curse

The following are some central issues and ideas which have arisen from AIPWA’s (All India People's women Association) work with women agricultural labourers and was presented as a paper in the Women's Conference at the Asian Social Forum held ein Bangalore earlier this year.

Agricultural Labourers are Increasingly Women:

The gender composition of agricultural wage labour is changing significantly in the era of globalisation. ‘Feminisation’ of agricultural wage labour is a result of a combination of regionally diverse processes which in many regions began well before the 1990s. In paddy cultivating regions especially, women’s labour has always been the major basis of production. But the proportion among women counted as ‘main workers’ who are agricultural labourers has increased rapidly in relation to that among men since the early 1960s. This trend has been further intensified by the New Economic Policies since the early 1990s. In particular, the collapse of rural non-farm employment and the growing crisis in the agricultural sector is leading to massive long-term, long-distance migration by men from rural poor households in areas like Bihar and Eastern U.P., leaving women to survive through agricultural wage labour. Women’s dependence on agricultural wage labour as a source of income has also increased in these regions with the destruction of many household based industries employing mainly women.

Women are at the Forefront of Agricultural Labourers’ Struggles:

Women have participated actively in wage struggles - these struggles have generally been launched during the periods of peak labour demand : in areas where rice is the major crop, these are paddy transplanting and paddy harvesting, in which women participate heavily. It has therefore frequently been women who have initially placed wage demands before employers, and subsequently collectively refused to work. And women’s participation has gone much further than this: in Bihar for example, women have also led marches of thousands to physically occupy land for redistribution, and have been at the forefront of resistance and protest against the repression unleashed by the landowners and the police. It is women who, armed with bricks, small scythes or household utensils, have driven the police out of their villages when they have arrived heavily armed in midnight or dawn raids, or who have surrounded police jeeps and snatched back those arrested, even forcing the police to apologise in some instances.

As feminisation increases however, women are increasingly becoming the centre of these struggles. In Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, women mobilised thousands in a sustained struggle for equal wages. Some months ago when activists in Central Bihar were holding discussions with labourers in different villages about the formation for the first time of a separate organisation for agricultural labourers, the Khet Mazdoor Sabha, they found that women were often the most enthusiastic. They felt that here at last was an organisation that would represent their specific needs and demands. Even in households where men showed little interest, women came forward to join the organisation. And they encouraged their daughters to join - when the men would say ‘what is the point, she will be going to another village once she is married’ the women responded that ‘when she goes, she will take part in the organisation there’.

Women Agricultural Labourers facing a Crisis of Employment:

A feature of the globalisation of Indian agriculture has been an acute employment shortage for those dependent on agricultural wage labour for survival and this has hit women hardest. The collapse of non-farm rural employment, the crisis faced by small cultivators, and the decline in access to land among the rural poor have all contributed to the increasing numbers of agricultural labourers. The overall agrarian crisis has left the rural economy unable to cope with natural disasters like drought and much of the burden is borne by poor and landless women labourers. In drought-hit Tamil Nadu for example, women labourers in Thanjavur district report that for the past two seasons, around 30 women are being employed in transplanting jobs previously done by 8 women. Thus wages have gone down drastically, and many women have been forced to take up domestic labour or semi-bonded agricultural labour simply in order to survive.

In addition, in several areas where women have successfully fought for wage increases, employers have attempted to undermine these struggles by introducing harvesters, and by bringing in male workers from outside to do paddy transplanting (traditionally done by women) on a contract basis . For example in Bhabhua district in Bihar, the employment available to women in transplanting and harvesting has declined from one-and-a-half months per year five years back to only 5-10 days in some villages. However women are actively resisting these moves and demanding that where there are enough women to harvest, harvester combines should be prohibited. In places where employers who used harvesters called women to do the weeding, they refused, telling them to invent machines to do the weeding too! In East Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh too, women labourers physically prevented harvesters from operating. Similar protests have also been taking place in Ghazipur and Chandauli districts of Eastern U.P.

Patriarchal oppression intensifies the exploitation of women agricultural labourers by their employers Patriarchal values and relationships legitimise the exploitation of women labourers. In Bihar, whereas the official minimum wage for agricultural labour is Rs.48.71 per day, an AIPWA workshop in which women from 15 districts participated revealed that the wages for transplanting work have increased very slowly, from Rs.10 ten years back to Rs.15 five years back and Rs.20-25 today, depending on the area. Even such increases have occurred only in areas where struggles have taken place. Women are in general paid lower wages and face worse working conditions than their male counterparts. In Bihar women are paid up to Rs10 less than men. Men workers are generally also given a meal, whereas women are not, even though women often have to bring young children with them to work. The only areas where men and women receive equal wages are those where wages are extremely low. Unequal wages are justified on the basis that women’s work is “less arduous” or women are “less efficient” even though this is evidently not the case.

Employers also use patriarchal and feudal relationships and values to try to prevent women labourers from organising. For example during the struggle for equal wages by women agricultural labourers in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, landowners attempted to break the strike by urging husbands and parents of the women labourers to bring them “under control” and make them withdraw from the struggle. However this attempt failed due to the level of organisation and determination of the women themselves. For many women agricultural labourers, sexual harassment and abuse by employers or other members of the landowning classes is a daily occurrence. This has been a key issue around which struggles have taken place (see below). Global capital is incorporating existing pattern of exploitation of women agricultural labourers and adapting them to its own needs as global capital increasingly penetrates Indian agriculture it incorporates existing feudal and patriarchal forms and patterns of exploitation and reshapes and adapts them.

For example flower farms in Karnataka are owned by American, Japanese, Dutch and Israeli companies in collaboration with Indian firms. A report describes the farm managers’ strategy for dealing with the mainly women workers : ‘the managers speak of the need to handle the workers delicately to overcome problems such as absenteeism. They seek the advice and assistance of village elders in the vicinity in identifying reliable workers and later, in maintaining work discipline in the farms. Village elders also seem to enjoy the attention they receive from the senior officers of the floriculture farms – it gives them a sense of importance especially in these troubled times when their sense of dignity is being challenged by their former clients’. Thus the corporations are fully aware of the uses of maintaining the existing rural hierarchy in controlling their workers, and are in fact providing a cushion against the transformation of relationships between the dominant landholders (the ‘village elders’) and the lower caste poor (‘their former clients’).

Meanwhile, alongside this corporate farming, we can observe the contracting out of flower production to local landowners whose flowers are collected and checked by middlemen and transported directly to the airport for export. Here one can witness the most explicit forms of feudal and patriarchal exploitation of women. It is on these farms, 40-50 kms from Bangalore, that girl children as young as ten are engaged as bonded labour. On payment of a lump sum of Rs. 1000-2000, or in some cases a larger amount in the form of a loan, to their parents, these girls are attached to farm households for periods ranging from one season to one year, made to work in flower plucking and packing as well as whatever household labour is demanded of them, and often face sexual abuse.

Sexual violence is used as a weapon of repression and terror against women agricultural labourers by Feudal elements:

In many regions, men of the dominant landowning groups have considered it their birthright to sexually abuse and even rape poor rural women. This has been a central issue for labourers’movements and in areas like central Bihar where there is a long history of organising, women testify that landowners no longer dare to routinely commit such crimes. However acute violence against women is now being used by feudal forces and the state as a means to crush resistance and attempt to maintain the status quo. For example in the ongoing movement for land redistribution and minimum wages taking place in West Champaran district of Bihar, the police have particularly targetted women, raiding homes, dragging women out, pulling off their clothes and beating them up with rifle butts and lathis and arresting them.

The most extreme and inhuman forms of violence against women were witnessed in the Bathani Tola and Laxmanpur Bathe massacres carried out against poor agricultural labourer families in Bihar by the notorious landowners armed gang, the Ranvir Sena. These massacres parallel the recent much more widespread carnage in Gujarat, not only in their brutality but also in the cold-bloodedly feudalistic ideology underlying them. The Ranvir Sena targetted women as those who would “give birth to Naxalites” and their children who would “grow up to be Naxalites” for the most horrendous mutilation and murder. These parallels with the actions of saffron fascists in Gujarat are hardly surprising since outfits like the Ranvir Sena have close links to the BJP and the VHP, sharing local leaders, funds, arms and a clearly articulated political ideology. The Ranvir Sena has the stated goal of ‘uprooting the red flag from Indian soil’. The links are made explicit in the recent formation of the ‘Jai Shri Ram Sena’(subsequently renamed the Soshan Mukti Sena) in the Bihar/U.P. border districts. The struggles of women agricultural labourers lead to challenges to domestic gender relations women labourers’ involvement in movements for change has inevitably led to their questioning oppressive domestic relations within the home. Very often these challenges begin with the woman’s determination to be actively involved in the movement and her resistance to her husband and in-laws who attempt to prevent her.

In the movement for equal wages in Thanjavur referred to earlier, women who were facing violence as a result of their participation in the movement left their homes to stay in the organisation’s office at the height of the struggle, in order to continue to be active. In Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, women have refused to continue to tolerate domestic violence and have challenged men publicly on this issue. In Bihar we have found that the emergence of women activists at a village level itself has a profound impact in the context of a deeply feudal and patriarchal society. When women see women and men working as equals in the movement and particularly when they experience this themselves, the idea that gender equality in day to day life is possible takes root. Women become determined to fight inequality oppression on many different levels, using whatever means necessary.

Demands raised by women agricultural labourers:

1) Implementation of statutory minimum wages and equal wages for women and men.

2) A comprehensive legislation providing protection to agricultural labourers and guaranteeing them 100 days work per year (there are still no labour laws relating to agricultural labourers, and at best they are recognised as an unorganised sector occupational category for minimum wages, which, in any case, are never enforced).

3) Social Security measures for agricultural labourers at par with other workers, including 3 months maternity leave.

4) No use of harvesters without assured alternative employment; formation of committees of owners, workers and the administration to monitor such conditional and restricted use of harvesters.

5) Distribution of land pattas (titles) in the name of wife and husband jointly.

6) Implementation of the ban on the Ranvir Sena and seizing of all arms from them. Giving licensed arms for self defence to poor rural women.

7) Allocation of land for house sites – there have been several militant demonstrations in Andhra Pradesh and such land has even been seized. In Bihar the struggle is primarily against corruption in distribution.

8) Effective and transparent implementation of DWACRA (Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas) and other schemes for women in the rural areas.

9)Ban on the sale of arrack (liquor) – women have conducted militant struggles in some areas of our work in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, breaking brewing pots or gheraoing the supply vans and sending them back.

:: Conrad Barwa 11:02 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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BUDDHA JAYANTI !!! BUDDHA JAYANTI !!! BUDDHA JAYANTI !!!

Today is a public holiday in India that marks the Buddha Jayanti Birthday of the Buddha. Buddhism itself is only followed by a small minority in India, mostly neo0-buddhist Ambedkarites but its historical and cultural imprint are writ large over many areas of Indian life; while elsewhere in the region it is the dominant religion in Burma and Sri Lanka where it has occupied a central place in the public imaginary and has proved to be a key field of contestation over various political groups and civil society movements involved in struggles over nationalism, democracy and social justice. Within India itself, the influence of Buddhist iconography and thought runs deep, though many people may question its direct relevance for most Indians. The Dhamma Chakra (Wheel of Justice) is the central emblem in the Indian Flag and the Ashokan symbol of the Four-Lion Pillar is the emblazoned insignia of the President of India’s Office, a miniature seal of which adorns the inside of most such official documents such as the passports issued to Indian citizens and the official placards of State institutions that are meant to be above partisan party loyalties. This has of course drawn the requisite ire of Saffronists, such as Advani who remarked caustically that such non-Hindu symbols were not the appropriate representations for a nation that was primarily a Hindu one to those who try and replace or read Hindu meanings into such symbols by arguing that the Dhamma Chakra is just another form of the Sudarsha Chakra; however these readings are distortions of a more complicated reality and try to impose a Brahminnical, purified form of Hinduism onto a much more syncretic and diverse tradition. Buddhism is just one branch of the Indic tradition yet it is a distinct one from Brahminnical Hinduism and indeed developed in many ways in direct conflict with the prevailing Brahmanism and Vedic teachings of its day: a closer examination of the historical differences between the two reveals the faultiness between the two.

Buddhism and Hinduism: the Way of the Buddha

Buddha was engaged in his search for enlightenment during a period of great ferment and religious upheaval, as most such spiritual leaders are; Vedic Hinduism was clashing with the Shrammanic sects, with Tantrism, with indigenous forms of Shakti worship and tribal animism, the Jains and the non-Deistic schools of philosophy such as Loykmayata and Carvaka. As Buddhism waxed and waned in the region various aspects of it did draw upon these sources and was in turn synthesised with other belief systems and the revival of Hinduism under Shankara non-dual Advaita ensured the eventual victory of orthodox Hinduism over other contending Indic religious traditions. Yet Buddhism made its unique contribution in the pre-Medieval period to critiquing both mainstream Hinduism and other religious traditions in their approach to philosophy, ethics and society as well as articulating clear differences between itself and the other streams of thought. In particular Buddha outlined Eight main points of departure with the orthodoxy of Vedic Hinduism and Brahmanism of his day:

1) While many Hindu ascetics, Shrammanic strivers and Jain monks pursued arduous acts of penance and physical suffering as a path to achieving spiritual and religious knowledge; Buddha disdained such acts as excessive and detrimental in pursuing the goal of Enlightenment. Excessive privation just like excessive luxury was seen as mystifying the way to true Knowledge and both were likely to lead the striver astray. Buddha advocated the Middle Path, which sought to eschew the errors of both ascetism and hedonism; moderation and self-control in all things was seen as the Right way.

2) Buddha’s teaching about individual experience and the nature of the world was a radical departure from the Hindu and Jain perspectives. Where the Hindus and Jains believed in things, the Buddha did not and in this he followed the more radical Shrammanical sects. The Hindus and Jains conceived of the Universe in terms of two master concepts: a spiritual Self (atman, jiva, purusha) and its relationship to a Not-Self (maya, a-jiva, prakriti), For Buddha, on the other hand, neither the “Self” jiva nor the “Not-Self” a-jiva were substantial at all. They were instead seen as insubstantial, phantasmagoric, dream-like processes. Concepts such as the Atman or Self were linguistic inventions, not objective realities. Instead of talking about the Self and Not-Self, the Buddha talked about the An-Atman (No-Self). The Buddha was a radical anti-essentialist, nothing existed in-itself, everything was either a representational fiction or a fleeting construction: the Universe was in constant Flux.

3) The Buddha did not accept any known authority, especially the authority of the Vedas or of the Brahmins. For the Buddha the Vedas were not the Eternal Word at the basis of Creation. Words, even supposedly sacred Vedic Words are just arbitrary and conventional signs. According to the Buddha the teachers of the Vedas are just like the Blind leading the Blind. The Buddha was a radical anti-authoritarian in that he felt no external source of legitimacy or authority could be relied on to reach existential ethical and philosophical truths: everyone had to reach these truths or struggle towards them by dint of their own effort and reach Enlightenment themselves.

4) The Buddha refused to follow established traditions. Thus he did not teach in Sanskrit the language of the Brahmin elite but in Prakrit the vernacular used by most of the labouring and plebeian population; he also set his face against esoteric doctrines, long initiation procedures and set inherited rules for religious organisations. The Buddha was an anti-traditionalist, doing something just because it was the tradition was seen as a poor excuse and all action had to be legitimated by thought and causation in the present not by referral to the past.

5) Buddha’s teaching was psychological rather than religious. It aimed at conquering the psychological barrier of craving or desire – not in abasing oneself before the Gods of the Vedic pantheon. The workings of the mind of the Striver rather than some relationship with a Divine entity was the focus. For Buddha it was the present Human Reality rather than Divine Reality that mattered.

6) Buddha was a committed egalitarian; unlike Vedic Hinduism which had different cosmological roles for different varnas and jatis often meaning that Enlightenment could only be achieved by the highest usually the Brahmin jati; or the more selective Shrammanas which taught that only a elect few could achieve such a state, for Buddha Enlightenment was available to all regardless of their background. For Buddha every single Human Being had the potential to achieve Enlightenment.

7) The Buddha rejected the excessive ritualism of Vedic Hinduism especially the yagyas. He argued that the rituals were ineffective because the Gods they were directed towards were mere fictions. For him merit was achieved not by such expansive shows of piety nor by ostentation but by other means and the expenditure on such activities were wasteful and counterproductive. For the Buddha, the belief in yagyas and such empty rituals were one of the main obstacles behind true Enlightenment.

8) Buddha as a rule refused to engage in metaphysical discussions as a way of propounding his thought and winning over converts. Unlike many other Shrammanical strivers who sought to sway potential followers and patrons by philosophical debate and base the veracity of their doctrines on the ability to best other rival Strivers in open rhetoric; the Buddha thought such discussions were a waste of time. Arguing whether the world was eternal or not, whether reincarnation existed or not; in his view concentrated on the wrong thins by essentialising concepts and treating them as pre-givens and also did nothing towards guiding people to performing ethical acts. For the Buddha ethical action and concern with the here and now, were more important than metaphysical speculation, prolonged self-reflection or contemplation: such actions were not really ethical but a form of narcissism.

A Buddhist Foreign Policy?

Buddhist practise within Buddha’s lifetime extended to the realm of political action and innovation as well; the sangha system was a body of monks that was governed by remarkable democratic and procedural rules of behaviour; many political scientists have compared it to the gana system of the tribal confederacies that preceded the period of centralised Kingdoms in northern India. This spilled over to the famous Vajjian episode whereby the rising Magadhan state under its ambitious king Ajatshastru was looking to expand its border by incorporating the smaller polities in the upper Gangetic belt; amongst them was the tribal Vajjian confederacy. Ajatshastru was meant to have despatched a messenger to Buddha at his abode in Rajagaha to seek the Buddha’s opinion on the matter and explained the king’s desire to annex the Vajjian Republic; an impulse that the Buddha categorically rejected, his reply is found in the Maha Parinibbbana Sutta:

“ And the Blessed One said to Ananda (his disciple), ‘Have you heard Anada, that the Vajjians foregather often and frequent the public meeting of their clan.’

‘'Lord I have heard it so’ replied Ananda. ‘So long Ananda’ rejoined the Blessed One ‘ as the Vajjians foregather this often and frequent the public meetings of their clan; so long may they be expected not to decline but to prosper.”

Buddha’s response goes into some length about basing such a decision on whether the Vajjians retained and respected the democratic gana practise of regular meetings and open debates and whether old people and women were safe. He wanted to know whether the Vajjians respected travelling Strivers and foreigners and gave them shelter. When he heard from his disciple Ananda that the Vajjians did practise these customs; he enjoined that they should not only be saved from destruction but helped to prosper. Ajashastru’s response contained in the same Sutta is less positive: “I will strike at these Vajjians, mighty and powerful though they may be. I will root out these Vajjians. I will destroy these Vajjians. I will bring these Vajjians to utter ruin” The following campaign was a bloody one in which the Vajjian tribal republic were subdued and they paid a heavy price for their resistance; Persian ambassadors recounted the roads to and from the Magadhan capital being lined with the impaled bodies of those that resisted the imperial annexation.

This is not to say that the Buddha was completely against violence in all situations or cases, as he was also in favour of justice and in order to establish and maintain a just society or order he was willing to accept the use of force. This was well illustrated in his dialogue with the Commander-in-Chief of Vesali, Sinha Senapati; when the latter asked the Buddha:

“ The Tathagatha preaches ahimsa. Does the Tathagatha preach that an offender be given freedom from punishment? Does the Tathagatha preach that we should not go to save our wives, our children, should we suffer in at the hands of criminals, in the name of ahimsa? Does the Tathagatha prohibit war even when it is in the interest of Truth and Justice?”

Buddha replied:

“You have wrongly understood what I have been preaching. An offender must be punished and an innocent man must be freed. It is not the fault of the Lawgiver if he punishes an offender. The cause of punishment is the fault of the offender. It all the means of maintaining peace have failed then the responsibility for himsa falls on him who starts war. One must never surrender to evil powers. War there may be. But it must not be for selfish ends.”

Later admirers of the Buddha such as Ambedkar developed several strands of Buddhist thought and contrasted them favourably with existing Hindu strictures: in particular the Buddhist emphasis on dhamma rather than danda as the basis for politics and the stress on egalitarianism and refusal to base current actions on tradition, established authority or textual sanction held obvious attractions to those under the dominance of an oppressive social system. We shall explore the historical impact of Buddhism and its relevance to those parts of South Asia where it is still the predominant religion but for today I think it is important to recognise the important and valuable role that Buddhism played in furthering the goal of emancipation and pushing the limits of the possible rather than the merely acceptable.

Om padne Om


:: Conrad Barwa 4:27 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Nepal Protest:

Supporters of the five major political parties in Nepal demonstrate against King Gyanendra for firing an elected government and replacing it with a pro-monarchy government last year, in Katmandu, Nepal, Sunday May 11, 2003. About 60 protestors were injured when they were beat up by police trying to break the protests, police and eyewitnesses said. The banner says Take back the royal actions. Long live the people's movement. (AP Photo/Binod Joshi)

An estimated 20,000 supporters of the main political parties demonstrating in the streets of the Nepalese capital Katmandu on Sunday, May 4, 2003, against the King Gyanendra who fired an elected government last year. This Himalayan nation's major political parties announced that they have begun an agitation campaign against the king's actions and established a democratic government.. (A P Photo/Binod Joshi)

:: Vikash Yadav 12:07 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Panchayat Elections in West Bengal: A Summing Up:

The most recent panchayat election results in West Bengal normally should bring cheer to those interested and committed to secularist and progressive politics and causes in India; however there are a number of reasons why this is not and should not be the case.

There are political and economic reasons for this. One can start with the application of what some have termed ‘Bolshevik terror tactics’ in West Bengal’s panchayat polls, in which at least 34 died in statewide violence. The CPI-M’s virtually Stalinist reinterpretation of electoral strategy for the panchayat elections makes Bengal almost unique. With the exception of Bihar, politics in no other major state descends to the level of routine threats of and violence against political opposition. We can recall that in the panchayat elections in riot-torn Gujarat ruled by Narendra Modi, the opposition had performed credibly. The Congress had boasted of its success. It hadn’t complained that Modi’s mobs made electioneering impossible and the last minute turn of fortune in favour of the Saffronist was due to the disunity amongst the opposition with the Congress and Janata Camp being split with the National Congress Party breakaway faction further splintering the opposition vote: in sum the BJP only increased its share of the vote by barely 5% and would have lost more seats had not the First-by-the-post system loaded odds in its favour.

The BJP, or the Congress, has not employed such brutal "Leninist tactics" of complete mobilisation all the time. In rural Bengal, politics and government have become indistinguishable to an extent unimaginable in other states and the Marxist Party machine has made party activity a feature of quotidian village life, not a cyclical phenomenon as elsewhere. Opposition political work in villages is therefore either difficult or dangerous and frequently both. It is a brave individual who will risk defying Party diktat in the countryside outside the purview of the shambolic but still functioning metropolitan Law and Order machinery.

It could have been different. In the 1998 panchayat elections in West Bengal, the BJP-Trinamul combine, which received informal support from Congress grassroots workers, had managed an impressive 42% of the votes. This time, the CPI-M had taken no chances and had ensured that in more than 30% of the panchayat seats there were no opposition candidates. Mamata Banerjee has her faults and has contrary to the hopes of her erstwhile supporters not delivered either as a responsible opposition politician or as a populist demagogue. But had she been a political challenger in any other state than West Bengal she would have had a better chance, because she would have been given more scope for activity.

This deplorable singularity in terms of political praxis results in an electoral landscape in Bengal that bears almost no resemblance to that in the rest of India. The BJP and the Congress are the natural governing parties nationally and in many states. Most regional or barely-national parties are formal or informal allies of the big two. Even the lumpenised, lathi-wielding Rashtriya Janata Dal of Bihar is a semi-Congress ally, and the Congress cannot ignore Laloo Yadav.

Splendid Isolation or Introverted Stagnation:

But the Congress and the BJP can quite comfortably ignore the CPI-M and West Bengal for the next general elections. If Lok Sabha elections were held for all states but not West Bengal in 2004, the results will be different statistically and not directionally from those of a full election. A Congress-led loose alliance or the BJP-led NDA can win or lose India without fighting for West Bengal, where the CPI-M and its vassal small Left parties will win the huge majority of parliamentary seats. That is not true of any other major state. Not Kerala, where the CPI-M is also strong but where the Congress is an equal contender. Not Kashmir, where the PDP is a Congress ally and the Abdullahs, the BJP’s possible friends. In fact the dynamism of the LDF coalition in Kerala is a testament to the fact that periodic spells in opposition instead of ossifying the CPM and other Left allies have rather strengthened Civil Society linkages and kept the Party more attuned with the needs of its constituents and wary of contemptuous dismissal of the electorate in a complacent assumption of superiority as is the case in West Bengal.

If the most significant trends of national politics stop at Bengal’s borders, it cannot but produce a distance between the state and mainstream India. West Bengal’s ruling politicians are more curiosities than power brokers in Delhi. That is unlikely to change even if the Congress comes to power at the Centre, because the now muted Congress-Marxist rivalry in the state will then get sharper. The CPI-M will say all this does not matter because West Bengal is politically “progressive”, a lesson to “caste and communal virus infected” rest of India. As it happens, “caste” and “communal” politics allows their practitioners and critics to fight lively electoral battles. More problematically while avoiding the pitfalls of a communalised polity and the caste fractiousness that characterises so much of India, West Bengal has still not made much effort to try and fully secularise society or remove vestiges of residual social prejudices: to this end religion still lurks as a potential mobilisational tool, except for the fact that this is done under CPM control rather than by an overtly communal BJP or Congress and the steady infiltration of illegal labour across the border from Bangladesh has now descended into farce with party apparatchiks managing such flows secure in the knowledge that it will form a reliable Muslim vote bank for future elections. Moreover politics still remains within the grasp of a rather narrow bhadralok elite which has monopolised almost all top level posts since independence and the plight of the ‘weaker sections’ such as adivasis who form a large migrant rural labour force on which the agricultural economy is dependent, remains mired in exploitative patronage labour contracts; while the situation of the Dalits and illegal Muslim immigrants is scarcely any better crammed into inadequate housing facilities, with little access to any social services, consigned to the grey zone of the informal sector where poor working conditions, pitiful remuneration and insecurity are endemic features. That West Bengal’s “progressive” politics has no space for opposition activity would not have mattered so much had the state been part of India’s economic modernisation.

But here, too, the CPI-M has carved out a worrying isolation. It hasn’t worked out a compromise towards economic reforms as the BJP and the Congress have. So, Capital does not know how safe the state is for business. But everyone knows West Bengal is a militant trade unionist’s paradise. Economies are modernised by industry and services. There has been almost no industrial growth in Kolkata and its surrounding areas over the last two decades. The stories of major companies leaving Kolkata are well known. Less known but more shocking is that West Bengal’s per capita power consumption is less than one fourth of Gujarat’s, less that one fifth of Punjab’s and less than half of Tamil Nadu’s. Power usage is usually taken to be a safe and reliable index of industrial activity. The data show how vast the gulf between Bengal and some other major states has become.

In the national highway project, the worst work problems are the stretches in West Bengal. In Delhi, if a flyover project is six months late, journalists do nasty stories and ministers and officials try to explain the delay. In Kolkata, if a flyover is only six months behind schedule, the media and the government will celebrate. But services are often the saviour of industrially dormant regions. Even if one ignores the fact that computer literacy rates among Kolkata’s children are lower than that of other metropolises — this has important implications for the IT industry in the state — what dynamic new services have grown in West Bengal? Bangalore boasts far more in terms of municipal services and innovative local government, Chennai has been better at attracting new industries and businesses while in Andhra Pradesh the IT-obsessed Chief Minister Naidu has ensures that Hyderabad has kept up with the latest developments in urban planning and layout.

Growing Marginalisation: Signs for Concern

The service sector that defines Kolkata — in fact, it is the mainstay of the city’s economy - is composed of sweatshops and street enterprises where the poor work. This informal economy makes Kolkata’s cost of living among the lowest in urban India. It also makes the city among the most economically retrograde, though more attractive for the professional and urban intelligentsia which revels in the availability of such an available and cheap source of manpower and services and whose own state assured incomes insulate them from any wider concerns about increasing productivity or sharing the benefits of such income streams outside a narrow circle. A checklist of India’s proven and promising service sectors will include IT, health, hospitality, tourism and finance. Where does West Bengal figure in any of them? Wasn’t it entirely apt and totally frightening that when bank unions called a nation-wide strike, the only city where ATMs did not operate was Kolkata? So, there can be no quarrel that the CII did not rank Kolkata in the top ten Indian cities for business infrastructure. There can only be a deep worry. Politically virtually irrelevant, West Bengal has nothing to offer economically to the rest of India either. Exciting new industries or services do not come up in the state. The outstanding centres of learning such as Calcutta University, Shivpur Technical Institute and Bengal Engineering College which once turned out artists of the calibre of Bankim Chandra, Tagore, Sarat Chandra, scientists like Jagdish Chandra Bose, Satyen Bose, Meghnad Saha; are now suffering from excessive politicisation in teaching appointments, declining incomes from government grants and crumbling facilities. Even the elite Presidency College to which every Chief Minister since the 1960s has belonged and to which the current one claims as his alma mater, has not managed to evade the general decline: it still turns out some of the best social scientists, writers, historians and physicists in the country but they no longer remain within the state any longer than they have too leaving for greener pastures in New Delhi and Bangalore or aboard as soon as they are able to. Trends are not made but ignored.

In a federal electoral democracy, the ability to influence Central politics and the capacity to set the national economic agenda determine the importance of a state as well as its own internal health. West Bengal is rapidly becoming a marginal player on the first two counts and suffering from a severe malaise on the third one. The latest election results will only hasten this decline from its once vaunted status as the economic, political and intellectual capital of India.

:: Conrad Barwa 2:14 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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National Security Doctrine or National Security Fantasy: Brajesh Mishra's Latest Offerings:

A national security adviser is expected to step back from a political template and tender to the government inputs and recommendations that are professional, one would hope against hope that at least some of this could be seen with the much hyped NSA appointment of the NDA government in New Delhi. Yet Brajesh Mishra’s publicly advocating a US-Israel-India tie- up against terrorism reflects the limited thinking of the Sangh Parivar and the comfort of the US more than it does comprehensive strategic formulations to tackle the menace. To attribute the causes of the militancy in Jammu and Kashmir as being rooted in Islamic fundamentalism is to over-simplify a complex situation and msacks of the usual time-worn clichés of Nationalist hagiography that so often passes for critical analysis within Indian policy-making circles. As puerile is to believe that a threat from a supposedly common quarter will suffice to ensure cooperation among the threatened, Kautilyan reductionism at its best. The threat to the US from the fundamentalists arises from what the latter perceive as excessive support to Israel and the conversion of a secular Iraq to fundamentalist sympathies by the dubious and oil-hungry proclivities of the Bush administration. An Indian link-up with Jerusalem and Washington against the terrorists would have little relevance to the problems this country faces. On the contrary it would enhance them, and fly in the face of India’s assertion that its new-found ties with Israel, welcome though they are, have not been forged by abandoning the traditional backing of the Palestinian case.

When the youth of J&K initially turned to the gun it was not for religious causes. The jihadi element crept in later, essentially to attract hardcore elements (after the Kashmiri youths were seen as soft by those more experienced Muhajedin who had taken over the movement frech from struggles elsewhere in Bosnia and Afghanistan), brainwashed into believing that Islam was under attack in India, in J&K in particular. Whether those currently in power in New Delhi like it or not, the spread of that canard was facilitated by the tearing down of the Babari Masjid — the nature of the insurgency changed thereafter. Mishra’s recommendation will only fuel the “endangered Islam” theory, as well as serve as a handle to those within the country who are convinced that there exists a Muslim-Pakistan-militant connection. The implications for the domestic communal situation require little amplification.

Despite New Delhi’s persistent efforts to project Pakistan as the sponsor of militancy, the US has not turned up the heat on Islamabad. The perception that Musharraf is a steadfast ally persists in Washington and we have been told that this is America’s war. Simply because Washington sees Pakistan as facilitating its Afghanistan-focused war against terror, means more to it than what is happening in J&K. So his three-pronged attack remains a non-starter. On the contrary, what would be India’s position should the gun-toting gang in the White House decide to take on Iran and Syria under the guise of countering terror? Even if there is some merit to Mishra’s grand design he blundered in articulating it at a Jewish forum. Risking India being sucked into a whirlpool in which it has few stakes. A BJP politician might have been excused for taking such a line in public, not a national security adviser. Clearly our man is so anxious to curry favour with Rice that he has allowed himself to be “conned” by his hawkish American counterpart. The perception that he is Washington’s man in Delhi is reinforced and helps neither the country he represents nor the country to which he is seen to be beholden.


:: Conrad Barwa 10:03 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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Hekmatyar's Revenge:

Al-Ahram has an excellent article on the current situation in Afghanistan where former Mujahideen leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is actively working to destabilize the official Hamid Karzai regime. The formation of an alliance between the charismatic Hekmatyar and the remnants of the Taliban are an ominous sign for the future stability of Afghanistan. The situation in Afghanistan has fallen off of the American public's radar, but I fear that is far from stablized. You can view the article by clicking on the text below:

"Afghan Endgame?" by Negar Azimi, Al-Ahram Weekly

:: Vikash Yadav 1:42 AM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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More Marxist Shenanigans in West Bengal:

Chairman Biman Bose is going through turbulent times. Although a veteran of many battles, the panchayat elections, seem to be too much for him. Anil Biswas tried to handle irate Left Front partners but gave up when he didn’t have convincing answers to their complaints of violence in the countryside inspired by CPI-M cadres. Now Biman uses a mixture of fact and fiction. He begins with the stark reality that everyone must acknowledge that the CPI-M is the pivot around which the Left Front revolves and that no partner can suggest even remotely that Big Brother ought to make sacrifices. Biman does not confirm that the CPI-M, in return, will not do anything against its junior partners even in areas where they have a strong base. In other words, the Front exists for Alimuddin Street and the sooner the RSP (Revolutionary Socialist Party), Forward Bloc and others accept this, the better.

Then comes the pretence, the distortions and the shameless recourse to imagination. He pretends nothing happened to the RSP minister who was chased by CPI-M goons at Hilli; he pretends not to have heard complaints from junior partners; and he pretends not to have had the time to watch television where these complaints are prominently aired. Then come the distortions: that despite the Trinamul-BJP “bluff’’ that they couldn’t field candidates for 20,000 seats because of the CPI-M strongarm tactics, West Bengal presents a shining example of free and fair elections because “only’’ 6,283 panchayat sets are won uncontested — naturally by the Left Front! If this is the level of reasoning, there is little to be said about Biman’s flight of fancy that Mamata Banerjee has to ensure victory for the Trinamul-BJP alliance in order to be gifted a berth in the Union cabinet.

Over the years, Biman, like his other colleagues, has perfected the art of producing red herrings, on the one hand, and managing disasters, on the other. This time too they are reasonably assured of a performance that will help prevent the party from being torn apart by factionalism. But like Left unity which Biman painfully projects to a disbelieving audience, there is one other thing that has been shaken as never before by the panchayat elections — the Left’s credibility

UPDATE: The BBC has more coverage of the violence during these panchayat elections; at least 34 people are feared to have dies and police estimates are higher. The level of violence has escalated since the last elections but it can hardly have said to be a surprise given the actions of both sides and particulalry the ruling CPM govt in Writer's Building. Though the Left Front has predicatably kept ahead of its rivals, it continues to haemorrage support in key areas and even repression will not be able to staunch its declining popularity. Violence is no substitue for policy.

:: Conrad Barwa 1:16 PM [Permanent Link] :: ::
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