Challenging the current development paradigm - A Discussion Paper from Mazdoor Mukti

Challenging the current development paradigm - A Discussion Paper from Mazdoor Mukti

March 29, 2007

Issued for discussion and dialogue by Mazdoor Mukti

Know at the outset that the “we” on whose behalf this proposal is being submitted refers to ordinary people, ordinary labourers, employees, students, youth; who are born with no form of connection with any Establishment, who toil and perish; who at most cast votes during elections, apparently to chose our rulers, but are not involved at any stage of national planning; who are not ministers, nor bureaucrats, nor police chiefs, nor leaders of parties engaged in parliamentary politics; not even promoters-contractors-order suppliers who mill around ministers and bureaucrats; not eminent citizens who wine and dine with capitalists as part of the same elite, bonded socially, culturally and economically in multifarious ways. Simply put, we are those who have no say in how present day society runs or will run. And nor are we among those who are drugged on the belief that capitalism is indeed the last word, and so have pledged to take responsibility for finding solutions to all problems within its given framework. There is another way in which this proposal can be viewed: it is the only rational stand of all exploited-oppressed-persecuted people fighting consistently against the onslaught of capitalism.

All sensitive and conscientious people in West Bengal unanimously condemn the exceedingly undemocratic, inhuman and anti-people process by which thousands of acres of land is being acquired for industry, evicting lakhs of farmers and labourers from their homesteads and livelihoods. But when the Left Front points an accusing finger at these protesters, calling them anti-development, anti-industry and therefore obstructing progress with deliberate intent so that the state remains backward forever – differences of opinion arise within the dissenting camp regarding the response to these accusations. Such differences are but natural since their politics and ideology are not identical. Be that as it may, let us clarify our own stand on this issue.

They say that acquisition of this land is an urgent necessity for industrialisation. Rubbish. Industrialisation does not mean opening one factory. Industrialisation means factory after factory, a barrage of enterprise. That this is not possible at this critical juncture of crisis-ridden capitalism has been admitted by the proponents of industrialization themselves. A natural question that arises of course is: If industrialization is truly on their agenda, why are thousands of factories still closed? Why is no effort being taken to revive them? That we have to accept the dislocation of thousands of lives for the sake of this so-called industrialization, is exactly the kind of argument we find totally unacceptable.

Because, very simply, industrialization or development, whatever they choose to call it, it’s all inspired by capitalism really, all for the benefit of capitalists, and nothing else. Even the roadways and infrastructure they build, the schools, colleges and hospitals, are all for the benefit of capitalists. To ensure a regular supply of various types of employees and workers, and thus keep their chariot-wheels well-oiled. The greatest example of this is the British colonial enterprise in pre-independence India when many such development projects flourished. Even their biggest supporters cannot claim that such projects were implemented for the benefit of the subject people. Now the problem is that continuous unplanned urbanization and indiscriminate proliferation of industry has brought the country to such a pass that any large development plans necessarily entail displacement and deprivation of livelihood of lakhs of people, and massive environmental degradation.

Having created such an impasse, they are now proposing that we should be ready to make sacrifices for the sake of industrialization and progress! We reject such a proposal with disdain. Whenever the rulers are faced with irresolvable problems which they themselves have created, they shift the onus of finding a solution on the suffering masses. And some among us fall into this trap and come forward with constructive plans. Some even glorify such a stance as ‘participatory democracy’. Let us give a few examples to illustrate this.

Example 1:

When the streets of Kolkata were being cleared of hawkers, citizens were asked whether they wished to walk freely and safely, or would they rather allow the hawkers to remain on the footpaths and obstruct free movement? Well firstly, the hawkers have come there through no fault of their own, nor any fault of ours. It is the direct fall-out of the development and industrialization model adopted by the rulers that has increased unemployment and lay-offs.
Thousands of people chose street hawking as a means of livelihood; and the government being unable to provide jobs, had accepted it perforce. Now, after 30-40 years, it seemed to have discovered that the footpaths had to be cleared for the convenience of citizens, so an attempt was made to turn the citizens against the hawkers. As if the hawkers were not citizens too. In any case, when we are asked what other option the government had other than evicting the hawkers, we have to answer that we want both. We wish to walk freely and safely, and we want the livelihood of hawkers to be safeguarded too. Those who have created this dilemma must find a solution themselves.

Example 2:

In the most recent cases of eviction from land, the argument they have put forward is that factories cannot be built on air, therefore, for the sake of industrial development, there is no other alternative to land acquisition. This time, the options are being placed before us thus: If you are in favour of development, you must condone the eviction of farmers and agricultural labourers from their established source of livelihood. If you oppose this, then you are against progress, you are enemies of the people. Wonderful! And remarkably, when some who are opposed to eviction try to put forward constructive advice, their proposed solutions turn out to be equally problematic. For instance, take only single crop land not multicrop land, they suggest. Who gave them the right to issue such an open license to the government we wonder? Did they not consider the fact that the land is not their very own private property? That thousands of people would be dispossessed and deprived there also? Besides, why is such agricultural land not being upgraded to give better yields? Moreover, in Singur you might say don’t take this piece of land, take this other. But when it comes to Nandigram or elsewhere, will you be able to point out 30-40 thousand acres of any alternative site? As responsible citizens, are you willing to mark out any alternative site for such a devastating project as a nuclear power plant in Haripur? If we study development paths being followed in different countries around the world (accepting industrial growth as a subset of development) we can see that development has many faces:

Development that takes place as a matter of day to day routine, which has no negative impact, which in fact we reap side-benefits of, as ordinary people. We don’t worry our heads about such things. We don’t oppose them, nor do we make a big song and dance over them. Things such as road construction, new bus routes or increase in the number of buses, new schools-colleges-hospitals, even new factories fall under this category.

Development by virtue of which large sections of people are displaced and/or deprived of their livelihood. For example the urban slum clearance drive that has been going on for some years, and the virtual requisitioning of farmland which has started recently, throwing village after village in dire distress.

Development that people fight for and achieve. Somewhere a hospital, somewhere a school, or roadways and so on. May be such things did not receive priority in government’s plans or, have been neglected, or have not been in keeping with the immediate needs of capital. We will mark these as our bold rejoinder to capitalism’s onward march. If we do fight and win these little victories, it does not mean that we overcome the limits of capital; but such attacks hinder capitalism’s innate pace and rhythm of growth. (And are therefore a part of the struggle against capitalism.)

On the issue of development and industrialization, our position is clear: When all the resources and wealth come into the collective hands of common people, when the source of inspiration for any development is the human being, then and only then shall we put forward our constructive proposals for industrialization and other such things. At present, you capitalists and your lackeys control politics and the economy; you decide what is to be produced and in what quantities; you budget expenditure on police-army-weaponry; on healthcare, on education, you determine all of this. Under this perspective, when you decide that one or more capitalists wish to build factories, so we must be forcibly displaced from our homes and deprived of our sources of livelihood, such silly and specious arguments we just cannot accept.

We make a humble submission or bold challenge on the issue of industrialization-and-development,. You say that it is for everyone’s benefit that you have made these elaborate plans. Well draw us a road map for the first five years. Show us how this development will benefit every level of society. What percentage of the unemployed will get jobs, what percentage of the hungry millions will get enough to eat, what percentage of the homeless will get a roof over their heads; how many of those who barely survive on the margin of existence, will improve their conditions of living; how many of those presently employed will be assured job security; what percentage will get pure drinking water, what rate of decline will there be in untimely deaths of pregnant women, in infant mortality; what percentage of children will have a chance for schooling, what decline will there be in the percentage of school drop-outs. Etcetera, etcetera.

Along with this, draw a map for 10-15 years, so that we can see clearly how the fruits of development are leading to a more equitable distribution of wealth. Only after we receive such maps, and can witness their effects, shall we think about how genuinely people-oriented your plans really are. Otherwise we take it that your development path will make the rich even richer, leave the poor exactly where they are, waiting like thirsty swallows in indefinite expectation of a few meagre drops from up above. Sorry, we cannot accept such anti-poor, pro-rich programmes as Development.

10 March, 2007
Issued for discussion and dialogue by
Mazdoor Mukti
Contact: Gautam Sen, P-494A Keyatala Road, Kolkata
700029Z Phone: 2465 2507
sengautam@hotmail.com

Development as Poison - Rethinking the Western Model of Modernity

Development as Poison - Rethinking the Western Model of Modernity

By Stephen A. Marglin, Walter S. Barker Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

At the beginning of Annie Hall, Woody Allen tells a story about two women returning from a vacation in New York’s Catskill Mountains. They meet a friend and immediately start complaining: “The food was terrible,” the first woman says, “I think they were trying to poison us.” The second adds, “Yes, and the portions were so small.” That is my take on development: the portions are small, and they are poisonous. This is not to make light of the very real gains that have come with development. In the past three decades, infant and child mortality have fallen by 66 percent in Indonesia and Peru, by 75 percent in Iran and Turkey, and by 80 percent in Arab oil-producing states. In most parts of the world, children not only have a greater probability of surviving into adulthood, they also have more to eat than their parents did—not to mention better access to schools and doctors and a prospect of work lives of considerably less drudgery.

Nonetheless, for those most in need, the portions are indeed small. Malnutrition and hunger persist alongside the tremendous riches that have come with development and globalization. In South Asia almost a quarter of the population is undernourished and in sub-Saharan Africa, more than a third. The outrage of anti-globalization protestors in Seattle, Genoa, Washington, and Prague was directed against the meagerness of the portions, and rightly so.

But more disturbing than the meagerness of development’s portions is its deadliness. Whereas other critics highlight the distributional issues that compromise development, my emphasis is rather on the terms of the project itself, which involve the destruction of indigenous cultures and communities. This result is more than a side-effect of development; it is central to the underlying values and assumptions of the entire Western development enterprise.

The White Man’s Burden

Along with the technologies of production, healthcare, and education, development has spread the culture of the modern West all over the world, and thereby undermined other ways of seeing, understanding, and being. By culture I mean something more than artistic sensibility or intellectual refinement. “Culture” is used here the way anthropologists understand the term, to mean the totality of patterns of behavior and belief that characterize a specific society. Outside the modern West, culture is sustained through community, the set of connections that bind people to one another economically, socially, politically, and spiritually. Traditional communities are not simply about shared spaces, but about shared participation and experience in producing and exchanging goods and services, in governing, entertaining and mourning, and in the physical, moral, and spiritual life of the community. The culture of the modern West, which values the market as the primary organizing principle of life, undermines these traditional communities just as it has undermined community in the West itself over the last 400 years.

The West thinks it does the world a favor by exporting its culture along with the technologies that the non-Western world wants and needs. This is not a recent idea. A century ago, Rudyard Kipling, the poet laureate of British imperialism, captured this sentiment in the phrase “White Man’s burden,” which portrayed imperialism as an altruistic effort to bring the benefits of Western rule to uncivilized peoples. Political imperialism died in the wake of World War II, but cultural imperialism is still alive and well. Neither practitioners nor theorists speak today of the white man’s burden—no development expert of the 21st century hankers after clubs or golf courses that exclude local folk from membership. Expatriate development experts now work with local people, but their collaborators are themselves formed for the most part by Western culture and values and have more in common with the West than they do with their own people. Foreign advisers—along with their local collaborators—are still missionaries, missionaries for progress as the West defines the term. As our forbears saw imperialism, so we see development.

There are in fact two views of development and its relationship to culture, as seen from the vantage point of the modern West. In one, culture is only a thin veneer over a common, universal behavior based on rational calculation and maximization of individual self interest. On this view, which is probably the view of most economists, the Indian subsistence-oriented peasant is no less calculating, no less competitive, than the US commercial farmer.

There is a second approach which, far from minimizing cultural differences, emphasizes them. Cultures, implicitly or explicitly, are ranked along with income and wealth on a linear scale. As the West is richer, Western culture is more progressive, more developed. Indeed, the process of development is seen as the transformation of backward, traditional, cultural practices into modern practice, the practice of the West, the better to facilitate the growth of production and income.

What these two views share is confidence in the cultural superiority of the modern West. The first, in the guise of denying culture, attributes to other cultures Western values and practices. The second, in the guise of affirming culture, posits an inclined plane of history (to use a favorite phrase of the Indian political psychologist Ashis Nandy) along which the rest of the world is, and ought to be, struggling to catch up with us. Both agree on the need for “development.” In the first view, the Other is a miniature adult, and development means the tender nurturing by the market to form the miniature Indian or African into a full-size Westerner. In the second, the Other is a child who needs structural transformation and cultural improvement to become an adult.

Both conceptions of development make sense in the context of individual people precisely because there is an agreed-upon standard of adult behavior against which progress can be measured. Or at least there was until two decades ago when the psychologist Carol Gilligan challenged the conventional wisdom of a single standard of individual development. Gilligan’s book In A Different Voice argued that the prevailing standards of personal development were male standards. According to these standards, personal development was measured by progress from intuitive, inarticulate, cooperative, contextual, and personal modes of behavior toward rational, principled, competitive, universal, and impersonal modes of behavior, that is, from “weak” modes generally regarded as feminine and based on experience to “strong” modes regarded as masculine and based on algorithm.

Drawing from Gilligan’s study, it becomes clear that on an international level, the development of nation-states is seen the same way. What appear to be universally agreed upon guidelines to which developing societies must conform are actually impositions of Western standards through cultural imperialism. Gilligan did for the study of personal development what must be done for economic development: allowing for difference. Just as the development of individuals should be seen as the flowering of that which is special and unique within each of us—a process by which an acorn becomes an oak rather than being obliged to become a maple—so the development of peoples should be conceived as the flowering of what is special and unique within each culture. This is not to argue for a cultural relativism in which all beliefs and practices sanctioned by some culture are equally valid on a moral, aesthetic, or practical plane. But it is to reject the universality claimed by Western beliefs and practices.

Of course, some might ask what the loss of a culture here or there matters if it is the price of material progress, but there are two flaws to this argument. First, cultural destruction is not necessarily a corollary of the technologies that extend life and improve its quality. Western technology can be decoupled from the entailments of Western culture. Second, if I am wrong about this, I would ask, as Jesus does in the account of Saint Mark, “[W]hat shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” For all the material progress that the West has achieved, it has paid a high price through the weakening to the breaking point of communal ties. We in the West have much to learn, and the cultures that are being destroyed in the name of progress are perhaps the best resource we have for restoring balance to our own lives. The advantage of taking a critical stance with respect to our own culture is that we become more ready to enter into a genuine dialogue with other ways of being and believing.

The Culture of the Modern West

Culture is in the last analysis a set of assumptions, often unconsciously held, about people and how they relate to one another. The assumptions of modern Western culture can be described under five headings: individualism, self interest, the privileging of “rationality,” unlimited wants, and the rise of the moral and legal claims of the nation-state on the individual.

Individualism is the notion that society can and should be understood as a collection of autonomous individuals, that groups—with the exception of the nation-state—have no normative significance as groups; that all behavior, policy, and even ethical judgment should be reduced to their effects on individuals. All individuals play the game of life on equal terms, even if they start with different amounts of physical strength, intellectual capacity, or capital assets. The playing field is level even if the players are not equal. These individuals are taken as given in many important ways rather than as works in progress. For example, preferences are accepted as given and cover everything from views about the relative merits of different flavors of ice cream to views about the relative merits of prostitution, casual sex, sex among friends, and sex within committed relationships. In an excess of democratic zeal, the children of the 20th century have extended the notion of radical subjectivism to the whole domain of preferences: one set of “preferences” is as good as another.

Self-interest is the idea that individuals make choices to further their own benefit. There is no room here for duty, right, or obligation, and that is a good thing, too. Adam Smith’s best remembered contribution to economics, for better or worse, is the idea of a harmony that emerges from the pursuit of self-interest. It should be noted that while individualism is a prior condition for self-interest—there is no place for self-interest without the self—the converse does not hold. Individualism does not necessarily imply self-interest.

The third assumption is that one kind of knowledge is superior to others. The modern West privileges the algorithmic over the experiential, elevating knowledge that can be logically deduced from what are regarded as self-evident first principles over what is learned from intuition and authority, from touch and feel. In the stronger form of this ideology, the algorithmic is not only privileged but recognized as the sole legitimate form of knowledge. Other knowledge is mere belief, becoming legitimate only when verified by algorithmic methods.

Fourth is unlimited wants. It is human nature that we always want more than we have and that there is, consequently, never enough. The possibilities of abundance are always one step beyond our reach. Despite the enormous growth in production and consumption, we are as much in thrall to the economy as our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Most US families find one income inadequate for their needs, not only at the bottom of the distribution—where falling real wages have eroded the standard of living over the past 25 years—but also in the middle and upper ranges of the distribution. Economics, which encapsulates in stark form the assumptions of the modern West, is frequently defined as the study of the allocation of limited resources among unlimited wants.

Finally, the assumption of modern Western culture is that the nation-state is the pre-eminent social grouping and moral authority. Worn out by fratricidal wars of religion, early modern Europe moved firmly in the direction of making one’s relationship to God a private matter—a taste or preference among many. Language, shared commitments, and a defined territory would, it was hoped, be a less divisive basis for social identity than religion had proven to be.

An Economical Society

Each of these dimensions of modern Western culture is in tension with its opposite. Organic or holistic conceptions of society exist side by side with individualism. Altruism and fairness are opposed to self interest. Experiential knowledge exists, whether we recognize it or not, alongside algorithmic knowledge. Measuring who we are by what we have has been continually resisted by the small voice within that calls us to be our better selves. The modern nation-state claims, but does not receive, unconditional loyalty.

So the sway of modern Western culture is partial and incomplete even within the geographical boundaries of the West. And a good thing too, since no society organized on the principles outlined above could last five minutes, much less the 400 years that modernity has been in the ascendant. But make no mistake—modernity is the dominant culture in the West and increasingly so throughout the world. One has only to examine the assumptions that underlie contemporary economic thought—both stated and unstated—to confirm this assessment. Economics is simply the formalization of the assumptions of modern Western culture. That both teachers and students of economics accept these assumptions uncritically speaks volumes about the extent to which they hold sway.

It is not surprising then that a culture characterized in this way is a culture in which the market is the organizing principle of social life. Note my choice of words, “the market” and “social life,” not markets and economic life. Markets have been with us since time out of mind, but the market, the idea of markets as a system for organizing production and exchange, is a distinctly modern invention, which grew in tandem with the cultural assumption of the self-interested, algorithmic individual who pursues wants without limit, an individual who owes allegiance only to the nation-state.

There is no sense in trying to resolve the chicken-egg problem of which came first. Suffice it to say that we can hardly have the market without the assumptions that justify a market system—and the market system can function acceptably only when the assumptions of the modern West are widely shared. Conversely, once these assumptions are prevalent, markets appear to be a “natural” way to organize life.

Markets and Communities

If people and society were as the culture of the modern West assumes, then market and community would occupy separate ideological spaces, and would co-exist or not as people chose. However, contrary to the assumptions of individualism, the individual does not encounter society as a fully formed human being. We are constantly being shaped by our experiences, and in a society organized in terms of markets, we are formed by our experiences in the market. Markets organize not only the production and distribution of things; they also organize the production of people.

The rise of the market system is thus bound up with the loss of community. Economists do not deny this, but rather put a market friendly spin on the destruction of community: impersonal markets accomplish more efficiently what the connections of social solidarity, reciprocity, and other redistributive institutions do in the absence of markets. Take fire insurance, for example. I pay a premium of, say, US$200 per year, and if my barn burns down, the insurance company pays me US$60,000 to rebuild it. A simple market transaction replaces the more cumbersome method of gathering my neighbors for a barn-raising, as rural US communities used to do. For the economist, it is a virtue that the more efficient institution drives out the less efficient. In terms of building barns with a minimal expenditure of resources, insurance may indeed be more efficient than gathering the community each time somebody’s barn burns down. But in terms of maintaining the community, insurance is woefully lacking. Barn-raisings foster mutual interdependence: I rely on my neighbors economically—as well as in other ways—and they rely on me. Markets substitute impersonal relationships mediated by goods and services for the personal relationships of reciprocity and the like.

Why does community suffer if it is not reinforced by mutual economic dependence? Does not the relaxation of economic ties rather free up energy for other ways of connecting, as the English economist Dennis Robertson once suggested early in the 20th century? In a reflective mood toward the end of his life, Sir Dennis asked, “What does the economist economize?” His answer: “[T]hat scarce resource Love, which we know, just as well as anybody else, to be the most precious thing in the world.” By using the impersonal relationships of markets to do the work of fulfilling our material needs, we economize on our higher faculties of affection, our capacity for reciprocity and personal obligation—love, in Robertsonian shorthand—which can then be devoted to higher ends.

In the end, his protests to the contrary notwithstanding, Sir Dennis knew more about banking than about love. Robertson made the mistake of thinking that love, like a loaf of bread, gets used up as it is used. Not all goods are “private” goods like bread. There are also “public” or “collective” goods which are not consumed when used by one person. A lighthouse is the canonical example: my use of the light does not diminish its availability to you. Love is a hyper public good: it actually increases by being used and indeed may shrink to nothing if left unused for any length of time.

If love is not scarce in the way that bread is, it is not sensible to design social institutions to economize on it. On the contrary, it makes sense to design social institutions to draw out and develop the community’s stock of love. It is only when we focus on barns rather than on the people raising barns that insurance appears to be a more effective way of coping with disaster than is a community-wide barn-raising. The Amish, who are descendants of 18th century immigrants to the United States, are perhaps unique in the United States for their attention to fostering community; they forbid insurance precisely because they understand that the market relationship between an individual and the insurance company undermines the mutual dependence of the individuals that forms the basis of the community. For the Amish, barn-raisings are not exercises in nostalgia, but the cement which holds the community together.

Indeed, community cannot be viewed as just another good subject to the dynamics of market supply and demand that people can choose or not as they please, according to the same market test that applies to brands of soda or flavors of ice cream. Rather, the maintenance of community must be a collective responsibility for two reasons. The first is the so-called “free rider” problem. To return to the insurance example, my decision to purchase fire insurance rather than participate in the give and take of barn raising with my neighbors has the side effect—the “externality” in economics jargon—of lessening my involvement with the community. If I am the only one to act this way, this effect may be small with no harm done. But when all of us opt for insurance and leave caring for the community to others, there will be no others to care, and the community will disintegrate. In the case of insurance, I buy insurance because it is more convenient, and—acting in isolation—I can reasonably say to myself that my action hardly undermines the community. But when we all do so, the cement of mutual obligation is weakened to the point that it no longer supports the community.

The free rider problem is well understood by economists, and the assumption that such problems are absent is part of the standard fine print in the warranty that economists provide for the market. A second, deeper, problem cannot so easily be translated into the language of economics. The market creates more subtle externalities that include effects on beliefs, values, and behaviors—a class of externalities which are ignored in the standard framework of economics in which individual “preferences” are assumed to be unchanging. An Amishman’s decision to insure his barn undermines the mutual dependence of the Amish not only by making him less dependent on the community, but also by subverting the beliefs that sustain this dependence. For once interdependence is undermined, the community is no longer valued; the process of undermining interdependence is self-validating.

Thus, the existence of such externalities means that community survival cannot be left to the spontaneous initiatives of its members acting in accord with the individual maximizing model. Furthermore, this problem is magnified when the externalities involve feedback from actions to values, beliefs, and then to behavior. If a community is to survive, it must structure the interactions of its members to strengthen ways of being and knowing which support community. It will have to constrain the market when the market undermines community.

A Different Development

There are two lessons here. The first is that there should be mechanisms for local communities to decide, as the Amish routinely do, which innovations in organization and technology are compatible with the core values the community wishes to preserve. This does not mean the blind preservation of whatever has been sanctioned by time and the existing distribution of power. Nor does it mean an idyllic, conflict-free path to the future. But recognizing the value as well as the fragility of community would be a giant step forward in giving people a real opportunity to make their portions less meager and avoiding the poison.

The second lesson is for practitioners and theorists of development. What many Westerners see simply as liberating people from superstition, ignorance, and the oppression of tradition, is fostering values, behaviors, and beliefs that are highly problematic for our own culture. Only arrogance and a supreme failure of the imagination cause us to see them as universal rather than as the product of a particular history. Again, this is not to argue that “anything goes.” It is instead a call for sensitivity, for entering into a dialogue that involves listening instead of dictating—not so that we can better implement our own agenda, but so that we can genuinely learn that which modernity has made us forget.

Source : Harvard International Review

A Million Nandigrams

A Million Nandigrams

By Sunita Narain

We were standing between a massive mine and a stunning water reservoir. Local activists were explaining to me how this iron ore mine was located in the catchment of the Salaulim water reservoir, the only water source for south Goa.

Suddenly, as I clicked with my camera, we were surrounded by a jeepload of men. They said they were from the mine management and wanted us off the property. We explained that we had come on a public path and that there were no signs to indicate that we were trespassing. But they were not in a mood to listen. They snatched the keys of our jeep, picked up stones to hit us and got abusive. Before things got totally out of hand, we decided to leave.

I was completely baffled at these developments. After all, this was Goa, known for its peace and calm. This was also the place where industrialists–the Dempos, the Salgoacars, the Timblos with mineral interests–play key roles in education, in culture and in promoting the ethics of good corporate governance.

Why would they allow mining to take place next to what is clearly the most important water source for the state? Why were there no signboards with names of owners, near or around the mine? Why would state regulators allow this to happen? What was happening in this paradise to unleash this violence and simmering tension? I got my answers soon.

In the next village, Colomba, I was surrounded once again: Not by goons of a mining company, but by women of the village. We were standing on top of the hill, overlooking the village nestled between coconut and cashewnut trees. But where we were, the bulldozers, mechanised shovels and trucks were hard at work.

They were breaking the hill, shovelling its mud, dumping the rejects and then taking away the ore. The mine had just started operations, said the agitated women, but their streams were already drying up.

Understandably the villagers had just one demand: Close down the mines. I asked how permission had been given without their consent. Who were these companies and whose land were they mining? It was assumed that conditional environmental clearance had been taken to operate the mine located mostly on comunidade land–originally under local community control and only to be leased out for agriculture.

But as the concessions had been granted by the Portuguese government and later converted into leases by the Indian government, these restrictions did not seem to apply. Or, at least, did not matter.

In the next village, Quinamol, the scene was more or less the same. The miners were rowdy; the villagers angry. The only difference was that the mine was older–first mined for manganese and now being excavated for iron ore. The people told me that they had complained but nobody was listening.

I learnt later–the day after my visit–that villagers had stopped a truck loading the material and beaten the driver. A case has now been registered against them. But is it only their fault?

This was the scene in all the villages we passed. What made the situation poignant, and ironical, was the fact that these villages are prosperous areas, where agricultural productivity is the basis of economic wealth. It is this well-being that is being destroyed, bit by bit. I understood then what the demand of ore from China, which had raised prices of the mineral to a new high, was doing to patterns of local economies.

It was in Vichundrem village, however, that I saw the future. Here our vehicle could not proceed up to the hill. It was blocked by a massive boulder. This was the simple but effective blockade by the village. It was their way to keep the miners out of the government forest land that surrounded their fields and provided it spring water for irrigation. The fields were gleaming green in the sun.

I had just seen a million Nandigram mutinies in the making. Where are we headed, I wonder?

Skewed notions of employment

D BANDYOPADHYAY

One of the major points that the CPI-M, particularly chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is making in support of acquisition of multi-crop land for industry is that it will create employment opportunities for the unemployed youth of West Bengal. This proposition goes against the trend that has set in in India vis-a-vis employment and liberalisation since 1991.
The Economic Survey 2006-2007 says: “According to the 61st round estimates (National Sample Survey Organisation) during 1999-2000 to 2004-2005 the labour force grew even faster at an annual rate of 2.54 per cent compared to the annual employment growth of 2.48 per cent.
“As a result, despite the faster growth of employment, unemployment (on the usual, principle-status basis) was higher at 3.06 per cent of the labour force in 2004-2005 compared to 2.78 per cent in 1999-2000....It appears that the increase in unemployment between the 55th and the 61st rounds of NSSO was primarily because of an increase in such unemployment incidence for women both in rural and urban areas. Further, while unemployment among men declined in terms of the UPS (Universal Package Service) and Current Weekly Status (CWS), it increased by the Current Daily Status both in rural and urban areas.” So, liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation and the rest, did nothing to reduce unemployment in India. The survey says: “Employment growth in the organised sector, both public and private, declined during the 1990s. The annual employment growth in establishments covered by the employment, market and market information system of the labour ministry decelerated from 1.20 per cent during 1993-94 to -0.38 per cent per annum during 1994-2004.”
So, rosy dreams of an Eldorado put out by private marketeers both in the Government of India and currently in the Left Front government were not only not realised but were also not realisable.
The Financial Express of 9 March, New Delhi edition, carries a news item: “Buddha may go shopping to the USA”. If Mr Bhattacharjee goes to the USA at public cost for creating a better Indo-US relationship at the diplomatic level with the consent and the approval of the Government of India, we have no comments to offer. But if he went at public cost to invite US investors to set up ventures for the purpose of “jobless growth”, the money he would spend would be infractuous.
First, half a million agricultural households which could lose their livelihood because of his intended acquisition of 1.4 lakh acres of good agricultural land in the districts would not get jobs in these high-tech industries.
A new set of knowledge would get some jobs obviously but they would come from the elite section of the population. From a rough calculation, the loss of livelihood of half a million agricultural households would not be compensated by the growth of new employment even at the most optimistic of estimates of one lakh jobs. Of course, these new employees would be much better paid. They would lead a much more luxurious life. They will create a demand for smart cars and white goods. And certainly they would go for cruises abroad on their honeymoons. If that is the growth model that Mr Bhattacharjee has for West Bengal, we belonging to the older generation would certainly not commend it.
Estimates of employment in organised public and private sectors since the liberalisation of 1991 is given. (See graph alongside.) It is apparent from the graph that with the nearly two-digit growth rate, we are squeezing out employment and increasing the pool of the urban, unemployed proletariat. What is also happening is that regular jobs are being casualised in the organised sector by various processes of the “putting-out” system. Casual employment is getting feminised, putting a greater burden on women both for earning a livelihood and looking after households, resulting in what ILO says is the “feminisation of poverty”.
If that is the grand vision of our beloved chief minister, feminisation of poverty and casualisation of employment, one can only say that this was not the goal for which our freedom fighters gave their lives. The Left would be betraying the trust the people reposed in it by voting the government to power.

(The author was secretary to Government of India, ministries of finance [revenue] and rural development and executive director, Asian Development Bank, Manila.)

HC rejects plea for larger CBI probe

- Nandigram firing case to be heard again three weeks later

Calcutta, March 26: The high court today turned down a plea for a CBI investigation into the mounting tension in Nandigram since January 3 and adjourned the police firing case for three weeks.

Advocate Kalyan Banerjee had wanted the court to order the CBI probe. “Since the March 14 police action, more than 27 people are missing. To proceed with its investigation, the CBI should have the liberty to register cases against the accused based on their findings,” Banerjee urged the court in his affidavit.

However, the division bench of Chief Justice Surinder Singh Nijjar and Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosh refused to accept the argument. It would consider the matter three weeks later, “only after going through the affidavits (several have been filed by NGOs and lawyers who want to be party to the case) and the CBI report”.

On Thursday, the CBI had submitted to the court a report on the police firing that killed 14 people.

Today, the court neither prevented the bureau from going ahead with the inquiry nor made the contents of its report public. “We’ve asked the CBI to keep the report in its custody, in a sealed cover, and would consider the same after going through the affidavits,” the judges said.

The bench directed the CBI to preserve the evidence — documents and materials seized in the course of its inquiry, including the post-mortem reports of the 14 killed.

The chief justice had taken exception to the incident following a statement issued by governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi condemning it and ordered the CBI probe suo motu.

Advocate-general Balai Ray today submitted that the governor “should not be dragged into the Nandigram case”, to which the court concurred.

Appearing for the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights, advocate Joymalya Bagchi pleaded that any statement by the injured that the CBI team records as evidence should be done in the presence of a judicial magistrate so that no witness can turn hostile under pressure.

The court turned down the plea.

Ranjan Roy, the CBI counsel, said the sleuths had the liberty to continue with their inquiry. “However, the court has made it clear that if we face any resistance or need any further assistance during the inquiry, we can appeal before the court and the bench may consider our demands,” Roy said.

According to legal experts, the division bench today maintained “status quo” on the proceedings as the Supreme Court had constituted a five-judge special bench to settle whether a high court had the authority to order a CBI probe without seeking the state government’s sanction.

The controversy arose during the hearing of a special writ petition moved by the Bengal government challenging an earlier high court order for a CBI probe into the alleged massacre in Chhoto Angaria.

In January 2001, CPM activists allegedly torched the house of Trinamul Congress supporter Abdul Rehman Mondol in West Midnapore’s Chhoto Angaria.

Trinamul claimed that 11 of its supporters were killed in the CPM attack and the bodies were smuggled out of the area.

The case is still pending before the five-judge bench.

'It’s outright war and both sides are choosing their weapons'

courtesy : Tehelka

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Chhattisgarh. Jharkhand. Bihar. Andhra Pradesh. Signposts of fractures gone too far with too little remedy. Arundhati Roy in conversation with Shoma Chaudhury on the violence rending our heartland

Singur and Nandigram make you wonder — is the last stop of every revolution advanced capitalism?

There is an atmosphere of growing violence across the country. How do you read the signs? In what context should it be read?

You don’t have to be a genius to read the signs. We have a growing middle class, reared on a diet of radical consumerism and aggressive greed. Unlike industrialising Western countries, which had colonies from which to plunder resources and generate slave labour to feed this process, we have to colonise ourselves, our own nether parts. We’ve begun to eat our own limbs. The greed that is being generated (and marketed as a value interchangeable with nationalism) can only be sated by grabbing land, water and resources from the vulnerable. What we’re witnessing is the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in independent India — the secession of the middle and upper classes from the rest of the country. It’s a vertical secession, not a lateral one. They’re fighting for the right to merge with the world’s elite somewhere up there in the stratosphere. They’ve managed to commandeer the resources, the coal, the minerals, the bauxite, the water and electricity. Now they want the land to make more cars, more bombs, more mines — supertoys for the new supercitizens of the new superpower. So it’s outright war, and people on both sides are choosing their weapons. The government and the corporations reach for structural adjustment, the World Bank, the ADB, FDI, friendly court orders, friendly policy makers, help from the ‘friendly’ corporate media and a police force that will ram all this down people’s throats. Those who want to resist this process have, until now, reached for dharnas, hunger strikes, satyagraha, the courts and what they thought was friendly media. But now more and more are reaching for guns. Will the violence grow? If the ‘growth rate’ and the Sensex are going to be the only barometers the government uses to measure progress and the well-being of people, then of course it will. How do I read the signs? It isn’t hard to read sky-writing. What it says up there, in big letters, is this: the shit has hit the fan, folks.

You once remarked that though you may not resort to violence yourself, you think it has become immoral to condemn it, given the circumstances in the country. Can you elaborate on this view?

I’d be a liability as a guerrilla! I doubt I used the word ‘immoral’ — morality is an elusive business, as changeable as the weather. What I feel is this: non-violent movements have knocked at the door of every democratic institution in this country for decades, and have been spurned and humiliated. Look at the Bhopal gas victims, the Narmada Bachao Andolan. The nba had a lot going for it — high-profile leadership, media coverage, more resources than any other mass movement. What went wrong? People are bound to want to rethink strategy. When Sonia Gandhi begins to promote satyagraha at the World Economic Forum in Davos, it’s time for us to sit up and think. For example, is mass civil disobedience possible within the structure of a democratic nation state? Is it possible in the age of disinformation and corporate-controlled mass media? Are hunger strikes umbilically linked to celebrity politics? Would anybody care if the people of Nangla Machhi or Bhatti mines went on a hunger strike? Irom Sharmila has been on a hunger strike for six years. That should be a lesson to many of us. I’ve always felt that it’s ironic that hunger strikes are used as a political weapon in a land where most people go hungry anyway. We are in a different time and place now. Up against a different, more complex adversary. We’ve entered the era of NGOs — or should I say the era of paltu shers — in which mass action can be a treacherous business. We have demonstrations which are funded, we have sponsored dharnas and social forums which make militant postures but never follow up on what they preach. We have all kinds of ‘virtual’ resistance. Meetings against SEZs sponsored by the biggest promoters of SEZs. Awards and grants for environmental activism and community action given by corporations responsible for devastating whole ecosystems. Vedanta, a company mining bauxite in the forests of Orissa, wants to start a university. The Tatas have two charitable trusts that directly and indirectly fund activists and mass movements across the country. Could that be why Singur has drawn so much less flak than Nandigram? Of course the Tatas and Birlas funded Gandhi too — maybe he was our first NGO. But now we have NGOs who make a lot of noise, write a lot of reports, but whom the sarkar is more than comfortable with. How do we make sense of all this? The place is crawling with professional diffusers of real political action. ‘Virtual’ resistance has become something of a liability.

Anyone listening? nobody Abhinandita D. Mathur

We are in the era of sponsored dharnas and NGOs the sarkar is comfortable with. The place is crawling with professional diffusers of real political action

There was a time when mass movements looked to the courts for justice. The courts have rained down a series of judgements that are so unjust, so insulting to the poor in the language they use, they take your breath away. A recent Supreme Court judgement, allowing the Vasant Kunj Mall to resume construction though it didn’t have the requisite clearances, said in so many words that the questions of corporations indulging in malpractice does not arise! In the ERA of corporate globalisation, corporate land-grab, in the ERA of Enron and Monsanto, Halliburton and Bechtel, that’s a loaded thing to say. It exposes the ideological heart of the most powerful institution in this country. The judiciary, along with the corporate press, is now seen as the lynchpin of the neo-liberal project.

In a climate like this, when people feel that they are being worn down, exhausted by these interminable ‘democratic’ processes, only to be eventually humiliated, what are they supposed to do? Of course it isn’t as though the only options are binary — violence versus non-violence. There are political parties that believe in armed struggle but only as one part of their overall political strategy. Political workers in these struggles have been dealt with brutally, killed, beaten, imprisoned under false charges. People are fully aware that to take to arms is to call down upon yourself the myriad forms of the violence of the Indian State. The minute armed struggle becomes a strategy, your whole world shrinks and the colours fade to black and white. But when people decide to take that step because every other option has ended in despair, should we condemn them? Does anyone believe that if the people of Nandigram had held a dharna and sung songs, the West Bengal government would have backed down? We are living in times when to be ineffective is to support the status quo (which no doubt suits some of us). And being effective comes at a terrible price. I find it hard to condemn people who are prepared to pay that price.

You have been travelling a lot on the ground — can you give us a sense of the trouble spots you have been to? Can you outline a few of the combat lines in these places?

Huge question — what can I say? The military occupation of Kashmir, neo-fascism in Gujarat, civil war in Chhattisgarh, mncs raping Orissa, the submergence of hundreds of villages in the Narmada Valley, people living on the edge of absolute starvation, the devastation of forest land, the Bhopal victims living to see the West Bengal government re-wooing Union Carbide — now calling itself Dow Chemicals — in Nandigram. I haven’t been recently to Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, but we know about the almost hundred thousand farmers who have killed themselves. We know about the fake encounters and the terrible repression in Andhra Pradesh. Each of these places has its own particular history, economy, ecology. None is amenable to easy analysis. And yet there is connecting tissue, there are huge international cultural and economic pressures being brought to bear on them. How can I not mention the Hindutva project, spreading its poison sub-cutaneously, waiting to erupt once again? I’d say the biggest indictment of all is that we are still a country, a culture, a society which continues to nurture and practice the notion of untouchability. While our economists number-crunch and boast about the growth rate, a million people — human scavengers — earn their living carrying several kilos of other people’s shit on their heads every day. And if they didn’t carry shit on their heads they would starve to death. Some f***ing superpower this.

How does one view the recent State and police violence in Bengal?

No different from police and State violence anywhere else — including the issue of hypocrisy and doublespeak so perfected by all political parties including the mainstream Left. Are Communist bullets different from capitalist ones? Odd things are happening. It snowed in Saudi Arabia. Owls are out in broad daylight. The Chinese government tabled a bill sanctioning the right to private property. I don’t know if all of this has to do with climate change. The Chinese Communists are turning out to be the biggest capitalists of the 21st century. Why should we expect our own parliamentary Left to be any different? Nandigram and Singur are clear signals. It makes you wonder — is the last stop of every revolution advanced capitalism? Think about it — the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Vietnam War, the anti-apartheid struggle, the supposedly Gandhian freedom struggle in India… what’s the last station they all pull in at? Is this the end of imagination?

The might of the gun: The Maoists march during their Ninth Convention in Chhattisgarh AP Photo

These are times when to be ineffective is to support the status quo. And being effective comes at a terrible price

The Maoist attack in Bijapur — the death of 55 policemen. Are the rebels only the flip side of the State?

How can the rebels be the flip side of the State? Would anybody say that those who fought against apartheid — however brutal their methods — were the flip side of the State? What about those who fought the French in Algeria? Or those who fought the Nazis? Or those who fought colonial regimes? Or those who are fighting the US occupation of Iraq? Are they the flip side of the State? This facile new report-driven ‘human rights’ discourse, this meaningless condemnation game that we are all forced to play, makes politicians of us all and leaches the real politics out of everything. However pristine we would like to be, however hard we polish our halos, the tragedy is that we have run out of pristine choices. There is a civil war in Chhattisgarh sponsored, created by the Chhattisgarh government, which is publicly pursing the Bush doctrine: if you’re not with us, you are with the terrorists. The lynchpin of this war, apart from the formal security forces, is the Salva Judum — a government-backed militia of ordinary people forced to take up arms, forced to become spos (special police officers). The Indian State has tried this in Kashmir, in Manipur, in Nagaland. Tens of thousands have been killed, hundreds of thousands tortured, thousands have disappeared. Any banana republic would be proud of this record. Now the government wants to import these failed strategies into the heartland. Thousands of adivasis have been forcibly moved off their mineral-rich lands into police camps. Hundreds of villages have been forcibly evacuated. Those lands, rich in iron-ore, are being eyed by corporations like the Tatas and Essar. mous have been signed, but no one knows what they say. Land acquisition has begun. This kind of thing happened in countries like Colombia — one of the most devastated countries in the world. While everybody’s eyes are fixed on the spiralling violence between government-backed militias and guerrilla squads, multinational corporations quietly make off with the mineral wealth. That’s the little piece of theatre being scripted for us in Chhattisgarh.

Of course it’s horrible that 55 policemen were killed. But they’re as much the victims of government policy as anybody else. For the government and the corporations they’re just cannon fodder — there’s plenty more where they came from. Crocodile tears will be shed, prim TV anchors will hector us for a while and then more supplies of fodder will be arranged. For the Maoist guerrillas, the police and spos they killed were the armed personnel of the Indian State, the main, hands-on perpetrators of repression, torture, custodial killings, false encounters. They’re not innocent civilians — if such a thing exists — by any stretch of imagination.

We were here: After the Jehanabad jailbreak AP Photo

I have no doubt that the Maoists can be agents of terror and coercion too. I have no doubt they have committed unspeakable atrocities. I have no doubt they cannot lay claim to undisputed support from local people — but who can? Still, no guerrilla army can survive without local support. That’s a logistical impossibility. And the support for Maoists is growing, not diminshing. That says something. People have no choice but to align themselves on the side of whoever they think is less worse.

But to equate a resistance movement fighting against enormous injustice with the government which enforces that injustice is absurd. The government has slammed the door in the face of every attempt at non-violent resistance. When people take to arms, there is going to be all kinds of violence — revolutionary, lumpen and outright criminal. The government is responsible for the monstrous situations it creates.

‘Naxals’, ‘Maoists’, ‘outsiders’: these are terms being very loosely used these days.

‘Outsiders’ is a generic accusation used in the early stages of repression by governments who have begun to believe their own publicity and can’t imagine that their own people have risen up against them. That’s the stage the CPM is at now in Bengal, though some would say repression in Bengal is not new, it has only moved into higher gear. In any case, what’s an outsider? Who decides the borders? Are they village boundaries? Tehsil? Block? District? State? Is narrow regional and ethnic politics the new Communist mantra? About Naxals and Maoists — well… India is about to become a police state in which everybody who disagrees with what’s going on risks being called a terrorist. Islamic terrorists have to be Islamic — so that’s not good enough to cover most of us. They need a bigger catchment area. So leaving the definition loose, undefined, is effective strategy, because the time is not far off when we’ll all be called Maoists or Naxalites, terrorists or terrorist sympathisers, and shut down by people who don’t really know or care who Maoists or Naxalites are. In villages, of course, that has begun — thousands of people are being held in jails across the country, loosely charged with being terrorists trying to overthrow the state. Who are the real Naxalites and Maoists? I’m not an authority on the subject, but here’s a very rudimentary potted history.

We are coming: A demonstration against the acquisition of land in Singur AP Photo

The government has slammed the door in the face of every attempt at non-violent resistance. The government is responsible for the situations it creates

The Communist Party of India, the CPI, was formed in 1925. The CPI (M), or what we now call the CPM — the Communist Party Marxist — split from the CPI in 1964 and formed a separate party. Both, of course, were parliamentary political parties. In 1967, the CPM, along with a splinter group of the Congress, came to power in West Bengal. At the time there was massive unrest among the peasantry starving in the countryside. Local CPM leaders — Kanu Sanyal and Charu Mazumdar — led a peasant uprising in the district of Naxalbari which is where the term Naxalites comes from. In 1969, the government fell and the Congress came back to power under Siddhartha Shankar Ray. The Naxalite uprising was mercilessly crushed — Mahasweta Devi has written powerfully about this time. In 1969, the CPI (ML) — Marxist Leninist — split from the CPM. A few years later, around 1971, the CPI (ML) devolved into several parties: the CPM-ML (Liberation), largely centred in Bihar; the CPM-ML (New Democracy), functioning for the most part out of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar; the CPM-ML (Class Struggle) mainly in Bengal. These parties have been generically baptised ‘Naxalites’. They see themselves as Marxist Leninist, not strictly speaking Maoist. They believe in elections, mass action and — when absolutely pushed to the wall or attacked — armed struggle. The MCC — the Maoist Communist Centre, at the time mostly operating in Bihar — was formed in 1968. The PW, People’s War, operational for the most part in Andhra Pradesh, was formed in 1980. Recently, in 2004, the MCC and the pw merged to form the CPI (Maoist) They believe in outright armed struggle and the overthrowing of the State. They don’t participate in elections. This is the party that is fighting the guerrilla war in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

The Indian State and media largely view the Maoists as an “internal security” threat. Is this the way to look at them?

I’m sure the Maoists would be flattered to be viewed in this way.

The Maoists want to bring down the State. Given the autocratic ideology they take their inspiration from, what alternative would they set up? Wouldn’t their regime be an exploitative, autocratic, violent one as well? Isn’t their action already exploitative of ordinary people? Do they really have the support of ordinary people?

I think it’s important for us to acknowledge that both Mao and Stalin are dubious heroes with murderous pasts. Tens of millions of people were killed under their regimes. Apart from what happened in China and the Soviet Union, Pol Pot, with the support of the Chinese Communist Party (while the West looked discreetly away), wiped out two million people in Cambodia and brought millions of people to the brink of extinction from disease and starvation. Can we pretend that China’s cultural revolution didn’t happen? Or that millions of people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were not victims of labour camps, torture chambers, the network of spies and informers, the secret police. The history of these regimes is just as dark as the history of Western imperialism, except for the fact that they had a shorter life-span. We cannot condemn the occupation of Iraq, Palestine and Kashmir while we remain silent about Tibet and Chechnya. I would imagine that for the Maoists, the Naxalites, as well as the mainstream Left, being honest about the past is important to strengthen people’s faith in the future. One hopes the past will not be repeated, but denying that it ever happened doesn’t help inspire confidence… Nevertheless, the Maoists in Nepal have waged a brave and successful struggle against the monarchy. Right now, in India, the Maoists and the various Marxist-Leninist groups are leading the fight against immense injustice here. They are fighting not just the State, but feudal landlords and their armed militias. They are the only people who are making a dent. And I admire that. It may well be that when they come to power, they will, as you say, be brutal, unjust and autocratic, or even worse than the present government. Maybe, but I’m not prepared to assume that in advance. If they are, we’ll have to fight them too. And most likely someone like myself will be the first person they’ll string up from the nearest tree — but right now, it is important to acknowledge that they are bearing the brunt of being at the forefront of resistance. Many of us are in a position where we are beginning to align ourselves on the side of those who we know have no place for us in their religious or ideological imagination. It’s true that everybody changes radically when they come to power — look at Mandela’s anc. Corrupt, capitalist, bowing to the imf, driving the poor out of their homes — honouring Suharto, the killer of hundreds of thousands of Indonesian Communists, with South Africa’s highest civilian award. Who would have thought it could happen? But does this mean South Africans should have backed away from the struggle against apartheid? Or that they should regret it now? Does it mean Algeria should have remained a French colony, that Kashmiris, Iraqis and Palestinians should accept military occupation? That people whose dignity is being assaulted should give up the fight because they can’t find saints to lead them into battle?

Is there a communication breakdown in our society?

Yes.

sketch : Red Anarchy: Painter Shuvaprasanna’s vision of Bengal today, rendered exclusively for Tehelka

Team Up! Follow The Money! India shines!

Team Up! Follow The Money! India Shines!


Palash Biswas


Indian Caste system based Hindutva dominated society is nothing but a model of Graded Inequality which falls in line with Globalisation.
Hence I emphasise Globalisation is itself the Post modern Manusmriti. The leading forces of fascist, Nazi corporate imperialist worldwide aggression and dehumanisation of Mankind are Hindu Brahmins and the Jews controlling US as well as world economy!

Hate the other caste and culture because you happen to be superior by birth, happens to be the base of the rotten Brahminical system in this sub continent. The hate campaign international is best expressed in War On Terrorism ( Against Muslims world wide). The Economic war, which is referred as Globalisation and Market economy is targeted against Blacks and dalits, Underclasses and Refugees, Migrants and Tribals, Minorities and all the Rural People in the third world!

Without an International dalit movement we may not be able to address the Menace globalisation!
They have teamed up!
They follow Money!
India shines for them!

The urgent need for integration in the world economic system for economic growth and development has been identified!
How the Communists in India have changed the Ideology to address globalisation, the models are Nandigram and singur!

Hindu Zionist State power does not understand that Sustained peace and stability can not be guaranteed when the disparity between the rich and the poor, in a nutshell-the haves and have-nots, does not only prevail but also widens!

And this is India Shining!As a country, we have seen the most unprecedented transformation of the economy, ranging from macro-economic stabilisation to the industrial, labour, fiscal and monetary policy reforms. For whom?

How do we address the post modern Manusmriti, Globalisation?

It is essential to understand the nature of conflict in order to address them. ... The globalisation is as fast as the conflicts intensify.
They proclaim globalisation as the total solution to the world problems!


We search of increased foreign direct investment , new markets for export, and development assistance for infrastructural and human resources development has been undertaken. To achieve these objectives we have had to forge alliances with countries and regional blocs, as well establish partnerships with international organisations and trans-national corporations for the purpose of reconstructing and developing the social and economic fabric of our society and the continent in general. Hence the formation of the International Investment Council, International Marketing Council, International IT Council and others, and our close and concerted engagement with among others the IMF, World Bank and WTO.

And thus, we have been enslaved! Wasington happens to be our capital!
The motto is : Follow Money!
Southeast Asia needs to seriously address poverty and economic disorder, corruption, social injustice, basic services and food scarcity.
But the global priorities are Blue films via NET, Mobile Telephony, Auto Boom, Electronics of all kind including computers, cosmetics and consumer junk products, Infrastructure for ruling classes, shopping malls , multiplexes!
Who have to pay for lacs corore Revenue Loss due to Tax holiday for SEZ!

China has made a new production system and streamlined the old production system. this is how they address globalisation!
We evict the Rural India from its Roots, destroy the Natural sources of livelihood for the illiterate, semi literate dalit, tribal underclasses. Devastation of Agro sector has become neo aesthetics!

We have annihilated our Indigenous production system!
This is Globalisation in India and service sector has become the main source of National income, the base of Economic Growth well reflected by sensex!

China does not try English! Chinese may get jobs in Chinese language! We use the language and culture as prostitution.
This is how we address globalisation which is limited in IT sector with mushroomed call centres and pirated soft Ware!

Was Jyoti Basu a Fool who chose not to follow Global Order?

The Writers has been transformed into a Kremlin of Stalin!

Chief Minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today said that though there could be “obstacles” in the path of his government’s industrialisation drive, there would be no going back on it despite the Nandigram incident. “There may be obstacles and complications may arise, but we will go ahead with our industrialisation programme,” Mr Bhattacharjee informed the CPI-M state committee meeting here. Meanwhile, Intellectuals from all walks of life today took out rallies that culminated at Metro Channel near Esplanade to protest against the Nandigram carnage on 14 March.

India Sets Semi Subsidy Policy
Forbes - Mar 22 9:08 PM
Government hopes to attract $6 billion to $9 billion in investments in three years.

Members and followers of Forum of Artists, Cultural activists and Intellectuals, Democratic Students Centre (DSC) a Pro-Naxalite Students took out a procession entitled “Walk for Democracy” from Desh Bandhu Park demanding resignation of chief minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and a judicial enquiry into the the incidents of Nandigram. The procession converged at Metro Channel opposite Metro Cinema Hall and held a protest meeting there. Eminent personalities associated with the Tollywood film industry like Jossy Joseph, Sashi Anand, Ranjan Palit, Supriyo Sen, Vidyarthi Chattopadhay, Mahadev Shi, Indranil Roy Choudhury among others participated in a rally.
Several artists, directors and producers of documentary folms who voiced their concern today said that they are willing to make documentary films to depict the mass killings at Nandigram. The leaders and supporters of Sagacious Teachers and Employees Association (School), West Bengal Primary Teachers Association and Prathamik Sikshak Kalyan Samity staged a silent sit-in-demonstration at R. R. Avenue to condemn the recent killings at Nandigram.

The "India shining" group may be less than 15% of our population. But they are the rulers. They have the media to shape the "public opinion". As over 80% of Indians are kept as slaves, they hardly have any opposition.

Our legislators are manipulated and made powerless.

We are once again entering into a dark era of zionist-driven Western colonialism. The Brahminical rulers are selling India to White Western rulers. We have been saying this, repeating it. But the killer Bush visit to India finally confirmed it.

Companies team up for project in India

Sunday, March 25, 2007

NEW DELHI
India's Reliance Industries and U.S.-based chemicals producer Rohm & Haas Co. have signed an agreement to explore joint construction of an acrylic acid plant in western India, the two companies said last week.The proposed plant will be located in Jamnagar along India's west coast, where Reliance -- an oil and petrochemical conglomerate -- is building the world's largest oil refinery, a Reliance statement said.

Philadelphia-based Rohm & Haas will provide technology for the plant that will have a capacity to manufacture 200,000 tons of acrylic acid and its derivatives annually, the statement said.

India expects chip policy to attract $5B in foreign investment
Electronics Supply and Manufacturing - Mar 22 9:55 AM
BANGALURU, India — The government said it expects its new chip policy to attract more than $5 billion in manufacturing investments over the next three years.

Irish firm to set up power plant in India
UPI - Mar 23 10:16 AM
India has said McNamara International, an Irish firm, will set up a 2,000 MW power plant in southern Tamil Nadu state. "McNamara International, an ...

Why this sudden Bush love for India?
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Bangalore: When Iran and North Korea are clubbed in the "axis of evil" for making bomb and punished, Iraq was invaded and pounded for "possessing weapons of mass destruction", why George Bush is waiving all norms, rewriting nuclear rules and rushed to India to sell nuclear material?

Why Bush wants India to produce bombs? And against whom? Why he tried to bend all rules for the sake of India? Why this special love?

Will not China now go out of the way to supply nuclear arms to Pakistan?

Is Bush pushing India against China? Why India is surrendering to such dangerous temptations at the cost of the country?

These questions lead us to only one answer: India has played into the hands of American Neo-Cons goaded by the country's over-fed ruling upper castes who, the history says, never had any love for their land.

Foreign investors will ditch India: According to a report the organised sector is contributing about 10% of the Indian economy. The corporate sector is even less. The much-publicised boom in the Indian stock market must not be taken as a reliable indicator of the state of the national economy and of improvement in the economic conditions of the people. The boom is due to Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) and the return of the laundered dirty money of Indian capitalists.

An economist warns that (1) an unholy alliance has been forged between the FIIs and Indian capitalists which may prove harmful to India's national interests. (2) Gradually foreign investors have begun exercising control over India's corporate sector. May be one can term this as imperialism through backdoor. (3) The boom hinging on FIIs may not last very long. Once they see greener pastures, they will certainly emigrate, leaving grave consequences for the Indian economy.
http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/april2006/reports.htm

William Pesek: Asian billionaires tell tales of their economies
Asbury Park Press - Mar 25 1:36 AM
Follow the money. It's among the first things young reporters learn about covering business. Nowhere is this bit of wisdom more useful than here in Asia. Take Forbes magazine's latest listing of billionaires. It showed a healthy increase in Asians, with the number of Indian and Chinese billionaires nearly doubling. India now has the most billionaires among the top 20, after the U.S.
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070325/BUSINESS/70324009
A bridge too far
The man squishes through the muddy banks of the Talpati canal on the edge of Nandigram. A rail-thin figure with a thatch of ... Read..
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070325/asp/7days/index.asp
In wake of West Bengal massacre: Indian workers must advance an independent socialist programme
Sat, 2007-03-24 01:51
By Nanda Wickremasinghe – World Socialist Webs Site

Facing popular opposition across India over the police shooting of scores of peasants in Nandigram last week, West Bengal’s Left Front government, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), (CPM), is desperately maneuvering to contain the crisis.

On March 17, the Left Front parties announced that the state government will not expropriate land in Nandigram to set up a Special Economic Zone. They further declared that the massive police presence in the area will be scaled down “in phases,” and that land acquisition for Special Economic Zones in West Bengal will be temporarily suspended.
http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/5034

Alliance Semiconductor Closes Sale Of Parcel Of Land Located Outside Of Hyderabad, India For About $3.2 Mln - Quick ...
Nasdaq - Mar 23 3:34 AM
(RTTNews) - Alliance Semiconductor Corp. (ALSC.PK) said that it has completed the sale of a parcel of land located outside of Hyderabad, India for Rs. 140,753,900, or about $3.2 million.

Nandigram part of conspiracy to disturb Left rule, says BimanBose, the Left Front Chairman. Latin American multiple Grammy award singer Shakira arrived in Mumbai Saturday for her first hip-shaking Indian performance.Rice urges Egypt to reform its democracy and India says air-to-air missile tested .Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind is planning to join WB politics. Bangla nationality, betrayed by so called Hindu Muslim national leaders of Undivided India as well as Independent India and pakistan, has the golden opportunity to assert itself as the Next global Super Power India pray for Bermuda to enter in Super Eight round of Cricket carnival on which stakes happen to be billion and billion dollars. With a Bangla win, Global Market forces and Multinational Hindutva Zionist forces would have some spare time for a second Thouht!

How to Exterminate Muslims in India? by Dalit VoiceHow to Exterminate Muslims in India? Dalit Voice, Editorial, May 16-31. 1999 ... Burning of Muslim houses and shops was encouraged to destroy their economy. ...
www.themodernreligion.com/assault/india-ext.html
India Together: Caste - news reports, opinions, analyses, articles ...Ruth Manorama, voice of Dalits Ruth Manorama is a women's rights ... INTERVIEW: NARENDRA JADHAV / ECONOMY/CASTE A Dalit straddles the financial world ...
www.indiatogether.org/society/caste.htm - 26k - Cached - Similar pages

India Together: Caste - news reports, opinions, analyses, articles ...In the recent impressive gains made by the Indian economy, the OBCs have not ... Demand for the randani roti, a staple of Dalit cooking in Central India, ...
www.indiatogether.org/dalit/ - 26k - Cached - Similar pages

EJournals & Newspapers on South AsiaDalit Voice: the voice of the persecuted nationalities denied human rights. ... plus a periodical series of special statistics on the economy and society. ...
www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/southasia/ejournals.html - 103k - Cached - Similar pages


India is supplying arms to Burma's military junta to counter China's influence in the neighboring country, but pro-democracy activists fear the junta will use the weapons to suppress opposition and resist democratization!


Opponents of the proposed Special Economic Zone stage a road blockade at Wadkhal in Raigad district of Maharashtra on Friday. Hundreds of farmers took to the streets on Friday opposing the Reliance-promoted Mahamumbai Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and blocked the Mumbai-Goa highway and other roads near Pen in Raigad district in Maharashtra for over three hours. The Government is acquiring land in 45 villages in Pen, Uran and Panvel talukas of Raigad district for the Mahamumbai SEZ promoted by Reliance.

The Shiv Sena and the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) alliance recently won the majority of seats in the zilla parishad elections in Raigad district. Shouting "Chale Jao (go away) SEZ" slogans the protesters waved the saffron and red and white flags of their parties.

The protest was part of a nationwide action against SEZs on the occasion of Shaheed Bhagat Singh Smriti Diwas. The main demands were that the SEZ Act should be withdrawn, and a national debate should be held on agriculture, land acquisition and development.

While Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has been saying that land acquisition notices can be withdrawn he has not made any administrative move to do so.

YES, CHIEF MINISTER!

A proposal that Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee must approve if he does not wish to be accused of violating Article 14 of the Constitution.

By RAVINDRA KUMAR

I am planning to write a letter to the Chief Minister of West Bengal. Here is a draft, which I offer to readers ~ who are, after all, the most important stakeholders in The Statesman ~ for comment.

Dear Mr Chief Minister,
I write this on behalf of The Statesman, a newspaper that is more than 130 years old and is directly descended from The Friend of India, founded 1818. In other words, we were born about half a century before the house of Tatas was founded as a trading firm, a reference that you may find mysterious but one that I promise to explain as I go along.
In February last year, we applied to your Housing Minister and head of the West Bengal Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation for a two-acre plot of land in New Town, Kolkata. In October or thereabouts, some seven or eight months later, we received a letter from WBHIDCO that it had been decided to allot the land to us. But, curiously, there were no details furnished in the letter about the location, the cost or anything else. Thereafter, there has been no word from WBHIDCO.
I had indicated that we required the land for our own use, for production activities and for new business ventures, including software development, that we proposed to set up. While there were several locations available to us for the proposed investment, including in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, we felt that West Bengal, which has been our home for nearly two centuries, would be most suitable.
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=3&theme=&usrsess=1&id=150877


In a bid to hone its military might, the Indian Army and Air Force held a day-long military exercise in Bagrakote, West Bengal, on Saturday.Code named "War Fire" the joint exercise in Bagrakote, which falls under the jurisdiction of Jalpaiguri District, involved personnel of the Indian Army's 33 Corps and other Special Forces, and included the use of the latest military hardware.

"A joint exercise involving the infantry, armour, the artillery and the supporting elements and also the air force, the Indian Air Force, which came at the right time as part of the joint operation that was planned," said General Officer C. K. S. Sabu of the 33 Corps.

Modern weaponry, including tanks, helicopters and MiG fighter jets from the 'Hasimara' Air Force base were part of the exercise.


Pakistan will fight war on terror to the end: Musharraf

* President says no one will be allowed political gains from CJP issue

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and its allies will continue the war on terrorism “till its logical end”, President General Pervez Musharraf told outgoing US Ambassador Ryan C Crocker in a final farewell meeting on Saturday. Aiwan-e-Sadr sources told Online that during talks on terrorism, Gen Musharraf said: “We have to defeat our enemies in this war. However it is essential that the root causes of terrorism are addressed.”

Crocker said Pakistan’s role in the war on terror had been greater than any other country’s, and the world community holds Pakistan in high esteem for this. He said the US takes pride in its strong ties with Pakistan and hoped these would improve further.He said Pakistan attaches a lot of importance to its relations with the US, and Crocker had played a pivotal role in boosting these ties. He said Crocker was instrumental in establishing a strategic partnership between Pakistan and the US and starting the Fulbright scholarship programme for Pakistani students.
Only some like it haute

Is India ready for fine dining? Padmaparna Ghosh finds out
It was the mid-nineties. The United Front government was in power. Michel Camdessus, then managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was visiting New Delhi. P. Chidambaram, then finance minister, hosted a dinner at the Taj Mahal Hotel in N... Read..
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070325/asp/7days/index.asp

India`s Banks Are Seen as Antiquated and Unproductive
New York Times - Mar 22 4:28 PM
India?s drive to become a global economic powerhouse faces a huge roadblock in its inefficient, largely state-controlled financial system

Comparing India Funds: INP is the Way to Go
SeekingAlpha via Yahoo! Finance - Mar 23 1:09 AM
Garrett Beauvais submits: The fact that The India Fund and Morgan Stanley's India Investment Fund , two closed-end funds focused on India, stopped following the broad Indian market as measured by the India BSE 30 Sensitive Index was painfully clear late last year.

Big Money Allowed To Go Short In India
Forbes - Mar 23 12:23 AM
Institutional investors get permission to short equities in the spot market, a reform that is expected to reduce volatility.

India Expects GE, Alstom to Bid for First Foreign Train Factory
Bloomberg.com - Mar 22 4:02 AM
By Editor: N. Johnson. March 22 (Bloomberg) -- India expects General Electric Co., Bombardier Inc. and Alstom SA to apply to set up factories to build locomotives in the country, the first time foreigners are being invited to do so, a state official said.

UAE premier on trade mission to India
Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates - 1 hour ago
NEW DELHI - United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum was scheduled to arrive in India Sunday on a two-day visit aimed at ...
UAE PM to arrives in India today DailyIndia.com
‘India is a family to us’ Khaleej Times
Mohammed begins India visit today Khaleej Times

Japan recognises India`s quest for nuclear energy
Zee News, India - 2 hours ago
Tokyo, March 25: Japan "recognises" India's quest for civilian nuclear energy cooperation and has promised to "proactively participate" in the discussions ...
India seeks Japan's support for access to nuclear know-how Hindu
India seeks Japan's support, calls NPT 'flawed' Indian Muslims
India wants to take Japan on board for its nuke initiative Economic Times

Realty sector welcomes Sebi’s IPO grading norms
Moneycontrol.com - 23 Mar 2007
Sebi has tightened the disclosure norms for real estate IPOs, and these will come into effect immediately. Pujit Aggarwal, MD, Orbit Corporation and Hardeep Dayal, Group CEO of Kotle Patil Developers discuss the implications.
IPO grading’s mandatory Economic Times
Rating agencies gear up for IPO grading Business Standard

India, Cambodia: Heavy traffic, beggars, ever-larger middle class
Tad Stryker (North Platte Bulletin)
About 40 hours after leaving Denver, I entered India at Calcutta, and quickly it became evident that I had left the West far behind.

[Editor’s Note: Bulletin sports editor Tad Stryker is working on a book about evangelicalism in the United States. It’s a case study of the Berean Fellowship. One of the Bereans’ projects is planting churches in India in conjunction with Campus Crusade for Christ.

In January, George Cheek, who is closely involved with the church-planting project, was preparing to make his 14th trip to India and wanted to take someone along, so Stryker jumped aboard. Cheek had to leave for India a week ahead of Stryker, which meant that Stryker had to find him at the airport there. His story:]

Calcutta is a filthy, noisy, congested, chaotic city. As someone who grew up on a Nebraska farm, I had an incessant sensation of claustrophobia while I was there.
Read Full Story:
http://www.northplattebulletin.com/NorthPlatteBulletin/stories/index.asp?pageID=3&storyID=12537

The cat is out of the bag. The world’s most authoritative economic journal, the Economist (Jan.27, 2007), and also sympathetic to Brahminical rulers, has said India’s GDP bragging and boasting is wholesale bluff and bunkum.

Did we not say that the rulers are simply misleading India and deceiving the outside world on the country’s “booming and bursting” GDP?

The article in the “Finance and economics” section of the Economist by its editor in charge says “comparison with China shows India’s boom may be less impressive than it seems”.

Slap on face of India: What a shame on India’s bragging and boasting Brahmins that the world famous journal so favourable to India’s rulers had to give a slap on their face annoyed by their noisy song and dance over the “soaring GDP” of India claiming that it is about to exceed that of China.

The Economist could not tolerate the bundle of lies and finally had to come out with an authoritative article refuting the official claim of the Manmohan Singh Govt.

The Economist says:

India has been swept by optimism that its economy can do as well as China’s. A recent article in the Economic Times claimed that the growth in India’s total factor productivity (TFP), the efficiency with which inputs of both labour and capital are used, had accelerated, whereas China’s had slowed owing to wasteful investment. As a result, the article boasted, rising productivity — the main driver of long-run economic growth — is now running neck and neck in the two economics. Close inspection of the numbers, however, reveals that China remains well ahead.

False hope of moksha: It is well known how the Brahminical people have been ruling us from thousands of years by giving false hopes. Their “sacred scriptures” are themselves a bundle of lies assuring moksha to all those who bribe and surrender to the Brahmin.

The problem with these people is that they never believe in facts, rational thinking, scientific analysis or logical conclusions. The Brahminical Hindu believes what he wants to believe. And this belief system is killing the country.

Spit on their face: Otherwise, where is the need to bluff on vital statistics which are available to all thinking people the world over and better experts than the Brahmins. Can they (experts like the Economist) not check these facts and figures and spit on their face?

The Economist adds:

Both India and China have large population, lo

Why this sudden Bush love for India?
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Bangalore: When Iran and North Korea are clubbed in the "axis of evil" for making bomb and punished, Iraq was invaded and pounded for "possessing weapons of mass destruction", why George Bush is waiving all norms, rewriting nuclear rules and rushed to India to sell nuclear material?

Why Bush wants India to produce bombs? And against whom? Why he tried to bend all rules for the sake of India? Why this special love?

Will not China now go out of the way to supply nuclear arms to Pakistan?

Is Bush pushing India against China? Why India is surrendering to such dangerous temptations at the cost of the country?

These questions lead us to only one answer: India has played into the hands of American Neo-Cons goaded by the country's over-fed ruling upper castes who, the history says, never had any love for their land.

William Pesek: Asian billionaires tell tales of their economies
Asbury Park Press - Mar 25 1:36 AM
Follow the money. It's among the first things young reporters learn about covering business. Nowhere is this bit of wisdom more useful than here in Asia. Take Forbes magazine's latest listing of billionaires. It showed a healthy increase in Asians, with the number of Indian and Chinese billionaires nearly doubling. India now has the most billionaires among the top 20, after the U.S.
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070325/BUSINESS/70324009
A bridge too far
The man squishes through the muddy banks of the Talpati canal on the edge of Nandigram. A rail-thin figure with a thatch of ... Read..
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070325/asp/7days/index.asp
In wake of West Bengal massacre: Indian workers must advance an independent socialist programme
Sat, 2007-03-24 01:51
By Nanda Wickremasinghe – World Socialist Webs Site

Facing popular opposition across India over the police shooting of scores of peasants in Nandigram last week, West Bengal’s Left Front government, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), (CPM), is desperately maneuvering to contain the crisis.

On March 17, the Left Front parties announced that the state government will not expropriate land in Nandigram to set up a Special Economic Zone. They further declared that the massive police presence in the area will be scaled down “in phases,” and that land acquisition for Special Economic Zones in West Bengal will be temporarily suspended.
http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/5034

Alliance Semiconductor Closes Sale Of Parcel Of Land Located Outside Of Hyderabad, India For About $3.2 Mln - Quick ...
Nasdaq - Mar 23 3:34 AM
(RTTNews) - Alliance Semiconductor Corp. (ALSC.PK) said that it has completed the sale of a parcel of land located outside of Hyderabad, India for Rs. 140,753,900, or about $3.2 million.

Nandigram part of conspiracy to disturb Left rule, says BimanBose, the Left Front Chairman. Latin American multiple Grammy award singer Shakira arrived in Mumbai Saturday for her first hip-shaking Indian performance.Rice urges Egypt to reform its democracy and India says air-to-air missile tested .Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind is planning to join WB politics. Bangla nationality, betrayed by so called Hindu Muslim national leaders of Undivided India as well as Independent India and pakistan, has the golden opportunity to assert itself as the Next global Super Power India pray for Bermuda to enter in Super Eight round of Cricket carnival on which stakes happen to be billion and billion dollars. With a Bangla win, Global Market forces and Multinational Hindutva Zionist forces would have some spare time for a second Thouht!

How to Exterminate Muslims in India? by Dalit VoiceHow to Exterminate Muslims in India? Dalit Voice, Editorial, May 16-31. 1999 ... Burning of Muslim houses and shops was encouraged to destroy their economy. ...
www.themodernreligion.com/assault/india-ext.html
India Together: Caste - news reports, opinions, analyses, articles ...Ruth Manorama, voice of Dalits Ruth Manorama is a women's rights ... INTERVIEW: NARENDRA JADHAV / ECONOMY/CASTE A Dalit straddles the financial world ...
www.indiatogether.org/society/caste.htm - 26k - Cached - Similar pages

India Together: Caste - news reports, opinions, analyses, articles ...In the recent impressive gains made by the Indian economy, the OBCs have not ... Demand for the randani roti, a staple of Dalit cooking in Central India, ...
www.indiatogether.org/dalit/ - 26k - Cached - Similar pages

EJournals & Newspapers on South AsiaDalit Voice: the voice of the persecuted nationalities denied human rights. ... plus a periodical series of special statistics on the economy and society. ...
www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/southasia/ejournals.html - 103k - Cached - Similar pages


India is supplying arms to Burma's military junta to counter China's influence in the neighboring country, but pro-democracy activists fear the junta will use the weapons to suppress opposition and resist democratization!
Why this sudden Bush love for India?
OUR CORRESPONDENT
Bangalore: When Iran and North Korea are clubbed in the "axis of evil" for making bomb and punished, Iraq was invaded and pounded for "possessing weapons of mass destruction", why George Bush is waiving all norms, rewriting nuclear rules and rushed to India to sell nuclear material?

Why Bush wants India to produce bombs? And against whom? Why he tried to bend all rules for the sake of India? Why this special love?

Will not China now go out of the way to supply nuclear arms to Pakistan?

Is Bush pushing India against China? Why India is surrendering to such dangerous temptations at the cost of the country?

These questions lead us to only one answer: India has played into the hands of American Neo-Cons goaded by the country's over-fed ruling upper castes who, the history says, never had any love for their land.
http://www.dalitvoice.org/Templates/april2006/reports.htm

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Friday asserted that the Left Front Government in West Bengal would not give up the industrialisation policy. It, however, emphasised that agriculture would be protected and developed further without any damage to the gains of land reforms.

Responding to criticism from various quarters in the wake of the Nandigram incidents, the party said it was time to reverse long years of de-industrialisation.

``Balanced economic development requires industrialisation within the capitalist framework too. If some argue that small and medium industries are sufficient, the CPI (M) does not agree. Large-scale units, particularly in manufacturing, are necessary,'' party general secretary Prakash Karat said in an article in the latest edition of the party organ, People's Democracy.

Opponents of the proposed Special Economic Zone stage a road blockade at Wadkhal in Raigad district of Maharashtra on Friday. Hundreds of farmers took to the streets on Friday opposing the Reliance-promoted Mahamumbai Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and blocked the Mumbai-Goa highway and other roads near Pen in Raigad district in Maharashtra for over three hours.

The Shiv Sena and the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) alliance recently won the majority of seats in the zilla parishad elections in Raigad district. Shouting "Chale Jao (go away) SEZ" slogans the protesters waved the saffron and red and white flags of their parties.

Led by veteran PWP leader N.D. Patil, the agitation began at 11 a.m. at Vashi Naka near Pen. The protesters walked three km to Wadkhal Naka on the Mumbai-Goa highway, about 80 km from Mumbai. Traffic was diverted at various places, according to the police, causing huge pile-ups along the way.

(Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata -&00110, India. Phone: 91-33-25659551)
Email: palashchandrabiswas@gmail.com