[R-G] Fwd: [killingtrain] (podur) a day in delhi

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.killingtrain.com/node/634

A Day in Delhi
Justin Podur
July 19/08

On my way from Pakistan to Kerala, I stopped for a day in Delhi - I  
have a couple of hours left in this very interesting city. Thanks to  
friends I had an excellent 48 hours, though I could have stayed much  
longer and learned much more.

Still, a few thoughts to share. My teacher Gita Kolanad <http://www.gitanjalikolanad.com/ 
 > and editor of Seminar <http://www.india-seminar.com> Tejbir Singh  
booked me into the India International Centre, which is a very  
comfortable haunt of academics and artists (across the street from the  
International Monetary Fund office actually) with an exhibit on Nelson  
Mandela and the South African Freedom struggle currently on and a well  
appointed library where I spent a few hours perusing the remarkable  
collection of Indian magazines.

I couldn't help but spend time on the Economic and Political Weekly <http://www.epw.org.in/epw/user/userindex.jsp 
 >, which is always very deep and the issue I read was fantastic. It  
had an article on the food crisis by Prabhat Patnaik, who is a very  
good left economist. He argued that the current global inflation in  
food and energy prices masked an earlier phenomenon of global income  
*deflation* in the neoliberal era. The poor had experienced a drop in  
their income and their consumption in this period through deflation.  
How? Three reasons, presented here as I understand them. First,  
through the neoliberal restructuring and the destruction of welfare  
programs and subsidies that benefited them. Second, through changes in  
the economy that devalued their agricultural production relative to  
other goods (especially manufactured goods that they needed as  
inputs). Third, through a process he describes in another book, in  
which elites in the developing world spend on first-world produced  
goods as status symbols, leaving little surplus left over for  
investment or advancement of developing economies to higher  
technological levels (this last is an interesting argument and I think  
original to Patnaik). Having lost income through deflation, they are  
now losing again through this new type of inflation, in which basic  
commodities - especially energy - are rising in price. Patnaik thinks  
that technological substitution and advance and increased land  
productivity are all possible with investment, but that capitalism  
prevents these from being emphasized as possible solutions. I think  
that the scope for these is limited, but we won't even have a sense of  
what the balance between limits of nature and the limits of economic  
organization until we have a more decent economic organization.

Most of my itinerary yesterday was orchestrated by the extraordinary  
Badri Raina <http://www.zmag.org/zspace/badriraina> (with honorable  
mention to Girish Mishra <http://girishmishra.com/>) who introduced me  
to Dr. Arjun Dev of NCERT, to some CPM folks, and to some folks at the  
journal Secular Democracy.

Arjun Dev told an interesting story of a controversy on Kerala  
textbooks <http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2114/stories/20040716003611000.htm 
 >, which he is on a committee to decide on. Apparently in a 7th grade  
(or 6th grade) textbook, tells a story of a young man whose father has  
a Muslim name and mother has a Hindu name. He registers for school and  
where he is to put "religion" and "caste", his father suggests he puts  
"none". The clerk asks the father, what if he is being grouped by  
religion, where will he fit. The father says if as an adult he  
develops religious feeling he's free to choose.

This little lesson has apparently united the orthodox of all religions  
against it, from those who argue the boy's parents' marriage itself is  
illegal, to those who argue that it is encouraging atheistic ideas  
among youth at a tender age.

And, well, there is also one other issue that is somewhat in the media  
here.

That is the Indo-US nuclear deal, which is actually on everyone's  
minds. The basic contours of the deal: India gets nuclear technology  
and aid from the US, US companies profit, India gets the chance to  
increase its share of nuclear energy production from about 3% to about  
7%, the US gets a more reliable ally in the region, India sacrifices  
its chances at further integration with Iran and other neighbours, the  
US gets a reliable client for its military, India gets military  
technology by forfeiting its technological and military independence,  
and accepts some kind of monitoring of its nuclear program by the US.  
Both strategic and energy/economic arguments have been advanced for  
and against the deal. Proponents argue India needs the energy.  
Opponents argue it won't provide much energy and will provide it at  
very high cost, crowding out other options (like cheaper and dirty  
coal, or renewables like solar and wind), and at the biggest cost of  
independence and integration in the region. I find the arguments of  
the Left on this issue to be compelling.

In two days there will be a confidence vote of the Congress-led  
coalition (UDA) government that the government will probably survive,  
freeing the government to go ahead with the nuclear deal. But in the  
meantime the opposition parties and the Congress are doing dozens of  
deals to try to get enough parliamentarians to keep the government  
alive (for the ruling party) or bring it down (for the opposition).  
Those who will vote against the government include the religious  
(Hindu) right-wing BJP, who helped run the country into the ground and  
unleash horrific communalism while they were in power, and the Left,  
who oppose the nuclear deal because it subordinates India's foreign  
policy to that of the US in Asia.

The nuclear deal obviously needs more explanation and I will do some  
more of it here, I hope, in the coming days, but I did want to say  
that while many are accusing the Left of effectively supporting the  
BJP, it seems to me that the Left had to do what it did. The Communist  
Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M or CPM) supported the Congress-led  
coalition from the outside on the basis of a common minimum program.  
It did so to prevent the right-wing from forming a coalition and in  
the process helped shift the center of gravity of the government at  
least somewhat left. When the Congress party started trying to push  
through the nuclear deal with the United States much more rapidly,  
probably because of US electoral timelines (and possibly US short-term  
strategic considerations in the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan,  
Iraq, and Iran) and including using procedural tricks to exclude the  
CPM from the details and timing of the deal, the Left either had to  
call the bluff or back down. Because they withdrew their support, they  
are accused of effectively helping the right and of being dogmatic.  
Had they not withdrew their support, they would have been acceding to  
imperialism and of being weak and unprincipled. In any case, what  
credibility does the smaller party in a coalition once it is known  
there are no red lines that it won't cross? It is unfortunate that it  
is only such threats that can force centrist parties to not act like  
right-wing parties (and that only sometimes), but it in this world is  
better to have such threats than not.

(I can't help but think of the Canadian parallel. In 2006, the NDP was  
supporting a Liberal minority government and asked the Liberals for a  
ban on private health care in Canada among other things. The Liberals  
wouldn't do it, so the NDP withdrew support, and the Liberals lost the  
election. Now we have Conservatives in Canada and it sucks. But the  
Liberals and Conservatives share most policies on economics and have  
virtually no differences on foreign policy. JK Galbraith, economist  
and observer of the US, once said something like when voters have the  
choice between fake right-wing and real-right wing, they'll chose the  
real thing. Hopefully they will have more choices in Canada, and India  
too).

Badri anyway doesn't think the BJP can win much more than they already  
have in an election. As we drove by the house of LK Advani, the BJP  
leader (who just wrote an unbelievably long and, by the reviews, not  
very good, autobiography), Girish said: "That's the house of the Prime- 
Minister-in-Waiting". Badri replied: "Yeah, he's going to keep waiting."

I hope in the coming days (depending on uncertain internet connections  
and schedules) I'll get to explain a little more about the details of  
the nuclear deal and the politics of it. Also some more thoughts on  
India's economy, its progress, and its attempts to join the first  
world - in wealth, in consumerism, and in exploiting and excluding  
vast numbers of people. All first world countries have an internal  
third world. With India, that world is still the majority and the gap  
between the worlds is bigger, and in some ways, more stark.