Friday, November 20, 2009

Convention against State Terroism, Siliguri, 6 December 2009

Provisional Central Committee
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
North Bengal Regional Committee

Address for Communication
C/o Vaskar Nandy, Kadamtala, Jalpaiguri

18 October 2009

Dear Friend,

The situation in Lalgarh and the vast hill-forest-plateau extending through Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Andhra, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra of which Lalgarh is a part, both geographically and culturally, is very grave and extremely precarious in terms of the lives and livelihoods of the indigenous population there.

Governments of all parliamentary hues who rule or have ruled in this region are all champions and executants of the Washington-dictated and corporate-driven policy of displacing lakhs of people from their lands and villages and destroying the environment through extractive and polluting industries. This region has also borne the main brunt of the withdrawal of social safety nets, causing starvation and malnutrition deaths a common occurrence.

The misery and suffering of the affected people, mostly of the first nations of India known via imperialist anthropology as tribals, is a human rights story comparable to the internal history of such apartheid states as Boer-ruled South Africa or Israel. But our corporate media, fawning over the corporate growth story, have naturally missed the real story, more or less.

It is a story of extreme misery and starvation that must be told over and over again. But it is also a story of militant resistance that defies Heaven. That story has also been submerged in the endless litany generated by the pincer attack on this resistance by two forces: on the one side, the brutal attack on that resistance by the central and state governments and on the other side, the retaliatory, ultimately counterproductive, and often pointless attack by the Maoists on the state forces and any one among the people who disagree with them.

The Maoist activities have been used by central and state governments as the justification of its suppression of the people’s movements not only in the hill-forest-plateau area but throughout India. Anyone opposed to state terrorism, the main danger today, and anyone sympathetic to the people’s cause are arrested and/or threatened by preventive detention and torture most foul. Countless women have been arrested as armed Maoists for possessing such lethal weapons as brooms, as admitted by the police in a magistrate’s court in West Bengal.

Now it is not just a question of suppressing the masses in the region, but the suppression of all solidarity with those masses. Leading intellectuals, artists and activists are being tarred with the Maoist brush and threatened with preventive detention. It is almost the second coming of the Emergency. But this time the whole political class of official India remains united, so there is no need for a formal declaration.

It is now therefore important that all democrats and all those who want peace with social justice to unite and oppose state terrorism and its Maoist counterpart. It is time to roll back the black laws now in force and it is time to unite in struggle.

We invite you to come together at a convention (not a party meeting) that is being organised in Siliguri, West Bengal on 6 December 2009 at the Bagha Jatin Hall (beside Siliguri College) at 11 a.m. so that all opinions are heard and a broad based movement in a consensual direction can be launched fr4om here in North Bengal and move on towards wider unity throughout the state and country.

Yours sincerely.

Tapan Nag

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Nepal: The People's Movement


by Ben Peterson

In defense of civilian supremacy over the military and the democratic "New Nepal" process, the revolutionary movement of Nepal, led by the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists), has initiated a nationwide "People's Movement" to topple the government and anti-people forces.

This comes after a Maoist-led government resigned in May due to what was essentially an unconstitutional coup by foreign powers, the political opposition, and the military.

The root cause of this conflict is the clash between the established elite and the majority of Nepal's poor.  After the overthrow of the despised King in 2006, a process of re-founding and recreating Nepal was initiated.  However, when it came to challenging the old state and trying to create new, democratic, and pro-people state structures, status-quoist forces sought to derail this process so as to protect their own power and privilege.

This was most evidently shown when the main parties of "responsible civil society" (the elites), the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist) and the Nepali Congress, chose to back the royalist military over the democratically elected government in May.  After the NC President Ram Baran Yadav unconstitutionally reinstated the head of the military defying the government's orders, the Maoists decided to resign from government rather than stay in a hollow office.

Dipak Sakota, Journalist with Janadisha Daily in Kathmandu, told Green Left Weekly:

Unified CPN (Maoist) has now started the People's Movement.  And this is quite serious.  This is not just a movement but it's a kind of decisive battle to decide who will hold the real power of Nepali state.  . . . [M]ost of the central leaders of the UCPN-M including Chairman Prachanda are in the field leading the movement. . . .   [T]he leadership of King had been removed but had not been filled by other forces. . . .  The Maoists are trying to turn Nepali state in favor of the majority of the poor and oppressed Nepali People.


After spending an extended period reaching out to the community across the nation, the Maoists have now launched a new mass movement to protect the revolutionary process.

Within the Assembly, they have blocked the new budget, until such a time when civilian supremacy has been assured.  The ministries have now already run out of funding and the state is crawling to a stop for lack of resources.

Outside of the Assembly, people are pouring into the streets.  Already there have been blockades and occupations of different local administration offices across the country.  In some areas there are reports of alternative local administrations being established.

The protests will climax with a blockade of Kathmandu and the seat of government, Singha Durbar.

In an attempt to find a peaceful way out of this conflict of interests, the United Nations proposed to Nepal's government that it open itself for a government of national unity.  This suggestion was slammed by the current government, however, claiming that the current government already is a government of national unity, despite it being founded via unconstitutional means and excluding the party that won the elections.

Nepal's elite, faced with the prospects of being forced to back down by the mass movement, has put the police, armed police, and military on high alert.  A meeting of high-level government members on November 3 declared that the Maoists' protest program was in breach of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2006 and that it "bypasses the jurisdiction of the Constituent Assembly."  Information and Communications Minister Shanker Pokarel told reporters: "The government is determined to ensure law and order with the help of the police force."

These threats were denounced by Chairman Prachanda, the leader of the UCPN(Maoist).  He warned the current government against making such threats, as that mimics the actions of the now dethroned King Gyanendra.  He added that, while they have put the armed forces on high alert, the current government could not suppress the movement even if they wanted to, as the government has such small support amongst the people of Nepal.

At any rate, a colossal clash of interests is unfolding in Nepal, and the outcome of this struggle will directly affect the future direction of the new Himalayan republic.

Monthly Review, 12.11.09
 

Ben Peterson is an Australian journalist.


Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Document:: Press Release dt 17.11.2009

COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MARXIST-LENINIST)
PROVISIONAL CENTRAL COMMITTEE
L-3 LIG HOUSING ESTATE, 49 N.N.ROAD, KOLKATA-700011


Sri K.L.Tamta,the IG (Police) North Bengal has issued a statement to the media alleging Comrade Vaskar Nandy, a member of Polit Bureau of our party and the mass-organisations led by him as “Maoist” and has threatened to take actions against them.

Com Vaskar Nandy is a senior member of our party and he has been organizing the workers in the tea-gardens and the peasants in the area over the last forty years. The tea-garden labourers are mostly Adivasis and Gorkhas and are among the most exploited in the country. The wage they get is much less than even the minimum wage for agricultural labourers and hunger-death is very common among them. Very often the PF is not deposited. The tea-garden owners and the corrupt officials do not like our activity in the area like organizing the people for NREGA, BPL cards to all poors, ICDS and food-security.

The IG of North Bengal is acting in collusion with the tea-owners and wants to curb our activities. We are apprehending a large scale attack on all democratic movements in the country . This resembles a situation like the Emergency in 1975 and all democratic forces should come forward to resist it.

Santosh Rana
General secretary
PH 0 9332372220
e-mail: rranagopi@in.com

Stepwise Revolutionary Advance in Nepal

by Analytical Monthly Review

Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its November 2009 issue features the following editorial. -- Ed.

We last commented on events in Nepal in our May editorial, following the attempt of the ceremonial president to exercise royal authority by "countermanding" the decision of the elected government to dismiss the openly insubordinate army commander, General Katawal. The government, headed by the Unified Communist Party of Nepal - Maoist and its chairman Prachanda, immediately resigned.

A government was then cobbled together dominated by the two primary political parties of the parliamentary regime of the deposed monarchy, the Nepal Congress (party of those who own meaningful property) and the UML (party primarily of the petit bourgeoisie). These parties had been decisively defeated in the April 2008 elections for the Constituent Assembly, obtaining fewer seats when added together than the UCPN(M). The new government chief became Madhav Kumar Nepal, head of the UML, who had run in two constituencies in the Constituent Assembly elections and been defeated by the UCPN(M) candidate in both! This practical demonstration of "democracy" has not been lost on the people of Nepal.

In the intervening half-year, the UCPN(M) has made the world aware that civilian supremacy over the military is the foremost issue in Nepal. Of all the unfinished business of the revolutionary civil war that deposed the monarch, the continuing control of the Nepal Army by U.S. "advised" officers remains the leading obstacle to any lasting peace. Although the agreements that ended the civil war explicitly required the "democratisation" of the Nepal Army, nothing whatever has been done. Since May the UCPN(M) has peacefully obstructed all initiatives of the defeated parties insisting that first the question of civilian control of the military must be decided. In a complete admission of moral impotence, the Madhav Nepal government refuses to permit the question of civilian control even to be debated in the Constituent Assembly.

The plan for Nepal's future as set out by Washington, New Delhi and their friends in the traditional political parties of Nepal is that the revolution is over once and for all, and no further substantive change shall be permitted. The Nepal Army shall stay under their control, as shall the judiciary and the higher civil service. "Development" -- such as it is -- shall be dictated by foreign "aid" and those who provide it. "Freedom of the Press" shall continue to mean that the media belongs to those who have the most money; in Nepal that means the friends and agents of the United States and India. "Equality" shall continue to mean only a set of formal rights set out in law codes, but even that beyond the reach of anyone unable to afford the best and most expensive lawyers. And "democracy" shall be ceremonial voting exercises in which no challenge is permitted to the power of the top layer of society and the agents of the United States and India, and the armed forces they control. In short, the complex of individual "rights" and exploitation that every honest person in the world recognizes as the fraud of bourgeois democracy, the most efficient form of the dictatorship of capital and its personifications.

Even among our friends there have been some who believed that the UCPN(M), having led a successful revolutionary war, had nonetheless settled for this fraud through a mistaken understanding of the "theory of stages" in revolutionary development. But as the last six months have shown, the UCPN(M), beyond dispute now the dominant mass force throughout Nepal, have used events for political education to deepen their presence. The next revolutionary advance -- toward a new democracy in which the majority actually rules -- requires that the class essence of the bourgeois democratic parties (and the version of "democracy" as advocated by their advisers from the United States and India) be understood by the entire leading elements of the working people of Nepal and not only party theoreticians. And this task is now successfully underway.

What is at issue is the achievement of the new democratic revolution in Nepal and the first steps in the transition to socialism. Readers of this journal will know that we see this not as an issue of concern to Nepal alone, but a necessity on the broadest scale if planet-wide catastrophe is to be avoided. As the advance of the people of Nepal quickens in the coming months, the revolutionary forces are owed the practical solidarity of all sincere Marxists the world over and such assistance as we are able to give -- it's in our own interest as well.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Solve the Problems through Dialogue, NOT through Terror

Jharkhand Andolan Samanway Manch 
Press Release, October 7 2009

On October 1, 2009, Sri Panchanan Tudu, President of the Jharkhand Janamukti Morcha was killed. The next day followed the killing of Sri Amalendu Patra, an activist of the same party. According to the press release of Maoist leader Bikash published in the Times of India on October 3, 2009, they (Tudu and Patra) were killed by the Maoists because the slain leader and activist joined the Samanway Munch. Earlier the Maoists had killed some leaders and sympathizers of the Jharkhand Party (Aditya). Other than these, a doctor and a nurse, polling personnel, school-teachers, agricultural labourers and poor peasants, some of whom were CPI(M) supporters, were murdered. Most of them belonged to poor Dalit and Adivasi communities. Since November 2008, when the movement against police atrocities started, the political forces participating in Jharkhand movement have been demanding autonomy for development through empowerment. The form of autonomy demanded would be such that the financial and administrative power would be vested in the hands of autonomous councils to be elected by the people on the basis of universal suffrage and all political parties would enjoy the freedom of carrying out political activities.

The State Government did not take the course of dialogue with the people and the elected panchayts; instead, it resorted to state terror to suppress the mass movement.

On the other hand the Maoists started killing the cadres and sympathizers of other political parties active in the area and tried to impose their one-party rule. Previously, the CPI(M) had tried to curb all opposition parties in the area. The Jharkhand movement had opposed it. Similarly, we are opposed to the one-party rule of the Maoists or any other party.

The Jharkhand Andolan Samanway Manch believes that organs of political power have to be elected by the people on the basis of universal suffrage. This is a fundamental democratic right. The JASM will stick to this fundamental position while launching movement for autonomy. The Maoists in Lalgarh want to have all power vested in the hands of armed squads led by them. They are unwilling to accept elected bodies as organs of political power. So, they want to stop all activities by other political parties. They are attacking the JASM because it opposes the Maoists’ practice of eliminating all oppositions and differences of opinion.

We are opposing the arrest of Chhatradhar Mahato under the UAPA and demanding that the UAPA be scrapped. We are strongly condemning the State Government for threatening the intellectuals who had met Chhatradhar and supported the movement. if somebody is to be arrested for talks or contacts with the Maoists then the CPI(M) leaders of West Medinipore have to be arrested first, for they had supplied firearms to the Maoist leader Kishenji way back in 2000 for suppressing the Trinamool Congress and the BJP.

We would like to convey to the State Government, the CPI(M) and the CPI(Maoist) that there is no military solution to the problems of Jangal Mahal.

We demand:
  1. The State Government stops state repression, the UAPA be scrapped and Chhatradhar Mahato be released.
  2. The Maoists stop killing and repression on the people who politically differ with them.
  3. The State Government initiates a dialogue involving all political and social organizations and elected panchayts.
  4. A formula for self-rule and autonomy be developed through dialogue.
  5. The Panchayts elected in 2008 be allowed to function.

We appeal to ALL to cooperate to create an environment of dialogue.


Signatories: Santosh Rana, Manoranjan Mahato, Aditya Kisku, Pradip Banejee, Leba Chand Tudu.


Will the Mindset from the Past Change?

Amit Bhaduri and Romila Thapar

Those that have governed in tribal areas must share the responsibility for the negligence of the adivasis. The proposals for a multi-lateral dialogue should be set in that context.

There has been a flurry of concern as also vituperation over the activities of the Maoists in the forests that are mostly home to tribal society. There is a confrontation between the state and this society through the intervention of the Maoists. One pauses while reading the speeches of those in authority and thinks back to the past. The texts of the past represent the people of the forest, the forest-dwellers, largely as “the Other” – the rakshasas, and those who moved like an ink-black cloud through the forest with their bloodshot eyes, who ate and drank all the wrong things, had the wrong rules of sexuality and, as strange creatures, were far removed from ‘us.’

Kautilya in the Arthashastra condemns them as troublemakers and Ashoka threatens the atavikas, the forest-dwellers, without telling us why. The interest of various kingdoms in extending control over forests has an obvious explanation. The forests supplied elephants for the army, mineral wealth including iron, timber for building, and by clearing forests the acreage of cultivable land increased and the consequent agriculture brought in revenue. In later times, even when there were situations of dependence on forest people, the conventional attitude towards them was that they were outside the social pale and had to be kept at a distance.

So is this pattern essentially different from the present?

Naxal activity started in the 1960s and gained some support in the rural and later urban areas of West Bengal and subsequently Bihar and Andhra. It raised the ire of the state but did it make the state more sensitive to problems of the adivasis? It was treated as a law and order problem and put down although sporadic incidents kept occurring to remind ‘us’ that ‘their’ problems have remained. So this activity is not new but there is an increase in anger and with attacks from both sides. This makes it far more palpable even in our big cities, as yet far away from the ‘jungle areas.’

The government’s anxiety over Maoist activity has at this point increased and needs explanation. Violence on both sides has been stepped up. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) was banned. Now the Maoists are being threatened with Operation Green Hunt but at the same time are also being invited to cease their violence and negotiate. The Maoists have slowly cut a swathe through the sub-continent and the fear is that this may expand. Would this be sufficient reason for a “hunt” or could there be other factors changing the equations from 40 years ago?

The current violence on both sides is fierce enough but what happens if the state launches a semi-military offensive trying to snuff out the Maoists and the Maoists retaliate, as they are likely to? It would displace and kill many hundreds of our people, villagers and tribals living in areas of Maoist activity, including those who are not sympathetic to the Maoist ideology or objective. Any “hunt” would have to be on an enormous scale since groups claiming to be Maoists are now widespread in over 200 districts in the country in contiguous areas. Has this kind of hunt helped solve our problems elsewhere? Manipur, Assam, and Kashmir continue to remain areas of on-going civil strife.

Perhaps we should look at it less as an ‘us’ and ‘them’ situation and more as an ‘us’ and ‘us’ situation. At the end of the day, we are all involved as people who live in this country and what is more, as people who have to go on living in this country. Even those whose lives have not been remotely touched by what goes on in ‘tribal societies’ will find themselves ill at ease with expanding civil strife.

If we see it as an ‘us’ and ‘us’ situation, then the need for a dialogue with all the groups involved becomes the most immediate concern. The question is who should be talking to whom and about what. If the state has to start the dialogue — as the strongest party in the conversation — it should be conversing with several groups:

  1. Those living in the rural areas and the forested areas affected by the current civil strife, frequently referred to as ‘the people.’ This should be the primary and most important dialogue. It is not about who is right and who is wrong but about what is it that is leading to people becoming embroiled in revolts. People do not support insurgent groups or get imposed upon by such groups unless there is a reason. The adivasis live in areas where the benefits of development hardly ever reach them. Education, health care, communication, access to justice are mentioned sotto voce, since in most places they don’t exist. Our Prime Minister and Home Minister have had long tenures in earlier governments as finance ministers and have been well aware of patterns of development. Did they and their colleagues not recognise the injustice of unequal “development” and the anger it could produce? The same applies to the State governments of these areas who have not exactly distinguished themselves in addressing the problems of the adivasis. The situation now demands attention because it has turned violent.
  2. Then there is the state. What has the state done in these areas to annul the terror of poverty over the last 60 years? Perhaps terrorism and its victims should be redefined to include many more varieties of terror than the ones we constantly speak of. The spectacular increase of wealth despite the recession has still done little to make poverty less immanent in much of the country. As the arbiter of Indian citizens, it might explain what it would propose to change in order to remove the injustices that encourage poverty. For example, what should be the terms and conditions that should prevail in a transfer of land between adivasis and others?
  3. Many areas under Maoist control are those that the corporate world would like to “develop.” These have rich mineral resources — once again, almost as in earlier times, the attraction is timber, and water, and also mineral wealth such as coal, iron, bauxite. There is of course a history to such “development” since colonial times: except that it has now been intensified given the increase in the number of corporates and more importantly, their hold on the state. Are the corporates the new factor, as some would argue? The state acquiring land to hand over to private corporations is not identical with the appropriating of the land and resources of the forest-dwellers in earlier times, but there are some echoes. Both the appropriators and the appropriated have to have their say in any dialogue with due respect to PESA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996), which recognises the right of the adivasis to decide on the use of their land. For any successful dialogue, the state has to be neutral without biases in favour of corporations in its notion of “development” in these areas.
  4. The Naxals/Maoists. Are they a unified party with a common programme? And is their programme tied to development for the people only through a revolution accompanied by bloodied violence? Do they reflect immediate demands related to the daily life of the people that sustains them or an ambiguous promised utopia that may never come? Discussions between the state, the Maoists, and the people on the implementation of development are far too compelling to be ignored.

If there is such a dialogue, what should the corporates be concerned with? Clearly land is the key issue and most of it is in forested areas. Is all and any land up for grabs? Surely there should be some categories of land that should be left alone if we are to survive on this planet. Is the demand for large tracts of land in these areas not a subversion of the much-vaunted Forest and Tribal Act of 2006, which promised 2.5 hectares to every tribal family that had rights to the land? And what does the forest dweller get in return for selling his land? He cannot use the money to secure his future income since there are no such facilities available to him. He is left with money with which to buy hooch — the pattern that was followed all over the colonial world in North America, Australia, and Africa. Are we now internalising a colonial history to repeat it on our own citizens?
And where lands have already been sold to corporations, one does not hear of the corporate organisations first setting in motion the essentials of development in education, health care, communication, and access to justice among the displaced or resettled communities, before they actually start working for profit on the land they acquire. Should this not be considered as part of the sale deeds, particularly as the state is the broker? Corporates are good at drawing up contracts so there should be contracts with the people, vetted by lawyers representing the people where agreements can be examined and negotiated, and those that have been pushed around can still make demands with the possibility that they might be heard.

Such actions may be more effective, certainly in the long run but even in the short run, than an Operation Green Hunt. Violence is a dead end even for the Maoists. When practised by the state on its own citizens, its collateral damage is unacceptable in a democracy; lasting civil strife escalating into a civil war in these areas will create its own demons of the arbitrary repression of ordinary citizens. An alternative form of intervention ushered in through a multi-lateral dialogue involving all the concerned parties is not merely an option, it is imperative.

(Amit Bhaduri is an economist and Professor Emeritus at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Romila Thapar is a historian and Professor Emeritus at JNU.)

Saturday, November 7, 2009

DOCUMENTS: Letter to the Chief Minister

To
The Rt. Honourable Chief Minister of West Bengal
Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharya

Through
The Divisional Commissioner
Jalpaiguri Division
Jalpaiguri

Sir,

It has come to our notice that North Bengal’s Inspector General of Police, Kundan Lal Tamta, has been threatening a registered voluntary association, Swadhikar, with the cancellation of its registration and its well known President, Shri Vaskar Nandy, with arrest for Maoist activities.

It could well be that the IG has information that we are not privy to which shows that the Maoist label in this case is appropriate. The West Bengal government has already arrested many alleged Maoists under the all-India ban imposed by the central government. Tamta is free to add a few more numbers from his own watch. Why doesn’t he do that? That would be a good test for his allegations before the courts and within civil society.

But it is intolerable that in a situation where such crucial matters as individual liberty and the right of association are at stake the IG resorts to threats instead of the high degree of rectitude expected of a police officer of high rank. The matter becomes even more worrisome when the IG implies that this organisation has to stop anti-government activities by inciting those among the poor with grievances against the government. This is strange because in a democracy anti-government activity is always desirable if there are serious violations by Government of such constitutional and legal rights such as the Right to Food, Right to Work, Right to Life, Right to Due Process, etc. as long as such activity is not accompanied by terrorist violence or incitement to it. The IG has to mind his own business by enforcing the criminal law and laws protecting the security of the state, but he has no business acting as the gatekeeper against anti-government activities as such. If the police start to behave in this way, then a free and democratic society will cease to exist.

We, the undersigned, have known Swadhikar and Shri Nandy for many years. We are conversant with the activities of this organisation and all of us have participated in and cooperated with those activities at some time or the other. This organisation has steadfastly worked to oppose the violations of ¬human and civil rights and it is ironic that a police officer is now threatening its own civil and human rights. If the government doesn’t like such opposition, surely the political leadership can have its say, but what is not permissible is to set the police on such opposition without any evidence of criminal violations of the law.

We record our protest against Tamta’s activities with regard to this matter and urge you to reprimand him or otherwise restrain and discipline him so that democratic norms are adhered to in the future.

Yours sincerely,
Signed by leading academics, lawyers and activists of North Bengal

DOCUMENTS: Press Release

We have seen in newspapers and on television that Kundan Lal Tamta, IG in North Bengal, has said that the two organisations that I belong to are Maoist outfits and that he would not flinch from arresting me.

The two organisations he has named are Swadhikar and the PCC-CPI (ML). Swadhikar is a registered voluntary society of which I am the President and the other is a political party of which I am a Polit Bureau member.

Tamta’s statement shows his practised and familiar ignorance. Swadhikar does not have any political activity, although its volunteers and staff belong to various political parties such as Trinamul, the Congress, the CPI(M), the CPI (ML) and others. This is their democratic right and Tamta or anybody else cannot take away that right.

The PCC-CPI (ML) has been criticising the CPI (Maoist) for a long time. We support the Adivasi movement in Lalgarh, but we do not support the activities of the Maoists there. We believe that the Maoists import an adventurism and extremism into mass movements that hamper the latter.

Because of our opposition to them, the Maoists have recently criticised us in an open letter and we have replied to them in kind.

It sometimes happens that during legitimate people’s movements in which we are, the Maoists join them without stating their affiliation. Take for example the case of the movement for the release of Dr Vinayak Sen. We were in it along with such democrats as Arundhuti Roy. Medha Patekar, Mahasweta Devi and others, but the Maoist were also there without announcing their identity. Does that make the famous democrats some sort of Maoists? And if they are not Maoists so we are not also.

Tamta has issued a fatwa that no voluntary society may lead movements of the poor for their rights and problems. This is undemocratic and cannot be acquiesced in.

Where the ICDS increases rather than decrease child malnutrition, where there is hardly any work in the NREGS, where Tamta’s police and other administrators are sunk deep into corruption and arbitrary behaviour, where, as in Jalpaiguri, the government knows from its own survey that in this district more than one lakh people do not access one square meal throughout the year, where any and all protest faces police an d cadre violence, the poor have no recourse except democratic movement.

Tamta or his political bosses cannot stop this democratic movement spearheaded by the PCC and Swadhikar by cancelling the registration of Swadhikar or by arresting me.

Vaskar Nandy
Member, Polit Bureau, PCC-CPI(M-L)

A Few Attempts at Destabilizing Iran

Vaskar Nandy

The US imperialists are desperate. They want Iran to be another nice miniature poodle for their laps like the despicable Jordanian royals or the even more despicable Saudi royals. Without the Iranians submitting to their hegemonic interests, the US imperialists cannot wholly subdue the myriad insurgencies engulfing and threatening to engulf west Asia, especially the ones led by Hamas in Palestine and the Hezbolla in Lebanon. Indeed, in Iraq itself, the Shi’ite majority could easily come to be led by the young Imam from Sadr City who is very close to the Iranian clerics.

So Iran has to be destabilized, possibly dismembered. There is no quarrel with the Islamic ethos and polity there, only those should be in the service of US hegemony, much like the situation that obtains in the Islamic theocracy that is Saudi Arabia. Dual tactics requiring armed and non-armed intervention are already in full view. Only, the Indian media don’t refer to them.

First, the rabid fascists Netanyahu and Lieberman have been manoeuvred into power in Israel and there is now frequent, very inflammatory talk about bombing Iran ostensively to take out the Iranian nuclear project. This from a country that has a very large stockpile of “secret” nuclear weapons! But since the US imperialists who have given the Israelis the technology and much else to build that stockpile pretend that they know nothing about it, therefore those weapons do not exist and there are no crippling sanctions on Israel such as those imposed on Iran and North Korea or even akin to the much softer sanctions imposed on India before its leaders began to shake their turbans to the Empire in the West. But Israel could not and would not dare to bomb Iran without the explicit consent of the US warmongers. The threat of Israeli bombardment is the sword hanging over Iran and it is not the sword of that ancient ruffian Damocles but of the modern smooth talking head of the US administration. So the threat of Israeli bombardment of Iran is kept alive till the time for it arrives.

Second, armed intervention is no longer confined to mere threats. It is now actual. For more than six months now, two terrorist groups based in Pakistan’s Baluchisthan have been raiding the Iranian province of Zahedan and committing atrocities such as bombing mosques, various other public places, assassinations, etc. This whole operation is backed by none other than the US imperialists, perhaps the CIA. These raids may be the beginning of further armed explorations in a country which is multi-ethnic and multi-religious where no one group is big enough to be dominant. The Azeris are the second largest ethno-linguistic group in Iran. The pro-West Moussavi, the main losing candidate in the latest Presidential election, is an Azeri and he went very far indeed to try and consolidate the Azeri vote in a divisive way. Given the CIA’s massive presence in neighbouring Azerbaijan, the Iranian Azeris may start witnessing atrocities such as in Baluchisthan. There are of many other ethno-linguistic groups in Iran which may come to the attention of the US imperialists.

Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, in surprisingly candid revelations, has written that “there have been numerous news reports that the US government has implemented a programme to destabilize Iran. There have been reports that the US government has financed bombings and assassinations in Iran” How closer to the horse’s mouth can you get?

Third and most important is the attempted “colour” or “velvet” revolution focusing on the Presidential election in Iran. There is now massive evidence about the mechanics of these so-called revolutions in eastern Europe by which pro-Western governments were installed. Everything kicks off with loud and continuous black propaganda by the media controlled by the US and other imperialists. Right wing think tanks do the required research to pinpoint the vulnerability of those to be toppled and develop black propaganda material that is terse and effective. Several organisations are then deployed to train, both inside and outside the country to be subverted, whole groups from the middle classes that have bought into the neo-liberal ideology. The training consists of creating crisis-inducing events as and when required by the foreign handlers and learning the skills for massive computer networking and cell phone messaging that spread the terse, black propaganda. All organisations and individuals participating in these operations are flooded with millions of dollars from the CIA and many foundations, such as the one run by George Soros. According to Mr Roberts, the US government alone has spent 400 million dollars to subvert the electoral process in Iran. Going by the evidence from eastern Europe, direct governmental expenditure is only a small part of the money thrown at such operations. The main funding comes routed through various foundations, endowments, etc. The massive scale and the swiftness of the operation is such that the adversaries, like President Shevardnadze of Georgia who was replaced by US-trained puppet President, get ousted even before they fully comprehend what is happening.

But in Iran the script for the “colour” revolution did not quite work out. Now the attempt is to give the script the colour of blood. But we will come to that presently.

Was there massive fraud in the Iran elections? No one has come out with an iota of credible evidence that this was so. The latest “evidence” is a forged letter purportedly written by the interior minister to the head Ayatollah of the Guardians’ Council. But there is evidence in the opposite direction. A poll carried out by US psephologists three weeks before the polling reflects the results rather uncannily. These poll results require extensive treatment.

The two pollsters were American: Ken Ballen of the Centre for Public Opinion and Patrick Doherty of the New America Foundation. The polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It was conducted in Farsi “by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News [a big corporate channel reflecting US ruling class opinion] and the BBC [a government-funded British ruling class mouthpiece with a deceptive veneer of objectivity] received an Emmy award [considered to be of very high value in the profession]. A very up-front arrangement this, without any trace of Islamic fundamentalist bias unless of course the black propaganda department of the CIA discovers that the Rockefellers were closet Muslims.

After the big hue and cry started about a stolen election, the pollsters who had conducted the polls three weeks before the polling day, sent an article to the Washington Post, a leading US newspaper, which published it on 15 June as a major piece for the day. Now, let us hear what these psephologists have to say.

Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by more than 2 to 1 margin — greater than in actual apparent margin of victory in Friday’s election.
While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting [the slog overs in the black propaganda game] portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahamadinejad’s opponent, Mir Hossein Moussavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran’s provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.
The breadth of Ahmadinejad’s support was apparent in our pre-election survey. During the campaign, for instance, Moussavi emphasised his identity as an Azeri, the second largest ethnic group in Iran after the Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favoured Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Moussavi.
Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbinger of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians have access to the Internet, while 18-24 year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.
The only demographic group in which our survey found Moussavi leading or competitive with Ahamadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found them mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities….

We have quoted the pollsters quite extensively from the Washington Post. But how many people know about this poll and its direct bearing on the results announced? The devaluation of the poll begins in the very same issue of the Washington Post. The paper carries a leading article on the very same day which does not even refer to the article of the pollsters on the front page and trots out threats against the Iranian authorities for stealing the election. Our own newspapers just follow the lead of the imperialist media. So, when they report a massive rally of Moussavi supporters, they just happen to forget or not notice a simultaneous rally of the President’s supporters in the poor quarters of Tehran which was at least double the size of the other one. This kind of reporting helps build up the false picture that the people of Iran are with Moussavi.

The imperialist charge against Ahmadinejad, as also of the Moussavi, boils down to two main points: he provokes the famous “international community” with his nuclear programme, a programme which interestingly was started by Moussavi when he was the Prime Minister (a post that has vanished), and his support for Hezbolla and Hamas; and, he wastes Iran’s great oil wealth by squandering it all on welfare programmes for the urban slums and the poor villages against all “economic wisdom”. I think all democratic and anti-imperialist forces of the world who do not have economic wisdom should rally in support of President Ahmadinejad in this crucial hour when a massive imperialist (primarily US and British) attempt at destabilising Iran.

The BPL Question

Vaskar Nandy

The Below Poverty Line (BPL) lists are to be revised again. It is time therefore that the people looked closely at what is involved. For a family to be listed as BPL promises to ensure relatively affordable food, free medical care and various other facilities. It is therefore a vital marker for the nearly 80 percent of our rural population and the similar but slightly lesser numbers in the urban areas who do not get two square meals a day throughout the year. It is therefore not surprising that BPL listings have become the focus of spontaneous class struggles throughout India. A brief review of the question is therefore necessary at the present juncture.

The World Bank has been and is terribly worried by world poverty. Now then, I didn’t really want to start with a joke, but that sentence sounds like a bit of black humour. Along with its Breton Woods twin, the IMF, it has imposed economic and fiscal policies designed precisely to create the most abysmal poverty in all countries of the world, including such metropolitan centres as the USA and Europe where discriminated ethno-racial groups, female-headed households, workers in the informal sectors and others such as the unemployed millions know well the kind of poverty we suffer from in South. All this in a relentless pursuit of the interests of their masters, what Samir Amin calls the Triad consisting of the three major imperialist formations, the US, Japan and the EU,

Huge and increasing poverty on a world scale has lately become exacerbated by the current economic meltdown. Naturally, the masters are worried and have been very worried over the last decade or so. They know that their monetarist, neo-liberal policies are designed to strangulate all social sector spending by the state or community such as on healthcare, subsidised food and transport, education, old age care, insurance, etc. Those policies are the very source of increasing poverty and consequent hunger, malnutrition and death. And yet the deep systemic crisis of capitalism, not just a financial meltdown, leaves the imperialist ruling classes no other serious policy choices even if that means a massive destruction of the productive forces of capitalism. Within that destructive process and after it, socialism will not appear as inevitable unless the class struggle is ideologically oriented towards it. Without this kind of class struggle, capitalism will emerge from the debris with a new regime of accumulation. But then no one wants to become debris especially when (if the socialist alternative can be averted) new regimes of accumulation have the bad habit of shifting their centre or centres geographically, as is being openly talked about with regard to China and some other countries, including India.

The current crisis has made the question of acute poverty most urgent for the ruling classes throughout the world. They have to do something and be seen to be doing something. But so massive and extreme is poverty in the world today that to attempt to alleviate it ever so slightly would totally disrupt the present economic regime. So it is better to be seen to be doing something than actually doing it while actually doing the opposite. Hence we see the reprehensible chicanery accompanying the whole question on who is poor.

Let’s look at our own experience in India where the gnomes who run this particular show from Delhi’s Planning Commission are not just passive followers of the World Bank but are a part of that bank’s intellectual climate of thought on poverty. The game is to show that poverty is low and reducing rapidly.

In 1979, a bunch of experts put together by the Planning Commission recommended that the minimum nutritional need (food) in India was 2400 calories in rural areas and 2100 in urban areas. This show of expensive research was a ploy to reduce the earlier figures recommended by Ackroyd and immediately reduce the numbers below the poverty line.

On the basis of this reduced caloric requirement, it was then decided that the minimum per capita expenditure ought to be Rs 49 in rural areas and Rs 57 in urban areas, taking 1973–74 as the base year. The assortment of goods chosen and their respective prices for the base year should come under strict scrutiny now that we know that the intentions of the Planning Commission and successive governments of India are less than honourable. But let us accept those figures, as so many have done so far. For subsequent years, the procedure should have been to take the same assortment of goods (to ensure comparability), determine their current prices and arrive at the required minimum expenditure required to satisfy nutritional needs. But that is precisely what the Planning Commission was not prepared to do. What it did was to adjust the monetary values obtained for 1973–74 by indexed inflation. With this arithmetical sleight of hand, the Planning Commission immediately reduced poverty as a lasting tribute to its planning.

Deaton and Dreze have shown what this price updating actually means. In 1999–2000, the Planning Commission arrived at the poverty line of Rs 328 for the rural and Rs 454 for the urban, whereas it should have been Rs 565 and Rs 625 respectively to satisfy the caloric norms. That meant that millions were shown to be above the poverty line when they were not and the government could crow about the rapid decline in poverty due to its policies.

The Ministry of Rural Development has over the years conducted several surveys. All of them have been found to be faulty by the ministry itself. There is now another expert group of that ministry that proposes a new methodology that has been on the internet as a draft. If adopted, it will surely meet the same fate as the previous ones because it is unnecessarily complicated, mystifying in many aspects especially in those where it means well and too unwieldy for the untrained (and mostly predatory about the poor) government officials at the grass root level. But even if it is conceded that this methodology will give us a fairly good picture of poverty in the country, there will still remain the gnomes in the Planning Commission to contend with. Before the last survey, the Commission arrived at the figure of 28.3 percent of people below the poverty line, defying NSSO and other results. But it ordered all concerned to not find anything above that figure. Only Montek Singh Ahluwalia and PM who certified that we all loved Bush, the puppets from the Bank, could order such wonderful sociology.

The situation is such that it has been truly said (2005) by Dr Pronab Sen, Chief Statistician and Secretary, Department of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, that

“…it is indubitably true that the per capita calorie intake of the poverty line classes practically all over the country has declined significantly between 1972–73 and 1999–2000… The current value of the poverty line does not permit the poverty line class to consume the caloric norm, and the periodic price corrections that have been carried out to update the poverty lines are inadequate and indeed may be even inappropriate. Consequently, the poverty estimates made in the years after 1973–74 understate the true incidence of poverty in the country.”
The 61st Round of the NSSO (2004–05) clearly shows that in rural and urban India less than 19 and less than 13 percent of the population respectively access the caloric norm. What is more staggering is that millions, nearly 30 percent of the population, cannot access even half of that norm. What is the need then to have more “elaborate” and “better” surveys? The case for a universal public distribution system (PDS), free and universal healthcare, free education, etc. is overwhelming when more than 80 percent of the population do not have enough to eat, let alone satisfy other vital needs. There is no need to fret over much about resource leakage to those who are not poor because the consumption of cereals by the non-poor 15 percent or so of the population is far less than that of the others and decreasing. Not only that, these non-poor would rarely access the coarse cereals dished out at the ration shops as was evident when there was universal PDS. The same sort of thing can be said about public sector healthcare and education, except that in the case of the latter, the high quality specialist education in government-run institutions such as medical colleges, technical institutes, etc. where the non-poor tend to crowd out the poor.

The Indian ruling classes have become very uneasy about their own poverty games owing to two factors. First and foremost, the continuous revolt of the poor on this question which is already spilling into intermittent violence against officials and the police. In these numerous instances of revolt, two issues come to the forefront. First, most of the poor have been left out. This is perceived as corruption by local officials. This perception has to change and the people must understand the role of the World Bank and the Planning Commission. But there is indeed massive corruption at the local levels of course. That comes out in the fact that many rich and super-rich households have gotten on the BPL lists through bribery and or political clout. This therefore becomes the second issue.

The second factor is the growing division among the ruling classes regarding what to do about export-led growth when the US and the EU consumer is tightening the belt on account of the current meltdown. No one is yet proposing a shift out of that policy for growth, but some it would appear to be rooting for drastic modifications through creating a modest home market a la the Beijing thugs. This contradiction could be read into the current budget and the various reactions to it from the ruling classes. Be that as it may, a modest home market is inconceivable, after the top 10 percent of our population having already satiated itself with all the white goods and the electronic goo-ga and already apprehensive about a meltdown at home making it a little shy of shopping sprees, unless something is done about the bottom of the pile. That pile needs to be fed and then given something to do that creates assets for bottom up capitalist development.

Fear of a mass revolt and policy flux within the ruling classes is a very good time for the people to rise up for their various rights, foremost of which is the right to food.
We must therefore all organise, organise and organise immediately on the following demands:

• We Want a Universal Public Distribution System!
• No More of this APL/BPL Farce!
• We Want Universal Healthcare & Free Education!
• Down with Police Repression against the Hungry!

Lalgarh: A People’s Uprising Subverted by the Ultra-Leftists

Santosh Rana

Lalgarh is in the Jhargram sub-division of West Midnapore district in West Bengal (WB). It is part of the Paschimanchal (western zone) of the State, being an extension of the Chhotanagpur plateau which lies mostly in Jharkhand.

With its laterite soil of low water-retention capacity and Sal-Mahua forests, the area differs from the Bengal plains both geographically and culturally. It is actually part of the Jharkhand cultural region. Nearly 30 percent of the population are Scheduled Tribes (ST), 20 percent Scheduled Castes (SC) and the rest are communities like Kudmi-Mahatos, Telis, Kumbhars, Bagals, Rajus, Tambulis, Khandaits and others. The Kudmi-Mahatos are the biggest among the rest. They had been treated as tribals till 1935 when they were de-scheduled. The Mahatos, Bagals and some other communities are actually semi-tribals who have been partly Sanskritized but still retain their tribal characteristics. Now they are treated as Other Backward Classes (OBC). There are other OBC communities like Kumbhar, Tanti, Teli and others. But in West Bengal, benefits for OBCs started late. Even now, there is very little reservation for OBCs in West Bengal. It is only 7 percent, and, that too, in government jobs. There is no reservation for the OBCs in higher education in WB. The SC communities living in the region (Bagdi, Dom, Jele, Mal, Bauri, etc,) are so backward that they are unable to get government or semi-government jobs through reservations. The tribals are 30 percent of the population locally, but in local jobs, they get only the 6 percent reservation that is the State average for the STs. As a consequence of all these factors, the people of this region have very little participation in government and semi-government jobs or in the administration.

This has many devastating effects, especially in the field of education. Among the primary school teachers, there are only 6 percent STs though the STs are 30 percent of the population. So there are many primary schools where the students are Santhals and Mundas but the teachers are non-tribals who do not understand the language of the students. This creates a language barrier between the teachers and the students. Apart from poverty, this is one of the reasons for the large drop-out rates among the tribals. Those tribal boys and girls who manage to reach the portals of higher, especially scientific and technical, learning are systematically excluded by defying the laws regarding positive discrimination. For example, the STs are deprived of their admission quotas in medical and engineering colleges by the West Bengal government. Since 2001, the rules of admission have been manipulated in such a way that 90 percent of the ST quotas remain unfulfilled in medical education.

Due to the laterite soil and lack of irrigation, agriculture is poor and uncertain. Forests provided some means of livelihood traditionally but the colonial forest policy deprived the people of this source. Those policies were continued even after independence. Unemployment, poverty, illiteracy and hunger are everyday companions of the people. This zone has a high concentration of agricultural labourers. In West Bengal as a whole, agricultural labourers are 25 percent of the main workers but in this region, they are 50 percent. Concentration of agricultural labourers and lack of employment is the cause of seasonal migration, known as going “Namal” (low lands of the Gangetic plains). There are also cases of migration to far-off places like Gujarat, Maharastra and Madhya Pradesh.

The Uprising

On the first week of November 2008, the Chief Minister of WB had gone to Salboni to inaugurate a steel plant of the Jindals under the SEZ scheme. The Maoist squads operating in the area blasted a land-mine on his return route. It missed the target but the State government ordered night-raids in the villages of the Lalgarh block. Since the colonial days, night-raids on tribal villages by police take the form of inhuman attacks on the people, unrestricted by any law. The police repression ignited a massive uprising of the masses. The Santhals were the main force in the uprising but other communities like the Mundas and the Mahatos also joined the struggle. The Bharat Jakat Majhi (traditional headmen) Marwah — Association of Majhis — was at the forefront of the struggle at the initial phase. Different factions of Jharkhand Party and the CPI(ML) also joined the movement and it spread to adjoining areas in Jhargram, Bankura and Purulia. It took the form of a blockade of the highways and some other roads. For nearly a week, the entire region was blocked. At this stage, the leadership of the Majhi Marwah entered into negotiations with the administration. The administration conceded some of their demands and they decided to withdraw the blockade. However, the younger sections refused to withdraw the blockade at this stage. A People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA) was constituted and the blockade continued. At the time of its formation, there were people of different political opinions in this committee though it was dominated by Maoist cadres and sympathizers. In the first week of December, the PCPA entered into negotiations with the government and withdrew the blockade. The terms of agreement were more or less the same as those negotiated by the Majhi Marwah. The movement was so strong that the administration had to withdraw eight police camps from the sensitive areas by the middle of November. It was a great victory of the people.

Opportunities Lost

After the withdrawal of police camps, the people were in a victorious mood and the movement was spreading to new areas. An opportunity was found where the awakened masses could be mobilized to establish organs of self-rule on the basis of democratic principles. Just six months previously the Panchayat election was held in the area. The CPI(M) had lost Lalgarh Panchayat Samiti (block Panchayat) and most of the Gram-Panchayats in Lalgarh. Different factions of the Jharkhand Party had own. Now, there was an opportunity to activate the Panchayats and to exercise control over them through the Gram-Sansads (a statutory body where every voter is a member) and to demand more financial and administrative powers in the hands of the Panchayats (like some power of control over the police and the administration of forests, village-level planning and their execution, the running of the NREGA, authority to issue BPL cards, etc.). Such measures would strengthen democracy at the village-level and prepare the ground for the masses to demand self-rule and autonomy.

But the Maoists operating in the area had a different plan. They wanted to utilize the uprising to create an area where the rule of the Maoist Party and their squads would be established, an area where there would be no opposition, not even any differing voice. So they tried to abolish all other parties and social organizations from the Belpahari and the Lalgarh blocks. The differences with the Majhi Marwah was objectively not such as could not be resolved within a democratic framework. This association of “Majhis” had no landlords or even rich peasants among them. When the CPI(M) had tried to impose its one-party rule in nearby Jamboni few years back, the Majhis played an important role in mobilizing the masses in their fight for democracy. But the Maoists wanted to abolish all social and political organizations which would not abide by their dictates.

The PCPA led by the Maoists issued a leaflet announcing the trial of Nityananda Hembrom, the head of the Majhi Marwa in a “people’s court.” They did not stop at that. They issued orders that everybody living in the area of influence of the Majhi Marwah would have to join processions called by them. Some people under the influence of Majhi Marwah defied this order. Many of them were beaten and some were killed. The murder of Sudhir Mandi in the last week of November by the Maoists created a major split among the masses. Sri Sudhir Mandi was the Chairman of Belpahari Panchayat Samiti in 2003-08. He belonged to the Jharkhand Party. He was a poor peasant having one acre of Dahi (infertile highland). Even after remaining Chairman of Panchayat Samiti for five years, he lived in his traditional mud-house with thatched roof. On the day of his murder, he had gone to the market to sell Sabui grass, a grass used for rope making and gathered only by the very poor. But to the Maoists, he was a class-enemy. A poor tribal is a class-enemy simply because he refused to carry out their order.

The Panchayat election was held in June 2008. Earlier Panchayats had failed because they functioned bureaucratically. A democratic functioning of the Panchayats was possible now with the supervision of the awakened masses. But the Maoists have no respect for democratic processes or democratically elected Panchayats. They beat up the Panchayat members and stopped them from functioning according to their mandate, They set up “people’s committees” with people loyal to them. In many villages, this loyalty was extracted by coercion. To them, these “people’s committees” were the organs of people’s rule in the area and had been given the power to impose any amount of tax and punishment through beatings or murder. The “accused” had nowhere to go for a hearing or an appeal. An Anganwadi worker earning Rs.1,500 per month had to pay a tax of Rs.500, a schoolteacher had to pay Rs.5,000, a small brick-kiln owner Rs.25,000, etc.

For seven months, there was no police in the area. During the period before the Lok Sabha election, the CPI(M) government was so frightened by the memories of Nandigram that they withdrew all administration in the area and left it to the PCPA. After the withdrawal of the state, the armed squads of the Maoists were the only armed forces in the area. Of course, there were CPI(M) squads in nearby areas. During the Lok Sabha election, the people in the CPI(M)-dominated areas were forced to vote for the CPI(M) while in the Maoist-dominated areas the people were not allowed to come to the polling booths. Thus there was “vote boycott” in nearly 75 booths with approximately 50,000 voters. The CPI(M) won the Jhargram Lok Sabha seat with a margin of nearly three lakh votes, the highest margin in the State. In the State as a whole, the CPI(M) lost heavily to the Congress-Trinamul combine and was totally in the doldrums. In many areas, the people living under the rule of CPI(M) thugs availed of this opportunity and raised the banner of revolt. It happened in Khejuri and many other areas in East Midnapur.

In the Lalgarh block, Dharampur Gram Panchayat was under the control of the CPI(M). During the Panchayat election, no other political party was allowed to set up a candidate. Even after the November uprising, this area was under the control of the CPI(M). The CPI(M) was actually using Dharampur as a base to attack people’s movements. Anuj Pandey, the notorious leader of the CPI(M) in Dharampur enjoyed the protection of his armed squads and the state police. After the Lok Sabha election, there was a popular revolt in Dharampur which was aided by the Maoist squads. Anuj Pandey fled to Midnapur town and his house was burnt and smashed. After this success, the Maoists openly held public meetings and press conferences in Lalgarh ¬announcing the area as a liberated zone. Making the PCPA irrelevant, they announced that they were leading the whole movement. They would mobilize thousands of tribal men and women to resist the police, they announced.

The Indian state was waiting for this opportunity. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, abandoned all his federalist and Left pretensions and prayed to Chidambaram to send central forces. The Indian state readily agreed with the condition that the Maoist Party would be banned. The Chief Minister of West Bengal accepted the condition (though some Left Front partners objected) and Centre-State joint operations started in Lalgarh.

In the face of this joint operation, the Maoists tried their best to mobilize the people for a mass resistance. It was expected by many well-wishers that the tribal men and women with their traditional bows and arrows would resist the police. It was being claimed that the paramilitary forces would have to proceed to Lalgarh over mountains of corpses. But nothing like that happened. On the first day, the Maoists mobilized some people for a mass resistance. The police fired some tear-gas shells and lathicharged them to remove the blockade. Subsequently, the police and paramilitary forces reached Kantapahari, the capital of Maoist rule in Lalgarh for six months, without any mass resistance. The squads placed some landmines here and there but they were in no way an effective deterrent to the paramilitary forces.

Now the paramilitary forces are setting up camps in Lalgarh and Belpahari. The State government is sending high-level committees to promote the “development” of Lalgarh. How far the paramilitary forces will succeed in “sanitizing” the area or the government succeed in promoting development is to be seen. But one thing is certain. The uprising has been suppressed. The state had to withdraw in November 2008. In June 2009, it reasserted itself. This is a defeat for the uprising.

Whether the defeat is temporary and how and when the people will rise again in mass movements depends on many factors. But people interested in the revolutionary transformation of our society must analyze the movement and draw proper lessons.

The movement was powerful enough to force the state to withdraw in November 2008 because (i) all the democratic forces in the region participated in the movement and a very strong people’s unity was forged, and (ii) there was division in the enemy camp with the contradictions between the Centre and State and between the Trinamul and the CPI(M) playing their role.

By March 2009, the situation was fast changing. The coercion on the people for “collection” and forcible participation in processions, suppression of all opposition by beatings, garlanding with shoes and killings were destroying the democratic content of the movement. The uprising was losing its internal strength. Then the squads resorted to more coercion and terror to show their “support” to the outside world. It reached its peak during the Lok Sabha election when the squads with guns went from village to village telling the people that they would be punished if they would go to the polling booths to vote. On the polling day, a landmine was blasted to kill some polling personnel. All these activities further alienated the masses.

When the joint armed forces started their campaign, only the advanced sections and cadres were ready for some resistance with landmines. The people decided to flee their villages and take shelter in the surrounding villages in Jhargram and Bankura. While the people’s democratic unity was disrupted, the ruling classes bridged some of their differences. The Central government offered all help to the State government in its fight against the “Maoists”.

Apart from tactical mistakes and mistakes on the question of united front, the Maoists hold a grossly wrong understanding of the nature of people’s power. They hold that absolute power in the hands of their party is equivalent to people’s power. They want a system where there will be no election on the basis of universal suffrage and no opposition party. “People’s Committees” would be formed with people loyal to them and they would decide everything. They tried to use the favourable situation in Lalgarh to start an experiment in political power on a miniature scale. So they imposed their “144” against all other political and social organizations in the area of their control. They did not allow a campaign car of the CPI(ML)-New Democracy, with a red flag hoisted on it, to pass through the area. The car was allowed to leave only after the red flag was pulled down. Same was the fate of a vehicle carrying a flag of the Jharkhand Party (Aditya).

In Lalgarh, the people’s uprising combined with the isolation of the CPI(M) forced the state to withdraw for some six months and the Maoists got an opportunity to practice what they understand as people’s rule. It is to be noted that they did not raise any class-issue or the issue of the people’s rights over the forests. They simply identified activists and supporters of other political parties as “class enemies” and killed them. These are the basic reasons for the failure of the movement.

The people of Lalgarh and the whole of Paschimanchal will certainly learn from the experiences of the uprising and rebuild their struggle for “Self Rule”, an aspiration which expressed itself during the Jharkhand movement and more explicitly during the November uprising. This will be a self rule where organs of political power will be elected by the people on the basis of universal suffrage and where these organs will seize all economic and political powers. They will certainly smash the limitations imposed by bourgeois dictatorship on the democratic aspirations of the people. But neither the people of Lalgarh nor the people of India will ever accept the one-party rule of any political party.

Nepal after Prachanda’s Resignation

Vaskar Nandy

Prime Minister Pushpa Kumar Dahal (Prachanda)’s resignation was followed by the formation of a ministry headed by Madhav Kumar Nepal of the Communist Party of Nepal (UML) in collusion with the comprador-feudal Nepali Congress whose main leadership is tied up with the Indian Congress party and powerful sections of the Indian ruling classes by numerous strings. Since then, more than months have passed. Many parties, including the Madhesh Forum, the fourth largest party in the Constituent Assembly (CA), has either supported or joined the ministry of Madhav Nepal. There is now a clear majority for the ministry, but the two-third majority required to promulgate the constitution will remain elusive unless Prachanda’s Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) is accommodated within a grand alliance.

Right now, the immediate question is why the cabinet formation process seems to have become unending, with no clear conclusion in sight. This question should be viewed from the vantage point of Comrade Prachanda’s resignation.

That resignation hinges on the two most important questions presently before the Nepal revolution. Will the present standing army subordinate itself to the authority of the CA and the Prime Minister? And will it stop new recruitment and make way for the merger of the Maoist fighters with itself? According to the terms agreed upon by all major parties (upon which agreement stands the present, temporary republican dispensation) the answer to both questions must be in the affirmative. But the chief of the Nepal Army has not only defied the Prime Minister and the Home minister by recruiting soldiers and refused to stand dismissed when so ordered by the PM.

The chief of the Nepal Army, a man brought up in the palace and a royalist, is now courted assiduously by both the Indian expansionists and the US imperialists. The Nepali Congress, the army chief and these interfering foreign powers have formed a solid, reactionary team to unhinge the major plank of policy regarding the future army and, therefore, the future state and government. The deposed King is said to be active on the management. The Supreme Court, which remains basically unchanged since the days of the King and as such suffers from a deficit of legitimacy, duly obliged the army chief by approving his recruitment of soldiers on the plea that he was merely filling up vacancies, forgetting that it is the Defence Minister and the Prime Minister who decide whether there are vacancies and when to fill them, if at all. The Court annulled the dismissal of the army chief by the Prime Minister. With such backing, it was no surprise that the army chief held press conferences denouncing the government and got away with it.

The most crucial political role at this juncture was played by sections of the CPN (UML), already close to the Congress leadership and just as vehemently opposed to the Maoists as the latter. They rallied a section of the leadership with the lure of the loaves and fishes of office and installed Madhav Kumar Nepal as the UML Prime Minister, backed by the Nepali Congress. At first, the Nepal ministry could not commandeer the required numbers for a simple majority. Once that was achieved, ministry formation should have come to an end. But months have passed, but there is no end in sight.

The inherent lack of stability in the process is manifest in different ways. The Congress leaders often make claims to form a ministry headed by them. But that is probably nothing more than their attempt to convince the flock that they are alive and as bad as they always have been even after the severe drubbing they received during the elections. Nevertheless this is not a good omen for the Nepal ministry. But far more serious is the growing preponderance of factions in nearly all the parties, especially the UML and the Madhesh Forum, who are increasingly critical and vocal about the role of their parties in the army chief affair and who favour a ministry headed by the U C P N (Maoist) as the only way to end the crisis and draft a republican constitution. More than that, each party has to counter the general perception of all the oppressed nationalities and ethnic groups who constitute the overwhelming majority that the only reliable ally they have to gain self-determination are the Maoists.

The Maoists are logical, principled and firm. Their position is that the CA must categorically declare the subordination of the armed forces to the civilian authority even if the present prevarications on the issue see the army chief retire as scheduled in October. On that condition they are willing to lead an all-party ministry or even support one, with or without direct participation. They are confident that their growing support within the CA and their massive power on the street will continue to ensure that the reactionary forces will remain fragile and unstable until they are forced to submit to the just demands of the Maoists.

The real question, one that we are sure the Maoists have seriously considered, is whether the frustrated reactionaries and their foreign mentors will soon consider a military option such as a coup d’état by the generals. The episode of the defiant army chief would indicate that the Generals are more than willing. Anything of course can emerge from desperation, but the Maoist support among the masses, which would appear to have grown significantly since their electoral triumph, their mastery of insurrection and guerrilla tactics and their combination of flexibility and bold resolve will make the expansionists and their mentors in Washington pause.

Lok Sabha Election 2009: The West Bengal Verdict

Santosh Rana

The people of West Bengal have given their verdict against party-dictatorship and the terror of the CPI(M).

At last, the people of West Bengal, both urban and rural, both Hindus and Muslims, and both low and high caste, voted against the Left Front, particularly the CPI(M). In 1977, the people had voted against the dictatorial regime of the Congress. After 32 years, the people almost repeated that performance. It was a historic victory of the people.

In 1977, the people had brought the Left Front to power. A massive movement of the workers and peasants unleashed itself. The peasants occupied many vested lands, the share-croppers recorded the plots in their names and there was an uprising against semi-feudal landlords and other vested interests. The revisionist CPI(M) leadership did not want this movement to advance further to overcome the limits of bourgeois democracy, i.e., the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In the name of controlling disorder, they concentrated all power in the hands of their party committees. They formulated a line to decimate all opposition parties in both rural and urban areas. If some peasant did not support the CPI(M), then he would not get any vested land, a BPL card or a house under the Indira Awas Yojana. Starting from primary schools to the universities, all appointments were controlled by the party.

After Buddhadeb Bhattacharya became the Chief Minister, the bureaucratic set-up formed during the previous 25 years engaged itself to start a process of rapid “industrialization”. Being Marxists, they knew very well that under a neo-liberal regime, industrialization would destroy more jobs than it could create. Still, they jumped on to that path. In this venture, they had to grab land from peasants as demanded by the corporate sector and they started doing it. They had to go against the interests of the small retail traders. They invited the Salim group of Indonesia to build a highway from Barasat to Raichak, a pleasure cum health-tourism city at Bhangar near the airport and a chemical SEZ at Nandigram. They also planned to acquire vast lands in Singur for the Tatas in Howrah and other districts for the corporate sector. They tried to convince the people of West Bengal that industrialization would create jobs for the jobless but the people were not convinced. Protest movements started in Bhangar and then in Singur, Nandigram and other areas. The valiant peasants built massive resistance struggles in the face of which the government had to withdraw, but not before committing mass murder in Nandigram. The people tasted victory for the first time in their struggle against the bureaucracy, party-dictatorship and the pro-imperialist policies followed by the CPI(M).

In the Panchayat election of 2008, the people got a chance and they utilized it to defeat the CPI(M) in vast areas of South and North Bengal. In the Lok Sabha election, the people who were eager to get rid of the CPI(M) misrule wanted an anti-CPI(M) alliance. With Congress, Trinamul and SUCI joining hands this unity was partly achieved. Some M-L parties were outside this alliance. So were the PDS (Party for Democratic Socialism) — a breakaway group of the CPI(M) — and the PDCI (People’s Democratic Conference of India) — a party promoted by the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind of West Bengal. But the people were eager to defeat the CPI(M) and they considered the Congress-Trinamul alliance as a viable alternative to the CPI(M). There was a strong polarization of votes and with nearly 7 percent swing away from the Left Front, it managed to win 15 seats out of 42, compared to the 35 it won in 2004. Considering the Assembly segments, the Left Front lost in as many as 193 out of a total of 293 seats. If the present trends continue, 2011 is going to witness the end of three decades of Left rule in West Bengal.

The Sachar Report

Apart from the party dictatorship and the bureaucracy of the CPI(M), the discontent among the Muslims played a significant role in the Lok Sabha results. Muslims constitute nearly a quarter of the state’s population but their presence in the government and semi-government services is negligible. This is a result of severe discrimination against the Muslims observed in all other spheres of life. The Muslims themselves were quite aware of this discrimination but the publication of the Sachar Report gave them an opportunity to vent their grievances.

A Wave for the Congress?

The CPI(M) leadership was shocked by the election results. They had apprehended a loss of few seats but could not imagine such a devastating result. But they are not ready for a self-examination. Instead of critically examining their policies, particularly those followed over the last few years, they tried to explain their defeat by a “Congress Wave”. Their Bengal leadership went so far as to criticize one of the few correct decisions which their Central Committee had taken, i.e., the decision to oppose the Indo-US nuclear deal, as having caused the debacle. But where was the “Congress Wave”? The Congress got 2 percent more votes than what they got in 2004. This was certainly no wave. There was a real sympathy wave for Congress in 1984 after the death of Mrs. Gandhi. Even then, the Congress could not win more than 16 seats in WB. This time the Left Front lost because they had abandoned the Left positions and had joined the battle for the rich, the Nano, the Tatas, the Salims and other multinationals.

But the Rightists Took Advantage

It is true that the Congress-TMC alliance took advantage of the situation and increased their seats. But it is also true that they had to pay a price to get that advantage. In West Bengal, the TMC opposed the SEZ, opposed the eviction of hawkers and retail traders and opposed land grabbing in Bhangar, Singur, Nandigram and many other places. The people got some immediate respite which they longed for.

Now, what will the UPA government do? Will it reverse the pro-imperialist and pro-rich policies followed during 2004-09? Certainly not. It may be that it will go slow on certain reforms like privatisation of banking, insurance and pension schemes and disinvestments in profit-making PSUs. Till the Assembly election in West Bengal, the Central Government may be pressurized by its Trinamul partner to go slow on SEZs and other projects affecting the people of WB and even sanction some more trains or a factory to show a pro-Bengal image. Their target is to capture power in WB. Their real face will be seen only after that.

The people of West Bengal have witnessed how the powerful mass movement of the 1970s and the 1980s was destroyed. The route was through a bureaucratic set-up that substituted for the mass movement, suppressed the opposition and democratic rights, and set up a one-party dictatorship. The Trinamul Congress is getting ready to take the same route. Once they capture Writers Buildings, they will probably suppress all opposition in urban and rural areas as the Congress did in the seventies. Even before capturing Writers Buildings, they have started doing it in some parts of East Midnapur. They want to replace a CPI(M)-led bureaucratic structure by a Trinamul-led structure. It is only after that they will advance to implement the neo-liberal policies dictated by Manmohan Singh.

But it will not be easy for them. It took 32 years for the people of West Bengal to realize the true nature of the CPI(M) and gather courage to rise in revolt against it. For the Congress-Trinamul combine, it will be less than five years. This time, the people’s struggles will advance to a higher stage, provided the genuine Left forces chalk out a programme of revolutionary democracy and persistently work to isolate both the CPI(M) and the Rightist forces.

EDITORIAL: The Situation After the Lok Sabha Elections

For A New Democracy, July-Sept 2009

The corporate press is beside itself in its celebration of the Congress victory. With Biman Basu and other CPI(M) stalwarts playing the drone to hide their own dismal performance, the corporate press has played the sweet melody of a Congress wave. Having established the melodic line, the modulations begin. It is a vote for more so-called reforms, i.e., more capitalism by dispossession, more cuts in welfare spending and a general withdrawal of social safety nets and more of the rest of the prescription from the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. It is also a vote, the media tell us, that stabilizes the launching pad for India to become the local gendarme of the US imperialists.

Was there a Congress wave? There was no doubt an increase of 2 percent in this party’s vote share nationally. Compared to Indira Gandhi’s triumph after the Bangladesh war or her ignominious defeat five years later, 2 percent is not something to crow about. The vagaries of the first past the post election system has allowed the Congress to win a greater percentage of seats than their mandate of less than 29 percent of votes polled. Consider the Andhra Pradesh results. The vote share of the Congress there actually declined by 2.6 percent but its share of the seats went up from 28 in 2004 to 33. It is that familiar story of adversial vote division, thanks largely to the rise of another thespian on the Southern parliamentary firmament. Among major States, Congress gained in vote share significantly in the so-called BIMARU (4) States and Punjab, while shedding vote share in Orissa, Chhatishgarh and Jharkhand, along with Andhra Pradesh. Without going into the details of vote divisions and causes that account for the Congress vote, it is safe to say that the results show a mixed bag for the Congress and it is certainly not a wave of any kind.

This notion of the wave brings the corporate media to another fond idea pushed by their mentors in Washington and Tel Aviv: the result of the general election shows that the country is on the edge of a bipolar electorate, with the Congress and the BJP at the two poles. Two neo-liberal parties ruling India alternatively from a strong national integrationist (read soft and hard Hindutva) centre and serving the US imperialists single-mindedly must be the panacea favoured by the captains of industry and commerce to quell the millions of insurgencies engulfing India today. But is the idea true when we know that the BJP has dug itself into a hole and the combined vote share of the two big parties has declined in this election? In spite of a strategic ¬weakening vis-à-vis the present composition of the Lok Sabha, the centrifugal forces representing various compositions of caste, tribe, religion, language and region (which includes the three regional satrapies of the CPI(M)-led front) still command a vote share equal to or more than the two so-called national parties. It is easy for the casteists of the media, for instance, to mock Mayavati’s ambition to become the first Dalit Prime Minister, but it is somewhat inconvenient to ignore the fact that her vote share did not change significantly from what she had received during her assembly triumph. It was rational of her to expect many more parliament seats, but that did not happen due to various factors, mainly adverse vote division, one of the lesser gainers being the Congress. That Congress has just about emerged from the doldrums with some mild wind on its sails in UP, but there is no wave in sight. The Congress gained in vote share and seats in Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Rajasthan, places precisely where there were no significant local forces and the fight was between it and the BJP. In Maharashtra, it gained some seats because the Shiv Sena votes got divided. The so-called Congress wave did not carry the party very far in Orissa. As long as Hindi, Hindu and Hindutva, in the softer or the harder version prevails as the mechanism of integrating the country, new centrifugal forces will rise over and over again until a federal polity with multi-layered autonomies is established. Only a twenty-first century socialism that builds upon the positive experiences and eschews the blunders of twentieth century socialism can deliver such decentralization. Until that day, the corporate media and the leaders of the ruling classes can crow to their hearts’ delight, but the democratic consciousness that has embedded itself in the Indian people will not allow centripetal forces to grow without decentralization to the grassroots and federalism.
Whatever the corporate media might conjecture about the future of economic policy, the Indian ruling classes, like the ruling classes all over the capitalist world, have been shaken to the core by the collapse of the neo-liberal verities. Already, a section of the Congress is crowing about their sagacity in not going the whole hog in opening up the economy more fully when in fact their sagacity would have taken us much further if not restrained by the mass movement. Some are even brushing up on their paens to Indira Gandhi’s policy of nationalisations and a strong public sector when only the mass movement stopped them from privatising everything in sight. But such dishonest posturing shows that some powerful sections of the ruling classes are already trying to confront the policies pursued by the World Bank dream team of Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The fundamentals of economic policies are vital to a ruling class and that class tends often to split on them. The people must keep a close watch and utilise even the mildest contradictions that emerge from differences on such policies.

The corrosive fluids of our mass poverty and our inhuman deprivations took the shine off the BJP’s Shining India five years ago. The shine was in the malls, the superhighways and the vicious ideology of individual selfishness propagated as the trickle down theory whereby the poor will also get to play in the long run, but right now let the Ambanis present their spouses with fifty-floor town houses. The BJP has not recovered from that debacle. It did not put up any serious economic issues because it was unsure about its own roots in the ruling classes. Its top leaders knew that shrill Hindutva had become counter-productive, although well into the campaign some of its leaders, apprehensive about the outcome, tried to revive it through the vicious and vulgar Varun Gandhi and his mother. Without a sharp edge to policies and barely concealed in-fighting for leadership, the BJP did perhaps better than expected. Now the daggers are out and it is not certain that these saffronites will not fight each other until a return back to the insignificance of the Jan Sangh days is assured.
The electoral fate of the CPI(M)-led Left Front has surprised many people. In Tripura its vote share has gone down very significantly. In Kerala it was nearly decimated. And in West Bengal it has received a body blow from which it will not recover very soon, if ever.

The causes for the loss of vote share in Tripura and West Bengal were similar. The Tripura bhadraloks followed their West Bengal kin in corruption, arrogance and the use or threat of violence against all civil society assertions in order to establish a monolithic party raj. Opposed to this party raj, the people of Tripura, especially the tribals who are drifting away from unproductive terrorism and rising in mass movements, are now ready to follow in the wake of the anti-CPI(M) tsunami in West Bengal. That mass movement has to develop much further before a debacle overtakes the Tripura CPI(M). We carry on another page an analysis of the West Bengal elections.

In Kerala, the party would appear to be vertically split with many elements, pro- and anti-people, leaving the party. The violence there is a little muted compared to West Bengal and Tripura, but the corruption is rampant. Nevertheless it would appear that, unlike West Bengal, there are in Kerala substantial groups of people in the CPI(M) who have not totally jettisoned communist ways among the people in their struggles. The immediate causes of the Kerala debacle is the corruption case against the state secretary and the ensuing faction fights, his pursuit of anti-people neoliberal policies and, radiating out of the party’s factionalism, mistreatment of allies. Those who left the party also contributed to heavy losses in areas where the party establishment was always strong. Parliamentary cretins that they are, powerful sections of the CPI(M)’s leadership wish to put down their debacle to the withdrawal of support from the UPA over a perfectly legitimate, anti-imperialist issue. They say that they could not explain the nuclear power issue, so Karat is to be blamed. Why couldn’t they explain? Because the babus of Alimuddin Street had already issued eviction notices under the grotesque Land Acquisition Act of 1894 to thousands of villagers in East Medinipur in order precisely to set up a nuclear reactor as and when the US accepts India’s capitulation through the nuclear deal. More generally, how could Alimuddin speak of and explain any anti-imperialist stance when it has ecstatically swallowed every economic prescription by Washington.
The fact is that the withdrawal of support from the UPA caused the debacle in West Bengal is just a bit of a fancy confidence trick. After the fascist massacre at Nandigram, after Singur, after millions of violent acts since coming to power over three decades ago, after their final exposure as revisionist renegades who cause and preside over hunger, malnutrition, lack of healthcare for the poor, national and linguistic suppression, blatant caste, tribal and religious discrimination, etc. the poor people of West Bengal, especially the workers and peasants, have decided to give them the boot. The parliamentary results were inevitable after the mass movement grew to explosive proportions,
Parliamentary cretinism is so ingrained and powerful in this party that all the grand anti-imperialist analyses that emerge from the Gopalan Bhavan and the curious enclaves in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) cannot move this party beyond some parliamentary pressure on the government.

The Lok Sabha polls have dealt a stunning blow on Indian revisionism. It will take them a long time to recover, if at all there is a recovery. This opens up interesting prospects for a correct process of uniting and coalescing the millions of revolts, big and small, that have already covered the whole map of India. This will not be easy. The working class in the manufacturing sectors and the vast employee sector in the industrial and capitalist service sectors are still not out of the clutches of mainly revisionist leaderships. The largest working women’s organisation is led by the CPI(M). The revisionist debacle at the polls and the mass movement against revisionism is still a peasant movement mainly. These other vital sections could be galvanised into revolutionary action if hard work among them on the basis of policies that eschew sectarianism and adventurism can be put in place.

Imperialism is in great crisis because of the economic meltdown. Many different forces are rising up to lead the people’s discontent. Policies and action should be the judges of these forces and exposure shall follow with the development of the movement. But there should not be any policy of exclusion based on the idea of single party hegemony of old communist history.