[Marxism] "INDIA: 'Neo-Liberal' Left Behind Peasants' Massacrez"" (re: Nandigram)

[Ruthless Critic of All that Exists]

On Mar 20, 2007 4:39 AM, Fred Feldman <ffeldman at bellatlantic.net> wrote:

> I think this report has a much better political focus than the Stalinophobic
> frenzy that Sukla Sen has been pouring out.  No, I don't think that what
> happened in Nandigram should bring to mind forced collectivization or the
> purges of the 1930s, or why Trotsky was right against Stalini, but thee
> neoliberal "enclosure" and expropriation of the peasantry that is taking
> place all over the capitalist world (and even to a significant degree in
> China).

>
> <http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36939>
> RIGHTS-INDIA:
> Massacre of Peasants May Slow SEZ Plans
> Analysis by Ranjit Devraj

>
> In a statement issued on Jan. 9, a group of leading intellectuals and
> rights activists warned: ''We are deeply concerned about the
> escalating levels of violence being reported from Nandigram in West
> Bengal, as a consequence of the state government's policy of land
> acquisition for industrial use.''


By : Ashok Mitra

<http://www.himalmag.com/2008/january/spl_report_idealism.html>

In 1977, the Left Front government came to power in West Bengal, and
the world heard its loud proclamation: India is a semi-feudal,
semi-capitalist society, and a state government has scant power at its
disposal to transform this system. What India requires is a mass
uprising! The Left Front government claimed that, despite the odds it
faced, it would attempt to implement an alternative financial policy,
based on Marxist ideology and socialist principles. All of India, it
was thought, would soon be impressed by their unprecedented success,
and the whole country would quickly move to emulate these new
policies. Indeed, West Bengal would be the pathfinder, eventually
leading India to evolve into a real socialist country.

Today, those at the helm of the Left Front in West Bengal are not
keeping to even the fringes of their old promises. The summary of the
pretexts offered for this failure goes as follows: globalisation has
changed the entire situation. The people of West Bengal are aware of
the fact that, owing to constitutional requirements, the profits for
state-owned industry operating under a situation of globalisation are
either significantly lessened or removed entirely. Nowadays, there is
fierce competition between states to garner private investment, and if
we fail to compete, we will remain bogged down. Moreover, the state
has to incur huge loans in order to set up industry. In this context,
we have to turn to foreign and domestic private capital, and if the
corporate bosses are not benevolent we will perish.

Even a cursory glance at the newspapers would tell us that the
leftists of India are waging a war against the central government's
policy of selling out state-owned industries to the private sector.
Why, then is West Bengal so anxious to place the state in a leading
role vis-à-vis industrialisation?

In the past, it was said that the Centre was uncomfortable with the
West Bengal government's leftist ideology, and therefore was neither
giving industrial licenses to the state nor increasing funds in the
state's budget. The financial agencies and banks, under the control of
the central government, were also purported to be uninterested in
investing in the state. Now, however, there is no restriction placed
on setting up industries, as the licensing system has been done away
with completely. Moreover, in the current context the Congress party
at the Centre is fully dependent on the left parties to stay in
government. As such, the question can be asked: What are the stumbling
blocks in implementing the leftist ideology?

The Life Insurance Corporation of India, the Unit Trust of India,
ICICI, the Industrial Corporation of India and other government-owned
institutions are making good profits. They are at a loss as to how to
manage so much money, and seem eager to invest a lion's share of it in
the market. But if the union government is so rich, why can the West
Bengal government not get a piece of the pie? If West Bengal had
received a substantial allocation from the central government's
coffers, it would have been much easier for the state to initiate
industrialisation. There is certainly no dearth of skilled persons,
technocrats, scientists or intellectual economists in the state. Why,
then, has it not been possible to set up state-owned industries in
West Bengal? A reply to this question is yet to come from the state's
mandarins. Moreover, it is particularly regretful that even those who
are continually at loggerheads with the government regarding state
policies on agriculture and industry are not asking this crucial
question. Unchallenged, the government has no trouble remaining
completely quiet on this issue.

To broach another matter, problems do not necessarily emerge from the
contradiction between agriculture and industry. Rather, the primary
question revolves around whether industry should be state-owned or
owned by capitalists. Those who are at the helm in West Bengal seem to
have completely jettisoned socialist dreams, and are now arguing for a
capitalist society. A little introspection would make it apparent
that, were land acquisition to have been undertaken to set up a
public-sector unit, the farmers' reaction would undoubtedly have been
completely different. They would have realised that the government was
setting up industries for economic growth that would ultimately
benefit the public. Profits could be made, employment assured in the
factories, and relative affluence achieved. Under this scenario, if
the process of industrialisation were endangered for one reason or
another, the government would have been able to tackle the snags along
the way. The people would have realised that they did not have to be
vulnerable in the hands of private capitalists: the profits accruing
could have been used for the state's welfare.

When the state government does not follow a constructive approach, but
instead acquires acre after acre of land for the well-being of
capitalists, the hearts of the common people are shattered. Thirty
years ago a different dream was being dreamed, but that vision has by
now vanished. Why has the movement for defining the Centre-state
relationship on a more equal footing ebbed? Why does the government in
Calcutta cower in the fight against the semi-feudal, semi-capitalist
system? The bone of contention is not agriculture versus industry, but
rather idealism and its oblivion.

Translated from Bengali by Srutirupa Chattopadhyay.

Full: <http://www.himalmag.com/2008/january/spl_report_idealism.html>