India’s War on Maoists

 

One of Charles Dickens’ characters, Ebenezer Scrooge (A Christmas Carol), when asked to make a donation for the sake of the poor responds acridly that the poor were none of his business and that they should go to the prisons or workhouses.  Despite being a disgruntled curmudgeon, Scrooge did not suggest that the poor should be killed.  He thought that it was the duty of the State to look after them.  Workhouses were the old institutions in England that provided food and shelter to the poor in exchange for labour. 

The government of India is not even as generous as Scrooge.  The Prime Minister has been asserting time and again that the Maoists are “the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country”.  The Home Minister has declared a battle on Maoists by fielding 55,000 troops of security forces against the Maoists.  “The centre is committed to fight Naxalism [Maoism],” Mr Chidambaram has declared. “We will provide all possible help to… eradicate the left-wing extremists completely.”

Maoism is a serious problem in India today.  They are using ruthless violence in order to achieve their goals (securing the rights of the poor).  Violence of any form is not justified for rational creatures.  Yet when an extremely violent movement sweeps almost the whole country (Maoism has spread to 18 states in India), one cannot just sit back and utter platitudes about the futility of violence.  Nor should the country merely treat it as a law and order problem and use more violence to suppress the infectious violence. 

“The Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of the poor,” says a recent BBC report which also says that the paramilitary offensive against the Maoists is likely to begin in October.  Do the poor have no rights in the present world driven by the egotistic greed of capitalism?  Should their clamour for the basic amenities of life be silenced with machine guns and battle tanks?  Should the poor be exterminated from the face of the earth?

India is a country with an enormous number of people (300 million at the least) living in abject poverty.  Their number keeps increasing because their sources of livelihood are being taken away from them.  Their land is taken away by dams, SEZs (Special Economic Zones), industries, or housing schemes for the affluent.  Their traditional jobs cannot be sustained any more.  Other job opportunities are not provided by the government or any other agency.  What should they do?  Commit suicide? 

The Marxist Party (CPM) in India, which was supposed to defend the rights of the poor, has become capitalist all but in name.  In West Bengal the party has joined hands with the industrialists and other capitalist agencies and waged wars against the poor.  In Kerala the party has been corrupted thoroughly by the charms of capitalism.  When there is no one to defend the poor, they will defend themselves.  This is what the Maoists are doing.

But it is a bad defence.  The ruthless violence they have resorted to will not carry them far.  It is an act of despair.  It is a terrified cry for serious help.  It is the roar of the mortally wounded but ferocious animal. 

The government of India may succeed in putting out that cry by killing large numbers of Maoists.  But is that the way to overcome poverty: killing the poor?  Why does the government of India refuse to learn the lessons from the mess its military actions have created in the Northeast?

“When a few people decide to live larger than life, we all get trampled,” wrote Naomi Klein in 2001.  The Colossuses have been taking giant strides creating a system that is not very different from the ancient caste system of India.  The new Shudras are the economically deprived lots.  How long should this new socio-economic system keep the balance tilted before we realise that the tilt of the balance is as unjust as the old caste system that we now repudiate?

In the meanwhile, one hopes that the contemporary (economic) Brahmins will at least acquire the humanism of Ebenezer Scrooge.

 

Other related articles of mine:

From Naxalbari to Lalgarh

Slums in Capitalist Utopia

Needed an Alternative to Capitalism

Slums in Capitalist Utopia

One out of every two Mumbaikars is a slum dweller, according to the latest report of a research carried out jointly by the Brihanmumbai (Greater Mumbai) Municipal Corporation and the UNO.  Mumbai (Bombay) is the financial capital of India.  50 percent of the population in the financial capital of a flourishing economy live in slums.  Worse, the slums occupy only 5 percent of the total area of Mumbai. 

One of the worst pitfalls of the present capitalism-driven globalisation is the rapidly widening gap between the haves and have-nots.  Globalisation promised more wealth for more people leading eventually to the wellbeing of the whole mankind.  What has happened, however, is more (and more) wealth for a few people and greater misery for the rest.

Most of the countries that capitulated to globalisation ended up with debilitating economic disparities.  Poland, for example, embraced globalisation in the early 1990s.  The country’s economy was liberalised and privatisation gained full momentum.  As a result unemployment skyrocketed.  Even now Poland has the highest rate of unemployment in the European Union.  40 percent of young workers were unemployed in 2006 (after a decade-and-a-half’s economic reform), twice the EU average.  If 15 percent of the country’s population lived below the poverty line before globalisation, the figure rose steeply to 60 percent after globalisation. 

Deng Xiaoping imported the corporate economy into China ten years before Poland was forced to do so.  When Poland was beginning to learn the lessons in corporate economy from Jeffrey Sachs, China was pumping bullets into the hearts of young student-protestors in Tiananmen Square.  Five days after the bloodiest massacre in modern China’s history Deng dismissed the protestors as “the dregs of society” and declared that he was protecting not Communism but capitalism.  Capitalism received a red carpet welcome to China, the carpet reddened with the blood of Chinese youth.  A decade-and-a-half later 90 percent of China’s billionaires are the children of the Communist Party officials who became the country’s corporate honchos.  Hundreds of millions of Chinese workers today work in sweatshops or similar conditions.  Despite the 9 percent annual economic growth, more and more Chinese are rendered incapable of having the basic services like primary healthcare and education.  With low taxes and tariffs, corruptible officials and abundant low-wage working population, China today is the sweatshop of the world, thanks to globalisation.

Globalisation was foisted upon South Africa’s gullible ANC and consequentially on the black South Africans as the price they had to pay for liberating themselves from apartheid.  Ten years after its globalising enterprises what has South Africa achieved?  The number of people living on less than one dollar per day doubled from 2 million to 4 million.  The unemployment rate for black South Africans more than doubled from 23 percent to 48 percent.  Of South Africa’s 35 million black citizens, only 5000 earn more than $60,000 a year.  The number of whites in that income bracket is 20 times higher.  2 million people lost their homes in the decade-long period of globalisation.  About 1 million people were evicted from their farms in that period raising the number of shack dwellers by 50 percent. 

In 1989, before Russia rolled out its red carpet to the market economy, 2 million people in the Russian Federation lived in poverty, on less than $4 a day.  In 1996, 25 percent of Russians – about 37 million people – lived in poverty described as “desperate.”  In 2006 the Russian government admitted that there were 715,000 homeless kids in the country, while UNICEF put the number at 3.5 million.  Many Russians committed suicide unable to carry the burden put on them by the liberal economy of their country.  “The years of criminal capitalism have killed off 10 percent of our population,” lamented Vladimir Gusev, a Moscow academic at a 2006 demonstration.  Russia is losing about 700,000 people a year due to poverty and poverty-related reasons such as crimes. 

There are more examples from other countries.  But let me conclude.

I have taken most of the material for this article from Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine.  Let me conclude this with a quote from the book.

The movement that Milton Friedman launched in the 1950s is best understood as an attempt by multinational capital to recapture the highly profitable, lawless frontier that Adam Smith, the intellectual forefather of today’s neoliberals, so admired…

Where Smith saw fertile green fields turned into profitable farmlands on the pampas and the prairies, Wall Street saw “green field opportunities” in Chile’s phone system, Argentina’s airline, Russia’s oil fields, Bolivia’s water system, the United States’ public airwaves, Poland’s factories – all built with the public wealth, then sold for a trifle.

The wealth that belongs to the whole country is being given very generously to a few individuals who have the financial capacity to bribe the political leaders and pay the prices quoted by them.  Look at some of the land deals for various industrial enterprises and SEZs in India, for example.  Public wealth has slowly been handed over to a few individuals in the form of shares in the stock market.  As a result more and more people will move out of the purview of the government.  Less and less people will come to inherit the earth.  More and more people will move into slums….

BJP in Transition

 

The crisis that the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] is undergoing is an indicator of the long overdue need for the Party to change its political vision and ideology both of which are rooted more in hatred than any meaningful positive value.  In the last few years whenever and wherever the Party had some significant power it used that power to wreak a lot of havoc on some of the minority communities in the country rather than use it for the welfare of at least some sections of the society, at least the section for whose interests the Party exists.  What it means in the final analysis is that the Party was merely trying to get power or retain it by whipping up communal feelings.  There is no survival for such parties anymore in India. 

India has tasted the rewards of capitalist outlooks. The country has moved far ahead from the days of the “Hindu rate of economic growth” to a flourishing capitalist rate.  There is only one thing that capitalist outlooks understand: wealth.  Capitalists are interested in gods only insofar as gods will rake in more profits.  Their interest in culture or nationalism is also circumscribed by the same motive.  Ratan Tata moved into Narendra Modi’s Gujarat from Mamata Didi’s West Bengal not for the sake of Hindutva but for the sake of an environment that is conducive to his commercial enterprise. 

It is high time that the BJP realised this plain truth.  The age of gods and goddesses is gone.  Wealth is the new god/goddess.  L K Advani’s somersaults between hardcore Hindutva and opportunistic secularism (as when he lavished praises on Jinnah during his Pakistan visit) cannot hoodwink a population whose eyes are fixed on material progress.  Mr Jaswant Singh praised Jinnah and went on to assert that it was time for the Party [BJP] to change its attitudes.  That makes him different from Mr Advani.  Mr Singh is saying that BJP’s vision has become outdated.  And he is right.

But Arun Shourie is determined to drag the Party back by a century or so, it seems.  He is asking the RSS to take hold of the reigns.  The RSS is a retrograde organisation with revanchist attitudes.  At a time when millions of Indians have settled down in peace and prosperity in countries all over the world and all of which are non-Hindu, the RSS is thinking of forging a nation in India exclusively for Hindus.  How can such an organisation lead a political party to any kind of success in a democratic country that is relishing the successes of capitalism?

It is time for the BJP to melt all its antiquated vision and policies in a cauldron and give shape to a new vision and new policies relevant for the twenty-first century.  India is ready for that new vision.

Hegemony a la America

 

“The theories of Milton Friedman gave him the Nobel Prize; they gave Chile General Pinochet.”  Eduardo Galeano

The United States of America regards itself the Messiah of the world.  At least it wants to project itself so.  In practice the country has become the dictator of the world.  It spares no efforts in making every country accept its ideology (if it can be called ideology) and economic theories.  According to Naomi Klein,* America makes use of two kinds of “shocks” for imposing its ideology and economics on nations.

1. Torture

America’s CIA creeps into any nation whose ideology seems to be leaning left or Islamic or in any way un-American.  It captures key persons and subject them to psychological torture to such an extent that they are disoriented totally.  What the CIA intends to do is to brainwash the persons into accepting American capitalist ideology.  But CIA has never succeeded in making its victims accept the American ideology though it has consistently succeeded in destroying their minds entirely.  

The CIA methodology

The victims are arrested late at night or in early-morning raids.  They are blindfolded, stripped and beaten, then subjected to some form of sensory deprivation.  They are subjected to extreme heat and cold alternatively.  Blinding light and total darkness are imposed on them, again alternatively.  Mice and cockroaches are sent into their cells in the darkness.  Electroshock is used liberally.  America has done this in countries ranging from Guatemala to Honduras, Vietnam to Iran, the Philippines to Chile.  As a result of these tortures the victims acquire total regression.  Most of them begin to behave like children devoid of individuated minds. 

Guantanamo is one of the many prisons where America exercised its torture techniques on prisoners.  But human rights groups point out that Guantanamo is the best of the US-run offshore interrogation operations, since it was open to limited monitoring by the Red Cross and lawyers.  So one can imagine what was happening in the other centres of American brainwashing exercises. 

2. Capitalism

Milton Friedman’s version of capitalism is what America loves to export to all countries.  America has spent billions of dollars by way of scholarships to students from various countries to study Friedman’s economic theories at Chicago University.  These students go back to their countries and ‘revolutionise’ the economy there.  It happened in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and so on.  What happened, as a result, is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Naomi Klein summarises Friedman’s economics thus: “First, governments must remove all rules and regulations standing in the way of the accumulation of profits.  Second, they should sell off any assets they own that corporations could be running at a profit.  And third, they should dramatically cut back funding of social programs.”  In addition were such rules as making the taxes the same for the rich and the poor – flat rates.  The market was to determine all prices including the price of labour.  The market became the new god, a god invented and imposed on nations by America.

America, which was very concerned about the fact that Saddam Hussein was a dictator, had no qualms in replacing the democratically elected President Allende of Chile with the ruthless Pinochet.  When Allende was elected, the American President Nixon ordered the CIA to “make the (Chilean) economy scream.”  And the CIA knew that job too well!

America played similar political games in Brazil, Indonesia and other countries too.  It continues to play such games in many countries in the name of controlling terrorism or bringing democracy.  It promises to bring development and progress.  What has it done to Afghanistan and Iraq recently? 

Can America do any good to the world by its relentless interferences in the internal affairs of the countries?  Why can’t America let other countries forge their destinies?

America is suffering from some kind of Messianic complex.  It should cease to view itself as the Messiah of the world. 

President Obama said recently in his Cairo speech: “It is easier to start wars than to end them.  It is easier to blame others than to look inward; to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share.  But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path.  There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we sould have them do unto us.  This truth transcends nations and peoples – a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian or Muslim or Jew.  It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the hearts of billions.  It’s a faith in other people…”

Yes, America, have some faith in other people.  That’s the remedy for your Messianic delusions.

* This article is based on the first two chapters of Naomi Klein’s book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.  [Penguin, 2007]

The Nexus between Truth and Power

 

“Generally speaking, truth has been suffered to exist in the world just to the extent that it profited the rulers of society.”  These are words of renowned American philosopher Barrows Dunham (1905-1995).  In his book Man Against Myth Dunham argues that people like Galileo or Bruno were suppressed or even killed not because they spoke the truth but the truth they spoke was too inconvenient for the ruling class.

Inconvenient truths are the most dreaded things in the world, perhaps. 

Truths are meant to maintain the status quo.  Those who challenge the status quo are the people left out of the purview of the prevailing power structure.

Let’s take the example of Marxism.  The Communist Party of China was founded in 1921.  A protracted guerrilla war was what it took for Communism in China to usurp the existing power structure.  What the common people (aam aadmi, in Indian parlance) got was another dictatorship.  Mao and Deng and scores of other schools of thought imposed their ‘truths’ on the common people.  These truths crushed under military boots the aspirations and dreams of the aam aadmi.  Did the status quo change for the aam aadmi?  Today, the ideology has changed.  China now has a totalitarian capitalist regime.  The transition from hardcore communism to hardcore capitalism has been quite easy compared to the birth pangs of capitalism in West Bengal and the slow decadence of socialism in Kerala. 

Today China competes with the staunchest capitalist nations.  It has piled up nuclear and other weapons.  It has marauded the environment ruthlessly.  Seven of the ten most polluted cities in the world are located in China.  The aam aadmi is digging deeper and deeper into the ground water sources in search of water: at the alarming rate of 1.5 metres per year.  The Chinese soil is losing its fertility at the rate of 10,400 square kilometres a year.  25 million people have lost their jobs after the country embraced capitalism.  But there is no voice of dissent.  Has the ‘truth’ of capitalism sunk so deep in the psyche of the aam aadmi in China?  Is the ‘truth’ of capitalism as unquestionable today as the truths of science, or as were the truths of religion in the bygone days?

In West Bengal, the Marxists not only did not protect the aam aadmi but colluded with the capitalists in the recent past.  Singur and Lalgarh are the proofs.  The Marxist Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, dictated the new ‘truth’ for the aam aadmi: “Capital has no ideology or colour.”

Pinarayi Vijayan in Kerala literally proved that capital has no ideology or colour.  He grew from rags to riches too rapidly for a Marxist political leader.  When he got embroiled in the SNC-Lavalin corruption charge, he drafted his own ‘truths’ and got the ‘inconvenient’ Chief Minister Achuthanandan ousted from the party’s Polit Bureau.  Vijayan’s supporters nailed down his ‘truth’ into the psyche of the aam aadmi by means of posters, processions and demonstrations.

The aam aadmi has had truths imposed on him from time immemorial.  He has little choice but to accept those truths.  Otherwise he would be labelled a Maoist or something like that and done away with.  The ‘truths’ of the ruling class are always more important than the aam aadmi.

I began with a quote from Barrows Dunham.  Let me end too with a quote from the same: “For Galileo to assert that the earth is a sphere rotating upon an axis, when feudal myth held it to be stationary and flat, was as ‘subversive’ as for a sociologist to assert today that wars originate from the nature of capitalism.”  Dunham wrote that in 1947.

Needed an Alternative to Capitalism

 

Socialism was tried in many countries in various forms and found to fail.  It failed more because of the assaults it could not withstand from capitalism than because of its conceptual non-sustainability.  Socialism is more broad-based in outlook than capitalism.  It seeks to ensure the welfare of the whole society.  Consequently it makes more demands on certain individuals particularly those who are more ‘capable’.  Capitalism focuses on individuals.  It is always easier to look after one’s own affairs than those of a group.  In other words, capitalism is easier to practise than socialism.  It is only natural that an ‘easier’ theory supplants the more difficult one.

Capitalism is a highly limited system.  First of all, it deals only with economy.  But man does not live in an economy; he lives in a society.  The total neglect of the social dimension of man is the most severe handicap of capitalism. 

But it is at the same time the greatest advantage of capitalism too.  It is always easy to save oneself and capitalism gives us that easy option.

Capitalism asks us to produce things, consume them as much as you can (not as much as you want), sell your products for the highest profit and keep on amassing the profits. An individual’s place in the capitalist hierarchy is marked out by the profits he accumulates.  The ‘capitalist’ obviously accumulates the maximum profit.  He employs labourers – skilled and unskilled.  He pays them according to their contribution to the profit-making process.  But who are the real profit-makers: the unskilled labourers who toil for hours or the skilled ones whose jobs may be much easier or the decision-makers such as the MBAs or the ‘capitalist’ who doles out his money?  The answer is too obvious to be mentioned.

Michael Albert, who is promoting an alternative to capitalism named Participatory Economics, says that “capitalism violates all the basic values; it does not promote equity, solidarity, efficiency, environmental sustainability, self-management, or diversity. In fact, capitalism does the contrary. Capitalism generates atomized, self-interested behavior, not solidarity. Capitalism generates inefficiency since it is based on individual actors. Capitalisms’ environmental record speaks for itself; it destroys biodiversity. Capitalism generates huge income and wealth differentials. Capitalism does not promote self-management but instead generates a situation where a few make decisions for the many. Capitalism does not generate diversity, it pushes people into boring and repetitive jobs, and creates a consumer culture based on a few brand names.”

Socialism may not be the appropriate alternative to capitalism.  Albert puts forward Participatory Economics as a better alternative.  (For more information on Participatory Economics, please click here.)

Perhaps capitalism is not as popular today as it was a few decades ago.  People are increasingly being disenchanted with the economic depressions and huge disparities in wealth engendered by capitalism.  Being neither an economist nor even a student of economics, I cannot present an alternative theoretical framework.  But I do believe that the present capitalist system will sooner or later give way to a more humane, more cooperative (rather than competitive), and more inclusive economic system.  My optimism is bolstered by the success of endeavours such as the Wikipedia which bears testimony to man’s readiness to contribute freely (and anonymously too) towards the betterment of the species.

From Naxalbari to Lalgarh

 

The Maoist violence that Lalgarh (West Bengal, India) is witnessing reminds us of the Naxalite Movement which was born 40 years ago in the same state.  Both Naxalism of four decades ago and Maoism today are symptoms of the same malady that grips the society from time to time: exploitation of one section by another. 

 

Naxalism and Maoism are both offshoots of Marxism.   The egalitarian society envisaged by Karl Marx as the pinnacle of social evolution is destined to be a mere dream, a mirage.  The capitalist systems have ensured that much at least. 

 

Where capitalism runs high socialism cannot survive.  Capitalism is based on individual enterprise and selfishness.  There is nothing wrong with that kind of enterprise and a certain degree of selfishness.  In fact, to a great extent that is desirable too.  But governments cannot afford to promote the interests of only certain individuals.  Governments are meant to look after the welfare of the whole society, the whole state.  This is where West Bengal failed.

 

It is ironical that West Bengal has had Marxist governments for the last 32 years and yet the state has witnessed large scale violence triggered by poverty a number of times, the present Lalgarh episode being the latest.  Marxism failed to bring any kind of progress and development in the state, let alone egalitarianism. 

 

But did West Bengal really put into practice the tenets of Marxism?  Did the Marxist government ever work for the betterment of the poor and the oppressed classes in the state?  What happened in Nandigram two years ago answers these questions partially.  The agricultural land of the farmers was taken over with the intention of giving it to a capitalist industrialist.  The farmers’ protests were suppressed by the government.  There was violence.  14 persons died in police firing.  Suppression of the proletariat by a Marxist government!  Karl Marx must have turned in his grave.

 

Lalgarh might also receive a similar response from the state government.  It is asking for the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) to take over the situation in Lalgarh so that the blame for the suppression of the rebellion and the accompanying violence on oppressed people can be transferred to some alien police force.

 

What is happening in Lalgarh is not a mere law-and-order problem.  This is the first thing that the West Bengal government has to realise.  It is the cry for justice of a section of people who feel helpless in the royal march of capitalist systems. 

 

While capitalism brings in more development and progress, it neglects large sections of people.  Marxism apparently fails to bring in development.  The equality it seems to engender is making everyone poor.  West Bengal is an appropriate example.  The government of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has to wake up to the present reality instead of waiting for the central government to step in with solutions or throwing the blame on Mamta Banerjee (though the latter may be adding fuel to the fire).