Friends of Bengal Lauding the Ruling Left

The following letter, as the appended list of signatures will testify, has been written by a group of thinkers, most of whose names are very familiar in leftist and democratic intellectual circles. The next letter, written by Kunal Chattopadhyay, is a rejoinder. I think that both of them will interest the readers of this blog.

Santanu Chacraverti

To Our Friends in Bengal.

News travels to us that events in West Bengal have overtaken the optimism
that some of us have experienced during trips to the state. We are concerned
about the rancor that has divided the public space, created what appear to
be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values. It is this
that distresses us. We hear from people on both sides of this chasm, and we
are trying to make some sense of the events and the dynamics. Obviously, our
distance prevents us from saying anything definitive. We continue to trust
that the people of Bengal will not allow their differences on some issues to
tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the state (land reforms,
local self-government).

We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly
dispossessed. We understand that the government has promised not to build a
chemical hub in the area around Nandigram. We understand that those who had
been dispossessed by the violence are now being allowed back to their homes,
without recrimination. We understand that there is now talk of
reconciliation. This is what we favor.

The balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to
split the left. We are faced with a world power that has demolished one
state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time for
division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.

Noam Chomsky, author, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assult on
Democracy.

Tariq Ali, author, Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope and editor, New
Left Review.

Howard Zinn, author, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.

Susan George, author, Another World is Possible if, and Fellow,
Transnational Institute.

Victoria Brittain, co-author, Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim's Journey to
Guantanamo and Back, former editor, Guardian.

Walden Bello, author, Dilemmas of Domination. The Unmaking of the American
Empire, and Chair, Akbayan, the fastest growing party in the Philippines.

Mahmood Mamdani, author, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, The Cold War and
the Roots of Terror.

Akeel Bilgrami, author, Politics and the Moral Psychology of Identity.

Richard Falk, author, The Costs of War: International Law, the UN and World
Order After Iraq.

Jean Bricmont, author, Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell
War.

Michael Albert, author, Parecon: Life After Capitalism, and editor, ZNET.

Stephen Shalom, author, Imperial Alibis: Rationalizing US Intervention After
the Cold War.

Charles Derber, author, People Before Profit. The New Globalization in an
Age of Terror, Big Money and Economic Crisis.

Vijay Prashad, author, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third
World.

An Open Letter to Tariq Ali

Dear Tariq,

When I was a very young radical, still a Maoist rather than a Trotskyist, it was your name, rather than that of Ernest Mandel, or of anyone else, that we came across, here in our part of India. There are still older comrades in West Bengal, who talk about a certain period of Fourth International history, in terms of “in those days of Tariq Ali”. This is why, a statement, even though signed by Chomsky, Zinn and others, along with the man who seems to have carried out the coup, a gentleman named Vijay Prashad, becomes most painful because you are among the signatories. As you once wrote in one of your wonderful books, about another comrade of yours, ‘there was fire in his belly in those days’. Perhaps we have all grown older, but some of us have refused to grow “wiser”.

I read, and re-read, with a growing sense of wonder, shame and above all anger, the statement that some of you have signed. If you are uninformed, what gave you the authority to issue a pompous statement based on that lack of information? I write to you, because I consider you a comrade who has committed a mistake in signing this statement.

Right at the beginning, you write:

News travels to us that events in West Bengal have overtaken the optimism
that some of us have experienced during trips to the state. We are concerned
about the rancor that has divided the public space, created what appear to
be unbridgeable gaps between people who share similar values.

Who are these people who share similar values? Just what do you know about the values shared by those in governmental authority in West Bengal? You, and those others amongst you, who made trips here, met some of the CPI(M)’s intellectuals, who put on a special face for foreign delegations. But as someone who has known Marxism for longer than I have, you know well that it is never possible to judge people solely by what they say about themselves. When someone uses words like democracy, even socialism, anti-imperialism, unless you know the context, unless you know exactly what their political practice is, you cannot assume that they say those words in the same way that you, or someone else does.

So let us begin by looking at values. Just a small example of values. When the Singur –Nandigram issues began blowing up, Medha Patkar, who happens to be one of India’s most respected social movement activists, someone who has therefore been vilified by parties and governments across India, extended her solidarity for the militant people. CPI(M) leaders took umbrage. CPI(M) State Secretariat member (and Central Committee member) Benoy Konar, in a speech, called on women to show Medha Patkar their buttocks. When Medha tried to go to Nandigram, her car was blockaded, and some people, supporters of the CPI(M), indeed followed Konar’s advice and showed Medha their buttocks. I could quote dozens of newspaper and television reports, but most clippings I have are in Bengali, so I give you the url of Medha’s own report. http://www.kafila.org/2007/03/15/medha-patkar-on-civil-war-in-nandigram/

I dare you, or any of your co-signatories, with the exception of Mr. Vijay Prashad, to come forward and assert that you share similar values as these people.

I am sure, that once this open letter is circulated, it will also be trivialized by the murders who are posing as leftists and persuading you to sign on behalf of them. So let me say that this is not the only issue I am talking about when we say values. I will be talking about political outlook and values in other ways. But Tariq, in the most extreme days of the IMT line, when talking about guerilla warfare, did you ever call on your comrades to do unto political opponents, that which Benoy Konar suggested and that which his followers obliged by doing?

If by values you mean left wing values, you would have to define more precisely what sort of leftism you are talking about. CPI(M) leaders and their government here in West Bengal are deeply wedded to a very authoritarian form of bourgeois democracy. I will be able to mention only a few cases below. But perhaps the clearest evidence is this – despite the fact that in the period 1971-1977, the Congress in power used utmost brutality, had people illegally arrested, tortured, many actually killed, in three decades in power, the CPI(M) led government has failed to carry though the prosecution of a single police officer of that era.

In your statement, you present a euphemistic comment, saying that you are concerned about the rancor that has divided the public space. The “rancor” that you talk about is the result of a long period of violation of civil liberties, of brutal repression of political opposition and massive use of party cadres as thugs. The most respected Civil Liberties organization in West Bengal , the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights, has recently been targeted by the chief minister, who claimed that the APDR is a Maoist outfit. The crime of the APDR was that it has consistently argued that everyone has political and civil rights, and these cannot be circumscribed without threatening all of us. Let me again give some illustration. Attacks on the Maoists, especially the organizations CPI(ML) Peoples’ War, the Maoist Communist Centre, and after they merged, the CPI(Maoist) have been massive. Anyone suspected of being a Maoist has been arrested, even without real charges. And why is someone suspected? In Medinipur district, an activist of the APDR was arrested as a suspected Maoist, on the strength of material found in his possession. Such material included a copy of George Thompson’s From Marx to Mao-tse Tung. I still have a copy at home, and I am wondering when it will be my turn to be arrested. In Kolkata, a man was arrested on suspicion of being a Maoist, and he was so traumatized by police action, that he committed suicide. (Ananda Bazar patrika, 9.7.2002). Four days after Ananda Bazar Patrika wrote about this, the CPI(M) daily newspaper, Ganashakti, reported that Benoy Konar told journalists, in reply to a question on whether the police had overstepped the boundaries of human rights, that it is difficult to determine the boundaries of human rights. In addition, Konar treated the media to the homily that the baton of the police is used as a repressive apparatus. (Ganashakti, 11.7,02). In 2002, the Chief Minister said that the KLO in North Bengal or the Maoists elsewhere were holding up development. So the priority for development was used to justify violence on them. The Home Minister’s budget speech for 2002-2003 seeking additional funds for the police highlighted the commitment of the state to modernisation of the police for counter-insurgency; at a time when the government’s debt burden had risen to 7500 billion rupees. (Amit Bhattacharya, ‘Duhsomoy: Ganatantra, Manabadhikar O Paschimbanger ‘Sangbedanshil’ Sarkar’, in Bartaman Lokayatik, 2002-2003, Nos. 3-4 and 1-2, pp. 238-270 . See especially pp. 245-7; and also Ananda Bazar Patrika, 7.8.2002) . There has been a long, very long trail of state and party sponsored violence. The APDR has regularly listed cases. Two comrades, members of the Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha (Forum Against Oppression of Women, Kolkata), Mira Roy and Soma Marik, have written a booklet, Women Under the left Front rule: Expectations Betrayed, where violence on women have been discussed extensively. Not all are cases of political violence. In many cases, we have seen how rapists have been defended by leaders of the ruling party. For example, in August 1991, a young woman had been arrested from a hotel in Kanthi, where she had registered with a male friend. She was then raped by the police. Virtually defending the police, Acting Chief Minister Benoy Chowdhury told the West Bengal Assembly that she had registered under an assumed name with a male friend. In other words, since she was a presumably unmarried woman “gone bad” it was fair enough if the police had a little fun with her. Values I share with them? No thanks.

Violence over Singur and Nandigram are not unrelated to the foregoing. At one level, they reflect the culture of violence supported by the ruling party. At another level, they reflect the submission to neo-liberal globalization, even while a huge rhetoric is floated abroad for the consumption of international left-wing intellectuals. After all, we boast of an intellectual chief minister capable of quoting noted poets as part of his political spiels. So he needs the endorsement of intellectuals.

You write, “We continue to trust that the people of Bengal will not allow their differences on some issues to tear apart the important experiments undertaken in the state (land reforms, local self-government).” Since the signature is mostly of leftwing persons, and since in particular I am writing to you, a well-known Marxist, I trust the signatories, and especially you, know that there is no unified and homogeneous people. I am sorry if I have to spell out such truisms. But in these days of triumph of neo-liberalism, this kind of woolly-woolly, non-class language is being resorted to, even by those whom I have always treated as charter members of the class struggle camp. West Bengal is part of India, and India is a bourgeois state with an economy where extremes coexist. From the latest in Information Technology in Sector V of Salt Lake, it will take you just about two and a half hours by car to get to Nandigram, where you have plenty of poor peasants eking out a living much as their grandparents did. Not that there has been no change, no development, but that has been limited development in a backward capitalist economy. Since the current conflicts seem minor to you, compared to the “important experiments”, let us look at those experiments briefly. As I am not writing a treatise, I do not intend to write for long pages, nor to provide extensive footnotes. It is however necessary to question fundamentally the false claims of the West Bengal Government, that you seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker.

Some years back, when the PRC had just started its trek back to class collaborationist politics, a comrade in the PRC named Franco Grisolia wrote to two of us, asking for a note on the CPI(M) led government, as well as CPI(M)’s support to the UPA at the center, because this model was being held up by supporters of Bertinotti to justify their turn to the right. So Soma Marik and I wrote a longish essay, The Left Front and the United Progressive Alliance, one version of which was published in Italian, and another version, in English, was put up in the website of our comrades of Socialist Democracy, Irish supporters of the Fourth International.

Just one paragraph from that essay will reveal an interesting story: “The key issue of land distribution, in fact, tells an interesting story. In 1967, and again in 1969, two short-lived United Front governments had been formed. There had been a mass upsurge, and huge land seizures and distribution. OF ALL the ceiling-surplus land vested with the state since 1953 (when the West Bengal Estate Acquisition Act was passed) and the year 2000, as much as 44 per cent of this land (6 lakh acres) was obtained in the five-year period between 1967 and 1972, thanks to the energetic initiatives of the two United Fronts; another 26% (3.5 lakh acres) had been acquired earlier. In the last 20 years of Left Front rule only 1.53 lakh acres were acquired, which amounts to almost a quarter of what was achieved during the very short UF regime and almost a half of what was obtained during the 14 years (1953-1967) of Congress rule.” The two United Front governments saw an active left, and one moreover facing a serious challenge from the emerging Maoist forces who eventually became the CPI (ML). Land reform at that time was based on popular initiative, not bureaucratic measures. The collapse of the governments clearly taught the CPI (M) a lesson – to wit, do not rock the boat of the bourgeoisie and their partners if you want a long stint.

As for the important local self government experiments that you talk about, what, really, is significant? The three tier panchayat system has been in operation in other provinces as well. Digvijay Singh, the Congress chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, took measures to extend it to the level of the individual village. Despite much talk about panchayats being organs of self-rule of peasants, rich peasants and teachers formed the bulk. And given the fact that the poorer classes seldom were able to let their children finish secondary education, let alone college, teachers came from rich peasant families, or from non-agricultural families. A survey in one of the districts, Purulia, further showed that real help was received from the government’s developmental projects by a significant part of the rural rich, using their positions in the panchayats. (Prabir Bhattacharyya, ed, Anva Artha 19: Bamfront Sarkar—Ekti Mulyayan, Calcutta, May 1985, pp.11-14.)

You next write: “We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly
dispossessed. We understand that the government has promised not to build a
chemical hub in the area around Nandigram. We understand that those who had
been dispossessed by the violence are now being allowed back to their homes,
without recrimination. We understand that there is now talk of
reconciliation. This is what we favor.”

This paragraph was drafted by/ is based on arguments by someone who is a dab hand at creating confusions that eventually aid exploiters, but is at the same time able to pull the wool over the eyes of leftists who are a little away from the scene. “We send our fullest solidarity to the peasants who have been forcibly dispossessed.” Exactly which groups are you talking about? Evidently not those of Singur, since the next sentence clearly talks about Nandigram. In Singur, a colonial era law was used to dispossess peasants, to hand over land to one of India’s major capitalist concerns, the Tatas. Even if we accept, (as I do not, as I hope you still do not), the logic of the “free market”, why should a supposedly progressive government use a colonial law to dispossess peasants for the benefit of a capitalist group that is so rich that it can bid for and win in a battle to control a First World company? Why did the government not tell the Tatas to go and negotiate directly with the peasants so that they could get whatever benefits they were able to wrest? Moreover, perhaps your informants forgot to tell you, that there were vast numbers of share croppers, agricultural labourers, as well as people in various industries and transportation sectors in and around Singur, for whom the rich agricultural land of singur mattered. Thus, people in the potato industry (for Singur grows potato) lost out. People transporting potato lost out. Wage labourers lost out. And these, the proletarian sections, have received what compensation? The answer, dear Tariq, is zilch.

So let us pass on to Nandigram. There, your statement is extraordinarily damaging. If it had come from comparable intellectuals in India, I would have used stronger language. I suppose that ignorance lets you partially off the hook. What is sad is that you think it perfectly legitimate to issue a statement even though you are ignorant about the details.

There have been two charges of being dispossessed. On 6^th January, 2007, CPI(M) thugs attacked peasants, and the retaliatory violence drove out a number of them. A further lot left of their own, fearful of the situation. They all stayed in a place called Khejuri. The CVPI(M) has claimed high figures – sometimes mentioning 1500, sometimes 3000. No independent investigation has proved this. Several of us went to Nandigram after the CPI(M) attack of 14 March, when 14 persons, at least, were murdered, and at least four women were raped. At that time, our investigations suggested that tht total number of CPI(M) supporters forced to leave Nandigram were around 300. The APDR twice sent teams to Khejuri, and suggested a figure of around 350. Out of these, some 35 had cleasrly been identified by peasants in Nandigram as active elements in the so-called cadre force of CPI(M) , i.e., the gun toting criminals who eventually carried out the November attacks to “reconquer” Nandigram. Now, in the first days, tens of thousands fled. Over the last few days they have trickled back, after having pledged loyalty to the CPI(M). So there is no recrimination, provided you have the 100% support for the CPI(M).

You write that you understand that the government has promised not to build a chemical hub around Nandigram. This specific reference comes as a surprise. Because it is actually once again a case of your walking into a trap. First, the chemical hub, and a number of similar proposals, are all of the same type – calls to build SEZs. If SEZs are built, who will they benefit? They will not follow even India’s far from excellent labour laws. Secondly, the chemical hub, wherever built, is going to be an environmental disaster. Finally, and most crucially, the West Bengal government never formally promised not to build the chemical hub in Nandigram. What they said was that it will not be built in Nandigram if the people do not want it. Now, after the CPI(M) conquest,( for that is what it was, it was not even the state apparatus going in, but armed forces of the major party of the Left Front), what if people are compelled to say that yes, they do want the chemical hub? Let me remind you, that the CPI(M) is among the world’s largest surviving parties of Stalinist origin, and while the Moscow tie is long gone , the Moscow style has been retained -- but in the service of capitalism. Today’s (21^st November) newspapers already carry a news about how peasants have been forced to give written apologies to the CPI(M) in order to go and work in their fields.

You talk of reconciliation. Between whom do you wish for reconciliation? Now that the CPI(M) has actually conquered the territory by force, would a humble acquiescence, given the inability to do anything else, be treated as reconciliation? Perhaps a little more detail about who the cadres were and how they fought the peasants would come in handy. Cadres — local criminals mostly involved in robbery cases — for the operation were drawn from Chandrakona and Garbeta zonal committees. Also, cadres were sent from Narayangarh and Keshiary areas. Another group of around 250 armed CPM supporters and criminals came from the villages of Punishol at Onda and Rajpur, Taldangra in Bankura.

Sources said criminals were given money in advance and given a free-hand to bring whatever they could from the empty homes once the operation is complete. Sources said one such group that has returned to Onda came with motorcycles.

The Bankura group reached Nandigram after travelling by train and then road. The group boarded trains and allegedly got off at Balichak, four stations after Kharagpur, and then headed towards Nandigram via Khejuri in the guise of daily wage earners. They take the same disguise when they go to Bihar and Jharkhand to collect arms, sources said.

Most of these people are suspected to be running arms smuggling rackets. The arms used in the recapture operation are believed to have been supplied from these suppliers.

Another cache of arms came from Purulia where party workers had received arms to combat Maoists. It is also suspected that the arms gone missing after the Purulia arms drop are with CPM supporters and were smuggled to Nandigram.

The coal mafia from Burdwan is also believed to have played a key role in the operation. The money from the mafia is believed to have supplied funds for the operation, helped in procuring ammunition and hire vehicles that carried the armed men to the interior areas as the attack progressed.

In your final paragraph, written in bold type in the version I received, you write:

“The balance of forces in the world is such that it would be impetuous to
split the left. We are faced with a world power that has demolished one
state (Iraq) and is now threatening another (Iran). This is not the time for
division when the basis of division no longer appears to exist.”

So here we get the motivation that led you to write the letter. You do not wish for a split in the left in the face of resurgent US imperialism. Let me go back several years. As you are aware, the Fourth International had been great supporters of the Nicaraguan Revolution, and we, here in locally, tried our best to campaign for Nicaragua. At one stage, when Halima Lopez Sarkar was appointed the Nicaraguan ambassador to India, the CPI(M) decided to take up the campaign for Nicaragua. Of c ourse, with their incomparably bigger force, they could do much more. But when I had a talk with a Sandinista comrade who came here, he accused us of being sectarian to the CPI(M). I pointed out that our problem was simple – the CPI(M) would not even let us do any united front work while retaining our independent political stance. So even if we accept, as you obviously do, that the CPI(M) is a legitimate part of the left, how would we be able to avoid a split? In emails where what passes for debates, CPI(M) supporters are not only abusive towards us, but even to RSP or forward Bloc, partners of the CPI(M) in the Left Front who have been critical about Nandigram as well as the CPI(M)’s sudden volte face over the Nuclear Deal.

Yet you are confident, that it is we who are impetuously causing the split. Tariq, the split is decades old. The CPI(M)’s idea of political hegemony is simple – bash everyone on the left till they genuflect before you. But according to you and your fellow signatories, the basis of divisions no longer appears to exist. If by this you mean that Nandigram’s resistance has been smashed, that armed terrorists of the CPI(M) have silenced the peasants, you are of course right. The basis however exists, because we have been unable to accept what was done.

Your argument, that in the face of the US, we must not fight the CPI(M), can be extended to every tin pot dictator who takes a formal anti-US stand. Meanwhile, the CPI(M) led government constantly strives to welcome multinationals, it fights tooth and nail in defence of globalization. In lieu of several more pages of details, I offer you the URL of Sanhati (Solidarity), an anti-globalization website -- http://www.sanhati.com/ . here you will find plenty of discussions about the Left front government and globalization.

Nonetheless, you will say, what about the Left and its ability to influence the Government of India, or its ability to bring out millions in demonstrations? Once more, even accepting your premise that when you say CPI(M) you still say Left (would you make the same concession for the right wing of the old Italian CP?) , why can we not oppose the CPI(M) on other issues? Or are you saying, that in the face of the US war threat, all class questions inside India disappear? Are you saying that those who are in government and are implementing World Bank-IMF dictated economic policies are such valiant fighters against imperialism that we must accept the loving pats they give us, even through their guns? Would demobilizing militant fighters be then the best road to militant anti-imperialism? I never learnt that from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg or Mandel.

Long years of defeat and retreat have made many of us cautious. I agree that the power of US imperialism is greater than it was. But I firmly believe that we can best contribute to the anti-imperialist struggles by consistent anti-capitalism at the point of our existence. When I joined the Trotskyist movement, nearly three decades back, this was clear to me. This was clear to me even before that, when I understood the meaning of Che’s call to create two, three, many Vietnams. And yes, on 14^th November, despite attempts to turn the protest demonstration into an “apolitical” show by some high profile figures, there were banners and posters, like the one that said, Nandigram is Bengal’s Vietnam, or the poster where Marx says, “Not in My name.” Don’t, please, call for a cession of the struggles of toilers in Marx’s name, and don’t claim that bourgeois reformism, like some land distribution, some registration of sharecroppers, or panchayat elections, make West Bengal a planet apart. Stand by those who have been murdered, and their comrades, and don’t call for a reconciliation between defenders of the ruling class who use sophisticated Marxist sounding jargon, and the crude, unsophisticated, but militant fighters who resist them.

With comradely greetings

Kunal Chattopadhyay

Professor of History

Jadavpur University

Fourth Internationalist since 1980

We loved them once - Upon the centenary of D.D. Kosambi and Hiren Mukherjee

Ashok Mitra
The Telegraph, 23 November

In this season of pragmatists and musclemen, thinkers are a distraction. It is therefore hardly surprising that centenaries of two outstanding ideologues — Damodar Dayananda Kosambi and Hirendra Nath Mukherjee — have passed almost unnoticed in the country: one or two tepid seminars, the rest is silence.

Kosambi was a mathematician who travelled to Marxism and stayed stuck. It was quite an extraordinary journey. Conferred a degree with summa cum laude from Harvard, Kosambi was a Phi Beta Kappa too. He could have opted for a comfortable existence in the United States of America, winning laurels after scholarly laurels, gaining great social eminence and rolling in wealth. Instead, he chose to return home to India, and spent years in research and teaching at the universities at both Benaras and Aligarh, perhaps to take a measure Everything for the cause Everything for the cause Everything for the cause Everything for the cause of orthodoxy and sectarianism of two different genres.

At some point in the late Thirties, he responded to the invitation from Pune’s Fergusson College where, under the tutelage of the Servants of India Society, the stress was on plain living and high thinking. Kosambi fitted snugly into the milieu and embarked on the most productive phase of his academic career. In 1942, Homi Bhabha invited him to join the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, which became Kosambi’s abode for the next 17 years. His services were rudely terminated in 1962 in the wake of the anti-communist frenzy sparked by the border clashes with China. One of the greatest mathematicians the nation has produced since Srinivas Ramanujan was sent packing on the ground that he was an ideologue and, what a horrid thing, a Marxist.

Curiosity does not die down though: how could a pure mathematician of Kosambi’s genre end up, in the course of a bare few years, in the turgid terrain of Marxism? Albert Einstein’s introductory essay, “Why Socialism”, which launched Paul Sweezy’s Monthly Review 60-odd years ago, perhaps provides part of the answer to the riddle. A mathematician is engaged all the while in tackling problems of symmetry and asymmetry, of linearity and non-linearity, of equations and non-equations. He deals with complex variables and the boulevards of statics and dynamics and, in the process, the laws of motion are at the centre of his scholarly concern. As he stares out of his window, he easily discovers in the real world the empirical correlates of the symbols, numbers and puzzles he has been cogitating over. The universe of mathematics has its prototype in the multiplex known as society. Are not integration and differentiation daily issues of human existence, and does not social structure eerily resemble a matrix which is the staple of algebra?

The cognitive aspect apart, Kosambi’s journey to ideology was the denouement of a step-by-step progression, from mathematics to statistics, statistics leading to worrying over a riddle in numismatics, numismatics prodding him on to archaeology — and what could be more natural than archaeological enquiry to evoke an interest in social history, from there the logical final point being the arcadia of ideology? In due course, Kosambi was bowled over by Marx’s law of motion of society, it was precise, logical, coherent, encapsulating history, economics, sociology, anthropology, biology, literature and much else. Kosambi ambled into Marxism much in the natural manner a child learns to walk. At the same time, he possessed much too original a mind to be a conformist. Those whom he used to playfully address as Official Marxists felt uneasy with his somewhat unorthodox analysis of the class structure of Indian society in ancient times. Kosambi was unconcerned. Marxism was a science, it is the burden of science to challenge orthodoxy.

While steadfast in his faith, Kosambi did not care to join the communist party. Hiren Mukherjee, on the other hand, was very much an organization man, always with the party, even in moments when his conscience was tortured by particular party decisions, such as during the Communist Party of India’s vocal support of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency.

A brilliant historian, Mukherjee imbibed the Marxist faith early in his youth, and from then on, dialectical materialism jammed every stream of his consciousness. His oratory, whether English or Bengali or Urdu or, for the matter, Sanskrit, would reach unbelievably great heights. He was a prolific writer as well, ceaselessly at work on behalf of the cause. Each of these was a secondary element in his metabolism; his outstanding attribute was his passion. This passion was, very nearly, a physical phenomenon. One could almost touch it. It would reverberate within the precincts of the Lok Sabha when he was speaking; it would pour out in waves of quivering expressions when he declaimed at public rallies, it would spill over and beyond sentences and paragraphs of the essays on diverse issues he wrote in English and Bengali.

This is where the two ideologues walked away from each other. Kosambi’s Marxism was a package of cool deduction, carefully argued, the harvest of intellection honed over long years. He considered the analysis of social asymmetries as belonging to the category of scientific investigation, historical determinism revealed itself in the course of such explorations. Hiren Mukherjee’s starting point was Damodar Kosambi’s point of rest. To Mukherjee, an ideologue has to be, very nearly, a religious person, a proselytiser in the noblest sense of the term. To disseminate most effectively the seeds of faith, one must, he was convinced, carry along a load of honest passion. Spreading the message of the communist millennium that is a-coming is the most rightful of all causes; to ensure the success of this mission, one must avail of all possible resources, including the armoury of passion. Mukherjee would proceed even further. He would sternly remind his callers that, where Marxism was concerned, passion was more than an accessory, it was the principal thing. Ideology is passion; sans passion, ideology is an inert heap, a heap of abstruse theorizing bound to go over the heads of those whom it is intended to bring into the fold.

Beside the issue of passion, there was that other gulf, already mentioned, separating the two ideologues. Kosambi shunned the party apparatus, Mukherjee was unflinching in his party loyalty. With one exception: he was with the CPI but refused to toe its line of denigration of Josef Stalin. He would extol Stalin as much as he would extol Gandhi and Nehru, defending his position with passion and yet in a manner which did not compromise his ideology. His party was embarrassed, but could do nothing about it.

The middle decades of the 20th century were a golden age for romantics on the Left. A mathematician, otherwise a fanatic for the rigours of science, could still take pride in the philosophy of dialectical materialism he had arrived at, thinking and toiling on his own. An historian, born in the same year as the mathematician, only six months the junior of the other, had voyaged along a different route; his alma mater too was not Harvard, but Oxford, and his forte was not logic but passion. The divergence in the two trajectories hardly mattered. They gave their everything for the cause. The luckier of the two bade adieu before the catastrophe that struck international socialism. The other one lived longer and raged passionately against the dying of the day till his very last moment.

Both these noble ideologues belong, at this juncture, to the category of the discarded. Their centenaries have passed almost unnoticed. The eternal verities, it would seem, remain the patent of classics; consider this couple of lines from the lips of a Marlovian character: “I loved her once, but that was in another country./ And besides, the wench is dead.”

‘No Left content left in CPI-M’

The Staesman, 17 November

Dipankar Bhattacharya succeeded Vinod Mishra as the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation in 1998.

Son of a railway employee, Mr Bhattacharya was born in Guwahati in December 1961. He talks excitedly about his early schooling at Alipurduar ~ “that is when everything was happening, it made me curious and my father with his Marxist inclination helped my understanding”. All the walls in the railway township were painted red with maps of India and the slogan,

“Turn the decade of seventies into the decade of liberation”. It triggered his curiosity and the question, “was not the country already liberated”, haunted him.

Mr Bhattacharya feels there was nothing “abrupt” in his switch to politics from his studies at the Indian Statistical Institute which he joined in 1979. His specialisation covered Indian agriculture, and in his own words: “This education also in a way helped me to understand the society and my formal and political education evolved together. Politics is a transition of knowledge put into practice.” He was given the degree only in 1985.

In 1986, he went underground in an working class area; a year later, he was with the Indian People’s Front (IPF) that was an over-ground affiliate of the party.

In an interview to Hemendra Narayan in the backdrop of the happenings at Nandigram in West Bengal and Naxalite killings in Jharkhand, Mr Bhattacharya discussed a wide spectrum of the Left and ultra-Left politics.

Excerpts:

How do you react to the killings in Jharkhand by the Communist Party (Maoists) cadres? Your party has a strong base in the area. Babulal Marandi is said to be campaigning against Maoists there. Are you losing out to the Maoists in Jharkhand?

I do not see any political logic in these killings. They (Maoists) are killing innocent people. The person they were targeting, Marandi’s brother, escaped. These killings are mindless and completely indefensible. We do not see much in Marandi’s activities. As chief minister, he had indulged in fake surrender of Maoists. There is not much evidence of Marandi countering Maoists and other leaders of the BJP were using Maoists against us.

No, we are certainly not losing out to the Maoists. By terror tactics, they have tried to prevent our supporters from voting our candidates in elections.

Maoist squads have targeted our workers and campaigners in the elections. This had no impact and people have seen through their game. In Chatra and Palamu, their supporters have been joining us.

But does the violence by them have an impact on your over-ground party participating in elections?

Maoist activity does give the state a handle (against us). It does become a handicap in the area where our identity is not well known. But in the area where we are known, it does not matter. We are not losing political space to the Maoists. There are cases where our offices have been targeted and the state aggression has been directed gainst us. We have been singled out for state suppression. This is not a case of mistaken identity, this is because of our identity ~ for we have been at the forefront of the militant assertion by the people. Action against Maoists has been a ploy to justify suppression of our activities.

How do look at the tactics of Naxalites ~ at times, your party has been their target?

After their military strategy in Andhra Pradesh, the pendulum shifted to talks. The government trapped them into talks. They are trying to make up for it by their action in Chhattisgrah and Jharkhand. The people have seen the futility of their activity and loss of initiative. The people are appreciating our point.

However, in spite of the fact that they have indulged in killing our comrades, we have avoided retaliation, and also we have never supported state repression against Maoists.

The two extreme Left groups ~ the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and the CPI (ML) People’s War ~ have merged to form the Communist Party (Maoists). What are the chances of merger of other extreme Left groups?

The two groups have yet to sort out all issues. They have no immediate political agenda. We are trying to unite people who do not subscribe to their anarchist policy. Also, in the Left spectrum there are people who are perturbed over the Right-wing shift of the CPI-M. We are trying to give this a shape. People from the CPI-M in Punjab were split on the ideological point.

Such shift has also taken place in Orissa. In West Bengal, serious Left forces, activists are looking up to us and joining us. The feeling is that sections of the CPI-M have become power seekers and power brokers without any Left content being left in them. People with roots in the ideology are turning towards CPI-(ML) Liberation.

What do you think of Nandigram and the CPI-M’s moves there?

The CPI-M’s calculation appears to be that a friendly Central government would help them assert themselves in Nandigram and recover respectability. The party has never been so discredited and isolated in West Bengal as it is now.
All democratic norms have been flouted with impunity.

After 30 years in power, the CPI-M just cannot accept the fact that the rural poor have the guts to challenge it. This intolerance is at the heart of the whole episode. Another reprehensible aspect is that there appears to be a link now between the CPI-M’s Nandigram strategy and their softening of opposition to the nuclear deal.

In West Bengal, the incidents of ration riots recently took place across the state, particularly in Bankura. The ruling party has blamed the extreme Left, as in Nandigram, by pointing to arson as a tool to cause these riots. What have you to say?

Well, the public distribution system is in a shambles in many parts of the country. In West Bengal, the nexus between corrupt PDS dealers and panchayat officials is presided over by the CPI-M. They have consolidated this nexus for the last thirty years and rural people have been exploited. Now they are blaming the extreme Left for everything.
The ruling Left Front has forgotten the language of protest. Such a language of protest could be traced right through the 1857 Uprising, Chauri Chaura episode of Gandhi days; Jayaprakash Narayan was leading the freedom movement in 1942 when rail lines were uprooted. This is the language of the people when they are angry. They (Left Front) are deceiving themselves and do not recognise the reality.

How about the situation in Siwan now that Shahabuddin is in jail. It is an area where your party has a strong base?

People in Siwan are yearning for the end of Shahbuddin’s terror. CPI-ML’s protracted struggle has been a factor in cornering Shahabuddin. Our comrades, our party have played a role. He is down but not out yet. Among the Muslim community, there was a contrived sense of polarisation, but now within that community also we find our role being taken in the right perspective and we strike a stronger chord with the Muslims now.

What is the situation in Bhojpur? It gave your party’s first MP? For many, it has been Naxalbari manifesting itself in the sprawling Ikwari village in the district.

We have managed to consolidate our strength. It is clear to everybody. It has taken many years. Jawala Singh (a feudal lord of yesteryears in the area) and Ranbir Sena are not in the scene now.

Our party enjoys a lot of respect. The attrition and confrontation with the Ranbir Sena has taken a lot of our energy. We have to expand, for there are areas where we have a slim presence. We have overcome the challenge and are now reaching out to all sections.

A significant activity was the celebrations of the 1857 event in Bhojpur. We organised a programme in the name of Kuer Singh (an Uprising hero). We freed Kuer from getting a caste tag as there was an attempt to bind his legacy to a caste. We projected Kuer’s revolt in a different light. This has been an eye opener. There are positive signs and the party has been able to broaden its base.

Alipurduar is not far from Naxalbari. Did you visit Naxalbari?

With the advent of the Naxalbari movement, all the walls of Alipurduar had been painted red with maps of India bearing slogans like “Turn the seventies into the decade of liberation”. It had triggered my curiosity as to why liberate the country again. The first dead body I saw in my life was that of a young comrade, a martyr.

The All India Students Association, CPI(ML) Liberation’s students wing, has emerged on top in the recent JNU elections. How do you see it?

Basically the revival was on account of AISA’s activities on the campus. AISA took up the cause of workers of the university.

The CPI-M’s activities in West Bengal have angered the students. It is for the first time that the SFI, the students wing of the CPI-M, has not won a single seat in the JNU since 1989 when Army tanks rolled down Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Nandigram has proved to be the CPI-M’s Tiananmen Square.

How do you view the developments in Nepal with Maoists getting power in the government?

We do not formally have any party-to-party relationship with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). They have certainly shown better political maturity than the self-styled Indian Maoists and Marxists. They have combined people’s war and the mass upsurge well. Now, the difficult part of the journey has begun. Sitting in India, we can wish them well.

The establishment of Nepal as a Republic and the restoration of democracy without any foreign intervention would be an achievement there.

(The interviewer is a Special Representative, The Statesman, New Delhi.)

Army deployed after Calcutta riot

BBC News, 21 November

Troops have been deployed in the Indian city of Calcutta after protests over a controversial writer turned into riots.

Police using tear gas and baton charges were unable to control crowds calling for Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasreen to leave India.

Rioters blocked roads and set cars alight. At least 27 people were hurt. More than 100 arrests have been made.

Crowds were also protesting at recent attacks on Muslims in the Nandigram area in the east of West Bengal state.

A number of people have been killed and thousands left homeless in Nandigram after violence over now-abandoned state plans to industrialise farm land in the area.

Roads blocked

Wednesday's trouble in the state capital began after the predominantly Muslim All-India Minority Forum called for blockades on major roads in the city.


"We have called out the army and they will help us restore order"
Prasad Ranjan Ray,
State home secretary


The group said Ms Nasreen had "seriously hurt Muslim sentiments". Many Muslims say her writing ridicules Islam.

Police arrived in strength to disperse the demonstrators.

Violence then broke out in Ripon Street in the north of the city and spread to Park Circus, Moulali and many other areas of central Calcutta.

The BBC's Subir Bhaumik in Calcutta says he saw two army columns, one in Park Circus and one in Moulali.

For most of the day, parts of the city centre were a no-go area, with main roads closed to traffic and commuters stranded.

Children spent hours in buses before they could be returned to the safety of their schools.

"The protesters started pelting policemen with brick bats and acid bottles in several places, so we can say the trouble making was planned and co-ordinated," Calcutta police chief Gautam Chakrabarty said.

Idris Ali, a senior leader of the Minority Forum, blamed the state's ruling Communists for the violence.

"They have infiltrated our ranks and sparked the violence. We wanted to protest peacefully but the Marxists are trying to discredit us," Mr Ali told the BBC.

The Marxists denied the charge.

"We had no idea of their plans, they have planned the trouble, they must take the blame for this mayhem," Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Biman Bose said.

'Red terror'

The All-India Minority Forum says Taslima Nasreen's Indian visa should be revoked and she should be forced to leave the country.

Critics say she called for the Koran to be changed to give women greater rights, but she vehemently denied making the comments.

Ms Nasreen fled Bangladesh in the early 1990s after death threats and has spent the last three years in Calcutta after a long stay in Europe.

India has not granted her citizenship which she has requested but has granted regular visa extensions.

Minority Forum leaders accuse West Bengal's government of "red terror" in the Nandigram enclave, a troubled cluster of villages to the south-west of Calcutta.

The state government denies it has failed to protect the people of the area from attacks by its supporters.

Cry, Calcutta - Waves of anarchy bring army out

The Telegraph, 22 November

A girl breaks down outside her school on AJC Bose Road during the violence on Wednesday.

Inconsolable children in school uniform wail. Grown-ups in office-wear hold aloft hands and file past bewildered men in blue riot gear.

Calcutta, Nov. 21: The two universal symbols of suffering and submission played out for hours in Calcutta today as an explosive cocktail of perceived and other grievances caught fire and burned the heart of the city — the spark lit by an unseen hand.

Wave after wave of mobs — largely made of youths — mounted West Asia-style attacks on police in the maze of lanes that formed a truncated triangle in central Calcutta.

Most of the youths were missing from a demonstration that wound its way through parts of central Calcutta, raising among several demands the ejection of Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen from India and protesting the Nandigram killings.

However, feeding on an unexplained frenzy probably aided by the pressure-cooker atmosphere that set in after the last few months of turmoil over disparate issues, the protest took on a life of its own and sucked into its vortex countless excitable youths waiting to erupt.

By the time darkness fell on the wild dance of defiance, the army was patrolling parts of Calcutta after over a decade. An eight-hour night curfew was also in place as the city went to bed unsure of which way the morning will swing.


If the restraint shown by the Nandigram-scalded police works and the usual calming effect of flag marches kicks in, Thursday should see the gamble of the Bengal government calling for the army in a hurry paying off.

“It seems things have settled down a bit,” a senior police officer told The Telegraph on Wednesday night as soldiers in battle fatigues stationed themselves at sensitive spots.

Referring to suggestions that the situation could have been brought under control had the police opened fire, commissioner Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti said: “Who will dare to open fire? If we do, people will claim that it is unconstitutional.” The high court had termed the March 14 police firing in Nandigram “unconstitutional”.

Around 250 people had assembled around 9.40am near Ripon Street to take part in the protest that began as a sit-in. When the police tried to clear the roadblock during the morning traffic peak-hour, trouble broke out in Park Circus and CIT Road, apparently triggered by rumours of action against the squatters.

People started pouring out and by 10.30am, the police and the Rapid Action Force — which were expecting little more than a traffic headache that has become par for the course after the Nandigram recapture — were on the back foot.


As 350-odd policemen advanced towards the swelling tide of protesters, brickbats and bottles rained on them amid chants of “Go back, Taslima”.

“We do not want Taslima here… Send her back,” thundered a middle-aged man who later identified himself only as Alam, standing at the Ripon Street-AJC Bose Road crossing.

“Do not confuse this with Nandigram… We do not want Taslima, that’s all,” he shouted — a refrain that caught on later as some television channels turned the vandalism into a backlash solely linked to the troubled zone.

As the day progressed, Nandigram took a back seat and the anger against Taslima overshadowed other demands.

The planned chakka jam — organised by the All India Minority Forum and Furfura Sarif Muzadeedia Anath Foundation and the Jamait Ulema-i-Hind (according to the police) — soon snowballed into a fullblown urban war.

Around 12,000 to 15,000 people marched on the streets, throwing missiles at the police, torching at least 17 vehicles, including private cars, and effectively keeping thousands of children captive in schools that dot the area.

The plight of marooned schoolchildren sent waves of panic with parents groping in the dark, which made the whole city reel under the impact of the “localised” street battles.

“The school is in the middle of the trouble zone. I wonder how we will get out,” shuddered Ranjit Sen, father of Ronita, a Class X student of Pratt Memorial.

“The trauma caused to schoolchildren and teachers is particularly” reprehensible, governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi said in a statement.

To keep themselves out of the way of the police baton, many office-goers raised both hands overhead — a gesture seen usually in areas where Section 144 is in force.

Burning its fingers in Nandigram with ham-handed police action and the resultant rebuke from the high court, the state government decided to call the army at 2.10pm.

The army brass in Fort William were asked to “appreciate” that the police had already made lathi-charges and had fired tear gas shells at the mobs. “The next step would have been to open fire,” an army officer told The Telegraph. “They (the state government) did not want to take such a risk.”

The police decision to treat the protesters with kid gloves — other than lathis and tear gas shells, few crowd-control devices were used — drew some fire initially.

But the absence of confirmed loss of life at the end of the day — and considering the possessed manner in which some of the protesters kept coming back to attack the police — suggests restraint was a prudent step and tougher action could have led to a bloodbath.

“We decided to call the army to ensure that the situation didn’t go out of control,” chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said.

“The police had been attacked…. But they showed restraint and tried to contain the trouble though it took some time,” said Bhattacharjee, who held the minority forum responsible for the riot.

“Tremendous disrespect has been shown to Calcutta by an irresponsible leadership,” he said, referring to the forum.

Late in the evening, CPM leaders Biman Bose — who backtracked on an initial comment that suggested Taslima should leave — and Mohammad Salim visited some of the affected areas to advocate peace.

Taslima was not seen outside her residence in Calcutta and guards said she was not in her flat.

Till the evening, the police had arrested 57 people on charges of rioting.

NREGA: Dismantling the contractor raj

Jean Drèze
The Hindu, 20 November

A recent survey on NREGA in western Orissa points to a quiet sabotage of the transparency safeguards aimed at perpetuating the traditional system of extortion in rural employment programmes.

Once upon a time, rural employment programmes in Orissa (or for that matter in much of India) were safely in the hands of private contractors and their political masters. The game was roughly as follows. Private contractors were the direct recipients of “work orders,” and of the corresponding funds. They made money by submitting fudged “muster rolls,” with inflated employment and wage figures. A substantial part of the loot was recycled through the so-called “PC” (percentage) system, whereby various functionaries received fixed percentages of the amounts released. The contractors also had to pay tribute to their political bosses, for whom these funds came handy during election campaigns. This is the sort of situation that led P. Sainath to say that “everybody loves a good drought” — the peak season for rural employment programmes. Labourers, for their part, worked hard and earned a pittance.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was supposed to bring about a radical change in this state of affairs. Under NREGA, rural labourers have a legal entitlement not only to work on demand but also to minimum wages. To prevent corruption, a wide range of transparency safeguards has been built into the Act. For instance, muster rolls are supposed to be kept at the worksite, displayed at the Panchayat Bhawan, and read out in public at the time of wage payments. Employment and wage details also have to be entered in the labourers’ “Job Cards”, to enable them to verify the records for themselves. Contractors are banned.

In some States, there is evidence of substantial progress in this transition towards a transparent and accountable system. In Rajasthan, for instance, contractors have virtually disappeared from NREGA and mass fudging of muster rolls is a thing of the past. Andhra Pradesh is also making rapid strides in this direction through strict record-keeping, institutionalised social audits and the payment of wages through Post Offices. In a recent survey of Surjguja and Koriya districts (Chhattisgarh), we found that in gram panchayat works, 95 per cent of the wages paid according to the muster rolls had actually reached the labourers concerned. This is a major achievement, especially in contrast with the situation just two years ago when a similar survey in the same area had uncovered evidence of massive fraud in the National Food For Work Programme.

However, the same transition is proving quite slow in some other States. A recent survey of NREGA in western Orissa, for instance, suggests that the “contractor raj” is alive (if not well) in this region. This survey, initiated by the G.B. Pant Social Science Institute at Allahabad University, was conducted from 3-12 October 2007 by students of the Delhi University in collaboration with local volunteers. Thirty randomly-selected gram panchayats, spread over three districts (Bolangir, Boudh and Kalahandi), were studied. The survey included careful verification of “muster rolls” for one randomly-selected NREGA work in each of these gram panchayats.

The survey points to a quiet sabotage of the transparency safeguards aimed at perpetuating the traditional system of extortion in rural employment programmes. Before elaborating, a few words about how NREGA works in Orissa may be useful. To keep things simple, the main focus here is on works implemented by the gram panchayats (these account for the bulk of NREGA funds in Orissa). At the gram panchayat level, the main responsibility for implementing NREGA works lies with the Panchayat Executive Officer (PEO). In some panchayats, the PEOs are assisted by Gram Rozgar Sevaks, but they are yet to be appointed in most cases. Another key actor is the Village Labour Leader (VLL), who is supposed to be selected by the gram sabha for the purpose of “supervising” a specific worksite.

The role of the VLL is actually in transition. The VLL concept goes back to the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY), a predecessor of NREGA. At that time, the VLL was a de facto contractor. He or she received the work orders, spent the funds, arranged the works, and filled the muster rolls. Under NREGA, funds are routed through the panchayat and the VLL is supposed to be a mere worksite supervisor, who earns wages at the same rate as other labourers. In practice, however, the post of VLL continues to act as a convenient foothold for the contractors. In many of the sample gram panchayats, the VLL was a small-time contractor or an agent of local contractors. In about half of the 30 sample worksites, the survey team found evidence that a contractor was involved in this or other ways.

The breakdown of the transparency safeguards is well illustrated by the fate of the Job Card. The main purpose of the Job Card is to enable NREGA labourers to verify their own employment and wage details. In Orissa, however, this purpose has been defeated from the start due to the faulty design of the Job Card. For instance, there is no column for “wages paid” in the card, making it impossible for workers to verify their wage payments. Even the number of days worked is hard to verify, as the names of the labourer and worksite have been replaced by numerical codes. To decipher a labourer’s code, one has to refer to the first page of the Job Card, which is often in English! The meaning of the worksite code, for its part, is anyone’s guess. In this and other ways, the Job Card is virtually unreadable, even for trained investigators — let alone semi-literate labourers.

The fate of muster rolls is not much better. In most of the sample gram panchayats, it was observed that various “adjustments” in the muster rolls had become routine practice. For instance, a worker without a Job Card is often accommodated by “clubbing” his or her wages with those of someone who has a Job Card under the latter’s name. Similarly, team work performed under the piece-rate system is often recorded under the name of the team leader alone. Sometimes, adjustments are also made to meet the requirements of the online Monitoring and Information System (MIS). These and related practices, well-intentioned as they might be in some cases, open the door to further “adjustments” that serve different purposes. In fact, the pressure to make adjustments in some circumstances (e.g. meeting the requirements of the MIS) seems to have become a handy cover for fraudulent practices, such as inflating the wage payments and pocketing the difference.

The bottom line is that the records are virtually unverifiable. Job Cards have become symbolic documents, and almost any discrepancy in the muster rolls can be justified in the name of “adjustments.” In this opaque environment, contractors have a field day. The extent of the loot is hard to estimate, given the near unverifiability of the muster rolls, but the “PC system” provides some useful clues. According to fairly reliable sources (including several contractors), the PC system — where it applies — absorbs about 20 to 25 per cent of NREGA funds in the sample Blocks. The “profit” of the contractors, for its part, appears to be of the order of 10 to 15 per cent. This suggests that 30 to 40 per cent of NREGA funds are siphoned off in this area.

The silver lining is that, even in Orissa, the traditional system of extortion seems to be finding it harder and harder to survive. In fact, contractors are not particularly happy with NREGA; vulnerable as it may be, the system has become more difficult for them to control. They are apprehensive of a possible tightening of the checks and balances, and have started fading away in some places (in almost half of the sample gram panchayats, there was no evidence of their involvement).

In some of the sample gram panchayats (notably in the Boudh District), corruption levels in NREGA are already much lower, by all accounts, than in earlier employment programmes such as SGRY and the National Food For Work Programme. Strict implementation of the transparency safeguards is the best way to accelerate this process of “phasing out” of the traditional system of corruption.

This story would be incomplete without a mention of the tremendous potential of NREGA in the survey areas. Where work was available, it was generally found that workers earned close to (and sometimes more than) the statutory minimum wage of Rs 70 per day, and that wages were paid within 15 days or so. This is an unprecedented opportunity for the rural poor, and there was evident appreciation of it among casual labourers and other disadvantaged sections of the population. Some of them even hoped that NREGA would enable them to avoid long-distance seasonal migration, with all its hardships.

Further, there is plenty of scope for productive NREGA works in this area, whether it is in the field of water conservation, rural connectivity, regeneration of forest land, or improvement of private agricultural land. The challenges involved in “making NREGA work” should always be seen in the light of these long-term possibilities, and their significance for the rural poor.

(The author is Visiting Professor at Allahabad University, and a member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council.)

THE COMMUTWITS’ TRIUMPH - Nandigram is supposed to have taught the reactionaries a lesson

Ashok V. Desai
The Telegraph, 20 November

In Godhra, some people detached a bogie of a train in February 2002, locked in the passengers and burnt them. The perpetrators were never conclusively identified. The Hindutwits claimed that the murderers were Muslims, and called for retribution. It started the next day. Hindu mobs killed thousands of Muslims, looted and destroyed Muslim businesses, and in three days, turned Muslims into the new scheduled caste of Gujarat — poor, deprived and maligned.

In Nandigram, some people forced local supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to leave, destroyed bridges, dug up roads, and isolated Nandigram from the rest of West Bengal. No one knows who they were. It is widely believed that they were local villagers. The CPI(M) said they were members of the Trinamul Congress, Naxalites, or both, and called for retribution. Armed commutwit mobs invaded Nandigram, killed and wounded hundreds, destroyed their homes, and turned them into the new scheduled caste of West Bengal.

This is not a coincidence; it is transfer of the technology of violence. In the Eighties, the BJP was exasperated; however hard it tried, it just could not get itself elected in any numbers, let alone come to power. And there, in the east, was CPI(M), an equally committed, ideologically-focused party, which simply could not be driven out of power. How did they do it? The Hindutwits diligently studied the secret of communist hegemony.

They worked out that the secret lay in the creation of a captive mob. Till the Sixties, West Bengal used to be India’s most industrialized state. It was the home of the jute industry, India’s largest industry next only to textiles. It was a leader in engineering; in those days of import substitution, anyone who could not get a machine or a part headed for Calcutta, where workshops could reproduce the most complicated engineering goods.

Then arrived bulk handling and cheap plastics. Pourable goods such as cereals began to be transported in containers in the United States of America. Railways acquired new wagons to transport containers; the first container ship was built in the US in 1956, if I remember right. Soon, bulk transportation spread across all the oceans, and increasingly along railway lines. And if small quantities of pourable goods had to be stored, plastic bags were more sturdy than gunny bags, and gave better protection. So over the Sixties and Seventies, life slowly seeped out of Calcutta’s jute industry. And the slump of 1965 hit its engineering industry hard.

That was when the CPI(M) found a niche amongst the embattled industrial workers. Citu started organizing them; it developed the technology of bringing them out in processions and paralysing Calcutta. It taught workers to abuse and attack managers. In a pyrrhic victory, it drove industry out of West Bengal, but captured the unemployed workers — and young men who never had any jobs. They became the CPI(M)’s foot-soldiers. They developed a rough-and-ready social insurance system: they intimidated and collected money from whoever was making a living — shopkeepers, hawkers, farmers, whoever wanted a peaceful life and could pay for it. If the victims belonged to the Congress, so much the better. Within ten years, the musclemen taught West Bengal that it was unprofitable to belong to the Congress — and that supporting CPI(M) minimized costs. This is how the commutwit monopoly of power was created in West Bengal.

Having learnt this technology, the Hindutwits reproduced it in Gujarat. In every village, every community, they collected musclemen and set up branches. But in one respect, they had it easier than the commutwits. Gujarat is more commercialized and industrialized than West Bengal; there were many more rich men to tap, and, correspondingly, the tribute to be collected from each was smaller — so small that many of them would not mind paying. Besides, many of these rich men could be asked to give jobs to the faithful, in which case those believers did not have to be paid a dole at all.

But how were those moneybags to be persuaded that Muslims were their enemies? Right into the Nineties, 600 tons — 600,000,000 grams — of gold used to be smuggled into India. So was most of synthetic cloth. So were thousands of watches. All these goods used to be loaded into fast boats in Dubai, carried across the sea, and land on Gujarat’s coast. They were a source of great convenience for consumers fed up with the rigours of the socialist state, and a source of prosperity for those involved in smuggling and selling the goods; most of whom were Muslims. Once in a while some smugglers were caught; their names were predominantly Muslim. Sometimes the smugglers fought and murdered one another; those caught were again Muslims. Thus there arose an impression in Gujarat that Muslims were smugglers and thieves. So when the Hindutwits offered to sanitize Gujarat of the Muslim criminals, they found ready clients. When they removed Muslim competitors from business, their services were all the more appreciated by Hindu shopkeepers. When the commutwits sanitized West Bengal, they created an economic desert. When the Hindutwits sanitized Gujarat, some flowers went missing, but business continued to bloom.

This is where the difference lies. Year after year, Gujarat grows faster than West Bengal. West Bengal, once one of the richest states, has fallen behind until it is just about average today; Gujarat, once average, has advanced upwards. No ruler of West Bengal who attends meetings in the South and North Blocks of Delhi, who can read figures, can ignore West Bengal’s decline.

That is why the commutwits are in a hurry. But they cannot bring back the capitalists whom they scared away in the Sixties. Nor can they tolerate the emergence of thousands of small industrialists, for whom trade unions would be anathema. What would be compatible with Citu’s prosperity? Obviously, industries that pay workers well. So the commutwits’ first answer was information technology. They laid out the red carpet for IT moguls. Some came, but on the whole they preferred the South; it has a huge output of graduates with good English, and they do not mind people from other states coming in. So today, West Bengal’s IT employment is still in thousands — no higher than that of Gujarat.

Now the commutwits have thought of big industries like steel and car-making. These require large tracts of land, and the commutwits are determined to clear land of obstructive human beings, however much blood they have to shed. The Hindutwits think that the post-Godhra riots taught Muslims a lesson; the commutwits think that Nandigram has taught the reactionaries a lesson. And if it has not, they will teach it again, in battlegrounds galore. Mamata, take guard!

Each lesson will reduce the number of industrialists that would be prepared to invest in West Bengal; Buddhadeb will have to travel ever farther to find an investor. But it is a quest in the right direction — for making West Bengal India’s richest state. It may take some time, and many lives, but so what? Revolutions cannot be made without bloodshed. In the meanwhile, the prime minister will continue to monitor the situation closely — from Moscow, Washington, Cape Town, from his eyrie on Race Course Road.

For Soumitra, Maoists get reel

Anjan Chakraborty
The Statesman, 20 November

KOLKATA, Nov. 19: They are known to target CPI-M leaders and police ~ be it in words or action. But for the first time, Maoists have chosen an apolitical person, Satyajit Ray’s favourite actor, Soumitra Chatterjee, to correspond with and question his stand on the Nandigram issue. Though the letter does not “call for his head”, as Maoist mails often do, or warn him to stay away from the CPI-M, it has made police sit up and take notice.

The letter, written by the state secretary of CPI (Maoists), to Soumitra Chatterjee, questions the Tollywood actor’s stand on the recapture of Nandigram by CPI-M cadres. “You played the character of Pandit Mashai in the film Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds) where there was a division between ‘we’ and ‘them’. You had portrayed a rebel character in the film and in the end the rebels were victorious.”

“But that was 1980 (the year the Satyajit Ray film was released), now this is 2007 and you have switched allegiance. In the fight that is going on, there is a division between ‘we’ and ‘them’ as well, but you have now taken the side of Hirak Raja (Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee). In this fight, the general public have retreated temporarily, but what will happen in the end? What does history tell you?,” the letter cautioned the Tollywood actor.

The letter, dated 14 November, also questioned why Soumitra Chatterjee has taken up the side of the “oppressor”. “Why are you scared? For what reason? In exchange of what have you sold your protesting self to Buddhadeb? We do not know whether there is any reservation or secret reason that compelled you to align with Buddhadeb. You have got everything in life ~ money and recognition ~ then what more do you want that you have to pawn your thinking to the fascist rulers? Think ....,” wrote the state secretary of CPI (Maoist). The letter ends with a note of caution: “There is still time to stand by the ‘oppressed’ people and tell them that you are one of them and had somehow lost your way. We do not wish that the love and affection that you earned by portraying the character of Pandit Mashai in Hirak Rajar Deshe is transformed into public hatred.”

When The Statesman tried to contact Soumitra Chatterjee, his cell phone was found switched off and on calling up his residence a family member said he was unwell and would not like to discuss Nand-igram. The South 24 Parganas SP, Mr Praveen Kumar, first denied having any knowledge of any CPI (Maoist) letter to Chatterjee, but later said ‘after checking with the local police station’ that “they had sent some policemen to the actor’s residence to find out if he had received the letter or not”.

CPM, Majlis spar in Andhra House

Statesman News Service. 20 November

HYDERABAD, Nov. 19: The CPI-M and Majlis Ittehadul Musilmeen today sparred in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly over continuing violence in Nandigram. The Majlis promised that it would soon enter West Bengal to win over Muslims.

MIM floor leader Mr Akbaruddin Owaisi, during a discussion on minorities’ welfare, said the West Bengal government was talking in Gujarat chief minister Mr Narendra Modi’s language. He was referring to West Bengal chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, saying the victims at Nandigram were paid back in their own coin.
CPI-M floor leader Mr N Narasimiah bristled and said the MIM was a party confined to only the Old City.

“They have no right to criticise Marxists and Communists. We don’t need to take lessons from you,” he said. Countering this, Mr Owaisi said they have a presence across Andhra Pradesh and had contested a few constituencies in West Bengal as well. “Mr Bhattacharjee is justifying the killings and talking like Mr Modi,” he said.

Mr Narasimiah shot back: “How can you compare Mr Bhattacharjee with Mr Modi? Nandigram is different. Maoists have infiltrated the place and the violence was started by them. This is happening despite the West Bengal government stating four months ago that it would not acquire land at Nandigram for the special economic zone. We are at the forefront of protecting secularism,” he said.

Mr Owaisi accused the CPI-M of double standards, by taking away farmers’ lands in West Bengal and demanding lands for farmers in states like Andhra Pradesh. “Soon, we will go to West Bengal and win the hearts of Muslims there," he said.

Wheels within the nuclear wheels

Raju Santhanam
The Statesman, 20 November

The Left “clearance” for the IAEA talks does not represent a weakening either in the Left position or a “thaw” in the relations between the two major UPA partners. It begs a bigger question: is the Congress misreading the Left again?

Actually, the chances of a mid-term election have only increased. The reason: the nuclear deal, the bone of contention, will come up again as a make-or-break issue when the Left-Congress committee meets to consider the India-specific safeguards.

Ironically, everyone including the Left acknowledges that not many know or realise the implications of the nuclear deal except a select few of the SMS generation. The issue is unlikely to influence the voter. In addition, a Parliament resolution on the deal, whether put to vote or not, would hardly enthuse voters burdened by aam aadmi issues. Yet by hardening their positions, Mr Prakash Karat and Dr Manmohan Singh ~ both driven by conviction and for their own ideological reasons ~ appear to be steering the country towards yet another mid-term poll.

Each side is hugely suspicious of the other. If Mr. Karat’s hobnobbing with the likes of Amar Singh was not taken to very kindly, statements emanating from senior ministers threatening elections have also not helped. The Left’s green signal for talks with the IAEA has to be seen in the context of mutual suspicion between a nuclear “love-struck “ Congress and an embittered Left that is determined the country have no truck with the USA. While the Left-Congress marriage is clearly on the rocks what has added to their plight is lack of communication and mutual suspicion.

The question everyone in Delhi is asking is why the Left has “given in” on the IAEA talks. When such a suggestion was made in the first week of October, the Left rejected it outright. What has changed since then? Is this merely to give Dr Singh face? If the government returns from the IAEA talks and the Left rejects its proposal, would that not cause greater loss of face? Or, is the Left move a googly that would finally lead to a face-off?

The facts that come tumbling out are too clear to miss. With the Left green signal, the following things have been set into motion. A quick agreement with the IAEA to get India specific safeguards before the UPA committee, further discussions with the Nuclear Supplier Group, then ratification by the US Congress. But the proponents of the deal are running against time.

If the US pointsman is to be believed, everything should have been done by early January 2008 for ratification by the US Congress. The Congress in Washington requires a minimum 30-day notice.

Now if the Left has its way, it would ensure that even the intra-UPA committee meeting would not take place before December. In effect, March appears to be cut off point as far as the Bush administration is concerned and already there are murmurs from Left quarters that even if everything is in order the Government should not sign up with Bush, a lame duck outgoing US President.

The Left strategy thus seems to be to buy time and to ensure that nothing substantially moves before February.

On its part, the Congress does not want to waste any time. The proponents of the nuclear deal are taking the Left nod for a yes to the nuclear deal. The Left “clearance” is seen as a virtual go-ahead because commitments in international fora need to be honored. Sources in the Government say if the UPA joint committee rejects the proposal after talks with IAEA then it will have no option but to press for polls. The AICC resolution supporting the nuclear deal will be seen as the entire party’s endorsement of the deal. The ace up the Congress sleeve is the Gujarat Assembly election results slated for December.

However, has enough groundwork been done for mid-term polls? If now the entire exercise of rushing to swing the deal ends up in opposition from the Left once again, it would mean egg on the face unless the logical corollary is the announcement of elections.

A Congress win in Gujarat would certainly embolden the UPA to go for mid-term polls. Internally, the Congress is quoting the Left’s own assessment that the Left would lose at least 20 seats in the event of early Lok Sabha polls.

Therefore, the Left gesture in what seems like a volte-face appears in effect only to be a ruse to buy time. The only reason they allowed the IAEA talks was the suspicion that the Congress might blow the election bugle sooner than anticipated.

With both the Congress and the Left not really budging from stated positions ~ the Left did budge a millimetre ~ the question is who will blink first. In the past, it was the Congress that swallowed its pride and backtracked; within days of a strong Left reaction both Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh offered to put the nuclear deal on hold. The same allies who had supported the deal developed cold feet. Some members of the core group too who were initially prepared to face polls also began having second thoughts. The Congress was then totally unprepared to even threaten mid-term polls.

The first face off could be on 23 December when the Gujarat election results are out. By that time, crucial meetings between IAEA, the NSG and the UPA coordination committee would be under way. There is little chance that by December-end Mr Karat would reconsider and see any merit in the nuclear deal whatever the India specific safeguards. Dr Singh is hardly expected to budge from his position that the Indo-US nuclear deal represents a turning point in the country’s history.

The battle-lines are drawn. On the last occasion, the Congress was clearly surprised by the Left roadblock on the deal. Part of it is also a misreading of the Left, a factor that made Congress lobbyists run to Budhadheb Bhattacharjee and Jyoti Basu.

This time the Congress appears to have finally realised that the Left speaks with one voice. It is more prepared as indications from the AICC session suggest. The Left too is ready to put the government “on autopilot” as Mr Karat himself threatens.

While the Left exercise is calibrated like a chess game, the Congress strategy seems based on factors they have no control over. While a Congress win in Gujarat would embolden the party, a defeat at the hands of Narendra Modi would herald vacillation, indecision and lack of political conviction, something the Congress has displayed in the past.

(The author, a veteran journalist, is a former Resident Editor of The Statesman.)