The Nandigram Narrative

The Sentinel, 16 March

What happened in Nandigram, about 170 km from Kolkata, on Wednesday can happen anywhere else in the country, given the craze about special economic zones (SEZs). One would not grumble against the SEZ concept if it were to provide the best compensation to the affected lot — all distressed farmers — and if it were to bind the foreign companies in the SEZ mould with the same rigour of Indian laws as applied to their Indian counterparts here. In the recent past, this column has had occasion to harp on some of the glaring absurdities of the SEZ concept in the Indian setting. Nandigram, though a fallout of the same concept (the whole mess is about the Indonesia-based Salim group being provided agricultural land to establish an SEZ), forms a different narrative. It is not just about the CPM’s bid to look ‘modern’ in an era of economic liberalization and globalization or about its own struggle to come to terms with the changing times. The Nandigram story — and those 14 innocent villagers killed in police firing on Wednesday are proof enough — is also a manifestation of how democracy can sometimes fail so savagely. We are not blaming democracy as theory — there is no alternative to this theory in the civilized world. We are talking about the discourse that we make out of democracy. We are talking about democracy as practice. And who will argue in favour of democracy as practice if it legitimizes the use of state force to perpetrate terror on the disadvantaged and the distressed section of the country’s populace whose only fault is their chronic poverty and their desire to cling on to their only asset — land? And see the irony: it is the CPM doing it all in West Bengal because quite late in the day, the industrialization bug has smitten the Comrades, thanks to the ‘reformer’ in West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. There are better ways of doing things — whether Singur or Nandigram — and there are better ways of evolving so as to fit into the mould of real globalization. SEZs could be one of them, and will indeed be so if the interest of the displaced populace remains the first priority. We are not concerned about what China is doing, despite being a Communist state, to fit the equations of free-market economy. China’s is an authoritarian regime; ours is a democratic one. Ask yourself: who are protesting the Nandigram takeover? It is the ordinary villagers, mostly debt-ridden and resigned to their fate, whose spears, rods and lathis are no match for the guns wielded by Buddhadeb-inspired West Bengal policemen. The CPM’s argument is that the ‘‘law is asserting itself’’, ‘‘the battle in Nandigram is not over land acquisition’’, and that ‘‘outside’’ forces and political adversaries like the Trinamul Congress and, hold your breath, even the Naxalites are fomenting trouble. This is what CPM politburo member Sitaram Yechury said on Wednesday. Mr Yechury & Co, what would be your reaction to a similar incident if it were to take place in a rapidly industrializing Gujarat under BJP’s Narendra Modi? Would it still be ‘‘law asserting itself’’? Where was your ‘‘law’’ when armed CPM cadres, on that very Nandigram day, assaulted two journalists — one of PTI and another of private Bengali TV news channel Tara News — when both were trying to cover the Nandigram cruelty? One would have hailed the CPM — the voice of India’s Left — if the party had bothered to do a bit of homework on democracy and the right to dissent when it came to the other side of the fence. And the Nandigram protesters were not members of any Red unions disrupting public life. They were ordinary citizens who are called the collective master in the democratic parlance. The state has killed some of them — and in a Left-ruled State.

Why Government Jobs?There is a bizarre tendency in Asom to go around looking for government jobs. It is as if the best employer could only be the government. Of course, to some extent the assumption of the government being the ‘best’ employer is true. This is so because if one is a government employee, he can earn without having to work at all and prove his mettle. And there is also enough scope for corrupt practices. It is high time this mindset changed. As we reported yesterday and asked why one should only look for government jobs when farming in sectors like fish, meat, egg and milk could be a wonderful entrepreneurial idea, the unemployed youths of the State can moot ideas along that line, come up with business proposals, and approach banks and other financial institutions for loan. A modernist government would inspire the youths to take the first leap forward — towards entrepreneurship in unexplored areas — and help them in all possible ways. The idea holds equally true for both the rural and the urban youths. And the idea may work out wonders in a strife-torn State like Asom where militant groups exploit the fact of unemployment to their utter advantage. If annually Rs 75 crore is drained out of the State for chalani fish and there are other disheartening figures for imported milk, egg and meat as well, the unemployed youths of the State can indeed contribute towards arresting the drainage — but if and only if someone supports them in their entrepreneurial ventures. We are talking about the State Government supporting them. Does the Tarun Gogoi Government have any vision towards that end?

The Indian Bottomline - THE REALITY MIRROR
Bikash Sarmah

Sometimes historians talk great sense, and one of them is Wang Hui. Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing which is also one of the six Chinese universities to have the privilege of being in the list of the 200 best universities of the world, Hui is famous for being critical of the emerging free-market trends in Chinese economy and has harangued neoliberal ideologies that champion the cause of rampant free markets. Prof Hui has a point to make, and we shall arrive at the Indian bottomline based on what he has to say about his own country in regard to its own changing times and trends. Speaking to Lakshmi Indrasimham (Tehelka, March 3, 2007), Prof Hui says: ‘‘For the last 20 years, China has been undergoing rapid development. By the late 90s, there were widening gaps between rich and poor, rural and urban, coast and inland. Neoliberal ideology legitimized these problems, presenting them as the inevitable cost of growth, thus suggesting that this was the only way to grow. To say that is to negate China’s entire modern tradition and the efforts of so many people, including the socialists. We need more democracy, more democratic societies, yes. But when we think of the Chinese future and of political reform, we cannot simply copy a pattern.

We need innovative thinking rather than just using democracy as an abstract slogan. We need to think about economic and cultural rights together with political rights.’’ There is no reason why one should disagree with Prof Hui when he says that ‘‘neoliberal ideology’’ has ‘‘legitimized’’ certain kinds of problems — the ones resulting from the twin process of economic liberalization and globalization. But one can as well ask: is it really a neoliberal ideology? An ideology of this kind that harps on rapid industrialization of the economy and a move to help create a flourishing services sector, cannot be a mismatch for a plausible paradigm-shift model of rural growth, especially in countries like China and, of course, India. These are countries that have large agrarian populations; in India’s case, poverty is romanticized to the extent that political parties would rather thrive on the very fact of poverty by floating schemes for the garib aam aadmi so that the schemes are also the best ones to commit theft on the aam aadmi. How can a truly neoliberalist doctrine prevent the liberation of ordinary citizens by clamouring that they have to initially pay the ‘cost of growth’ and then have to wait for the rich dividends later on? Why should they pay and wait? Just because they are poor and have no means to resist the neoliberal adventurists? How does this doctrine define Wednesday’s Nandigram? If one bothers to delve a bit deeper, Prof Hui’s take on the neoliberal ideology of the day is neither Communist nor capitalist. And this column’s attempt to draw the Indian bottomline is provoked by Prof Hui’s neoliberal assertion in its own right: that ‘‘we cannot simply copy a pattern’’, and that ‘‘we need innovative thinking’’, not just ‘‘democracy as an abstract slogan’’. Some may argue that Hui’s is a typically Chinese way of looking at things, given China’s polity — Communist authoritarianism. Have the likes of Hui ever experienced what it means to breathe the democratic air as to talk of ‘‘democracy as an abstract slogan’’? But what is equally argumentative is whether a country like democratic India, with a whole lot of aberrations in the democratic dispensation, should indeed be the one to freely deliberate on the abstraction of a functioning democracy as ours, especially in the post-reforms era. Yes, we should. Must we copy Western models without looking into the specificities in the Indian setting? Have we, as a democracy so proud of being the world’s largest (thanks to our burgeoning population), also not created some abstract notion about democracy — with least regard to the practicalities? Before we talk of special economic zones (SEZs) and industrialization, we ought to think innovatively: what we can do to salvage the agricultural sector, to boost agricultural growth, to make the countryside a happening hub too — quite like the urban areas, to streamline the process of rural infrastructure development, and most importantly, to define ‘‘infrastructure development’’ for the countryside. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to be obsessed with ‘‘inclusive growth’’ and ‘‘affirmative actions’’ — the former is perhaps about snatching away land from the poorer lot whose only assets are their land and their toiling capacities, while the latter is surely also about caste-based quotas in higher education as proven by the highly retrogressive 27 per cent OBC quotas in that field. But what is there in this bizarre concept of ‘‘inclusive growth’’ and ‘‘affirmative actions’’ that will eliminate the aberrations of Indian democracy one by one, and irreversibly at that? There are surely many in India who are nursing their own ‘neoliberal’ ideals, especially our policymakers and political executives. Let those ideals then fight Indian democracy as an abstract slogan — the premise, however, being that there is absolutely no alternative to democracy but it has to be democracy in the real sense. Let those ideals also fight the Indian version of secularism where religious figures are free to dictate the course of politics and where the minorities (mainly Muslims) are wooed for electoral gains — as routine ‘secular’ gimmickry. Cannot we jettison religion, caste or any other man-made barriers in the matter of politics and governance? Cannot the Indian neoliberal ideology be modernist then, in the real sense? Let us also talk about how the so-called neoliberals have thought of modernizing education in a happening India.

Are we to have the world’s largest army of unemployable graduates? What has liberalized India done to inspire the universities of the country to devise an education strategy so that the courses are exactly in sync with the changing times, and so that the examination system is both valid and reliable? The above defines the Indian bottomline. Democracy is a practical narrative on freedom, not to be frittered away as an abstract ideological paradigm. Just as there is freedom to act within the prescribed limits of democracy, there is freedom to think; and when it comes to ‘‘innovative thinking’’ as Prof Wang Hui calls it, there is no limit at all. Why does not the breed of policymakers and politicians in the country does a little bit of homework — one must study a lot for that — to gear up to innovative thinking in order to remodel the Indian democratic setting and let the country usher in a truly egalitarian era of justice, liberty and equality? Is anyone stopping them?

(The writer is the Consulting Editor of The Sentinel)