India, South Asia & the World

2008-04-27T12:14:00.000-04:00

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The Constituent Assembly for Stable ‘Democracy’ or for uninterrupted Democratisation?

2008-03-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

A substantial portion of the following reflections on Nepal was jotted down several days ago, but they seem still relevant.

Stable democracy is the end of democratisation. This statement is ambiguous - on the one hand, it means that democratisation leads to stable democracy, but on the other it also means that the latter actually ends the process of democratisation. Isn’t it true that all stable formal democracies are realisation of particular processes of democratisation? Isn’t it also true that the stability of these democracies depends on how much the ritual of elections and the cacophony of parliamentary halls and senates are able to control the popular assertion on the streets and in every walk of life?

In Nepal, this tussle between democracy and democratisation is very intensive. Till recently especially during the phase of the people’s war the forces representing each of them were easily identifiable since they were generally mutually exclusive, but after April 2006 both are on the same turf trying to overpower one another. The only consistent forces are the royalty and the imperialists - the former is waging an existential struggle, while the latter have to make best out of the worst situation. And all others are inconsistent in varying degrees. The non-communist forces of democracy are evidently still afraid of any drastic break from the past - the royalty and their own past practices. The royal nostalgia looms heavily on the election manifestos of the Nepali Congress and UML, even when they officially declare themselves as republicans. They are afraid of any radical change in the legitimation process. They are unable to give away the ritualism and ceremonialism that characterised the polity which they profess to challenge. They still need a ceremonial patriarch in whose name they will rule.

Everybody knows that it was the mass agitation that forced the royalty and foreign interests on defensive. Even after the restoration of the old parliament it was the continued presence of masses on the streets that coerced the restored leadership to inch forward to further democracy.

By becoming part of the government that is non-committal to any radical change unless forced, the Maoists perhaps became vulnerable to all the pitfalls of power politics in a competitive set-up. However the greatest strength or safeguard for them is their recognition and commitment to two-line struggle within their own ranks - between the tendencies of compromise and of uninterrupted transformation. They are aware that their radicalism lies in intensifying this struggle at every level. If we find today an apparent inconsistency between the Maoists in the government and those on the streets, it is the open realisation of this two-line struggle, which tempers one another not allowing the former to settle with status quoism. Recent statements by Prachanda, Baburam Bhattarai and Mohan Baidya, where they stressed on the need for giving “top priority to the street struggle at this juncture”, reflect the Maoists’ resolution to remain as forces of democratisation, rather than a stability factor for a democracy of an elitist minority and the depoliticised majority.

Definitely, this does not go well with the scheme for democracy as visualised by the hegemonic forces. They need stability; democracy too is needed just to have a stable environment, as a scheme to bribe away the representatives of those who shout on the streets. If democracy goes beyond this scheme, it is an aberration and anarchy - if workers assert themselves on their workplace or the landless demand their share on the resources, they are harming the property rights of the individuals. Democracy is a privilege, which must not be practiced everyday and everywhere. It is in this sense we can understand the conflict between the forces of democracy and those of democratisation. Democratisation in this regard can be understood as perpetual expansion of democracy beyond the confines of established institutions.

It was expected that after locking up the arms of the Maoist army, the Maoists would be “disarmed” and locked up in barracks. It is forgotten that a revolutionary army is first and foremost politically armed and always on watch out. The recent controversies on the activities of the Young Communist League are symptomatic of the impossible demands posed by the status quo on the revolutionary forces. Another controversy that has come up is regarding the issue of returning land to the deposed landlords. It is part of the hegemonic expectations, which seek to do away with any impact of the previous parallel revolutionary government on the future political economy of Nepal. Even if the Maoists officially may agree to it, the popular energy that they have unleashed in their decade-long people’s war will obviously reassert itself, despite all odds. This popular energy is evident in various self-determination movements, which have startled all the political forces in the country with their vigour.

Among these movements, the Madheshi (Terai) struggle clearly stands out, not only for its vigour but also for its peculiar constitution. Evidently, the various Madheshi identities have long been oppressed and suppressed in the overall Nepali set-up. But the recent attempt to homogenize Madheshi as a singular regional identity beyond divisions - caste and class - is a phenomenon that can only be understood by revealing the interplay of class, national and international forces behind it.

The Madheshi (Terai) region is agriculturally the most productive region in the country. Historically there has been a strong section of landed and propertied gentry in this region which has continued to oppose any systematic land redistribution efforts. Until now this section has been able to preclude such possibility through their opportunist lobbying and support to various political formations. It has time and again resisted any efforts to decrease the land ceilings. Unsurprisingly, it will see the Maoists with their commitment to radical land reforms as a grave threat. With the genuine federalist self-determination movements rising throughout the country to hasten and shape up the future Nepal, this section along with other Indo-Nepali businessmen with evident backing from the mellowed down monarchy supporters utilized sections of the Terai movement to turn anti-Maoist. In order to homogenise the Madheshi sentiment against the Maoists, the Terai ruling class and political elites have been utilising the apprehension that the radical land reforms might relocate non-Terai landless into the region. The following quote from Sarita Giri of Nepal Sadbhawana Party (Anandi Devi), one of the political parties claiming to fight for the Madheshi rights reveals much of the class-fear among the leadership of the Madheshis:

“As a consequence of [the] 1990 movement, Communists (led by hill elites) emerged as a formidable new force. [The] Revolutionary land reform agenda has been now their political agenda. But it would be naive to say that it was no more the agenda of Nepali Congress. Prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba ha[d] agreed to reduce the ceiling to 4 to 5 bighas from 11 bighas in Madhesh. It was due to the movement led by Nepal Sadbhawana Party and supported by madheshi elites across parties that the government dropped its agenda. And now in 2007 they are the Maoists who have designed to march ahead with their agenda of revolutionary land reform. It has explicitly been mentioned in the Interim Constitution. This time too, Nepal Sadbhawana Party (Anandi Devi) has written note of dissent against the revolutionary land reform program. The aim behind such an agenda is obviously to enhance the control of hill centric state over madhesh. This is the context against which the current Madheshi movement and its demands of republicanism, autonomy, self determination and federalism should be understood.”

Even Jwala Singh, a militant Madhesi leader demanded that, “The land of Madheshis captured by Maoists should be given back”.

Obviously these sections of the Terai leadership will be all the more anxious, as the Maoists have already included the demand for ‘land to the tiller’ in their Commitment Document for the Constituent Assembly elections.

Furthermore, the Terai region being geographically, culturally and economically closer to the only immediate imperialist force and agency in the region, India, is also open to various kinds of imperialist manipulation. In recent years, India with its rising economic interests beyond its territory has used all sorts of “identities” to assert a diasporic homogeny under the garb of which it can support its cross-border political economic expansion. It is not very surprising that this expansionist tenor was firmly and vocally established by the Rightist forces in India. It can in fact be comfortably said that the rightists became a legitimate force in India only with the rise of neoliberalism, when Indian capital found Indianness, Hinduism etc to be effective in its “free” market consolidation and operation globally. One needs to cursorily go through the widely circulated weekly of Hindu fascists, Organiser and its chatterbox journalism to grasp the confident obscenity of Indian expansionism in its extreme. Recently it invented “The Western-Christian agenda in Kathmandu” and “the Christian leadership of the Maoists”, lamenting the threat to the “Hindu civilisation”:

“The bells are tolling, not just for the Nepalese monarchy, but also for the Hindu culture and civilisation of the nation.”

It is a known fact that the Hindu rightists in India have been outspoken against the republican and democratisation processes in Nepal, and have been very active recently in the Terai region. It is this transnational unity among Hindu fascists with its base in India, which acts as a major weapon of active imperialist intervention, besides the usual economic threat of the flight of capital and the diplomatic diatribes.

It is evident that delays that marred the implementation of the anti-royalist agenda to which various democratic forces agreed have given a significant time for the reactionary forces to consolidate. It will be interesting to observe the various political realignments before, during and after the Constituent Assembly elections.

The Maoists claim that the main basis of the new constitution will be “the mandate of the 10 years People’s War and 19 days people’s Movement”. They see, as Maoist leader Badal explains, the Constituent Assembly as “the process of building new Nepal. We are advancing through the Constituent Assembly as the process of institutionalising new Nepal by the representatives elected directly in the participation of the people.[sic!] We raised the agenda of the CA through revolt and movement; institutionalized it and we are in the stage of its implementation. The process has been advanced ahead to carry out movement up to conclusion.” Obviously this reinterpretation of the CA as a process, if legitimised through elections and if the Maoists continue to adher to it, will be a death knell for the reactionary forces in and around Nepal.

James Petras’ critique of “progressive regimes”

2007-03-27T07:24:00.000-04:00

James Petras has been criticised for his “ultra-leftism”. Petras doesn’t need my defence, if any at all. But since some comrades have raised concerns about ultra-leftism of the leftist critique of the sarkari left in India, I thought it pertinent to use my defence of Petras as a personal exercise in understanding this ultraleftophobia gripping these genuine comrades.

For complete article: RADICAL NOTES

2007-03-09T18:23:00.000-05:00

36 of the 946 billionaires featuring on the Forbes' list of richest are Indian citizens. This is being posed as India's march forward. But is this so?

They are stinking rich. Their richness, wealth stinks. Is this a complement? But still identity-hungry Indians toiling in global sweatshops - academic, industrial etc, are asked to rejoice in the growing capacity of a few to stink. This world is really a PORCILE - with the number of Indians stinkers being only next to Russians (another group of gangster capitalists, who emerged during the post 1989 loot of public property), with the US and Germans, being front-runners.

"I killed my father. I ate human flesh and I quiver with joy." Farmer suicides are increasing with a growing number of underemployeds being ravished in the panopticon world of new industries, call centres and peripheral informal sector units, while we are asked to quiver with joy.

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Absolute Poverty (not just relative poverty with growing divide between rich and poor, which is generally recognised) is increasing, as people are more and more dispossessed, alienated from their means of production, losing control over their conditions of production. Even if we find consumerism rising - with new gadgets cropping up in the home of the new poor, it only increases her material and mental destitution and dependence - this is not a sign of enrichment. The secret of the billionaires' wealth too is not more gadgets and things at home, but their ability to control over the majority's means and conditions of production. Then why more gadgets and things at home be the parameters of judging the poor's poverty?

"Neoliberal" Leninism in India and its Class Character

2007-02-19T19:24:00.000-05:00

Pratyush Chandra
RADICAL NOTES

"Criticism - the most keen, ruthless and uncompromising criticism - should be directed, not against parliamentarianism or parliamentary activities, but against those leaders who are unable - and still more against those who are unwilling - to utilise parliamentary elections and the parliamentary rostrum in a revolutionary and communist manner. Only such criticism-combined, of course, with the dismissal of incapable leaders and their replacement by capable ones-will constitute useful and fruitful revolutionary work that will simultaneously train the "leaders" to be worthy of the working class and of all working people, and train the masses to be able properly to understand the political situation and the often very complicated and intricate tasks that spring from that situation." (V.I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Chapter 7)

1. Lenin and the CPIM's Leninism

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPIM)-led Left Front government in its endeavour to industrialise West Bengal, admittedly within the larger neoliberal framework of the Indian state's economic policies, is ready to scuttle every act of popular vigilance in the manner which Lenin would have called "bureaucratic harassment" of workers-peasants' self-organisation. India's official left position on neoliberal industrialisation and its potentiality to generate employment is very akin to what Lenin characterised "Narodism melted into Liberalism", as the official left "gloss[es] over [the] contradictions [of industrialisation] and try to damp down the class struggle inherent in it."(1)

In fact, the mass organisations of the official left in West Bengal have for a long time been the main bulwarks of the state government to pre-empt any systematic upsurge of the workers and peasants. They have become increasingly what can be called the ideological state apparatuses to drug the masses and keep them in line. And in this, Leninism has been reduced to an ideology, an apologia for the Left Front's convergence with other mainstream forces on the neoliberal path, giving its "steps backwards" a scriptural validity and promoting an image that in fact this is the path towards revolution - all in the name of consolidation and creating objective conditions for revolution. For justifying their compromises locally in West Bengal, CPIM leaders have found handy innumerable quotations from Lenin, and sometimes from Marx too. Contradictory principles and doctrines can easily be derived from their statements, if read as scriptures and taken out of contexts. Hence, as a popular saying in India confirms, baabaa vaakyam pramaanam, which loosely means, you can prove anything on the basis of scriptures.

Complete Article: RADICAL NOTES

Neoliberalism and Primitive Accumulation in India

2007-02-07T19:16:00.000-05:00

The need to go beyond capital

Pratyush Chandra & Dipankar Basu

Recent events in Singur - a town which is less than 40 kms away from Kolkata (Calcutta), where the West Bengal government is struggling to acquire and sell 1000 acres of agricultural land to Tata Motors - indicate the extent to which capitalist-parliamentarianism can regiment a counter-hegemonic force once it agrees to play by the rules. At the least, it clearly shows that the Communist government, which boasts of being the longest-running democratically elected Marxist government in the world, is hopelessly caught in the neoliberal project. And Singur is not an isolated event. In the state of West Bengal alone, the process of state-led land grab and the resultant opposition is already gaining momentum in at least three different locations: (a) in Kharagpur, West Medinipur district, where vast tracts of multi-crop farmland is being taken over for yet another Tata vehicle factory; (b) in Nandigram, East Medinipur district, where a chemical industries hub is proposed to be set up by the Salim group on a 10,000-acre area; and (c) in North Bengal where a Videocon Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is proposed to come up in the near future.

Nor is this story limited to West Bengal. Throughout India, resources are being acquired for Special Economic Zones and numerous other industrial schemes meant to facilitate corporate capital expansion. Since laws permitting this acquisitions were passed an year ago, state governments have notified 267 SEZs, which will require more than a half million hectares of land. Of this, the state has already acquired 137,000 hectares for 67 SEZs while another 80 have `in principle' been approved.(1) The Government has converted the erstwhile Export Processing Zones located at Kandla and Surat (Gujarat), Cochin (Kerala), Santa Cruz (Mumbai-Maharashtra), Falta (West Bengal), Madras (Tamil Nadu), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Noida (Uttar Pradesh) into SEZs. In addition, 3 new Special Economic Zones that had been approved for establishment at Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Manikanchan (Salt Lake, Kolkata) and Jaipur have since commenced operations.

Complete Article: Radical Notes ZNet Countercurrents

The Lost Left

2006-12-29T20:21:00.000-05:00

The Times of India (December 28, 2006)
Considerably modified version of the article can be found in RADICAL NOTES & ZNET

The events in Singur are signs of a crisis borne out of a disjuncture between the Left Front's pragmatic policies and the legacy of the movement and class interests that empowered it.For a long time, the open eruption of this crisis was evaded by the West Bengal government's success in convincing its mass base of its ability to manoeuvre state apparatuses for small, yet continuous, gains. It justified all its limitations and inefficacy by condemning the faulty Centre-state relationship and a larger conspiracy to destabilise limited reformist gains, for instance, those from reforms in the Bargadari system.

The allegation of conspiracy seemed tangible only to the extent that parliamentary politics drives every opposition party to encash the difficulties incumbent governments face — by peddling popular grievances for electoral gain. For illustration, one needs to just review the history of the exit-entry of governments and their economic policies over the past 20 years. There were economic grievances that contributed to the Opposition's success in destabilising governments and forming alternative ones, yet there was a remarkable continuity in economic and financial policies. Because of the Indian state's ability to contain popular opposition within the precincts of electoral democracy — the ritual of elections — it could evade any fundamental political economic crisis and did not have to deter from its neo-liberal commitments.

Once the Left in West Bengal chose to play by the rules of parliamentary democracy, it faced the constant threat of defeat in electoral competition. The internalisation of the need to evade this threat transformed its character, thus leading it to aspire beyond being a class party of workers and peasants. It had to become an all people's party — a party that could negotiate between diverse, dynamic and antagonistic interests.

A cosmetic radicalism though is advantageous in the states where it is the incumbent power. It can mobilise its traditional class base, by playing on victimhood, and rituals of national strikes. Alongside, it has been increasingly using the threat of capital flight to justify its concurrence with the national economic policies. Behind these usual mechanics of stabilising its position in the representative democratic set-up resides an essential dilemma for the official Left.

The historical legacy of the peasants and workers' movements has been both a boon and a bane. This has gravely severed its ability to use traditional means of state coercion for containing its mass base, forcing an informal accommodation or para-legalisation of the Left's traditional mass organisations — their transformation into ideological state apparatuses. Herein lies the danger.

Once these organisations are identified with officialdom, the grass roots are alienated and the scope for their independent assertion amplifies. In the history of Bengal's Left, this has happened many times — the most formidable one was the Naxalbari movement. Singur is the latest case.

One must question the motives of mainstream non-Left political parties like the Congress and Trinamul, which represent the interests of the landed gentry that use 'kishans' — hired labours and bargadars — for cultivation. This class, who the West Bengal government claims have consented to land alienation in Singur, join such movements essentially to obtain various kinds of concessions — a higher price for giving up land to the state and perhaps also for increasing the price for future real estate speculation around the upcoming industrial belt.

But there is a larger section of the landless peasantry and those frequenting nearby towns for work; for them, the struggles like that of Singur are existential ones. They do not possess any faith in neo-liberal industrialisation based on flexible, informal and mechanised labour processes. Recently, in many parts of the country, these sections of rural poor have been the object and subject of radical mobilisations.

It is the fear of their politicisation in the wake of its drive for competitive industrialisation, which is the real worry for the accommodated Left in West Bengal, especially CPM, which has traditionally resisted the mobilisation of the landless in the state, even by its own outfit.

Class and the 'common sense' of Thinking Beyond Class

2006-12-08T09:53:00.000-05:00

Pratyush Chandra & Ravi Kumar

[Note: This is in response to a review article entitled "Rhetoric and reality in critical educational studies in the United States", written by a well-known U.S. critical educator, Prof Michael W. Apple and published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education (Vol. 27, No. 5, November 2006, pp. 679-687). Apple's article is available at Prof Peter McLaren's blog. A pdf version of the present response is also available there. I am posting it here because it provides my ideas on the relationship of class and identity in a nutshell.]

Like everywhere, in India too the celebration of diversity has always been present as political aesthetics underlying the hegemonic stability. We have always been taught about India being a marvellous realisation of 'unity in diversity', despite the crudity in which this diversity is often realised - with the islands of opulence (population-wise these might seem vast) surrounded by the sea of deprivation and hunger. Within this politico-epistemological paradigm conflicts are taken to be socio-cultural gaps, which can never be bridged but definitely an equilibrium point or harmony can be engineered. The success of any hegemony is dependent on its capacity of reproducing this diversity without disturbing the equilibrium "graph". So there is nothing new in this continuous babbling which we hear in political and academic circles about multiplicity, about conflicts. The only change that we can discern is in the multiple innovative ways in which this commonsensical discourse is presented. After all it is all about différance - about deferring and differing signs.

We must admit that our interest lies more in exposing our indigenous Apple "look-alikes" than Apple himself, who nevertheless with his erudition provides an occasion to understand the basic nature of this community (which is hegemonic even within the mainstream Indian left circles informing their status quoist accommodation). A defining characteristic of this leftism is that it accepts reality as it is given by capitalism, i.e., in its appearances. The empiricist description of the reality, as this left experiences, is enough for forming its agenda. Thus the systemic logic of capitalism is fragmented and reduced to the realpolitik division of economics, politics, education etc and class is reduced to the category of an identity among a plethora of identities, like caste, race, gender etc.

It is forgotten that whenever you 'identify' class, as a group of people, as an identity, you don't really identify it but rather you describe various groups of people, i.e., manual/mental worker, organised/unorganised labour etc. On the contrary, class is a relational entity that can be grasped only in the process of its formation. The point is to unfold how class formation, dynamics and struggle constitute the apparent reality - realised in identity conflicts, "social movements" etc; in short, how "essence must appear". Only during the course of continuous open/hidden class struggle, class realizes itself, "across [identity] lines", across groups of people. 'Apple look-alikes' simply refuse to recognise the logico-historical structure of the reality in their description and celebration of apparent relativities - they go on repeating that there are many determinations of reality but cannot understand that there is "no democracy of determinations" in this structuring of reality.

It is this sociology of relativities or differences that leads Apple and his ilk to admire the Right's chameleon character. They definitely "have much to learn from the forces of the Right" - how antagonistic becomes mere "disparate", and how left can takeover the right by emulating the latter's capacity of brokering "alliances" across "disparate groups", "across ideological differences".(1) Hence, the status quo of differences is effectively maintained - peace and harmony prevail. This admiration of near-fascistic social corporatism has been the hallmark of the tired and accommodated left everywhere. They have become cynical towards every leap in societal development - drastic and violent break. They preach nothingness in their flashy rhetoric, like Apple's "non-reformist reforms" (-1+1=0), just to insist that they are still different, which Apple time and again explicitly claims in his review article.

In India, during the post-independence stage of planned capitalism, which needed analytical tools to inform the intensification of capitalism "from above", a sort of Marxist historiography in the academic circles (which tilted more towards nationalism) was absorbed eclectically within the overall positivist atmosphere.(2) The economistic notion of class was used to the extent that it could help in identifying the historical forces developing under the impact of capitalist development, but it was effectively embedded within the discourse of national developmental needs asking for popular sacrifices in the interest of national goods. Thus, the left sacrificed "class". Despite being more aware of class processes and being conscious of the effectiveness of class as a category of analysis as well as mobilisation, the political left in India was subservient and attracted towards the homogenising nationalist goals because of the leadership's hangover for united front, nationalist struggle and peasant/petty-bourgeois class interests. This led to the betrayal of the revolutionary simmering that gripped the Indian working classes and peasantry in the 1960s-70s.

The 1970s is the historical turning point when we see multiple identity conflicts flaring up throughout India, which were until now networked either by the democratic nationalist discourse or by their articulation within the communist politics in terms of the classical notion of national self-determination, or were generally despised like Hindu-Muslim conflicts. There arose caste identities competing for a greater representation in bureaucracy and state institutions and regional identities competing for a greater share in capital allocation, developmental funds and rent. On the one hand, this was symptomatic of the intensification of capitalist development that led to the rise of rural and sub-regional bourgeoisie with their aspirations to share power in the Centre - which could be possible only by confronting the upper caste rentier landlordism and its alliance with the monopoly bourgeoisie brokered on the eve of Independence. On the other, with the lack of any attempt on the part of the political left to organise the growing mass of the unemployed (especially among the educated sections) and the vast section of the underemployed informal sector workers (whose organisation would have to transcend the pecuniary logic of legalist trade unionism), the class resentments of the exploited were effectively fragmented and thus organised on caste lines and other competitive identities. Some sections of the educated unemployed could be appeased and accommodated in the mainstream sector with the extended affirmative action measures, which effectively derailed the need for politically organising the reserved army of proletarians. In the process occurred a vertical homogenisation, which provided a stable field for the competitive 'democratic' realpolitik reducing class assertions to rights discourse and lobby politics, which were eventually promoted by the internationally funded Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).

However, the most revealing aspect in "the retreat of class" in the left discourse both in direct politics and academia has been the easiness with which the notion of class could be replaced by other identities. In India, especially caste and minority-majority discourses became pivotal for determining the political agenda of the left, as for other status quoist forces. And this happened because traditionally class was not taken as a process unfolding itself in diverse appearances but rather was understood simply as another identity, different only to the respect that it possessed economic overtones, thus allowing the later critics of class to dub the concept of class as economistic. This notion of class was definitely sufficient for the pragmatic needs of leftism in the colonial phase, but with its entrance in the postcolonial liberal democratic set-up where it competed with other bourgeois political formations to sell its agenda as more accommodative of 'diversity', the notion of class, as traditionally understood, could not satisfy its new priorities for winning the elections.

In social theory the impact of 'post-ism' was felt heavily and the analysis in educational studies, without any exception, carries this trait. The debate on inequity is not so much in terms of class (no doubt 'poor' are mentioned as do all 'development sector' reports) but on lines of the 'Indian reality', that of multiple realities. It is caste, gender, race and religious communities, which are deprived and marginalised. Consequently, the reality that social identities are mere instrumentalities related with the particular stages of development and that their specific functions are defined in the political economic context constituted by capitalist accumulation and class dynamics are comfortably ignored. Identities, though touted as democratic due to their heterogeneity become homogeneous occulting the class differences within. It successfully pushes class to back burner and celebrates the democratisation which ultimately, and in fact, is for the dominant elite within the identity, which becomes or aspires to be accommodated in the ruling segment of the society and state. Empirical works have very sharply shown this phenomenon.

Within this framework, if one locates the possibilities of anti-systemic political movements what one finds is that until and unless the crisis of accumulation reaches an unsustainable level, the counter-hegemonic oppositions are generally channelled into identity assertions and even, social alliances "across ideological differences" - a crisscrossing of class interests. Only at a revolutionary stage, classes congeal themselves qua classes in their finality, and are ready to seize the moment when either revolution disarms the counter-revolution or the counter-revolution disarms the revolution. However, unless there is an unrelenting effort to deconstruct the identitarian political processes in terms of class processes as part of the conscientisation and organisation of class militants while readying them for the revolutionary seizure, the counter-revolutionary fragmentation of the uprising and even at times the rise of a totalitarian fascist power are inevitable (bundling the 'disparate' forces together by force). In fact, German revolutionary Klara Zetkin "described fascism as the product of a political situation, itself shaped by the 'decay and the disintegration of the capitalist economy', which combined with 'the standstill in the world revolution', to enable a capitalist offensive. It was this context which enabled fascism to grow."(3)

The rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India can be understood in these terms. On the one hand, it represented the failure of the secular democracy to manage the popular fallouts of the capitalist development especially at the time of a neoliberal consensus. Thus, the neoliberal offensive required a militant "executive committee of the ruling class", which eventually had to rely on the Hindu Right after the failure of Indira Gandhi's attempt to establish an authoritarian rule in the 1970s. However, it was mainly the remarkable inability of the traditional Indian left in preparing its own mass base and establishing a unity between the working class and the poor peasantry for a revolutionary assault against the Indian state that provided a greenfield for the rightist manipulations. This left the popular resentment vulnerable either to the manipulation of the localist, regionalist and identitarian petty bourgeoisie and neo-bourgeoisie or to the militant right, which effectively used trade unions and voluntary organisations for selling its social corporatist agenda.

In fact at the turn of the 21st century, like everywhere, the agenda of the Right in India and the Centre-Left fidelity to democratic-secularist consensus to outpace the Right seem to be bound with one another in a kind of perverted "negation of negation": "in a first negation, the populist Right disturbs the aseptic liberal consensus by giving voice to passionate dissent, clearly arguing against the "foreign [immigrants/Islamic/Pakistani/Bangladeshi] threat"; in a second negation, the "decent" democratic center, in the very gesture of pathetically rejecting this populist Right, integrates its message in a "civilized" way - in-between, the ENTIRE FIELD of background "unwritten rules" has already changed so much that no one even notices it and everyone is just relieved that the anti-democratic threat is over."(4)

Definitely this is true even for the more "decent" left, which would agree with Apple: "we have much to learn from the forces of the Right. They have shown that it is possible to build an alliance of disparate groups and in the process to engage in a vast social and pedagogic project of changing a society's fundamental way of looking at rights and (in)justice. Radical policies that only a few years ago would have seemed outlandish and downright foolish are now accepted as commonsense. While we should not want to emulate their often cynical and manipulative politics, we still can learn a good deal from the Right about how movements for social change can be built across ideological differences."(5)

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(1) Apple's review article (see the note in the beginning)
(2) However, there are a significant number of Marxist historians and political economists in India who have successfully transcended the identitarian, nationalist and third-worldist enticements, like D.D. Kosambi, A.R Desai and Rajnarayan Chandavarkar. On the other hand, another critical school of historiography, the subaltern school essentially emerged as a critique of the nationalist school, but quickly graduated into the community of "Apple look-alikes", postmodernists and post-colonialists with their stress on the relative autonomy of the subalterns.
(3) Renton, Dave (1999), Fascism: Theory and Practice, Pluto Press pp.58
(4) Zizek, Slavoj (2003), The Iraq War: Where is the true danger?
(5) Apple's review article (see the note in the beginning)

Protest Letter against the West Bengal Government action in Singur

2006-12-07T11:45:00.000-05:00

FORUM OF INQUILABI LEFTISTS (FOIL)

To: Members of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)

December 6, 2006

Dear Comrades,

We, members of the Forum of Inquilabi Leftists, a broad network of US based South Asian Leftist scholars and activists write this to register our protest at the manner in which the CPI(M) led Left Front Government of West Bengal dealt with the land acquisition process in Singur for the Tata automobile plant.

The protests by the oustees of Singur whether by landowners or by the thousands of landless poor drawing sustenance from the local economies are emblematic of a new political force that is arising in both rural and urban areas of India. The challenge of this force cannot be met with by brutal repression. By resorting to such highhandedness, the Government of West Bengal leaves the CPI(M) with little credibility while protesting similar actions by other state governments in India.

We acknowledge the incontrovertible fact of opportunist politics by centrist and rightist political parties in Singur. But opportunist politics arise in the first place because there are opportunities to exploit. Those opportunities in the case of Singur, we believe, were created by the Government of West Bengal by prioritizing private investments with little promise of equity over large local economies that sustain numerous social groups that are marginal to the formal economy.

That such an approach has been adopted by the only leftist political party in India to hold elected state power is disappointing at the very least. It makes us wonder whether: the leadership of the CPI(M) in its capitalist-parliamentarist pursuit has dangerously internalised the dominant class/caste structures of the Indian society at the expense of unwavering loyalty of the poor peasantry and the working class that handed the control of the state machinery to CPI(M) in West Bengal.

As a group of people committed to the advancement of socialist democracy, we urge you to:

1) Immediately take steps to encourage democratic political activity in Singur, especially the five affected villages by:

a) dropping charges against the protesters and releasing them from custody

b) lifting Section 144 of the CrPC and withdrawing police camps, and

c) desisting from imposing formal and informal barriers to people visiting Singur.

2) Initiate a process to rethink your strategy for economic development in the context of globalization by keeping in mind the dangers of largescale dispossession of people everywhere. Such a rethinking is the imperative for a party like the CPI(M) especially because outside of Bengal - where the party is not in power, the CPI(M) has a responsibility to oppose similar projects.

In short, we are writing this to you to remind you of a historic responsibility that any leftist party has to confront. It cannot be sidestepped through circulating platitudes about the 'reality of globalization' as the spokespersons of the CPI(M) have been wont to in the wake of the incidents at Singur.

In solidarity,

Forum of Inquilabi Leftists (FOIL)

[signed on behalf of FOIL by:]

Anantakrishna Maringanti, Anivar Aravind, Anu Mandavalli, Ashish Chaddha, Ashwini Rao, Aurnab Ghose, Biju Mathew, Girish Agarwal, Kaushik Ghosh, Nandita Ghosh, Partho Ray, Pinaki, Pratyush Chandra, Raja Swamy, Ra Ravishankar, Ravindran Sriramachandran, Satish Kolluri, Sayan Bhattacharyya, Shalini Gera, Shourin Roy, Sushovan Dhar, I.K. Shukla, Sukla Sen, C.K. Vishwanath

"The last shall be first, and the first last"

2006-09-19T23:25:00.000-04:00

Pratyush Chandra

The Bush-Blair duo's statements immediately after Zarqawi's death were very interesting. The adolescent victorious spirit that they generally display was clearly absent. Bush said: "The difficult and necessary mission in Iraq continues. We can expect the terrorists and insurgents to carry on without him. We can expect the sectarian violence to continue." And Blair echoed: "The death of Zarqawi is a strike against al-Qaeda in Iraq and therefore a strike against al-Qaeda everywhere but we should have no illusions. We know that they will continue to kill, we know that there are many, many obstacles to overcome." Evidently, the 'optimism' that they demonstrated after Taliban's and Saddam's defeats was nowhere to be seen.

There is only one reason behind this cautiousness in the imperialist camp, that the duo themselves makes clear, is that the death of all these "evil" symbols will not curb the continuity of insurgency. In fact, as these symbols are rubbed off the media lenses, the anxiety increases with the revelation of the continuous and mass character of the insurgencies in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The presence of al-Qaeda has been a boon in the post-Cold War era, providing a definite target and rationale for the continued military expansion to cover up the political economic fragility of US-British imperialism. The domestic opinion was easily mobilized by this comic-strip type situation of the two Supermen countering the bearded and hideous aliens. With these aliens dying in their own fire, the Superiority of the "good" men diminishes. And that is dangerous. Thus we find Bush/Blair fumbling for words to characterize the 'new' insurgency, and to convince the public of continuing their own 'noble' mission. In fact, Blair in his statement on Zarqawi's death went to the extent of completely shifting the subject to the irrelevant "domestic agenda", which meant to tell the public that - don't always stress on our gymnastics, we know we have landed in a thick soup, let's talk about something else.

And we find them trying hard to convince their international allies, too: "And what I've always said about this is whatever people think about the original decision to remove Saddam -- I mean, that happened now three years ago -- our forces, American forces, other forces have been there with a full U.N. mandate, with the consent of the Iraqi government to do one thing, and that is stand with the Iraqi people in their desire for democracy." (Blair)

Looming large on all these efforts to recompose the imperialist camp and its ideological campaign, the most formidable danger is the real danger of the increased and coherent insurgency. Al-Qaeda's elitist character and its sectarian violence, despite its frequent use of pan-Islamic rhetoric to obtain legitimacy, curb every attempt by the colonized people of Afghanistan and Iraq to self-organize, thus helping the occupying forces in divide and rule. Al-Qaeda's insistence to be the sole-contractor to "save Islam" in this world forces it to target civilians more than the occupants and oppressors, and indulge in sectarian terrorism replicating the same imperialist policy of divide and rule. It was thus that these 'holy' soldiers served the global masters during the Cold War, and after the Cold War they continue to serve them. In fact, throughout the Global South the 'religiosisation' and sectization of the nationalist and regional politics that we see today have been the immediate results of Post World War II neo-colonization that found post-colonial secular nationalism and regionalism as grave dangers to the imperial powers' hegemony.

However, as these self-imposing vanguards vanish one by one, who indulge in physically removing the masses from the center-stage of insurgent politics with the help and for the benefit of the occupying forces, the spontaneous and organized nature of mass insurgency will be smoothly nurtured, which until now was always nipped in the bud after sectarian killings, bombings and kidnappings, forcing it to remobilize itself from scratch. The days are not very far when we might see an organized insurgency independent of all clans and sects, which will insist like the Algerians did in the 1950s - "Placing national interest above all petty and erroneous considerations of personality and prestige, in conformity with revolutionary principles, our action is directly solely against colonialism, our only blind and obstinate enemy, which has always refused to grant the least freedom by peaceful means."

And the Middle East has a great history of anti-colonialist and nationalist uprisings. Even if the officials (both colonials and their local cahoots) have forgotten this, the Middle Eastern people can never forget it. They don't need to "borrow history" from others. Zarqawi and bin Laden can inspire fear and admiration among those who have forgotten the brilliant struggle for decolonization, but the people throughout the Global South have continued to live this struggle every moment of their lives - against political and economic tyranny, against direct or semi-coloniality. As violence escalates in Iraq and Afghanistan, the natives are not at all afraid. They are not afraid and innocent; they too threw stones at the passing tanks and brigades in the streets of the Afghani towns. As Fanon aptly taught us -

"This atmosphere of violence and menaces, these rockets brandished by both sides, do not frighten nor deflect the colonized peoples. We have seen that all their recent history has prepared them to understand and grasp the situation…. The native and the underdeveloped man are today political animals in the most universal sense of the word."

Herein lies the danger for imperialism. Afraid of relying on hired locals, as it increases its force and drowns in its own muck, there is a genuine hope for the organized rise in the aspirations of self-determination among the natives. As Sartre would put, all that these hired soldiers can do is to delay the completion of the uncompleted decolonization process that started long back, but ultimately, as Jesus commanded, "So the last shall be first, and the first last" (Mathew 20:16). Amen.

And thus the colonizers are anxious, and the colonized hopeful.

Progressive Regression in Nepal

2006-08-30T12:51:00.000-04:00

Pratyush Chandra

Only one aspect of Nepal's Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat's budgetary speech delivered on July 12, 2006 is stunningly consistent: its ceremonial mentioning of people's movement, their aspirations and their martyrdom. Along with references to “rural empowerment”, “peace” and “sharp cuts in royal palace allocations”, these incantations are intended to provide new discursive “instruments of legitimation” for the Nepali state, or as the World Bank Country Director for Nepal, Ken Ohashi, says, all these are necessary for "establishing the credibility of the state" (“Seizing the open moment”, Nepali Times, 7-13 July 2006). Only time will tell if radical forces are able to expose the new regime's opportunism under cute baubles: the progression of regression in Nepal.

Let us first ponder briefly over the present state of Nepal's economy to understand the full meaning and implications of the budget. In 2004, Nepal’s population was around 25.2 millions, of which around 85% resided in the rural areas, suggesting their dependence on agriculture. The per capita income in 2004 was US$260, which is far below the average per capita income in low-income countries ($510) and in South Asia ($590). Particularly revealing is the structure of the economy according to the sectoral shares in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP):

Source: World Bank (2006), "Nepal at a glance".

Source: World Bank (2006), "Nepal at a glance".

As Table 1 shows, there has been a continuous decline in the share of agriculture in the GDP. The industrial sector's share definitely did expand from 1984 to 1994. However, since 1994, at least, its share has been stagnant, while the manufacturing industries' share is on the decline. It seems that the non-manufacturing industries and services sector have been compensating the decreasing share of agriculture in the GDP, but as evident from Table 2, none of these sectors have been promising in their self-expansion. In fact, the average annual growth rate in the industrial sector has drastically reduced in the period 1994-2004.

Even though the increasing share of non-agricultural sectors in the GDP is a universal trend, in Nepal, like in other South Asian countries, this has not been accompanied by a proportionate shift in the labour force from agriculture to the other two sectors. According to the estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN, the percentage of agricultural labour force in total labour force in Nepal remains almost unchanged since 1979 - it was 94% during 1979-91, while for several years now it is stuck to 93%.

All these indicate a huge rural/urban divide – an immense sea of rural poverty encircling a few islands of urban affluence. Taking into consideration the inequitable distribution of land holdings (Table 3) and semi-feudal forms of exploitation in an increasingly monetised rural setting, one can only imagine the state of the poor peasantry, semi-proletarians and the landless.

Source: Devendra Chhetry, "Understanding Rural Poverty in Nepal", in Christopher Edmonds and Sara Medina (ed.), Defining an Agenda for Poverty Reduction (Vol. 1), Asian Development Bank (Manila, 2002). The figures are drawn from National Sample Census of Agriculture Nepal, 1991/92, Analysis of Results, Central Bureau of Statistics (Kathmandu, 1994). Ha= hectares

Even the World Bank admits (Economic Update 2002) that poverty could not be reduced in Nepal since “growth has been concentrated primarily in the urban areas and particularly in Kathmandu valley, largely excluding 86 percent of the population who live in rural areas, where per capita agricultural production has grown minimally and the overall level of economic activity has been sluggish”.

The disproportion between the share of the non-agricultural sectors in the GDP and the amount of employment generated in these sectors indicates that whatever growth we find in these sectors are either in capital-intensive industries controlled by foreign capital collaborating with a handful of Nepali mercantilist corporates, or in the informal economy where the circulatory migrants from rural Nepal toil with no job security and very low wages.

Moreover, impoverishment in rural (also in urban areas) has resulted in sluggishness in domestic demand for industrial goods, which has further eroded the possibility of an increased industrial growth in Nepal. This fact coupled with the backlash of liberalisation (export-oriented production) has made the industries in Nepal increasingly dependent on external markets – depleting internal resources to feed external demand. This further perpetuates the need for capital-intensity and an import of technologies to compete globally, thus making the dependency total, and the goal of employment-generating industrialisation a chimera.

In this situation, it is expected from any post-April 2006 government, which draws its power from popular radicalism that has enwrapped Nepal today, that it will represent the aspirations of the masses and address their basic problems - rural poverty, inequitable land distribution, unbridled commercialisation, profit-motivated industrialisation, lack of economic activities induced by popular needs, etc. The figures in Tables 1-2 testify the reality of neoliberalism as practiced in the Nepali setting.

It was in 1984 when the Nepali State accepted the IMF/WB liberalisation package, and never deterred from the neoliberal course despite the so-called 1990 democratic achievements. The Maoist revolt was a challenge to this path, and it was obviously expected that a post-April 2006 government would rethink the model of economic management that the Nepali State has been pursuing till now. But this was not to be, at least if we go by Mahat's budgetary exercise.

In the introductory paragraphs of the speech, the Finance Minister talks about the need to "form a common vision of socio-economic development through dialogue among political and social forces active in the country" and asserts that "the dialogue between Government of Nepal and Nepal Communist Party (Maoist)" is most certainly a formidable step in this regard. In his zeal to make this point, he goes to the extent of visualising the fantastic possibility "to end all forms of conflict prevalent in the country". However, the revolutionaries would never claim to negotiate for such a utopia, not with the democrats who are still uncomfortable with the possibility of sweeping away the most blatant point of contention: the burden of royalty.

But the Finance Minister himself betrays his and his colleagues' conscious design of which all this wordiness is an important characteristic. This blueprint becomes clear in the following sentences: "The national debate today has surely centered on determining the future political system and process to achieve sustainable peace. This does not mean that the issue of economic development should be pushed to back burner. Democracy cannot flourish on the foundation of a weak economy. The economy is in crisis for over half a decade. It is looking for a new momentum."

This statement contains all the essential ideological elements that characterise global neoliberalism, the weaning diet of the leadership of developing countries. First and foremost, the will to separate the economic from the political, that is, to ensure the complete depoliticisation of the former, is expressed in clear terms. To present that the "national debate" is only about politics is not only a gross misrepresentation of Nepali politics, but more importantly, it is a ploy to ensure that "the issue of economic development" does not become part of this "national debate". Of course, economic development should not "be pushed to back burner"; rather with Mahat it must compete with political development more vigorously. But what will be the course of this economic development? The immediate answer that we seem to get is: No politics, please.

Economic development, for Mahat and his ilk, is unilinear along a neoliberal trajectory, or whichever one set by the global and regional masters. And the fundamental duty of any "national" leadership under the global neoliberal regime today is to police this unilinearity so that politics does not contaminate economics. This is the redefinition of the cherished "rule of law" today. If all conflicts in the politics of economic development are systematically ruled out, then, of course, the fantastic vision that Mahat has about ending "all forms of conflict prevalent in the country" will become real and there will be everlasting "sustainable peace".

Consider provisions of the budget. As usual, there is an overabundance of promises, allocations and words as proof of the government's commitment to the people in Mahat's budgetary speech. All these are duly balanced by its fidelity to "investment-friendly atmosphere" for agro-businesses and "commercial farming", "to encourage private investment" in every sector and, of course, faithfulness to its donors.

In the name of the pro-poor programme, the government will formulate an agriculture business promotion policy for "enhancing private sector participation in agriculture, market infrastructure development and agro-industries". "As per the concept of public-private partnership, a policy will be adopted to encourage private sector in the expansion of technology and seeds under agriculture extension programme". Then, there will be interest subsidy in tea farming, floriculture and milk chilling centres. The "One-Village-One-Product" programme "under public-private partnership will be initiated to increase production of commodities, which have adequate export potentials in foreign countries". "Assistance will be provided for improved seeds, fertilisers and technology to jute producing farmers". And the clincher - "concessional credit facility will be provided to the landless people for the purchase of land".

Thus, the government will alleviate rural poverty, to ensure food security and implement land reforms. Market is the magic wand. What if there is no food, no land? Market will resolve everything.

Is it too demanding to realise the implications of these budgetary provisions? Where do they locate rural Nepal and its toiling masses in the global agro-industrial complex by excessive commodification of their lives? They are milled into "a new division of labour in agriculture", where "the centre has specialised in capital-intensive production of grains and dumped them in the periphery, while peripheral states have battled for saturated markets for traditional exports, or have discovered 'comparative advantage' in various 'non-traditional' goods and land uses, namely 'exotic' fruits, cut flowers and vegetable, as well as ostrich husbandry and 'wildlife' management (ecotourism). In turn, all of these have been biased towards large-scale landholding, controlled by corporate capital, and destined for luxury peripheral and metropolitan consumption."(Sam Moyo and Paris Yeros (ed), Reclaiming the Land: The Resurgence of Rural Movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Zed Books, London, 2005, p.18)

In the industrial sector too, Mahat has all his recipes ready for resolving industrial difficulties. He dips straight into undergrad textbooks on Economics to derive his recipes. For private sector there is a development and rehabilitation programme. "An Industrial Rehabilitation Fund will be established with the participation of the government, central bank, financial institutions and interested industrialists and entrepreneurs in order to rehabilitate the conflict-affected sick industries". There will be a new labour law too, amenable to the needs of new industries, special economic zones and export processing zones.

This means the institutionalisation of the already informal labour market with no security for the workers. And, if these workers organise themselves and agitate, they will be accused of serving "the narrow interests of a small group", as World Bank Country Director Ken Ohashi (“Seizing the open moment”, Nepali Times, 7-13 July 2006, p. 4) puts in an article published on the eve of the budget submission, since "peace, social and political inclusiveness, and economic growth" can be attained only if energy is directed "away from self interests to a collective purpose". Strikingly, it seems either Mahat has literally lifted phrases from this article, or else the budget was drafted in the WB's office. He too pleads for "a balance between the collective wishes and collective means".

It is not very hard to identify the nature of this collectivity. In a class-divided society, the hegemonic collectivity is that of the ruling class, and the State is a definite instrument to serve its purpose. Hence, to meet this 'collective purpose', the Koirala government has everything to offer to their rich protégé-protectors, even a complete tax holiday for the newly-established industries in 22 remote districts for ten years. But for the same 'collective purpose', the workers and poor peasantry must understand that all "goals cannot possibly be met by this budget" (Ohashi) and that "the state does not have adequate resources to immediately fulfill unlimited needs of the people" (Mahat).

All this should definitely encourage foreign investors and their local agencies, but Mahat draws something more from the free market of ideas. This time around he desires to satiate the swadeshi and patriotic spirit. For this, he has a Swadeshi Jutta (national shoe) formula: "In order to promote the domestic production, the existing legal provision to purchase the domestic products by the government agencies even in cases where such goods are costlier by 10 percent than the foreign products will be implemented strictly. It is believed that the use of indigenous shoes and clothes by agencies like Nepal Army, Armed Police and Nepal Police under this program will encourage the domestic industries to a great extent."

While all these development and rehabilitation programmes will be implemented to boost the private sector, the classical medicine is in store for "public enterprises": Liquidation. It is not very difficult for even a newspaper-reading or TV-watching layperson to decipher the neoliberal ideological character of these budgetary measures, squeezed between the wordy paragraphs on "inclusive society and economy" and poverty-alleviation rhetoric.

The Nepali leadership, which has been historically compliant to the needs of the global masters, literally as their security guards, has never found neoliberal lessons very difficult to learn. Like in other countries, Nepal's balance of payments crisis in 1982-85 gave the country's leadership the classical rationale to ride the IMF/WB led neoliberal wave. Thus, they negotiated "a standby credit arrangement with the IMF. Accordingly, Nepal implemented an economic stabilisation programme in 1984/85. This was followed by the Structural Adjustment programme of IMF and the World Bank in 1986/87". ("Understanding Reforms in Nepal", Institute for Policy Research and Development, 2005). The political economy of Nepal, which had been a guinea pig in the hands of international finance capital for testing strategic panaceas, was once again brought to the operating table for yet another surgery. When the side effects started showing up in the shape of the democratic uprising, a patchwork was arranged in 1990.

The 1990 political arrangement broadened the experience and reach of this leadership in renting out the local natural and human resources for the benefits of the global machinery of capitalism. The localised elements of the ruling class that were nurtured by the aid regime and extensive commercialisation of the economy were brought into the fold of the State power. The limited democratic "political competition" established in 1990 provided a mechanism to attune the composition of the State to the changes in the ruling class composition. It was visualised that formal democracy would reduce all inter- and intra-class conflicts to competition between lobbies and dissipate any fundamental challenge to the economic structure, while the process of neoliberalism intensified.

The standard remedy in neo-classical bourgeois economics for any crisis due to marketisation is more marketisation with peripheral superstructural arrangements. Thus in Nepal too, "Economic liberalisation and privatisation policies were intensified from 1992 onward with the implementation of the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) programme. Given the open border and special trade relations with the southern neighbour, the speed and direction of reforms were also affected by the reform drive pursued in India. Since then reforms have either been continued or deepened in the modern economic sphere of trade, industry, finance, exchange rate, and monetary and fiscal policies. As a result, Nepal now stands as one of the most liberalised and open economies in the South Asian region" (ibid). A least developed country has been blessed by the most liberalised economy in the region; such is the endowment of neoliberalism.

This reckless and continuous compliance to the needs of global capitalist accumulation and its political regime nurtured radicalism in the consciousness of the Nepali downtrodden. Before 1984, this was spontaneous and sporadic. Under neoliberalism, it became general and organised, reaching its zenith in the form of Nepali Maoism. In 1990, it was thought that electoral games and formal democracy will keep this radicalism at bay and the Nepali downtrodden playful. On the contrary, it helped in rooting out the local elements of the Nepali ruling classes and neo-rich, revelling in their newfound proximity to Kathmandu and royal institutions. Thus the prism of caste, ethnic and local consciousness that inverted the reality and united the downtrodden with their oppressors was shattered.

As wealth and growth concentrated in few urban areas in a few hands close to power, close to local political linkages of international investment and finance, the rural-urban divide sharpened. There was an unprecedented intensification in vertical and horizontal inequalities leading to the unity of class war and autonomous identity movements under People's War. The rural poor and migrant workers united with all the other marginalised forces to challenge the basic structure.

The alternative that emerged in the Maoist practice sought for "land to the tillers", endogenous development geared towards the popular need and political institutions best suited to facilitate such development. The energy that this practice unleashed rocked the fragile 1990 arrangement despite the consistent neoliberal pursuit by all the governments that were formed thereafter. However, there could never be a clear unity within the political elite due to increased competition for commissions in administering the aid regime and proximity to global and regional players. At the wake of the parallel governments under the Maoists, this competition was further accentuated as the formal structure's reach of influence narrowed spatially. This overcrowding wrecked the political arrangement that was inaugurated with so much fanfare with the blessings of the global powers. This led to the royal regression, while the democrats for the first time had the time to listen to the radical voices outside the parliament, and thereby allied with the Maoists.

The Koirala government formed after the reinstatement of Parliament in Nepal was, however, quick to realise the significance of the depoliticisation of the economic in order to sustain the Nepali State's role as the local agency for global and regional capital. Negotiations with the Maoists are making the international forces, especially India and the US, increasingly nervous. The rushed visit to India and Mahat's presentation before Indian capitalists was to assure Indian and other 'donors' that they have not deviated from the neoliberal path. The act of presenting the budget without consulting the Maoists is part of this design. What else could be the reason to overload any future regime with so many prior obligations, but to reassure the supremacy of global capitalist interests after the post-April fluidity?

This brings us to another neoliberal ideological element, which is subtly evident in Mahat's statement quoted in the first section, where he seeks to pose democracy as the end not the means to attain economic development. This is intrinsically part of the same project of depoliticisation of the economic. If democracy is the end, you do not need to practise democracy in deciding and pursuing the course of economic development. On the contrary, the elite push for liberalisation will itself engender democracy. So wait and suffer!

Of course, this is the ideal of bourgeois democracy: a system of elite decision and public ratification, as Chomsky defines it. But did Nepali people really come on the streets and suffer bullets for this brand of democracy? Royal regression can go, but the Nepali leadership continues to serve the neo-liberal counter-revolution, that leaves the lives of the labouring majority at the mercy of the ups and downs of the globalising market.

Under the neoliberal regime, capital effectively dodges every regulation and controls politics by threatening to fly away in the wake of any uncomfortable circumstances, while the political elite rationalises its anti-labour policies in the name of making the environment investment-friendly. In the name of removing market imperfections caused by "extra-economic" factors, a new authoritarianism is perpetuated, which Venezuelan Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel calls, "economic authoritarianism". This renders the democratic control over human and natural resources impossible, while it instrumentalises the state in favour of the hegemonic market interests. As Rangel further says in his address to the 13th Meeting of the Latin American Economic System (SELA) Council in 2003, "Authoritarianism that is dressed in democratic forms is difficult to fight. The neoliberal model and economic decisions, which sustain and reproduce it, need a democratic façade to feign legitimacy." Hence, the fetish of elections, as "the beginning and the end of democracy", while economic authoritarianism continues.

(This is a slightly modified version of the article originally published in Combat Law, September-October, 2006)

Ambush Journalism

2006-08-06T16:52:00.000-04:00

Pratyush Chandra & Bela Malik
International Nepal Solidarity Network

A spate of print media reports, mainly in the Times of India, but also elsewhere (kantipuronline.com), point to tendencies in the media that have their provenance in geopolitical games. All the reports taken up here have the Maoists as their point of reference. Many of the articles are just sniper-style attacks, absolutely lacking in substance or authenticity. They are remarkable also for the uniformity of screaming sensationalist headlines.

The Wadhwa affair

On 1 August 2006, Times of India (ToI) carried a series of reports about the plight of Indians in Nepal. The shocking headlines are modified for the Delhi, Mumbai and online editions of the newspaper:

1. Mumbai Edition (page 1) “Maoists force Indians to leave Nepal” (print edition)
2. Delhi Edition (page 1) “Maoists are hounding out Indians: A New Threat emerges in Nepal”
3. Maoists: “We shoot those who don't listen to us” (print edition)
4. “We were very scared”
5. "Trouble for Nepalis here?"

All these reports have been authored or co-authored by Indrani Bagchi, a reporter who talked about India’s "nasty neighbourhood" not very long ago (ToI, August 21, 2005). These reports all bear the stamp of a new breed of journalists who are trying hard to graduate into the growing ranks of jingoist security intellectuals in India, tawdry imitations of the American breed of all-purpose experts, whose essential job is to compete with one another for the patronising approval of the imperialist mafia.

Bagchi has a short “page-13” eyewash about the possible backlash on the Nepalis toiling in India, if the Maoists target Indians (“Trouble for Nepalis here?”). The report is supposed to be based on unnamed sources, who only the writer, from all the journalists in India, has access to. But the tenor of the “report” betrays rabid jingoism, warning the Nepalis in Nepal to “behave” themselves.

It pointedly draws the readers’ attention to the Indian government’s patient tolerance. "Thus far, the Indian government has been remarkably lenient, confining themselves to talking to the Nepalese government quietly on these thorny issues. But if things take an ugly turn, the government in Delhi will have to react, particularly as it affects Indian interests." So, the interests of sleazy businessmen in the gambling trade are to be identified as "Indian interests". Bagchi also introduces the Chinese factor, obviously, to exploit the Indian elite's perpetual fear of China: "If Indian trade and business is threatened, said some business interests in Nepal, it is not inconceivable that Chinese could be used to fill the gap".

As if this weren’t enough, in “Nepal Maoists are hounding out Indians”, Bagchi writes:

"Indians are being hounded out of Nepal by the Maoists. Death threats, 24-hour deadlines for leaving with bag and baggage have been received by Indian hospitality sector employees and businessmen, creating a sense of deep fear in the community.

"The frightened community leaders have gone to the Indian embassy in Kathmandu for protection. Although the foreign office here confirmed that chauvinistic Maoists are driving out Indians, it has surprisingly not taken a public position on the issue -- apparently, it will when the threat triggers a deluge."

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA, India)'s spokesperson clarified on the same day (August 1),
"I have seen the press report in question. I can only confirm to you that we have received a specific complaint in our Embassy by Mr. Rakesh Wadhwa who is the Executive Director of Nepal Recreation Centre Pvt. Limited about the threat received from the Maoist affiliated, All Nepal Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union. On receipt of this complaint, we have taken up the matter strongly with the Government of Nepal through our Embassy."

The MEA official statement went to add, “It is not correct to say, as I have heard, that community leaders are rushing to the Embassy etc. That is factually incorrect.” Aside from the obvious fact that Wadhwa is clearly seeking to utilise diplomatic pressure to resolve labour dispute, possibly in his recreation centre (casino?), is the question of reporting.

The “reporters” did not check with the Indian Embassy, an obvious port of call. Neither did they check the facts with the concerned trade union and workers involved in the dispute to get a balanced report.

Salik Ram Jamarkattel, President of the All Nepal Trade Union Federation (Revolutionary) clarified on a phone interview to Nepal 1 (a TV on Nepal channel run by Nalini Singh) that they have not threatened anybody (Indian business class or otherwise) and that they have no such policy/programme of getting Indian citizens out of Nepal. Further, regarding the threat to the Indian workers about which the reports talk, Jamarkatel said that there was some debate between the management and the workers regarding two Indian employees, and eventually 586 workers voted against them and 27 in favour of them. Then they were removed through a democratic process.

As in May this year, when industrial disputes in Birgunj were projected as extortions, once again the above-mentioned sensational reports about industrial matters dub the Maoist's labour activism as threats to Indian interests. This time too, the Ministry of External Affairs statement said that there “…have been incidents of extortion against businessmen and industrial units including Indian joint ventures in Hetauda-Birgunj area…" and went on to clarify, "I would not like to characterize these as a pattern and to give (say) anything that leads to an alarmist situation."

Obviously, first page news items with such titles in a national newspaper proud of its “pulp” status are bound to be sensational, and we all know why and when such news is placed in such manner. These items follow the pattern of analyses that informed the US-Indian diplomatic exercises ever since the Maoists-Seven Party Alliance (SPA) understanding erupted into an unanticipated popular revolution in April this year. The motivation has been to force a convergence in the mentality of the paranoiac "national" middle classes in India and Nepal, reiterating the illegitimacy of the Maoist by tainting them with new "sins" both against Indians and against their property. This move is also designed to give a handle to opportunists in the SPA's rank-and-file to repudiate the Maoists on the pretext of both Maoism’s incorrigibly violent nature as well as the need to desist from displeasing India. They only served to sensationalise the issue and exploit the rising neo-liberal jingoist paranoia in India and to keep the Maoists on the back foot always having to issue clarifications.

Axis of evil: a case of two news reports

On 26 July 2006, an article “Nepal Maoists aiding the underworld?” filed by Pradeep Thakur in Delhi appeared in the Times of India.

It claimed to be based on information “leaked” from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI), India. The said DRI report finds threats from every corner of the "nasty neighbourhood". Apart from Nepal, the report mentions Indo-Bangladesh and Indo-Myanmar borders used for smuggling arms and ammunition into the country. The 1,800-km Indo-Nepal border which touches Uttaranchal, UP, Bihar, West Bengal and Sikkim is at present the most active and vulnerable sector from the smuggling point of view, the report adds. The Indo-Bangladesh border, stretching over 2,650 km along Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya and West Bengal, is an open border and illegal cross-border movement of people through it is extensive. Another sensitive sector used for smuggling arms and ammunition is India's 2,896-km-long border with Pakistan across the states of J&K, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat. "Smuggling by residents of border villages is suspected despite heavy patrolling by the armed forces," the report notes.

There is again no corroboration.

Then a news report appeared in Kantipuronline on 2 August (server time 9:12:26) by a “Special Correspondent” that claimed that (Nepali) Maoists have links with (Indian) Naxalites. It said that the Indian Minister of State for Home Prakash Jaiswal gave a written reply to the lower house of parliament, Lok Sabha, dated 1 August that Indian Naxals are "reported" to "have ideological and logistic links with Nepalese Maoists. The Naxals, in turn, have links with Islamic organisations like Lashkar-e-Taiba, he is quoted to have added." The links between Indian and Nepali Maoists are news, while the Naxals are assumed to have links with Lashkar-e-Taiba. Thus, by transitivity Nepali Maoists are part of the "terrorist network" and ultimately part of the ISI and Al Qaeda operation to destabilise the "civilised" societies. The report concludes with

"Over 200 districts in 14 Indian states are grappling with the menace of Naxal activities such as bombings of railway and other infrastructures and attacks on security patrols. India has adopted a two-pronged approach --counter insurgency and economic development -- to deal with the crisis described as number one threat to national security."

With such predictably Indian intelligence-speak, it appears that indeed one department of the great Indian State went out on a limb and shot off its mouth.

But that was not the case here. The Government of India’s official Press Information Bureau, had put up a press release on 1 August 2006, 4:27 p.m. IST, began clearly:

"Indian naxal outfits are reported to have ideological and logistic links with Nepalese Maoists. There are no reports to suggest links between Indian naxalites and Lashkar-e-Taiba."

And concluded:

"This information was given by the Minister of State for Home, Shri Sriprakash Jaiswal in written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today."

How does one then explain the Kantipuronline report? Is it a simply a grave mistake, or is it mischief, or, worse, malafide?

Indian Fascists find Bush their "National"

2006-07-26T23:09:00.000-04:00

A Comment

The chamaleon character of Indian fascism does not allow us to rely on its views except on its consistent barbaric Hinduism. However, it is sometimes worthwhile going through the weekly magazine, ORGANISER, of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India's mother fascist organization, to understand how and why it reacts to certain issues in certain manners. One such interesting piece is the edit on the US-India nuclear deal published in this weekly dated July 09, 2006.

When one starts reading this edit, it seems to be a standard write up from an organisation in opposition jealously opposing the achievements of the party in power. It talks about anonymous skeptics saying, "that there are many hidden clauses perhaps in the deal", and finds ruling government's unilateralism "as most worrying". It goes to the extent of accusing the government of destroying "the hard work of Indian scientists with a deal that permits outside interference that emasculates its nuclear options in military and civil sectors. This deal has made India perpetually dependent on the US on nuclear energy. The deal has put restrictions on India’s capacity to have a minimum nuclear deterrent capability." All these are standard salvos targeted against the deal by both left and right.

Definitely, unilateralism as such is not a problem for the RSS. Unilateralism was far graver when the RSS' political wing - the BJP led government tested nuclear bombs at Pokhran in 1998, and made the parties then in opposition, which included the Congress that leads the ruling coalition presently, desperate for credits for at least the researches that made India nuclear-capable. Undeniably, what is happening between India and the US today, including the deal, has a strong foundation in the past, especially the Vajpayee Government. Hence, it is natural for the BJP and RSS to accuse the UPA government for attempting to take all the credits for the deal. So the edit asserts, "[T]he NDA government under Atal Behari Vajpayee proudly declared India a nuclear power in 1998. That is a process which has culminated in the present deal."

The edit makes it a point to differentiate the RSS-BJP's criticism from the Communist opposition to the deal. And in this zeal it clarifies that it does not have anything to say against the deal.

This feeble attack on the deal is surpassed by the tremendous appreciation expressed for it after the two introductory paragraphs. Whatever lacuna it finds with regard to minimum deterrence etc "can be taken care of if the Indian government insists, when the US legislation that seeks to exempt India from the 1954 Atomic Energy Act is taken up in the full floor of the House of Representatives this month end". On the whole, the "deal has presented India with a new opportunity. The other option was to continue with its nuclear isolation, and perpetually be in competition with Pakistan".

Typically, the edit finds pride in Bush supposedly taking the deal "as his most important foreign policy success". And "skeptical Democrats …don't want to be seen as voting against India", that is why they are supporting the deal. What a revelation or pity! The American politicians nowadays go in such deals not for their strategic significance, but more because they are afraid of being seen opposing it. Then, definitely, "it only proves India’s growing clout as a world power. This should make India proud." And all those who are opposing the deal must be part of the "pro-Pakistan lobby" or "inspired by the Islamabad-Beijing nexus"

But most revealing is the final ecstatic couplet - "American companies and the NRIs [Non-Resident Indians] lobbied hard with hostile Congressmen to make the deal possible. The bottom line is enlightened national interest." What does one make out of this separately paragraphed final in the cacophonous arrangements of arguments in the edit? When the domestic opposition is "pro-Pakistani", American companies have "enlightened national [Indian=Aryan] interest" in mind! Certainly, the CEOs of American companies must have found that they are from some lost tribe of Aryans; only then they could find "enlightened national interests" in making the deal possible.

The Historic Agreement in Nepal and the Immediate Challenge

2006-06-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

The Koirala government has effectively utilized its time to ensure that the basic economic framework is in place which would be difficult to change drastically under any future political transformation. Only after this did it become comfortable with the idea of the dissolution of the parliament and the formation of the interim government with the Maoists.

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THE HISTORIC AGREEMENT IN NEPAL AND THE IMMEDIATE CHALLENGE

Pratyush Chandra

Nepal continues to create history. Within a few weeks from now there will be an interim government with the Maoists' participation to pre-empt any further betrayal to the basic immediate demands of the Nepali people for a constituent assembly and for exercising their right to decide the fate of the moribund monarchy and its institutional shields. Definitely, the political developments in Nepal after the April mobilization have approximated to what the parliamentary parties agreed upon in their understanding with the Maoists.

But as Reuters put (June 19), "The pace of change has been as breathtaking as the Himalayan scenery…This week Nepalis are asking themselves if it is all too good to be true". Given the tremendous hostility that the global and regional hegemonies display, to the degree that they still label the Maoists terrorists, and opportunism of the parliamentary leadership, which was till recently struggling within itself to gain royal proximity and to become trusted agency for the external powers' interests, has the situation really arrived for the revolutionaries to put their trust in the vestiges of the ancien régime? However, it is the level of popular vigilance and radicalism that have affected even the grassroots of the parliamentary parties, complementing the revolutionaries' faith in the Nepali downtrodden, that makes them confident to take such unprecedented risk.

Popular Vigilance

After the restoration of their parliamentary privileges, the Nepali democrats have re-baptized the established institutions with new names and cut the wings of the royalty. Of course, all these do help in building the atmosphere amenable for taking the first step towards the resolution of the "Nepali crisis", which is the formation of the Constituent Assembly as the body that will have the capacity to establish the basic rules, norms and 'institutions' necessary for, what Chairman Prachanda calls, "political competition".

The local elites and their global sponsors had thought that the April radicalism on the urban streets of Nepal would die down after the restoration of the old parliament. But they were time and again rebuffed when the vigilant Nepali people took to the streets to check and decry every compromise and regression in the air. The Maoist rejection of the April compromise did not allow this radicalism to sleep. Deuba, Koirala and others known for their moderate royalism and elitist anti-Maoist stance in the past are constantly watched, and any statement and action from them that reek of the design to give space to decadent institutions and their representatives are duly criticized by spontaneous showdowns on the streets.

Not a single day has passed since the April agitation without meetings and gatherings where diverse sections of the Nepali people discussed the future regime and contents of the future constitution. Various sections of the marginalized majority of the Nepali society have been coming and demonstrating in Kathmandu for ensuring their representation and the inclusion of their demands and rights in the future political system. This remarkable spirit of self-determination rejects any compromise that is short of what the Nepali people have promised themselves. It is this spirit that destroyed the "Royal Regression" and continues to eliminate any possibility of the Parliamentary Regression, of making the old parliament an end in itself. And the June 16 agreement between the Maoists and the government is the definite result of this Popular defiance.

The Elitist Game Plan

But the Nepali crisis was never just related to the accommodation of the Maoists and establishing institutions for such accommodation. It is most importantly linked with the political economic empowerment of the Nepali downtrodden. Until and unless the radical needs of the Nepali laboring classes - workers and peasantry - that have found expression in the Maoist movement are not dealt with, the crisis is not going to be resolved. And here lies the tension that is clearly visible in the political developments in Nepal.

Just before the recent June agreement the Prime Minister arrived from a very "successful" trip to India. And as expected the parameter of this success in Nepal is how much monetary aid the leader is able to raise. And India as the new recruit in the Imperial Project struggling to obtain a definite share in the continuous re-division of the world has recently been too ready to fulfill such requests. Hence, the success was unprecedented.

In return, Finance Minister Ram S. Mahat sold the newfound peace and sovereignty, for which the Nepali people have been fighting, to "captains of Indian industry" at a function organized by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII): "This is a new era after the establishment of the people's sovereignty in Nepal. Peace has now been restored after the end of a decade long conflict that had held back the country's socio-economic advancement… It is in this context that our attention is now focused on increased investment, public and private, domestic and foreign." An Indian newspaper, The Hindu (June 10) reports, "Referring to the fact that India faced higher labour and operating costs of production, Mr. Mahat said cheap and abundant labour, educated technical workforce and other less expensive inputs provide investors incentives for producing intermediate products for Indian companies in Nepal."

This economic hyper-activism just before the installation of the interim government is meant to pre-empt any future attempt to radically transform the economic path that the Nepali state and ruling classes have pursued for the last five decades - of economic clientilism and dependency. It seeks to depoliticize the arena of economic policy by overburdening the future political regime with all sorts of economic arrangements that would maintain status quo in the basic political economic structure. The Koirala government has effectively utilized its time to ensure that the basic economic framework is in place which would be difficult to change drastically under any future political transformation. Only after this did it become comfortable with the idea of the dissolution of the parliament and the formation of the interim government with the Maoists.

All this is very aptly complemented by the recent attempt to reduce the "Nepali crisis" and the Democracy Movement to the question of the position of the Nepali royalty and the accommodation of the Maoist "rebels" in the mainstream political system. Clearly, the most formidable way to dilute any radical resolution of this crisis is to simply ignore what it is all about. The recent political discourse of "People's Movement" and "People's Power" which sought to de-"classify" the movement, ignore its class constituents and their diverse aspirations, homogenize it under an amorphous category of the "people" was the first attempt in this regard. Moderate royalists, corporate media (foreign and national) and foreign funded NGOs and "civil society" groups led this santization campaign. Foreign interests too found this discourse worthwhile, as it minimizes the damage, by eliminating the clarity of the demands. It effectively evades the Maoist element and puts the Nepali movement in line with the "color revolutions" of Eastern Europe, coloring the corrupt elements of the old regime to provide a "stable", yet "experienced", leadership to the new.

Obviously on every front, the Nepali ruling classes are trying hard to de-link the question of democracy from the issue of building the essential institutions for fulfilling the popular needs, giving "land to the tillers", political and economic self-determination of the diverse downtrodden sections of the Nepali society. They seek to sweep aside the whole question of endogenous development - of accounting the endogenous resources, putting them under democratic control for fulfilling the popular needs.

The Revolutionary Resolution

On the other hand, the popular classes of Nepal - Nepali workers and peasantry - were for the first time mobilized independently during the People's War, undiluted by the opportunism of the disgruntled sections of the landlord-merchant-moneylending classes and the clientele petty bourgeoisie nurtured as local "nodes" for implementing the social agenda of imperialism. It was in the Maoist movement that for the first time the Nepali landless and near landless, involved in circular national and international migration to meet their ends, found an organized political expression. The rural roots of the Nepali laboring classes even in the secondary and tertiary sectors allowed the popular democratic aspirations unleashed by the Maoist movement to integrate virtually the whole Nepali society behind the New Democracy Movement, despite the claims by other political forces to have achieved democracy in 1990.

Obviously, Prachanda's concept of "political competition", which the Maoists in Nepal have developed in one or the other way right from the time they put forward their 40-point demand in 1996, has to be interpreted in this background. They seek an open competition between the "democracy from above" that the 1990 arrangement established and the aspirations for the "democracy from below" that they have inculcated in the daily lives and struggles of the Nepali downtrodden. In standard terms, at the level of economic policy, it is a competition between the growth-oriented and need-oriented frameworks. With the June 16 agreement, the possibility of such competition as the new level of class struggle has become almost certain. But it will be interesting to see how the revolutionaries in the interim government, when established, are able to undo what the Nepali ruling classes have already achieved to make this competition inherently lopsided in their own favor by imposing the basic framework for pre-empting any conclusive assault from below.

(Modified version of the article written for ML International Newsletter (July-August))

Angels and Demons in the People's Movement in Nepal

2006-05-23T12:03:00.000-04:00

INSN

Today, the talk of people's power in Nepal is the order of the day. Even the Mainstream Media, Moriarty, Manmohan and their intellectual goons are full of that. Evidently they are having hysterical fits intensified by the return of the Cold War paranoia. The possibility of the Maoists' coming over ground and their revolutionary agenda -- targeting the Nepali dependency -- being constitutionalized is definitely a grave crisis for Indo-American imperialism in South Asia. And in order to have a scope for diplomatic engineering, they need sanitized expressions like people's movement, people's power etc without identifying who the people are and without detailing their demands.

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International Nepal Solidarity Network

ANGELS AND DEMONS IN THE PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT IN NEPAL

Pratyush Chandra

Today, the talk of people's power in Nepal is the order of the day. Even the Mainstream Media, Moriarty, Manmohan and their intellectual goons are full of that. Evidently they are having hysterical fits intensified by the return of the Cold War paranoia. The possibility of the Maoists' coming over ground and their revolutionary agenda -- targeting the Nepali dependency -- being constitutionalized is definitely a grave crisis for Indo-American imperialism in South Asia. And in order to have a scope for diplomatic engineering, they need sanitized expressions like people's movement, people's power etc without identifying who the people are and without detailing their demands.

Definitely the mainstream hatred against the Maoists knows no bound. The media campaign to denigrate the Maoists has never been so vigorous as now, showing the crisis and desperation in the imperialist camp -- its failure to color and control the democratic upsurge in Nepal as in East Europe and other parts of the world. As one of the coup organizers against Chavez in Venezuela, Vice Admiral Ramírez Pérez told a private channel just after the coup on April 11, 2002, "We had a deadly weapon: the media." And as Pablo Neruda, once reminded us, "He’s the skulking coward hired to praise dirty hands. He’s an orator or journalist. Suddenly he surfaces in the palace enthusiastically masticating the sovereign’s dejections".

1. People's Movement - a New Phase in the People's War?

Just a cursory reading of the mainstream media headlines on Nepal and the Maoists today shows that they increasingly concentrate on Maoist "extortions" and other "criminal" activities. One needs to just go through the reports under those headlines to have a glimpse of the conscious game plan. Only to cite a couple of examples:

a) As reported, recently, Indian company Dabur suspended its operations in Nepal. The headline and the first paragraph of the report in Telegraph (May 20), one of the mainstream newspapers in India, told it was because the company refused "to buckle under the extortion threats of the Maoist rebels". But the same report subsequently went on: "The Maoist-affiliated trade union, All Nepal Trade Union Federation (ANTUF), on May 15 issued a 22-point charter of demands to all the units in the Bara-Parsa-Birgunj industrial belt. They demanded scrapping of the labour contract system, payment of a minimum monthly wage of Rs 5,000 and provisions of housing, medicare and education facilities to the workers and their families. The union warned of dire consequences if its demands were not met within a week." So the genuine workers movement and its demands in the Nepali sweatshops controlled by Indian imperialists are extortions.

b) The prestigious International Federation of Journalists (IFJ, Asia-Pacific) issued a media release on May 19, where a subheading said - "Maoists attack radio station" (later "attack" was changed to "threaten"). It is obvious that many people who have the habit of reading just headlines will interpret -- Oh! These gun-trotting "polpotists" must have raided the radio station. But no! "The Maoist-aligned All Nepal Trade Union Federation issued a letter on May 12, 2006 accusing the two FM radio stations of exploiting their respective staffs, dismissing staff without reason, extreme excesses and mental torture of the staff, and called for the immediate termination of the Kalika FM station director, alleging him to be a pro-royalist." So, this was an attack!

In order to understand the impact of such unambiguous media reports, one needs to remember how even a great novelist from the Left Jose Saramago went on to dub the great guerrilla movement under the Frente Armada Revolucionaria de Colombia (FARC) as an "armed gang" dedicated "to kidnapping, murdering, violating human rights." One can only imagine what will happen in the case of Nepal.

The international left movement divided into innumerable sects is taking its toll on the Nepali movement too. So we find even sober Marxist analysts indulging in subjective analyses of the peasant movement in Nepal displaying their rich repertoire of inter-sect abuses ready for the Maoists just because they have learnt from the Chinese peasant movement and call themselves Maoists. The irresponsible reactive armchair leftism ever online enamored of the rights discourse and neutrality too in its efforts to justify its own passivity is increasingly involved in this media redbaiting. As James Petras noted in his open letter to Saramago (Counterpunch, December 22, 2004):

"[T]here are many types of "communists" today: Those who stole the public patrimony of Russia and became notable oligarchs; Those who collaborate with the US colonial regime in Iraq; Those who have struggled for forty years in the factories, jungles and countryside of Colombia for a society without classes; And those "communists" who fear the problem (imperialism) and fear the solution (popular revolution) and make it all a question of personal preferences."

All kinds of media and ideological manipulations are going on endeavoring to disrupt the New Phase of People's War in Nepal -- its extension to the urban streets with its own peculiarities, to the urban proletarian struggle - with the increased Maoist interventions in urban mobilization and trade union activities. We find rosy words being showered on the People, while denigrating their War. The rightists, "leftists" and imperialists are all united in this propaganda campaign.

Personalities who were never on the streets to suffer police beatings and face bullets were the first ones to declare victory of the People's Movement with the King's pronouncements. The desperate Indo-US imperialism and its media touts were booed when they prematurely partied after the King's April 21 invitation to the parties to name the prime minister, which every force in the movement duly rejected, including the nervous parliamentary leaders. However the panicky US-EU-India interests ultimately found loyal agency in this "responsible leadership" when it unilaterally accepted the April 24 declaration restoring the defunct parliament.

And thus started the sanitization program -- of talking about People's War vs. People's Movement, of the failure of the first against the successes of the latter as proof of the virtue of non-violence. The hidden agenda is very apparent, that is to restore the sanctified institutions of State Terror while disarming the People by preaching them non-violence. The neutral apostles of Human Rights do this by treating the State's offence at par with the Popular defense. Imperialisms do this via their "Community Faces" too - through well funded "Civil Society" groups and NGOs, who specialize in administering and selling the social agenda of Neoliberalism, providing "Social Cushion" in the face of the growing marginalization and social unrest. As perfect plainclothesmen, all these apostles of non-violence can be spotted here and there in the Nepali unrest with their clear job of policing the movement from within. After the so-called "victory" of April 24, their additional job has been to write anecdotes about their participation in the "Turn-the-other-cheek-Revolution" with the mainstream and "civil society" media ever ready to channel the processes of sanitization and betrayal.

In this regard, it suffices to quote Black revolutionary Malcolm X who was himself the epitome of Popular Suffering, Anger and Movement right in the belly of the beast:

"I don't go for anything that's non-violent and turn-the-other-cheekish. I don't see how any revolution—I've never heard of a non-violent revolution or a revolution that was brought about by turning the other cheek, and so I believe that it is a crime for anyone to teach a person who is being brutalized to continue to accept that brutality without doing something to defend himself. If this is what the Christian-Gandhian philosophy teaches then it is criminal—a criminal philosophy."

2. The Nepali Movement Beyond Sectism

There is far more to a movement than just its personalities and ideologico-cultural labels - Zapatistas, Chavistas and Maoists. However, there is always a mainstream tendency to relegate these movements to a few personalities, symbols and ideological lineages. This definitely benefits the status quo as the movements are effectively portrayed as sects with some innate pathological tendencies. The failures and problems of the older movements whose idioms the present movements have adopted and adapted to mobilize and organize the masses are extrapolated to vilify the latter. The fundamental issues of the changed conjuncture and the composition of the movements are effectively swept aside through this exercise, ideologically arming the status quo to contravene the 'subversive' forces.

Feeding to this is the widespread sectism prevalent within the Left, which aids the hegemonic forces in this regard. The leftist dissection, labeling and libeling are more effective than any repression and mainstream media propaganda in forming and deforming the opinion, as they can be projected as internal dissensions. Karl Marx while summarizing his experience in the First International rightly notes in his letter to Friedrich Bolte (November 23, 1871):

"The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers' movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary."

The recent upheaval in Nepal has once again brought this sectism to the center-stage as people everywhere are trying to cope up with the Maoist element in it. We find Mao's failures and Pol Pot's barbarism discussed more than what the Nepali Maoists have done in Nepal - how they have energized the issues of land, land reforms, decadent forms of gender, national and ethnic oppressions, neo-liberal commercialization, distress migration etc as their central concerns.

In the hands of the Maoists, the issue of the constituent assembly, which was forgotten by the democrats, became a rallying point for uniting the rural and urban downtrodden. It was the Maoists' strength with the growing influence of their slogans and radicalism on the lower leadership and the mass base of the petty bourgeois parliamentary parties that shattered the Nepali ruling machinery's ability to control the growing rage of the people's war. Eventually the 1990 historic "compromise" between the royalty and the democrats brokered by the imperialist interests in the region collapsed leading to the latter's historic alliance with the Maoists in 2005.

This alliance triggered the mass upsurge that we witnessed throughout April this year. The imperialist onlookers were awe-stricken by the response to the General Strike called by the Seven Party Alliance facilitated by the unilateral ceasefire declared by the Maoists in the Kathmandu region with an increased armed assault on the (then Royal) Nepalese Army in other regions. US Ambassador went on with his rumor mongering and presented the situation as "pre-revolutionary" in one of his interviews, which was correct but was meant to terrorize the Nepali petty bourgeois leaders and mobilize international opinion against the revolutionaries. India, who has the history of utilizing the unequal treaties with Nepal for changing the internal political arrangement that best suited India's interests that necessarily used to include a cosmetic democracy, this time was (and is) desperate to preserve the monarchy. However the Indian response has been moderated due to the immense mobilization within India in solidarity with the Nepali democracy movement.

The petty bourgeois leaders of the parliamentary parties feared direct action in the rocking streets and burning fields of Nepal destroying every institution that mothered them. Instead of the path of revolution, they chose the path of legislation, which allows manipulation and compromise. Afraid of the revolutionary 'uncertainty' they found a ready opportunity to withdraw their support to the movement when the King restored their parliamentary privileges. But the movement continued as the Maoists and the grassroots of these parties rejected this compromise and sustained the spontaneous upsurge in popular consciousness, ever vigilant of the old leadership returning to its old habits and forcing some concrete progressive "concessions" that we hear in the news today.

3. Hands Off Nepal: Rebuff the possible 'Plan Nepal'

Today, most dangerously, all imperialist manipulations, media propaganda and the parliamentary drunkenness in Nepal might prepare the background for something like Plan Colombia, which derailed the similar process of overgrounding of the peasant and people's upsurge in Colombia under the leadership of the FARC. The FARC in 1999-2001 suspended their armed struggle and negotiated with the Pastrana regime, insisting on a demilitarized zone, putting forth "a political program of agrarian reform, national public control of strategic resources, and massive public works programs to generate jobs". All these radical measures were destined to destroy the reactionary political economic institutions that allowed the imperialist network to operate in the country, devastating the peasantry, indebting the economy and entrenching corruption in the state structure. Therefore, "with the backing of the US government the Pastrana regime abruptly broke off negotiations and launched an attack on the demilitarized zone" and restarted funding, training and arming the drug traffickers and private armies of the landlords as para-military forces to harass and destroy the people's movement.

There are well-documented evidences of the drug mafia network under the CIA of which "The King of Nepal" has been an important part. Last year there were reports that Crown Prince Paras "has been allegedly in the drug business for seven years, but his stakes and that of the Nepali royal family have grown by leaps and bounds in the last few years…[T]he crown prince is now reported to be operating his network beyond South Asia." (Newsinsight.net, July 6, 2005) With the history of the linkages between the drug trade and the US' counter-insurgency drive, one cannot ignore the possibility of a Plan Nepal in the pipeline until and unless the revolutionary Nepali people are vigilant enough forcing the country's ever shaky "democratic" leadership to facilitate the 'overgrounding' of the Maoists and the crushing of the military leadership trained for imperialist wars, thus thwarting the danger of any imperialist manipulation.

Remember the US insists to keep the Maoists on its terror list, which allows it to intervene and manipulate regimes beyond the seven seas for its domestic security interests. The first thing that the US did after "welcoming" the April 24 proclamation was to sit with the military leaders, not even with the King. The parliamentary forces might remove R(oyalty) from the name of every institution, might add Secular in the official name of Nepal, but the country needs the negation of the whole system nurtured by 200 years of semi-colonialism, that allowed the imperialist powers to use the Nepali people, army and resources as reserve for crushing liberation struggles internationally (in India, Afghanistan among others), as canon-fodder. And all these in exchange with a promise that the Nepali royalty and elite could handshake and dine with the White Royalty, while the Nepali people suffered dual exploitation, and later, in exchange with rents in the form of foreign aid.

In the age of neo-liberalism, when the Nepali soldiers are not sent for killing, they can be used as guinea pigs too for pharmaceutical researches. Recently, there was news about "the American government’s exploitation of Nepali soldiers as human guinea pigs to find a Hepatitis vaccine." As Jason Andrews wrote in The American Journal of Bioethics: "Noting the millions of dollars, military training, and arms that the State Department and Military have been giving to the RNA to help them put down the Maoist rebellion, it seems plausible that the resultant military and economic dependence of the host institution/population (RNA) upon the research sponsor (the U.S. Military) threatened the voluntary nature of the institutional and individual participation in the trial. That is, the RNA probably was not in a good position to say 'no' to the small request by their generous benefactor."

Servility and loyalty towards global imperialism entrenched in the Nepali state structure and elites can never be removed only by legislations -- it needs a complete structural transformation, it needs a revolution, which has just begun and can go anywhere from here. With the growing imperialist counseling to the newly formed Nepali government, and the consensual ideological campaign endeavoring to alienate the movement from its revolutionary leadership through 'neutral' rights discourse and by media, any complacency on the part of the revolutionary masses of Nepal at this juncture will curb the process of democratization of the Nepali society and state.

The Royal Nepalese Army and the imperialist agency in Nepal

2006-05-10T09:13:00.000-04:00

INSN

Ensuring a premature disarming of the Maoists, without crushing the R(oyalty) of the RNA, is the prime game plan of the international hegemonies and their local cahoots in Nepal.Only such design will ensure the demobilisation of the revolutionary intent of Nepal's downtrodden that has been heightened during the decade-long People's War, politically rejuvenating every section of the society. The imperialist network fears that this rise of the red scourge in this supposed "backwater" of global capitalism will blow away the mirage of the new Asian "miracles" in the region, who have been long fishing their booty in these same "backwaters".

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International Nepal Solidarity Network

The Royal Nepalese Army and the imperialist agency in Nepal

Pratyush Chandra

After King Mahendra (Gyanendra's father) and his Royal Nepalese Army (RNA), overthrew his government in 1960, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Nepal BP Koirala asked himself in his jail diary: "Is the democratic system in Nepal compatible with the preponderance of the Nepalese Army?" After five decades of the democracy movement in Nepal, this question still haunts the Nepalis. Mesmerised by the royal proximity, Nepali democrats have time and again lapsed into amnesia, comfortably and willingly. But by one or another way the question has found expression and has been answered negatively in the popular upsurges and daily struggles of the downtrodden.

As Nepal's foremost revolutionary leader Prachanda stated, just after the royal coup in February 2005, "Ultimately, the so-called royal proclamation of February 1 has not only exposed the irrelevance of reformism in the Nepalese politics, but also shattered the collective lethargy of the parliamentary political politics.". Although the reinstatement of the old parliament once again poses the danger of the relapse of the "collective lethargy", the politically charged Nepali masses are ever watchful of the parliamentarist deviations. Along with the issue of forming the Constituent Assembly, the question of controlling the RNA is going to be one of the decisive (and divisive) elements in the course of the Nepali democratic revolution.

This army has been the major force behind enforcing the betrayal of the democratic aspirations of the Nepali people for more than five decades. Nevertheless, as Marxist-Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai rightly notes, "Any ordinary student of military science would know, the victory or defeat of a particular army ultimately depends more on its social class base and the political goal." And, "the feudal reactionary nature of the royal army and its complete hegemonisation by the ruling Shah-Rana families may be gauged from the fact that of the thirty commander-in-chiefs since 1835, twenty-six belonged to the ruling Shah-Ranas and four to their close courtiers, Thapa-Basnets. Hence, there should be no doubt, at least to the progressive and modern-minded, that the current fight in Nepal is précised for ending this age-old feudal tyranny and to usher in a real democracy suited to the 21st century."

The RNA has been the major "saboteur", "with the prompting of some foreign powers" (whom we are all familiar with) in every peace talk in Nepal. Its time-tested principal method of sabotage is senseless massacres of the civilians in the name of defending its soldiers against the revolutionaries while the peace process is going on. In 2003, "the most serious and provocative incident was the massacre of nineteen unarmed political activists by the RNA in Doramba (Eastern Nepal) on the very day of start of third round of talks on August 17". Again, a few days back on April 29, on the eve of GP Koirala's swearing in ceremony as a result of the mass upsurge that we saw recently, "Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) launched an aerial attack on a peaceful mass meet called by the CPN (Maoist)… An RNA chopper rained bullets on the mass meet organised in the jungle adjoining a human settlement, where around 10,000 civilians were gathered for the program".

The RNA is definitely a major concern, as it gets more and more desperate about its own future with the debilitating royalty. International powers that have been arming the reactionary RNA are already having meetings with its chief and other officials, enquiring about their Will.

The recent visit of US Assistant Secretary for South Asia, Richard Boucher is a pointer in this regard. He did not meet with the beleaguered monarch, rather chose to remain satisfied with his direct meeting with the RNA chief Pyar Jung Thapa.

On April 3, in a press conference after the meeting, Boucher was asked whether he thinks "the Royal Nepalese Army is going to be one of the decision makers in future instead of parliament".

Boucher's reply was, "I don't think I quite used the word decision maker, but I said something like that. I think that the army is going to have a very important role to play. The army has to help defend the nation; it has to help defend the nation against threats. They also have to be able to implement the ceasefire, and carry it out. So I wanted to check with the army and see, first of all, that they were supporting the political process, that they were supporting the civilian leaders in Nepal, and second of all talk to them about how they saw their job in the days ahead, and how, when a civilian leadership wanted us to, we could support them in the future."

What a mode of professing a civilian control over the RNA! A US official makes an official visit to find the will of the Army chief directly, whether he supports the political process or not, instead of asking the government to ensure the submission of the RNA to the civilian control.

However this incident is not at all surprising, since US Ambassador James Moriarty's chief job after the 12-point agreement between the parliamentary forces and the Maoists last year has been to defend the RNA's existence in every significant statement. He has been trying hard to mobilise the moderate and wavering democrats and former prime minsiters, like GP Koirala and Sher Bahadur Deuba who were the main exponents of using the RNA to crush People's War till recently. Replicating Conan Doyle's Professor Moriarty - a Supervillain or the "Napoleon of Crime", the US Ambassador time and again has been tying to make the democrats, who lack Moriarty's "common sense", understand the virtue of not weakening the RNA, which he calls, in one of his nauseating self-proclaimed "provocative" speeches, "the parties' one logical source of defense", despite the well-known fact that it has never respected the self-styled democratic leadership.

If we can learn something from the US's history of imperialist intervention and of nurturing military juntas, we can at least be sure of the US's desperation in Nepal to preclude the Nicaragua-type situation, where the revolutionaries disbanded Somoza's army, and even after the Sandinistas' defeat in 1990, the Sandinista Army remained as the popular national army and the prime vehicle of democratisation (notwithstanding a considerable dilution of the army's revolutionary character). As an ex-Nicaraguan Army chief Joaquín Cuadra Lacayo said in the year 2000: "Despite everything the Sandinista revolution eventually led to free elections and democracy, and...the Sandinista People's Army became the National Army of Nicaragua. For the first time in the history of Latin America, an army that was born as a guerrilla force and matured as part of a government became an army for the nation without political overtones." In spite of the fact that the ruling elite of Nicaragua has reversed the major gains of the Sandinista Revolution, and the military is completely integrated with the State, the popular revolutionary past of the Army officials and Sandino's portraits in military headquarters and offices still haunt the US and the local elites. An obvious question for the global hegemony today is: where will the army be once the new radicalism that is gripping Latin America affects Nicaragua? Obviously, the Nicaraguan arrangement can never keep paranoiac imperialists at ease. Therefore ensuring a premature disarming of the Maoists, without crushing the R(oyalty) of the RNA, is the prime game plan of the international hegemonies and their local cahoots in Nepal.

Only such design will ensure the demobilisation of the revolutionary intent of Nepal's downtrodden that has been heightened during the decade-long People's War, politically rejuvenating every section of the society. The imperialist network fears that this rise of the red scourge in this supposed "backwater" of global capitalism will blow away the mirage of the new Asian "miracles" in the region, who have been long fishing their booty in these same "backwaters". With the struggle of democratisation at every level succeeding in Nepal, and the possibility of an open mobilisation, by the "Maoism in the 21st century", of the proletarians, semi-proletarians and poor peasantry, there is a danger that the class conflict will spread throughout the region, providing "plenty of recruits for Maoist armies and other forms of resistance to global capitalism", as Alex Callinicos puts it.

In Nepal, The Saga of Compromise and Struggle Continues

2006-05-01T07:13:00.000-04:00

April 26, 2006

Pratyush Chandra

As sniffing K9s of the global hegemony, the corporate media around the globe smelled Maoist activists' and pamphlets' presence in the post- April 6 protests as proofs of the Maoist infiltration. The BBC reported on April 24: "There are very real fears that Maoist rebels could well use the opportunity to fill the void and take control of the protests. Maoist activists are already believed to have been present at many of the rallies, and there have been several instances of Maoist campaign pamphlets being distributed among the protesters. The last thing the parties want is for the protests to spin out of control and for the Maoists to move in, a view that is fast gaining currency."

Such rumour mongering by the corporate media is definitely sufficient to send their own masters to psychotic fits of Global McCarthyism. It can also buy a compromise between the King and the anti-communist section of the Nepali middle class trained during the US' Cold War aid regime who grabbed the leadership of many moderate democratic parties after the 1990 arrangement. However, it means nothing to the local population. They know that the Maoists were the only force facilitating their politicisation to the degree that they could sustain mass strikes for so many days.

Of course, the 7+1 alliance was a great jolt to the vastness of "popular exclusion" that the Nepalese polity and its sponsors have till now maintained by utilising the weapon of "divide and rule". And we saw literally a new version of Samudra Manthan (churning of the seas) and the whole Nepal was drowned in the resulting tide. The General Strike in Nepal that continued to gain momentum since April 6 demolished the floodgates already tattered in the course of Maoists' continuous assaults for a decade. These gates erected during the six decades of continuous betrayals forged and financed by the complex international network that combines the global, regional and local ruling classes had trapped and 'subalternised' the confidence and consciousness of the Nepalese downtrodden.

Today the gates are nowhere. Throughout Nepal curfews and "shoot-on-sight" orders have been enforced and defied. "Emotionally charged sea of the masses in the streets manifests that the liberation forever from the feudal monarchy, which has been betraying since the past 250 years in general and 56 years in particular, is the earnest and deep aspiration of the Nepalese people" (Prachanda's Statement, April 22).

Justin Huggler aptly captured the scenario for Independent (UK) on April 22 after King Gyanendra did his first bid to buy off the leadership by offering the protesting parties the Prime-Ministership. "Looking tense before the camera, King Gyanendra said: 'We are committed to multi-party democracy and a constitutional monarchy. Executive power of the kingdom of Nepal, which was in our safekeeping, shall from this day be returned to the people.'" On the other side of the political fence: "'Death to the monarchy!' they chanted as they marched. And as they walked, the people of Kathmandu lined the streets to cheer them on. This was a nation on the march. Several police lines fell back before them. Soldiers guarding the airport grinned and gave them signs of support."

After the King's second bid on April 24 once again the million-dollar question remains "whether the announcement will be welcomed as readily on the street, where hundreds of thousands of Nepalis have called for the monarchy to be abolished" (Huggler in Independent, April 25), despite the fact that the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) has accepted the King's offer to reinstate the Parliament, dissolved in 2002 on the recommendation of one of the leaders in the SPA. Guardian (April 25) reports, "There is a danger that crowds may take to the streets in defiance of the political leadership. Yesterday, speakers at rallies in the capital's suburbs repeatedly said they would not be "tricked" by the king."

What we witness in Nepal today is a unique dialectic of spontaneity and organization in full operation that characterises any great movement. "The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process" and the 'leaders' are forced to or willingly "make themselves merely the mouthpiece of the will and striving of the enlightened masses, merely the agents of the objective laws of the class movement". (Rosa Luxemburg) At least one section of the political leadership is conscious of this dialectic, when it says: "[T]his movement has not now remained to be a movement only of either seven political parties or the CPN (Maoist) or civil society or any particular group but as a united movement of all the real democratic forces, who have been repeatedly deceived by the feudal autocratic monarchy since 1949." (Prachanda & Baburam Bhattarai's statement, April 17, 2006)

By rejecting the present compromise the Maoists show their respect to the Nepalese downtrodden who fought valiantly for the basic demand to form the constituent assembly - the institution that will give them at least a say in the process of 'democratisation' curtailing its patrician character and may serve as the foundation of the new democratic Nepal. Even though the wavering petty bourgeois parliamentary leaders afraid of the radicalised masses unilaterally withdrew their support and rejoiced on the restoration of their privileges, let us hope the Maoist rejection and the grassroots unity across various political formations built in the yearlong united people's struggle will keep them sober.

A commenter on International Nepal Solidarity Network's website (insn.org) thus reacted to the news of the King's announcement:

"In protests, for a moment, people from all classes were present… They will once again split into the political camps, who best represent their class interests. The only ‘people’ who will continue to be on the streets are those who were already there on the streets and fields before the protests - who will continue to fight to survive. The ‘protests’ have at least given them a rough map of the political scene of Nepal, and heightened their confidence and consciousness."

However, we must admit that the recent protests marked a new phase in the Nepalese struggle for democracy and self-determination. From now onwards nothing remains consecrated in Nepal, beyond popular scrutiny and criticism. Every section of the society is politically charged. We see democracy in action in the streets of Nepal.

Tariq Ali rightly puts (Guardian, April 25): "What the uprising in Nepal reveals is that while democracy is being hollowed out in the west, it means more than regular elections to many people in the other continents". It means the people's right to root out their own poverty, the democratic control of the Nepalese human and natural resources, ending the caste, national and gender privileges and discriminations… It means to have a Constitution that secures all these fundamental rights, and for that they demand a constituent assembly.

Versions: Counterpunch, Countercurrents, INSN, ZMag

Pure-and-Simple Revolutions in Nepal and Venezuela

2006-04-21T17:39:00.000-04:00

For a decade or so, the media has been talking about new color and flower revolutions with colorful revolutionaries like "orange" ones in Ukraine. But, after so many sponsored, colored and sanitized revolutions, as additions in the market of "a series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, politics without politics the other deprived of its otherness" (1), once again we are witnessing pure-and-simple revolutions and revolutionaries, in Latin America and Asia (and of course, there are many in the streets of Paris, and among the immigrants in the US, too). Nepal and Venezuela are two hot centers of pure-and-simple revolutions.

Full Text: COUNTERPUNCH

And Now, Nepalis say- Ya Basta!!!

2006-04-10T18:49:00.000-04:00

EXTREME COMPARISONS?
A COLLAGE

Pratyush Chandra

"But today, we say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. We are the inheritors of the true builders of our nation. The dispossessed, we are millions, and we thereby call upon our brothers and sisters to join this struggle as the only path, so that we will not die of hunger due to the insatiable ambition of a … dictatorship led by a clique of traitors who represent the most conservative and sell-out groups…For hundreds of years we have been asking for and believing in promises that were never kept. We were always told to be patient and to wait for better times. They told us to be prudent, that the future would be different. But we see now that this isn't true. Everything is the same or worse now than when our grandparents and parents lived. Our people are still dying from hunger and curable diseases, and live with ignorance, illiteracy and lack of culture. And we realize that if we don't fight, our children can expect the same. And it is not fair. Necessity brought us together, and we said "Enough!" We no longer have the time or the will to wait for others to solve our problems."

How honestly these words represent the Nepalese people's struggle for freedom and democracy, for self-determination. But the people who uttered these words lived very far from Nepal, and perhaps the majority of them knew nothing about the Nepalese people and their struggle. These were the words of the Zapatistas declaring war against the Mexican state from Lacandona Jungle (December 31 1993). They expressed the sentiments of not only the Mexican Indians but of everyone who are waging the "struggle that is necessary to meet the demands that never have been met by [the] State [in their region]: work, land, shelter, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace".

On April 9, the 4-day general strike in Nepal was supposed to end, but it continued. An activist said, "The Nepali people want the king to abdicate and he needs to go. There is no other option, otherwise the country will continue to see riots and demonstrations."

Guardian further reports, "On the border with India, hundreds of demonstrators stormed government buildings to declare Nepal's Chitwan district the kingdom's "first republic". Troops later drove them out. It has also been reported that students in smaller towns have taken to the streets with the slogan "death to Gyanendra"."

The New York Times quotes the editor of the Nepali Times who wrote, "As we write this on Sunday noon, public anger is boiling over…This is a surprising uprising: even without the parties, neighborhoods have got together to set up road barricades, stoning police and pouring out into the streets to defy curfews. Each day that passes, the pro-democracy chariot is picking up momentum."

This saying strangely connects once again the struggles on the two corners of the globe with each other. Well-known Marxist Harry Cleaver noted in 1994 in his Introduction to 'Zapatistas! Documents of the New Mexican Revolution', "Today, the social equivalent of an earthquake is rumbling through Mexican society. Every day brings reports of people moving to action. Campesinos [villagers] and Indigenous peoples completely independent of the EZLN [Zapatista Army of National Liberation] are taking up its battle cries and occupying municipal government buildings, blockading banks, seizing lands and demanding "Libertad." Students and workers are being inspired not just to "support the campesinos" but to launch their own strikes throughout the Mexican social factory."

A prominent pro-democracy and peace activist, Mathura P Shrestha (a retired professor and former Secretary of Health, aged 72), arrested for endangering the security and sovereignty of the country poses Lokatantra (full democracy) against formal democracy in his interview to Lucia de Vries, “Lokatantra is the rule of the people. Nepal was democratic until four hundred years ago. People didn’t vote but they talked until a consensus was reached. Only the powerful voted… What I am researching now is how the dictatorship of the proletariat can be transformed into the rule of the proletariat. If a constituent assembly is properly elected we can establish the rule of the people. I do not think ceremonial monarchy goes together with lokatantra…”

But the US State Department still chants, "The United States calls upon the King to restore democracy immediately and to begin a dialogue with Nepal’s constitutional political parties. It is time the King recognizes that this is the best way to deal with the Maoist insurgency and to return peace and prosperity to Nepal." It refuses to acknowledge that insurgency is general, just backed by the Maoists and democrats. India too refuses to listen to the unrest in Nepal and demonstrations of solidarity in its own streets.

But, again stealing words from Cleaver, "[L]earning to listen is not always easy, even today. To clear the way, we have to learn to cut through the "noise" of official discourse, to recognize and avoid debates over how to "solve" the crisis within the old frameworks. We have to learn to decode the official jargon, to cut through the euphemisms that cloak the "business as usual"."

On April 8, "the rallies occurred on the 16th anniversary of Nepal's first pro-democracy movement, when the present king's brother and predecessor, Birendra, accepted demands for parliamentary elections. Political activists say the king needs to "understand the public". (Guardian) Officially three people died in Nepal in police firings, and Nepalese Home Minister vows, "We will get stricter now to preserve law and order and keep the situation normal"(BBC), as the general strike becomes indefinite.

The Nepalese Royalty's pig-headedness has proved at least to the Nepalese people, what Baburam Bhattarai said in his reply to the International Crisis Group in 2003, "Laat ko bhoot baat le mandaina" (the devil of force won't listen to persuasion).

And, today the Nepali says in her own way: YA BASTA! Enough is enough!!! A protester told Reuters news agency, "We are not afraid of bullets, we have to get democracy at any cost and we will get it." (BBC)

[For latest news and views on Nepal, visit International Nepal Solidarity Network's website]

Ceasefire and Democracy in Nepal - the Global Semantics

2006-04-07T00:39:00.000-04:00

The Maoists in Nepal have once again demonstrated exemplary resilience by declaring a unilateral and indefinite ceasefire on April 3, as proof of their commitment to their understanding with the "democrats". They ceased all military actions in the Kathmandu Valley considering "the requests from the seven-party alliance and from the civic societies"...

Today, the defiant resistance by Castro’s Cuba, the possible comeback of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the resolution of the Nepalese ‘problem’ with an active Maoist participation re-establish the link between the present “Post-Cold War” revolutionary democratic movements and the revolutionary movements of the past...

Full Text: ZNET INSN COUNTERCURRENTS

Hobson's Imperialism And The Desperate Uncle Sam As Naked As Ever

2006-03-29T23:31:00.000-05:00

Countercurrents
March 29, 2006

John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940) was an 'economist' who conceptualised modern imperialism for the first time. Though never formally accepted in academia, he could never be ignored, as he overwhelmed the discipline of economics by writing vociferously and touching every field of economic analysis. Although never consistent in his own political conviction, he influenced many diehard revolutionary internationalists and radical pacifists before, during and after the World War I. He is better known as a precursor to the Marxist interpreters of economic internationalisation, finance capital and European politics, despite his avowed liberalism. It is in line with this fact that we generally see him as an economist, giving 'objective' analyses of economic processes leading to the world war.

However, any cursory reading of his classic work, 'Imperialism: A Study' (1902) shows that he was far more than an 'objectivist'. The tenor in his work on imperialism makes him a great persuader against the imperialist motivation of the British state, its policy of colonisation and militarism, and the interest groups driving these policies. The economic analysis is simply a part of this overall project. Even if his economic analysis runs out of gas in the changed circumstances today, and seems to be timed without much contemporary relevance, his powerful indictment of jingoism, militarism and "economic parasites of imperialism" makes him immortal.

Hobson photographs the whole imperial machine instituted by finance capital vividly where we find philanthropists, media and politicians complementing the military's work. He notes the blurring of nationalism/patriotism and expansionism. His description in this regard vividly captures even the post-Cold War imperialist rage today.

FOR THE COMPLETE ARTICLE: CLICK COUNTERCURRENTS

Nepal & Venezuela

2006-03-20T09:37:00.000-05:00

INSN

The comparison between Latin American experiences and Nepal’s Maoist movement is quite meaningful. Both aim towards political exercises unprecedented in the world revolutionary movement. In Latin America (Venezuela, Argentina and others) and Nepal, we are literally witnessing, what Marx hypothesized, “the whole superincumbent strata of official society [of global capitalism] being sprung into the air”.

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Nepal & Venezuela

Pratyush Chandra

INSN, DISSIDENT VOICE, COUNTERCURRENTS, ZNET

Any serious and honest survey of the Maoist movement in Nepal can convey the truth that its main agenda has been to establish the essential democratic institutions that will allow a devolvement of political economic power to the masses. The Maoists can challengingly claim that in every negotiation they have indulged, with the King and the parliamentary forces, they have asked for an unconditional constituent assembly, during whose election different political forces can go with their respective choice of political structure and ask for the people’s mandate. And, of course, they have demanded a subservience of the national army to the democratic government. Only a democratically elected constituent assembly having representatives from the exploited and oppressed majority has the capacity to provide a democratic constitution. Otherwise a constitution is bound to be an eclectic compromise between the already empowered vested interests, as it has happened many times in Nepal, and in many other ‘democratic’ countries. On the other hand, which modern nation can openly deny the ‘professionalisation’ of the armed forces, their ability to harm the democratic interests incapacitated and their subservience to those interests?

The Maoists have time and again emphasised their sufficiently theorised commitment to multi-party republican democracy and to 'political competition' that it represents. They know that the fight for their maximal goal, for socialism and communism has to be long drawn, taking into consideration “the balance in the class struggle and international situation”. But as Prachanda simultaneously stresses, this position “is a policy, not tactics”.(1) Does this stress diminish the revolutionary agenda of the Maoists? Not at all. When Mao called for putting politics in command and guns under this command, he meant the readiness of the revolutionary forces to change according to the exigencies of class struggle and revolution. What the Maoists are struggling for is the establishment of the basic political structure that will release the energy of the Nepalese exploited and oppressed masses towards an intensified class struggle, creating conditions for an unhindered process of self-organisation of the working class.

In this regard, well-known Indian Marxist Randhir Singh’s assessment of the place of the Nepalese movement among the post-Cold War revolutionary movements is quite apt: “Latin America is in fact emerging as a particularly important zone of class struggle against international capital. Just as, far away, on another continent, Nepal exemplifies that, odds notwithstanding, people will continue fighting for life beyond the established capitalist or feudal social orders. In this revived revolutionary process, the Chavez-led Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela apart, the Communist Party (Maoist)-led movement in Nepal – popularly known as People’s War – is undoubtedly the most significant popular struggle for freedom and democracy in the world today.”(2)

This comparison between Latin American experiences and Nepal’s Maoist movement is quite meaningful. Both aim towards political exercises unprecedented in the world revolutionary movement. In Latin America (Venezuela, Argentina and others) and Nepal, we are literally witnessing, what Marx hypothesized, “the whole superincumbent strata of official society [of global capitalism] being sprung into the air”.(3)

In Venezuela (and Latin America, in general), the complexity of the revolutionary transformation is engendered by the lingering of the capitalist state machinery and hegemony, on the one hand, and on the other, the contradiction of bourgeois democracy, which has put revolutionary forces at its helm. In this situation, there exists a tremendous pressure within the capitalist state and society o de-radicalise the social forces behind the upheaval by accommodating their leadership. The strength of the revolutionary forces, on the other hand, will be determined by their ability to challenge the lingering hegemony and the danger of their own accommodation by facilitating the task of building and sustaining alternative radical democratic organisations (“self-government of the producers”), while subordinating the state to them. “Only insofar as the state is converted from an organ standing above society into one completely subordinate to it’ can the working class ‘succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew’.”(4) Asambleas Barriales (neighbourhood assemblies) in Argentina and the practice of co-management (a partnership between the workers of an enterprise and society) in Venezuela seek to transcend the officialised practice of statist socialism and ‘sectionalist’ self-management by establishing an incipient 'social' control over production.

Modern capitalism relies mainly on representative democracy as the political system to reproduce the general conditions of capitalist accumulation. Therefore, “the crucial problem for the people in charge of affairs is to be able to get on with the business in hand, without undue interference from below, yet at the same time to provide sufficient opportunities for political participation to place the legitimacy of the system beyond serious question… Parliamentarism makes this possible: for it simultaneously enshrines the principle of popular inclusion and that of popular exclusion.” It ‘de-popularises’ policy-making and limits the impact of class contradiction at the workplace and market place upon the conduct of affairs.(5)

Hence, the practice of “participative and protagonistic democracy in society as a whole, the idea of people communally deciding on their needs and communally deciding on their productive activity” is definitely a grave crisis for global capitalism. This practice shoos all ‘metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties’ that characterise market relations (presenting the capitalist reality in distorted manner), dividing the collective worker into various identities (consumers, citizens, unemployed, formal and informal sector workers) and devise competition among them. It reclaims the right of determining one’s own destiny, to realise the “creative potential of every human being and the full exercise of his or her personality in a democratic society”, as envisaged in the Bolivarian constitution of Venezuela.(6)

In Nepal, on the other hand, regular betrayals of the democratic movement by Monarchy and democrats have time and again scuttled the potential emergence of even the minimum semblance of popular democracy. Therefore, the movement was restricted to petty bourgeoisie, who were heavily fed by international aid and its 'cut and commission' regime. Whenever the movement seemed to integrate with the struggle for the basic needs of the poor peasantry, landless and proletarians, a compromise was forged curbing the radical potential of the movement.

The success of the Maoists lies in the fact that they integrated the remotest corner of the Nepalese society with the mainstream struggle for popular democracy. They exposed the class content of the formal democratic exercises undertaken in the 1990s. They demonstrated how the formal democratic institutions that emerged in Nepal with the arrangement between the royalty, landlords and the upper crust of petty bourgeoisie along with global imperialism were designed to integrate the neo-hegemonic interests, the local agencies of commercialisation, dependency and primitive accumulation.

In this regard, we must not forget that the armed struggle was the major catalyst in the achievements of the Maoist movement. Firstly, it was a veritable boost to self-confidence and self-defence of the oppressed and exploited in Nepal. Secondly, it allowed sustaining politicisation and democratic practice of the downtrodden undiluted by the hegemonic coercive and consensual influences. The virtual emergence of dual power could become possible only if it had its own defence mechanism. The decade long people’s war and radical land reforms undertaken in the countryside with alternative incipient democratic institutions have radicalised the Nepalese society. It halted the continuous drainage of the Nepalese natural and human resources for economic profit, leisure and security of the external hegemonic forces, buffered by the Nepalese landlords, merchants and corporates under the leadership of the royalty. Time and again all these forces combined to scuttle the democratic aspirations of the Nepalese society in the name of maintaining stability, however allowing a “controlled transformation of the economy to suit the imperialist calculus”.(7) The Maoist upsurge liberated the potentialities in the Nepalese polity and economy.

The recent alliance between the Maoist and other democratic forces in Nepal can be seen, on the one hand, as winning back of the “middle forces” (using Mao's phrase) and on the other, it signifies a nationwide unity among the exploited and oppressed sections of the society. Further, it marks the willingness to challenge the formal ‘democracy from above’ by the incipient ‘democracy from below’, to allow a “political competition” between them. It is in this respect we can understand the Maoist movement as part of the global struggle for freedom, democracy and socialism. We will have to wait and see, what specificities the Nepalese struggle would acquire. Or, will it be another saga of historic betrayal forged by the imperialist forces and the local ruling coalition?

Seeing the way global imperialism has been once again hyperactive with its ideologies and armies, one can only rely upon the working classes of the world to defend these movements for social transformation with their “fraternal concurrence”. They must realise their “duty to master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective governments; to counteract them, if necessary, by all means in their power; when unable to prevent, to combine in simultaneous denunciations, and to vindicate the simple laws or morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the rules paramount of the intercourse of nations. The fight for such a foreign policy forms part of the general struggle for the emancipation of the working classes.”(8)

Notes:

(1) Interview with Prachanda, The Hindu (excerpts published on February 8, 9 and 10, 2006)

(2) Randhir Singh (2005), Foreword in Baburam Bhattarai, Monarchy Vs. Democracy: The Epic Fight in Nepal, Samkaleen Teesari Duniya, New Delhi, pp.vii.

(3) Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (1848), The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Chapter 1).

(4) Michael Lebowitz (2003), Beyond Capital (2nd Edition), Palgrave, pp.196

(5) Ralph Miliband (1982), Capitalist Democracy in Britain, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp.38

(6) Michael Lebowitz (2005), Constructing Co-Management in Venezuela: Contradictions along the Path.

(7) Baburam Bhattarai (2003), The Nature of Underdevelopment and Regional Structure of Nepal: A Marxist Analysis, Adroit Publishers, Delhi, pp.46

(8) Karl Marx (1864), Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association.

Bush's Ports Affair

2006-03-13T06:09:00.000-05:00

Countercurrents

Finally Dubai Ports World has decided to transfer US ports business to a "US entity". Bush must have felt relieved along with his colleagues (both for and against the ports deal). They must have patted each other for effectively creating a drama around the deal that achieved two ends - it has homogenised and 'jingoised' the American opinion to a certain degree, while giving a softening touch to the warrior image of Bush.

Full Text: click COUNTERCURRENTS

Dinner with George and Manmohan: Bush in India

2006-03-03T13:40:00.000-05:00

COUNTERPUNCH

The Joint US-India statement issued after the meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Singh on March 2 clearly reflects the Indian approval of the principles on which the US hegemony is established globally. The five sections, in which the statement is divided, to summarize the broad areas of cooperation, enumerate the basic concerns of the US hegemony, and India's willingness to cooperate.

Full Text: http://counterpunch.org/chandra03032006.html

Recent Developments in Nepal: Problems and Prospects

2006-03-03T06:33:00.000-05:00

Nepal is in a state of continuous flux. On February 1, Gyanendra celebrated the first anniversary of his "royal coup", while democratic forces denounced it with ever greater strength and unity among themselves. Since the beginning of this year, there has been a tremendous expression and repression of democratic voices; arrests, police vandalism, demonstrations, strikes and street fights have become a daily routine; elections to local bodies turned out to be farcical (“hollow”, as the US Department of State prefers to call them), because of the boycott by the democratic parties reinforced by a general strike imposed by the Maoists… What exact shape this fluidity will take is still unclear, however one can trace the pattern.

Recent Developments in Nepal: Problems and Prospects

ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER, MARCH-APRIL 2005

Pratyush Chandra

Nepal is in a state of continuous flux. On February 1, Gyanendra celebrated the first anniversary of his "royal coup", while democratic forces denounced it with ever greater strength and unity among themselves. Since the beginning of this year, there has been a tremendous expression and repression of democratic voices; arrests, police vandalism, demonstrations, strikes and street fights have become a daily routine; elections to local bodies turned out to be farcical (“hollow”, as the US Department of State prefers to call them), because of the boycott by the democratic parties reinforced by a general strike imposed by the Maoists… What exact shape this fluidity will take is still unclear, however one can trace the pattern.

The Naked King and the Imperial Dilemma

The Maoists withdrew their unilateral 3+1 month ceasefire on January 2 this year. Since then we have seen curfews, elections, boycotts and a general strike, which provided us the opportunity to assess the relative strength of monarchy and the democratic forces. The King tried to block rallies and demonstrations, but his brutality could not match the tide of the democratic aspirations of the Nepalese people. Immediately, the strength of the opposition forces too was tested. The King planned an institutionalised demonstration of his strength with the Panchayat (local bodies) elections. The popular defiance reinforced by a general strike called by the only concrete people’s power existing in Nepal fizzled out the charm of the royal fanfare, and there he found himself naked before the whole world - this way they knew him and he knew himself!!!

The US and India wailed. Not for the fate of the Nepalese royalty, but for being forced into an impossible situation, to make an impossible choice. Their inability to convince the King of his “illegitimate” games and their consequences has been stark. They are afraid of making any clear choice, since the two clear choices available before them will bring crisis to the global imperial regime.

They know that supporting monarchy, on the one hand, will de-legitimise the post-Cold War ideology of ‘democracy propagation’, which they cannot afford to do just for Nepal and South Asia. On the other hand, at least for India, which is presently the newest member in the US-led imperialist consortium, this choice is devastating as the unpredictable nature of the Nepalese monarchy is not at all beneficial for its political economic interests.

But a clear-cut support to republican democracy too is equally untenable for them, if not more. Because of the level of political consciousness among the oppressed and exploited masses of Nepal, any free leverage to them will sweep away the Nepalese dependence. Further, the imperialists are aware of the limited capacity, reach and influence of the ‘democratic’ political elites in Nepal. These elites are under constant pressure from their own mass base, which has been in direct interaction with the revolutionary forces in the country. This fact considerably reduces the manoeuvring capacities of the Nepalese parliamentary forces in comparison to the elites in other democracies. Hence, the global imperial strategy is stuck.

The Ceasefire, 12-point Agreement and Democracy from Below

The political elites in Nepal have traditionally been nurtured through global aid politics in its aided pedagogical institutions. Aid has been a major post-World War II instrument of finance capital geared towards “creating an extraordinarily dense and widespread network of relationships and connections which subordinates not only the small and medium, but also the very small capitalists and small masters” (1). In the 1990s, through a quasi-democratic exercise, the Nepalese neo-rich and petty bourgeois clienteles and contractors could choose their own delegates for official negotiations with the global corporate regime.

The petty bourgeois democrats’ relationship with the institution of monarchy has always been of awe and reverence, but it instantly led to hatred whenever they tried to get near it. They were forced to feel their own smallness before the arrogant royalty and its indifference. Throughout the history of post-1990 Nepal, and more intensively after Gyanendra’s enthronement, various sections of democrats competed for the royal affection finding themselves more and more isolated and divided. The February coup of 2005 marked a decisive break in this relationship.

The faithful lower-rank leadership directly dealing with the grassroots of the democratic parties were already disillusioned by the opportunism of the upper-rank party bureaucracies. The coup consolidated this disillusionment. These democratic aspirations of the radicalised sections of the petty bourgeoisie and the urban proletarians opened the dialogic avenue with the ongoing-armed class struggle in the countryside and beyond Kathmandu.

The Maoists, on the other hand, have always been resilient to these dialogues. In fact, deaf ears to their own innumerable calls for democratic unity have not discouraged them. They have understood through their experience what Mao told, while criticising Stalin: “the main blow of the revolution should be directed at the chief enemy and to isolate him, whereas with the middle forces, a policy of both uniting with them and struggling against them should be adopted, so that they are at least neutralized; and as circumstances permit, efforts should be made to shift them from their position of neutrality to one of alliance with us in order to facilitate the development of the revolution.” (2)

In return to these genuine calls the Maoists as a proof for their commitment announced a unilateral ceasefire for three months. This ceasefire along with pressure from their own mass base forced the democratic parties and their leaders to seal a historic alliance with the Maoists – the 12-point agreement. And the Maoists extended their ceasefire for another month.

Imperialist Forces Operating in Tandem

This ceasefire humbled all the poles of global imperialism, who faced a danger to their own credibility if they continued supporting the royalty in all its arrogant, repressive and intransigent gymnastics. However, the US and India remained persistent in their efforts to call for the isolation of the Maoists and thought that the King eventually would come to his mind. They kept on advising him and the parliamentary forces to re-establish the harmony between the “constitutional forces”. As indicated earlier, this persistence came from their need to have a full grip over the Nepalese political economy. This control is dependent upon their ability to moderate the royal and status quoist intransigence with the help of various nodes in the commercialised and monetised political economy of Nepal, while negating the ‘anarchy’ of the latter by the overseeing authority of the royalty. Of course, the February coup and later, the alliance between the Maoists and 7-parliamentary parties posed a definite crisis in this regard, but the imperialist forces have been consistently trying to rebuild a situation amenable for themselves. And in this task, they have shown remarkable mutual coordination, both in deeds and words. The striking similarity between the American and Indian messages in this regard is unprecedented.

For example, on the end of the ceasefire none of these two countries asked why this ceasefire remained unilateral. Instead, for Indians its normal expiry was “an unfortunate decision” and they passed their moral judgement on the Maoists’ “path of violence and terror”(3). Similarly, the US too moralised saying that it has “consistently called upon the Maoists to abandon violence and rejoin the political mainstream. The end of the ceasefire at this time is unhelpful and contrary to that goal. There can be no excuse for the resumption of violence” (4).

Again, on January 19, 2006 after the royal crackdown over democratic leaders, the US called for “a dialogue between the King and the parties and a return to democracy” in order to effectively “address the Maoist insurgency in Nepal”, without taking note of the fact that the parties are already in agreement with the Maoists (5). Similarly, the UK asked the King “urgently to release those arrested, and to find ways to resume dialogue with the political parties.”(6) And India regretted that its “wish to see the constitutional forces in Nepal working together to achieve peace and stability in the country” remains unfulfilled.(7) Taking into consideration their mutual understanding in other international affairs, it is definite that these imperial states are pronouncing all these decisions and opinions in tandem. Even the press releases of one seem to be mere paraphrasing of others’.

The Danger

The humiliation of the King in his own Panchayat elections is a big blow to his self-confidence, and the confidence of the interventionist forces in him and their own capacity to manoeuvre. The US is forced to admit that the elections “represented a hollow attempt to legitimize his power”. But we will have to wait in order to see the full implications of these results.

The moral boost to republican sentiments is evident. The imperialists are anxious, but they know that they are incapable of undertaking any aggressive activist step in this regard. Their game plan has to be subtle and nuanced, but the pattern is quite evident. The US in the same post-elections message blamed “Maoist intimidation and killing of candidates during the campaign” for the failure of the elections, and refused to note the unanimity between the parliamentary forces and the Maoists on the illegitimacy of the elections. It once again insisted on the need to have a dialogue between the King and the “political parties” in order to “effectively deal with the threat posed by the Maoists” (8). How will this dialogue happen when the “parties” and the Maoists are already in alliance? Where is this hope for a royalty-parties alliance against the “Maoist threat” coming from? And herein lies the danger.

The success of the Maoists’ General Strike is bound to make the inconsistent upper crust of the petty bourgeois leadership epileptic because of the immense fluidity and uncertainty of the aftermath. If this is not complemented by more intensive consolidation on the part of the radicalised masses and their consistent leadership, it will lead to horse-trading between the inconsistent democrats and the King mediated by the imperialists, especially India and the US. US Ambassador to Nepal, James F. Moriarty in his recent speech clearly indicated this. He called upon the Democrats and the King to be ready for "hard compromise, tough give and take". In return, the United States "would look eagerly for ways to assist a new Nepal government that respects and supports democracy, human rights, and freedom. This also could include renewing assistance for the Royal Nepalese Army." (9)

The Maoists are aware of this danger, as Prachanda informed in one of his recent interviews: “We have gotten an indication, through the UN people or other international agencies, that they [government] are trying to propose in a roundabout way a conditional constituent assembly. Obviously, the Maoists will “reject it outright because "conditional" means "compromise"” (10), but as the intensity of the movement increases, the leaders who have tasted proximity to the royalty and enjoyed it while in government are used to such compromises. They are bound to vacillate. In such a situation the only resort will be closing the ranks at the bottom level on the basis of the rapport which the Maoists and other radical democratic forces have built between the rural and urban working classes, peasantry and petty bourgeoisie across party lines. Only a vigilant and conscious check and assault from below on such tendencies will guarantee a political transformation that goes at least an inch beyond the replay of democratic farce in the name of attaining peace among the “constitutional forces”.

References

1. V.I. Lenin (1916-17), Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

2. Mao Tse-tung (1956), “Stalin’s place in history” (1956), Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol. 7.

3. “In response to a question on the withdrawal of ceasefire by the Maoists in Nepal”, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India (January 2, 2006)

4. “Nepal: Maoists End Cease-fire”, US Department of State (January 3, 2006)

5. “Nepal: Arrests of Opposition Leaders”, US Department of State (January 19, 2006)

6. “Foreign Office Minister condemns political arrests in Nepal” (January 19, 2006), UK Foreign Office

7. “In response to a question on developments in Nepal”, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India (January 19, 2006)

8. “Nepal Municipal Elections Lack Public Support”, US Department of State (February 8, 2006)

9. James F Moriarty, "Nepal’s Political Crisis: A Look Back, A Look Forward"

10. “Interview with Prachanda”, The Kathmandu Post (posted on February 7, 2006)

Bush's Passage to India: Why Does India Carry His Water?

2006-02-25T15:50:00.000-05:00

COUNTERPUNCH

A few days from now, Bush will go to India and reaffirm his newfound love, becoming the only Republican President to visit India after Nixon. Bush and his 'mouthpieces' are quite vocal about their need of India - to compete with the EU, to check China, to control unpredictable regimes and to expand the war on terrorism etc. But it is quite interesting to note how India's consistent positive response to these advances is generally taken as paradoxical, or else simply as succumbing to 'external' pressures. However if we take notice of the transformation of Indian capitalism and of the aspirations of the Indian ruling class, we can easily find the reason behind this mutuality.

Full Text: http://www.counterpunch.org/chandra02252006.html

What the US Ambassador Taught Nepalis

2006-02-20T19:11:00.000-05:00

COUNTERPUNCH, ZNET

Recently, the United States has been anxiously trying to pre-empt every possible uncomfortable situation in South Asia. Its ambassadors are actively intervening in internal political debates in South Asian countries. Of course, it is nothing new for the US, but in order to understand specific implications of this activism in specific contexts, the peeping tom has to be caught red-handed at the site of the crime and interrogated. The ambassador in India was recently in the dock for threatening Indians to behave well on the Iran issue. Now it is the turn of the ambassador in Nepal, James F. Moriarty. However, for our convenience, Moriarty has been too explicit in his conduct.

For the complete article: http://counterpunch.org/chandra02202006.html
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=32&ItemID=9769

Cartoons, Anti-Semitism and the “Aestheticisation of Politics”

2006-02-07T10:16:00.000-05:00

The way the European press and politicians behaved on the issue of the publication of “anti-Islamic cartoons” can really be interpreted as, a Haaretz journalist puts, "a new breed of anti-Semitism. But the Semites, in this case, are not Jews.”

Cartoons, Anti-Semitism and the “Aestheticisation of Politics”

Pratyush Chandra

The way the European press and politicians behaved on the issue of the publication of “anti-Islamic cartoons” can really be interpreted as, a Haaretz journalist puts, "a new breed of anti-Semitism. But the Semites, in this case, are not Jews.” (1)

It is worth pondering, why did these European "cartoonists" choose to indulge in this sort of "freedom of expression" at the time when they knew it would be volatile to do so. Either it was an act of sheer cheap commercialism, or it had a political meaning - a journalistic contribution in the hegemonist World 'War on terrorism'. This "contribution" serves one major purpose - to provide an ideological sustenance to this war, by creating and homogenising "the enemy", and of course its mirror image - a homogenised West, the land of the "advanced" people terrorised by the “backward” Orient. What is happening now seems to evidence the designs.

There might have been wider underlying international political economic reasons that brought Hitler to power, but the ideology of anti-Semitism was essential for its sustenance. Today's Western mode of dubbing all movements of self-determination in the Middle East (which goes against the interests of the Western Powers) as "Osama's conspiracy” is not very dissimilar to "the Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion". The myth of "Osama" (if we separate it from Osama the man, if he is really one) itself can sustain the Western militancy and its regional cohorts throughout the globe for a long time to come, not only against the "Islamic" forces, but also, and more so, against any "rogue" states and movements (leftists or nationalists).

For example, already, now and then 'journalists' report about Osama's “shadows” emerging in different places in the Indian subcontinent. One was sighted in Sri Lanka with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) just after 9/11.(2) Moreover, the Indians have traditionally found Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)’s involvement in every uncomfortable movement of ‘self-determination’ within its territory, and after 2001, it has become synonymous to Al Qaeda’s involvement. Interestingly, nowadays ‘reports’ regularly come about ISI’s role in the radical left movement of India too. It has already been ‘spotted’ in Nepal’s communist upsurge. And of course, through ISI, it’s Al Qaeda that operates!!! So the target is set and reasoned!

In the case of Hitler, anti-Semitism of one sort (with the ghost of “the Elders of Zion” and their protocols) could enable him to invade regions with negligible Jewish population or influence, and to be on continuous war. Now, it is anti-Semitism of another sort (with the ghost of Osama and his audiovisual tapes) that provides reason to the global ride of the international ‘security guards’ to wage their ‘crusades’. The time is not far when we will find Osama’s shadow roaming in Latin America too. Or, may be it has been already spotted, and the “investigative report” is awaited.

The timing of the publication of these cartoons is very important to understand their significance – the ongoing war in Iraq and the ensuing discomfiture, continuing embarrassment of the Europeans over their ineffectiveness in the Middle East (lately on the Iranian issue), humiliation in their efforts to outrun the Americans throughout the globe, the Hamas victory… The First World rulers have many reasons to be upset. Their anxiety is heightened by their inability to completely monopolise critical information, whose unhindered transmission despite all kinds of borders and boundaries erected through international negotiations, intellectual and material property rights have virtually recreated an alternative world of commons. The ‘ dynamic’ reproduction of the ruler’s real self in its ever-changing forms by the immense ‘horde’ of ‘commoners’ is bound to make him anxious, and this is what forces him time and again to aestheticise politics – to occlude critique. And what else is the ‘official’ function of the media? What else can be the function of these cartoons? To force the readers, viewers and listeners to “think with one’s blood’. And that’s what they are doing.

Note:

(1) Bradley Burston, The New Anti-Semitism, cartoon division, Haaretz (February 6, 2006)

(2) Osama hand in glove with LTTE, The Times of India (September 22, 2001),

The India-China relationship - What we need to know

2006-01-31T17:32:00.000-05:00

Pratyush Chandra

Every ‘bold’ and ‘independent’ step by a ‘third world’ government is seen as congenitally progressive and even anti-imperialist. Any ‘third world’ alliance is welcomed on the ground that it will develop multi-polarity in the ‘unipolarising’ world. Today, in India at least the middle class “progressives” have the tendency to visualise every dinner party between Delhi, Peking and Moscow to be progressive and a step against imperialism. While trivialising the very notion of imperialism as a world system, this nostalgia for an “anti-imperialist” statist cooperation has made our “progressives” remarkably moody – the Indian state’s apparently contradictory, adulterous relationship with the US hegemony seems to negate the promise revived by Manmohan’s courting of Putin or the Chinese leadership. The simultaneity and intensity of all these relations put our “progressives” totally out of mind, making them giddy.

They must be really sick, if they come to feel the potentiality of anti-imperialism in business ties, as recently in the partnership between ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL) and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) for jointly bidding for promising projects. This particular partnership is definitely significant not only for the energy supplies to India and China, but also perhaps for global energy politics. But to consider it as challenging the global hegemonies is undoubtedly a maddening extrapolation.

It is true that India and China both are major players in the world market, and the global polity cannot be understood by ignoring their activities. But it must be admitted that their position is largely, if not solely, dependent on the cheap labour-force and its vast reserve army (regimented by the informalisation of labour markets along with the statist integration of ‘labour aristocracy’). Their underdevelopment has been a boon in this global rise of these economies. It has carried the segmentation of labour market to an unprecedented level, along with a multiple diversification of the demand structure. These are the gifts of the “differential of contemporaneousness”, as Sidney Pollard would call it. (1) Do we want to term this rise as “progressive”?

Further, the Indo-Chinese “collaboration to compete” is already in place in various international and regional trade, business and political forums, both struggling against the protectionist west and claiming low labour and environment standards as their comparative advantages. Even though global capital on the whole – western and indigenous capital and multi-nationals – is effectively using these advantages for its expansion, its identitarian heterogeneous configuration forces a competition that requires cornering of each other through shifting coalitions.

With regard to the Sino-India cooperation, three points are very important. Firstly, its political manifestation need not exactly pattern with the economic. In fact, all international alliances and cooperation in the phase of neoliberalism tendentially seek to ‘depoliticise’ the economic management. Are we not used to frequent statements from businessmen and politicians that call for not mixing ‘national’, ‘pragmatic’ economic interests with politics? However, “depoliticization is highly political” – it puts the economic management beyond the effects of political uncertainties that mar political systems today, especially democracy. In effect, this means putting economic instruments beyond the possibility of democratic control, beyond any reciprocal effects of the social fallouts of capitalist competition and collaboration. (2) There is a high probability that we will see political and border conflicts between India and China intensifying with the increasing economic cooperation. In fact, the reformist China has been very efficient in depoliticising its international relations and also its labour market, by carving a near-ideal panopticon (Bentham’s “confinement house”) out of the Chinese society, as “mechanism of discipline, secure management of a multitude and extraction of labour”. (3). Only a rampant depoliticization of all economic relations – i.e., by forcing labour to surrender – China could achieve its “global rise”. The said Indo-China cooperation is developing in this context.

Secondly, any global intervention on the basis of this cooperation will be more of a competitive-collaborative character designed to redistribute the booties gained in the areas where they compete, or more exactly for the “division of the rest of the world”, left by the “great powers”. They collaborate to compete, and their collaboration in the energy sector, where cartelisation is an inherent tendency, is exactly of this nature.

If we see counter-hegemony in India-China partnership, can we call the formation of OPEC as progressive, or anti-imperialist? OPEC was constituted by five oil-producing countries in 1960 to stabilise their own income against the earlier system of royalty arbitrarily fixed by the oil concessions. “The royalty rates …were exclusively geared to the extent of political domination of international oil companies and their governments with respect to this particular oil region.” (4) OPEC was formed as a collective body of rentiers to negotiate with Occidental companies, linking the oil rent system to oil price. However, at the time some did call it anti-imperialist, but considering its relationship with the non-OPEC ‘third world’ it hardly seems so. The collaboration of the OPEC countries individually and collectively with the global hegemony has been quite pronounced except over division of oil income, which is more like a conflict between landlords and capitalists, or an intra-capitalist class conflict, as there are local oil companies too. Further, there is hardly any political unanimity within OPEC except on oil dealings.

Similarly, the Sino-Indian collaboration internationally will be geared towards regions and sectors where they are unable to compete individually, and this collaboration does not require any mutual ‘political’ understanding, except a level of trust required for any business relationship. And, of course, a ‘political’ collaboration is required to the extent that it facilitates their collaborative business to fructify.

It is here that the last and most important aspect or implication of the ‘outward-oriented’ Sino-Indian relationship resides. The fruitfulness of this relationship as a rule will be determined by and will lead to an intensified intervention in the regions of this collaborative landing. It is nothing but chimera to imagine a peaceful Asia under the unlikely leadership of China and India. Particularly in the energy sector, the conflict between the ‘Indo-China nexus’ and OPEC will become more direct and intensive, which will be similar to the conflict between the West and OPEC, that of between ‘oil rentiers’ and oil companies. Nothing can prevent India and China, not even the ideology of “Asian Continentalism”, from collaborating with the West on the basis of this commonality of business interests, which does not take much time in getting politically translated into either active collaborationism or neutrality, or even armed conflicts (when intra-class conflicts intensify).

In some regions, the interventionist collaboration between India and China is already politically visible. In Sudan and other African oilfields, Chinese and Indian businesses have been remarkably coordinating with highly conflicting local hegemonies to stabilise their own interests, tempering and tampering the global aid and ‘humanitarian’ regime for these ravaged economies to their advantage. Further, these interventions are not totally devoid of militaristic component, as India (and China, too) has been involved in training local military personnel and supplying arms. In sharply fragmented and divided societies such interventions cannot have any other purpose but “neo-colonial”.

In South Asia, where India knows that any slackening on its part in any field can give the Chinese a tremendous advantage, and China is aware of the near impossibility of shaking off the Indian hegemonic influence on the region, the collaboration between them acquires a different level of intensity. Both require stabilising local polities and curbing any ‘nationalist’ hostilities for safe intrusion and spreading. More important in the region is to facilitate market integration and capital flow, for which infrastructure too should be provided for. China and India are aware of the futility of trying to negate each other in the region. Any attempt to shutting off each other is bound to fail and result into greater instability, as both have groomed their political agencies in all the regional societies for many years now.

Moreover, the nature of capitalist regulation from the firm level to the industry level, further up to the economy and to the global level has changed. It has transformed the character of “the division of the world between capitalist associations and great powers”. The corporate structure has intensified competition within a firm among diverse stakeholders and shareholders for greater share in profit. The same struggle is every moment transformed into greater collaboration that constitutes the firm. Similarly the “division of the world” is increasingly fluidised. Particular (national) capitals compete for attracting more and more profit, but they need to collaborate to compete with others or even to go on competing among themselves. The presence of India and China in South Asia and elsewhere too has acquired this dimension. They compete with one another, collaborate to compete with others, and collaborate with others to compete with one another. We cannot take one of these moments to be all defining as most analysts do when they analyse the rise of these two “Asian Powers”. Their analysis on the basis of one set of events is always negated by another, and they find India’s alliances with competitive powers contradictory.

Notes:

(1) Sidney Pollard (1992), Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760-1970, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

(2) Peter Burnham (2000), “Globalization, Depoliticization and ‘Modern’ Economic Management”, in Werner Bonefeld & Kosmos Psychopedis (ed.), The Politics of Change: Globalization, Ideology and Critique, Palgrave, New York.

(3) Massimo de Angelis (2002), “Hayek, Bentham and the Global Work Machine”, in Ana C Dinerstein & Michael Neary (ed.), The Labour Debate: An Investigation into the Theory and Reality of Capitalist Work, Ashgate, Hampshire.

(4) Cyrus Bina (1985), The Economics of the Oil Crisis: Theories of Oil Crisis, Oil Rent and Internationalization of Capital in the Oil Industry, Merlin Press, London.

The 12-point Agreement and the Future of Democracy in Nepal

2005-12-23T21:57:00.000-05:00

Whatever be the future results, which are not dependent on the Nepalese revolutionaries but on the amalgam of international and national factors, they have created a crisis of legitimation for the monarchy, alienated its middle class support-base gathered during its alliance with parliamentary forces, and brought the exploited and oppressed labouring classes to the centre-stage. It is clear that any future political arrangement will have to deal with the alternative participatory institutions and popular aspirations that they have helped in generating during the decade of people’s war.

The 12-point Agreement and the Future of Democracy in Nepal

Pratyush Chandra

ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER (JANUARY-FEBRUARY, 2006)

Four Phases of the Democratic Movement in Nepal

The present-day Nepalese democratic movement has perhaps entered its fourth phase now. The first ended with its partial victory in 1990, with the accommodation of the “democrats” in the power structure, which eventually frustrated the movement’s vigour, alienating its committed vanguards and grassroots. It was also at that moment that the Nepalese “long march” started to re-base the people’s movement among the people - peasantry, working class and other downtrodden sections - and look for the occasion to rise again as a contra-power rather than being glued to the old power structure, becoming its agency for manipulating ‘demos’ to preserve the ‘cracy’. This second phase saw mobilisation and dispersal of the movement beyond a few urban centres. The cry for democracy - for “self-determination” - reached hitherto untouched zones of the society. It is not strange that Mao’s model of strategy-formulation - of re-building the democratic movement from below in peasant societies like those in Nepal formed the guidelines for the revolutionaries there. This phase ended with the announcement of the ‘people’s war’ beaconing a new phase, of the rise of dual power.

The history of the third phase is well accounted in two recent collections - of the reports by Li Onesto (1), and of Baburam Bhattarai’s writings (2). They provide graphic descriptions of the fast-changing Nepalese polity embedded in the ever-dynamic post-cold war international political economy. Bhattarai’s works, especially, reflect the Maoist revolutionaries’ ability to dialectically cope up with the unfolding of the multivariate reality that always reveals itself in a piecemeal manner, never in totality. A historicist may find the Maoist strategies and tactics as frequently shifting. This is true for most of the political analysts - journalistic or serious. They are, however, ignorant of the pains of a revolutionary movement that bases itself on a continuous critique of international capitalism, its subordinate political economic structures and their diverse manifestations in deeds rather than simply in words. The movement itself is the epitome of this multi-level critique.

The Maoist’s ability to establish and flourish as the counter-power against the local state formation nurtured by global imperialism has perhaps heralded the fourth phase in the new democratic transformation in Nepal. The consistency and strength of the Nepalese revolutionaries, have rendered a fatal blow to the corporatist-monarchist-landlordist alliance with petty-bourgeois parliamentarism. In a way, this alliance was sponsored and nourished by imperialists to gain a decisive control over the region. India’s decision not to renew the 1978 treaties on trade and transit rights in 1989, leading to a major strangulation of the Nepalese economy, enforced this ‘nationalist’ compromise in 1990. It allowed the imperialists to check the arbitrariness of absolutism and radicalisation of the democratic movement, and gear up the local political economic arrangements in their own favour. However, the energy that was released in this process could not be fully confined in this official arrangement. On the contrary, as mentioned earlier, it allowed the radicals a freehand to reorient the democracy movement towards the oppressed masses independent of wavering petty bourgeois democrats, afraid of any drastic structural transformation. A decade long success of this grassroots movement today seems to have reoriented the aspirations of the Nepalese petty-bourgeoisie too forcing the “democratic” parties to form an alliance with the revolutionaries against “the autocratic monarchy”. The 12-point agreement between the Maoists and seven parliamentary parties, along with the unilateral ceasefire by the revolutionaries, perhaps, marks the beginning of the new, fourth phase in the Nepalese democratic struggle, in the Nepalese struggle for self-determination.

The 12-Point Agreement and The Success of People’s War

The text of the agreement shows the willingness of the democrats - both parliamentarian and revolutionary - to rethink their respective strategy to save the coordination achieved so far. Although it is hard to prognosticate all the implications of this agreement, the contradictory aspirations are clearly reflected in the text. The unwillingness of the moderates to go beyond constitutional monarchy is reflected in the criticism of “autocratic monarchy”, instead of monarchy itself. On the other hand, the agreement talks about absolute democracy, too. Only time will determine where this Cartesian unification of spirits of ‘democracy’ will lead. However, the major breakthroughs are the refiguring of the issue of “constituent assembly” on the agenda for the ‘unified’ people’s movement, with that of sweeping away the ‘royalty’ of the Nepalese armed forces (however, the latter is not clearly spelt out) (3). Independent statements from the revolutionary leaders indicate that they are willing to rethink their stand on “constitutional monarchy”, if a constituent assembly is formed.

The post-agreement political scenario may perhaps seem quite unclear, but it will be wrong to make a mechanical interpretation of it. Some “radical” outsiders want to think that the Maoists are using the agreement simply as a tactic, as such compromises go against the spirit of revolution. However, one must realise the truth of Mao’s pronouncement that the complete victory of revolution will take hundreds of years, and a revolutionary force needs to be prepared for all eventualities in “the process of continuous revolution and counter-revolution”, and it cannot rely on formulas. The Nepalese revolutionaries’ understanding on “relationship between the Party, Army, State and the People” is significantly based on the basic idea of “the rights of self-determination of the masses” (4). Throughout the history of people’s war, they have built on coordinating with various ‘autonomous’ movements even if they have not frequently been conscious of it. There have been occasions where they have faltered, but have readily rechecked themselves. Hence, identifying only the militarist aspect of people’s war in Nepal is reducing its history, experience and logic to nought, to mere formulas derived from “teachings” and “preaching”, themselves generalisations of past experiences. It amounts to making people’s war and sacrifices goals in themselves, against their function to unleash the people’s “creativity and energy, making them the new rulers with more responsibilities” (5).

The documents of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) along with Prachanda and Baburam Bhattarai’s remarks on the situation in both their statements and interviews reveal their distinct “pessimism of intellect, optimism of will” regarding the Nepalese situation. Bhattarai in his recent interview clearly stated the constraints in which the Maoists are operating:

“We are not attempting a final military victory right now, but are working for a negotiated political settlement either directly for a democratic republic or for the election to a constituent assembly. That is basically for two reasons. First, given the vacillation of a large section of the urban and rural middle classes toward revolutionary change, we find it prudent to go through the substage of a democratic republic. Second, due to the sensitive geopolitical setting of the country sandwiched between the two huge states of India and China, and both hostile to a revolutionary change we feel constrained to settle for a compromise solution acceptable to all.”(6)

The ability of the Nepalese revolutionaries to transcend any metaphysical idealisation of particular practice distinguishes them from other revolutionary movements and insurgency, and brings them closer to the temperament of Mao and his comrades, despite the vast difference in the national and international scenario in which they are operating. Whatever be the future results, which are not dependent on the Nepalese revolutionaries but, as noted by Bhattarai, on the amalgam of international and national factors, they have created a crisis of legitimation for the monarchy, alienated its middle class support-base gathered during its alliance with parliamentary forces, and brought the exploited and oppressed labouring classes to the centre-stage. It is clear that any future political arrangement will have to deal with the alternative participatory institutions and popular aspirations that they have helped in generating during the decade of people’s war.

Global Imperialism and Democracy in Nepal

The international interventionist forces are afraid of the evolving pattern out of the present fluidity in the Nepalese situation. India, especially, is deeply worried. It came to its senses immediately after its ambitious and phoney embargo in the aftermath of the “February coup”, after having been chastised by its own corporatist interests in Nepal. Although it says it has still not restarted supplying arms to Nepal, it admits of providing military training to the Nepalese army. In fact, it is desperately using all tactics to keep the monarchy in the scene. Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran during his visit to Nepal explicitly stated on December 13 that the “constitutional forces [monarchy and political parties] should be working together... This is our view” (7).

Recently, China has been supplying arms to the Nepalese monarchy. One may suspect that there might be evolving an understanding between India and China, in this regard, to complement each other. Since the former is constrained by the domestic left forces who are against re-supplying arms to Nepal, however allowing it to train the RNA personnel, China can take over the complementary role. Both countries are not comfortable with the elimination of the institution of monarchy, and, as Shyam Saran puts, “to the extent that our objectives are the same, it is better for us to work together” (8).

Other imperialist interests - the UK and US are largely involved through India. On the other hand, the EU’s desire to become an independent pole of international relations (despite its militarist irresolution) motivated it to applaud the revolutionaries’ unilateral ceasefire and the 12-point agreement, and to call upon Gyanendra to reciprocate the ceasefire.

In this context of consensus and division among the imperialist forces globally, the democratic tasks in Nepal become furthermore complicated. This context proves decisive at least with regard to the mobilisation of the wavering democrats. The extent of the success of the democratic movement depends on the counter-balancing of this imperialist opinion and interventionism by the internal cohesion among working classes, semi-proletarians and petty bourgeoisie. This cohesion seems to have evolved to some extent, but it needs to be sustained and promoted consistently. Another factor that can help in disarming the imperialist support to monarchy is the anti-imperialist mobilisation in the interventionist countries, especially India.

References:

(1) Li Onesto, Dispatches from the People’s War in Nepal, Pluto Press, 2005

(2) Baburam Bhattarai, Monarchy Vs. Democracy: The Epic Fight in Nepal, Samkaleen Teesari Duniya, New Delhi, 2005

(3) Parties, Maoists announce 12-pt agreement, Kathmandu Post, November 22 2005

(4) Present Situation and Our Historical Task, Adopted by Central Committee Meeting of CPN (Maoist) in June 2003
(5) Parvati, People’s Power in Nepal, Monthly Review, Vol 56 No 6, November 2005

(6) Maoists eye multiparty democracy, Interview with Baburam Bhattarai, Washington Times, July 30 2005

(7) Media Interaction by Foreign Secretary Mr. Shyam Saran in Kathmandu, Nepal on December 13 2005, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India

(8) Ibid

India's Strategy of Realignment

2005-12-16T15:38:00.000-05:00

Recent strategic relationships and nuclear agreements between India and the US, between India and Israel draw upon the imperatives of Indian capitalism and its peculiar emergence in the post-Cold War global capitalist polity. Those who perceive these relationships as decisive breakthroughs or a change in approach often forget to put them in a historical perspective. However, a word of caution is needed here for them too who see in these agreements a “sell out” to foreign interests. Proponents of this perspective do not take note of the intertwined phenomena of competition and cooperation in every international “coalitions”. They do not ponder over the fact that the hegemonic political economic interests in India are sufficiently integrated into the global class hegemony to be motivated to defend themselves globally. Recent agreements are in fact means to protect these interests in the context of the ongoing international realignment. They are not mere agentive or clientele. On the contrary, they are simultaneously collaborative and competitive, which make all ties and relationships opportunistic, fondly termed as pragmatic. India’s frequent hobnobbing with the idea of a “third world” unity in the WTO and other world forums, and its independent dealings with the Russian, Chinese, Iranian and other regimes are relevant in this regard. They are symptomatic of the complex crisscrossing of ever-dynamic international relations that constitute the global capitalist polity, of which India is an integral part. The essence of these relationships cannot be found in the ever-changing color of diplomacy, “but in an analysis of the objective position of the ruling classes in all” these countries, including India – in their conflicting and collaborative interests.

INDIA’S STRATEGY OF REALIGNMENT

Pratyush Chandra

The imperatives of the political economic structure delimit the options for political actors. At the time of India’s independence, a developed versatile capitalist class of India required a stable government, which could develop and consolidate the national market for it, along with dealing effectively with the bipolar global set-up that evolved after the Second World War. India’s non-alignment was a result of this scenario. It always tried to balance its relationship with the two blocs, and cautiously played them to bargain as much as it could. Regarding the Middle East, considering the dependence of the developing industries of India on the energy resources of Arabia, India definitely preferred to negotiate with the non-‘cartelized’ nationalist regimes in the region, which went well with its domestic industrialization strategy and its relative “non-alignment” internationally. Israel’s existence based on colonization, and its position in the Middle East policy of the West, was necessarily a disturbing factor undermining the nationalist regimes in the Middle East, perpetuating a kind of political economic ‘cartelization’ in the region, under the US or against it. This informed India’s relatively consistent anti-Israel attitude during the Cold War, even if there were occasions when it went into secret intelligence dealings with Israel to combat the ‘danger’ from its immediate neighbors – Pakistan and China.(1)

The pragmatism of the Indian approach could be witnessed further in the 1980s when the US clearly edged over the Soviet Union in its struggle for hegemony in the Middle East with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey aligning with it, while Saddam’s Iraq acted as a pawn to subvert the danger from Iran. India could feel the fizzling out of the bipolarity, and started seeking to establish new strategies to address its requirements. Rajiv Gandhi’s changed stance was the result of this situation, with the growing internal/external demand for liberalization. India’s approach towards everything seemed to change – Middle East, Israel, USA. It was the phase of the crisis of non-alignment, or in other words, the situation for realignment. The balance of payments crisis, a new surge in the local demand to open up the economy for global capital integration and reclaiming of the state-regulated sectors all pooled up to shape the future course of the Indian foreign policy. The decision to refuel the American warplanes during Chandrashekhar’s regime in 1991 was the first formal and fatal blow to the principle of non-alignment. However, it was left for Narasimha Rao’s government in 1992 to do the initial systematization of the Indian foreign policy for the new era.

In 1992, Narasimha Rao destroyed one of the major pillars of the so-called “nonalignment” that guided India’s international relations during the Cold War, when he established full ties with Israel. The Vajpayee government stretched this to the extent of a complete abandonment of the principle of nonalignment. Manmohan Singh has now completed the process, by abandoning the formal Indian stand for strengthening the UNO as the global coalition to resolve international disputes and provide humanitarian aids. Becoming a part of the US-led 4-nation coalition (which included its other most stable allies in the region, Japan and Australia) for tsunami relief efforts, the “pragmatic” India showed the world, other western powers and its former comrades in the NAM (non-aligned movement) that it sides with the US. It aligned with the US’ unilateral strategy of imposing its own designs on the world community, by carrying out its moves and then using the UN as a rubber stamp. The recent IAEA vote reconfirmed India’s own design.

The Indo-US relationship has continuously intensified since Clinton’s visit to India in the year 2000. It was not simply, as Americans pose, a result of the one-way Indian “need to diversify its international relationships” after “the demise of the Soviet Union — India’s main trading partner and most reliable source of economic assistance and military equipment for most of the Cold War”.(2) In fact, the US sanctions after the nuclear tests by India were rendered emasculated by its own businessmen who realized that sanctions would give free field to the European capital in the vast South Asian market. Clinton’s visit immediately afterwards to salvage the relationship indicates at the American desperation. The US knows quite well that due to India’s consistent political economic structure and not being exclusively dependent on international aid and investment, it is the most reliable and stable regime in the region. The overall dominance of the Indian capital in South Asia makes India a regional power, and no other country can rival its hegemony, except China, which makes India’s recognition all the more important. Bush patronizes the Indian leadership, ever ready to wait on him, while indicating his own interest in the growth of the Indo-US relationship – “We are the two largest democracies, committed to political freedom protected by representative government. …We have a common interest in the free flow of commerce, including through the vital sea lanes of the Indian Ocean. Finally, we share an interest in fighting terrorism and in creating a strategically stable Asia. Differences remain, including over the development of India’s nuclear and missile programs, and the pace of India’s economic reforms. But while in the past these concerns may have dominated our thinking about India, today we start with a view of India as a growing world power with which we have common strategic interests. Through a strong partnership with India, we can best address any differences and shape a dynamic future.”(3) And now these differences are definitely giving way to active cooperation.

After the 9/11 incidents, this relationship between India and the US has acquired a new impetus and dimension. The most significant and worrisome aspect is the militarist content of this relationship. “In the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, India took the immediate and unprecedented step of offering to the United States full cooperation and the use of India’s bases for counterterrorism operations.” In November 2001 the meeting between Bush and Vajpayee took place. Since then “notable progress has come in the area of security cooperation, with an increasingly strong focus on counterterrorism, joint military exercises, and arms sales. In December 2001, the India-U.S. Defense Policy Group met in New Delhi for the first time since India’s 1998 nuclear tests and outlined a defense partnership based on regular and high-level policy dialogue.” In September 2004, “the sixth meeting of the U.S.-India Joint Working Group on Counterterrorism was held in Delhi… In October, Under Secretary of Commerce Juster and Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Rocca made separate visits to New Delhi to discuss Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) issues with Indian leaders, who said that “substantial progress” had been made in NSSP implementation. Also in October, “Malabar 2004,” the sixth round of U.S.-India joint naval exercises, took place off India’s west coast.”(4)

Furthermore, the “Joint Statement by India-US Defence Policy Group” (Aug 6-7, 2003) exposed the real position of the erstwhile Vajpayee government on the post-9/11 international developments, on Iraq and Afghanistan, despite its rhetoric and resolutions against these wars in the Indian parliament. After enumerating the achievements of the Indo-US defence relations in the year 2002-03 (that included “combined special forces counterinsurgency exercise in Northeast India”), “the two sides welcomed the improved prospects for freedom and security in the Middle East. They underlined their commitment to … the contribution that international cooperation could make to that process. They agreed to continue to seek ways for the United States and India to work together to support the people of Iraq. They also welcomed the establishment of Iraq's Governing Council… They discussed the success of Operation Enduring Freedom and reaffirmed the ongoing commitment of both countries to the future of Afghanistan.”(5)

However it is the Indo-Israel relationship that graduates India as a reliable candidate in the Anglo-American nexus. A necessary precondition for any stable relation with the USA is to cooperate with Israel. Egypt, Jordan, and others, learnt this in their own manner. These countries chose to become US allies in the declining phase of Soviet Union’s prowess, as the US held, to quote the Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, “90 percent of the cards”. The Soviet Union stood as a support during the national reconstruction of the newly independent countries of Asia, but its own political economic vulnerability in the era of “peaceful coexistence” or the Cold War, could never make it a long-term provider for the monopoly and rent-oriented interests of the oil economies. Further, Israel’s innate expansionism provided the US regime an effective tool in the Middle East “to start the collapse of the populist nationalist regimes, to break their alliance with the Soviet Union” and pursue the US.(6) The defeat of Egypt in the 1967 war with Israel and eventual change in its stance became a lesson for other countries in the region. Compromising with Israel is the only road to get morsels from the US hegemony in the Middle East.

India too decided to tow the line. Right from the time of Rajiv Gandhi, subsequent governments of all hues and colours have consistently contributed in promoting Indo-Israel relationship. Last year, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during his visit to India confidently rejected any suggestion that Israel will have difficulties in dealing with India's “left-leaning” Congress Party-led coalition government. He said, “It was the Congress government which established friendly relations with us 11 years ago and I find no difference in policy of the previous government and the present regime."(7) Definitely, Olmert’s optimism was well founded – change in faces in the government really does not matter. Be it in India, Israel or elsewhere. This is what is today termed as pragmatism and even ‘de-politicisation’ of national interests. Condoling Arafat’s death, the mainstream left parties in India reiterated their long-term stand in favour of the Palestinian state. They asked the Congress government supported by them to sever military ties with the Israelis, reverting the previous government’s deep rightist fascination for this relationship.(8) But Manmohan Singh seems to be in no dire need to comply with every demand of his allies, since he knows that they are in as much need (if not more) to support him, as he has the need for their support.

Even the Indo-Israel relationship is heavily militaristic. In December 2004, India and Israel concluded their third Joint Working Group meet on defence cooperation. Israel became the second largest defence equipment supplier to India. It is time and again asserted, especially by the Indian corporate interests, that defence is the core sector in which Indo-Israeli relationship has immense potentiality. “The driver of pro-Israel relations is the defence establishment, which finds no alternative to Israeli high-tech weapons, and defence cooperation between the two countries has become so far-reaching that it is impossible to reverse it, without knocking the bottom out of India’s security.”(9)

Recent strategic relationships and nuclear agreements between India and the US, between India and Israel draw upon the imperatives of Indian capitalism and its peculiar emergence in the post-Cold War global capitalist polity. Those who perceive these relationships as decisive breakthroughs or a change in approach often forget to put them in a historical perspective. However, a word of caution is needed here for them too who see in these agreements a “sell out” to foreign interests. Proponents of this perspective do not take note of the intertwined phenomena of competition and cooperation in every international “coalitions”. They do not ponder over the fact that the hegemonic political economic interests in India are sufficiently integrated into the global class hegemony to be motivated to defend themselves globally. Recent agreements are in fact means to protect these interests in the context of the ongoing international realignment. They are not mere agentive or clientele. On the contrary, they are simultaneously collaborative and competitive, which make all ties and relationships opportunistic, fondly termed as pragmatic. India’s frequent hobnobbing with the idea of a “third world” unity in the WTO and other world forums, and its independent dealings with the Russian, Chinese, Iranian and other regimes are relevant in this regard. They are symptomatic of the complex crisscrossing of ever-dynamic international relations that constitute the global capitalist polity, of which India is an integral part. The essence of these relationships cannot be found in the ever-changing color of diplomacy, “but in an analysis of the objective position of the ruling classes in all” these countries (10), including India – in their conflicting and collaborative interests.

Notes

(1) P.R. Kumaraswamy (1998), “Strategic Partnership between Israel and India”, Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol. 2 No. 2

(2) K. Alan Kronstadt (2004), Indo-US Relations, Congressional Research Service (CRS), The Library of Congress, Washington DC

(3) The White House (2002), “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America”

(4) Kronstadt, op cit

(5) Joint Statement by INDIA–US Defence Policy Group Meet (Aug 6-7 2003) at Washington DC

(6) Samir Amin (2004), “The US Imperialism and the Middle East”, in P. Chandra, A. Ghosh & R. Kumar, The Politics of Imperialism and Counterstrategies, Aakar Books, New Delhi

(7) India, Israel float think-tank, Dawn 9th December 2004

(8) Sever military ties with Israel: Left, The Hindu 24th Nov 2004

(9) New hand: Worsening Israeli relations with Pakistan is a boon for India, September 13 2004

(10) V.I. Lenin (1916), Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Indian Edition (Left Word, New Delhi, 2000, p.37)

Indian Politics in the context of the Iranian Crisis

2005-11-27T17:12:00.000-05:00

Pratyush Chandra

The postponement of the decision to refer Iran to the UN Security Council has given the Indian rulers temporary relief. A few days back, India’s Foreign Secretary denied giving away any inkling about India’s stand if voting on Iran issue took place on November 24. (1) But did he or his superiors themselves have any hint of what they were going to do?

1 India and the Iranian crisis

Ever since India joined the Western powers led by the US in backing an IAEA resolution calling on the agency to consider reporting Iran to the UN Security Council if it does not meet its nuclear obligations, the Indian government has been going out of its way to explain its vote being in accordance with not only national but also Iranian interests. Its leftist allies are doing everything to make it apologetic for what it did on September 24, and to ensure that they do not repeat it again whether on November 24 or after. When the rightist opposition was in government it did not miss any opportunity to run behind the US wagging its tail. In fact, the consistency that we see today in the Indo-US relationship and its general acceptability are their gift to Manmohan Singh. However, the parliamentary logic forces even this spineless opposition to talk about non-alignment and anti-“imperialism” in its efforts to mobilise the alienated forces under its fold, and regain its spirit after last year’s electoral shock.

The government had always expected some international political development to take place that would help it avoid the voting. Increasing its pain was the Iranian endeavour to mix up the issue with the pipeline deal, which is still halfway. During the project’s Joint Working Group’s meeting in Tehran, Iran’s Deputy Petroleum Minister for International Affairs M H Nejad Hosseinian told the Indian delegation on October 24 “Iran expects that the esteemed government of India would compensate the past default by supporting Iran in the next meeting of the IAEA board of governors in November.” (2) Petroleum Secretary “had then replied that Iran’s demand was political in nature and it was difficult for him to comment on a political issue.” (3) Since then the desperate Indian government has been trying hard to convince Iran of its neoliberal lessons on the depoliticisation of economy learnt under the guidance of an Economist who happens to be the present Prime Minister, too, “to keep nuclear politics out of the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project and consider the latter as a purely commercial deal.” (4)

Finally, the US agreed to the Russian proposal allowing Iran to refine uranium at a key nuclear facility as long as more advanced work on the material was completed in Russia. Iran too promised to consider it. It is a face saving exercise for every party in the discussion. The Bush administration recognises “that its Iran policy, both tactically and strategically, was failing to resolve” the crisis and that it has been unable to persuade other Western powers, not even its otherwise faithful allies to refer the case to the Security Council. (5) Any unilateralism in these circumstances will be dangerous for the US. Militarily irresolute EU powers too wanted a resolution that did not force them to take a stand. However, the only negative aspect of such resolution for the US and other Western interests seems to be the strategic boost to Russia and China that this resolution entails – their ability to negotiate.

A similar face saving exercise was on in India – the possible resolution of the nuclear crisis or even delay in any decision in the IAEA in sight was a great respite. The international political exercise apparently seemed to second the government’s main argument in its efforts to convince its partners and others that what it did on September 24 was in national interest and in the interest of Iran too – giving time to Iran and others for negotiations. On the other hand, the official Left which has been trying hard to balance between saving its own independent political image and its desperate need to keep rightists out of power by supporting the government too will be able to continue balancing them consistently for some more time. When everything seemed safe, the government informed the Left what everybody already knew by then:

“At the eighth meeting of the United Progressive Alliance and the Left parties here, two days ahead of the crucial IAEA meeting in Vienna, the Government apprised the Left leaders of the progress made. The indication is that there is a possibility that there will be no voting and till now there has been no draft resolution suggesting that the matter be taken to the United Nations Security Council.”

As expected the government sought to convince its critiques that the postponement was the success of the diplomatic efforts to which it became a party by voting affirmatively on September 24. Finance Minister told the media, “The Government informed the Left parties of the progress made through diplomatic efforts. It was noted that the Government's intention was to ensure that the matter remains within the jurisdiction of the IAEA”. (6)

2 Neo-liberal consensus and the foreign ministry

Ambiguity and opportunism have always constituted the bedrock of Indian foreign policy. Even during the Cold War, India’s choice for “non-alignment” was opportunistic rather than a matter of principle. Non-alignment allowed it a space to manoeuvre and bargain in the bipolar atmosphere. On the one hand, the already established strong capitalist interests in the country motivated the Indian state to establish channels that could facilitate their integration in the world market dominated by the West under the US. But, on the other hand, the lateness of capitalism in India kept it devoid of a systematic infrastructure for domestic capitalist expansion on the basis of which its capitalist interests could integrate and compete in the world market. The required support for this could come only from the Soviet camp, which envisaged a similar model for “national capitalist development” in third world countries. This dualism on the part of the Indian State made it opportunistic par excellence.

This opportunism has acquired new dimension in the post-Cold War liberalisation phase. The uneasiness that India feels today when it has to take a clear stand on international issues derives from the multi-layered, often contradictory, nature of its integration in international political economy. Its apparent opportunism is starkly reflected throughout its international dealings. Ever since it did nuclear tests in 1998, India seems to be caught in a schizophrenic existence, unceasingly oscillating between over-confidence and desperation. Events in the year 2005 evidence this eccentricity at least twice, earlier on the issue of Nepal and now on Iran.

Political analysts generally take this political behaviour at their face value. They fail to grasp the underlying stress and strain. Since Rajiv Gandhi’s open avowal to ‘neo-liberalise” the Indian economy with his New Economic Policy, there have been opportunities to test the words and deeds of almost all the major political fronts in the country. Since Rajiv Gandhi’s defeat in 1989, we have seen 8 Prime Ministers taking over (if we include the 13 days rule by Vajpayee in 1996). All these leaders despite their diverse political and ideological allegiances have been consistently wed to the basics of neo-liberalism. Finance Ministry has been remarkably consistent in its attitude throughout the two decades since 1985. Ideologies and ‘politics” have served to divert their social fallouts rather than to guide the overall policy designs.

The interior or home ministry along with the external affairs or foreign ministry takes on the tasks of making the ground fertile for the practice of neoliberalism. The Home Ministry has always been important for smoothening the track for capital accumulation by securing property relations and bringing material and “cultural” commons into the fold of these relations. However, less recognised is the fact that since the neo-liberalist economic policy is fundamentally designed to facilitate the entry and exit of capital and to administer the process of international capitalist integration, the External Affairs or Foreign Ministry eventually becomes the most active in this phase. Synchronising the global market dynamics and political reality is the major task undertaken through this ministerial coordination. The motivational glue is provided by keywords like pragmatism and the trans-political (de-politicised) notion of national interest. This pragmatism is nothing but a sanctified discourse to justify the “realpolitick” of making best of opportunities, or opportunism.

3. The crisis of mainstream left nationalism in India

The so-called experts on international relations and security issues have divided India’s international activism in two phases – the idealist phase and pragmatist phase, Rajiv Gandhi’s reign being generally considered the turning point. Despite being superficial and meaningless, this division sufficiently indicates at its purpose, which is simply to disparage the principle of non-alignment as utopian and to justify the pro-US tilt. Similarly these self-acclaimed ‘security intellectuals’ have redefined the all-accommodative notion of “national interest” in “Social Darwinian” terms. They have succeeded sufficiently in derailing the task of a serious inspection of the real context in which the Indian foreign policy is taking shape, of understanding it in terms of the continuity and change in Indian capitalist development.

Even the Left in India has been mesmerised by this ‘realpolitick’ definition of national interests, not trying to reinterpret them in terms of class and class interests. Eventually they too become prisoners of the supra-class nationalist ideology. This has been starkly evident in the ongoing debate on India’s “interest” in the Iranian nuclear crisis. The Leftists tried to assess India’s “national interest” in terms of ‘national’ material gains, the same basis on which the ruling elites are grounding their defence. Asking for an independent foreign policy in general, on this particular issue Prakash Karat, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said, "If the Centre decides to vote against Iran, it should be viewed seriously as the focus should be on Indian interests, without succumbing to outside pressures”. And, hence, “India, which imports 70 percent of its oil, should maintain good relations with Iran and be alert of the designs of the 'imperialists'”.(7) So the “focuses” are national sovereignty, “national interests” and pragmatism. Does any mainstream political formation differ on the primacy of these “focuses”? Does the Indian state deny them? In fact, by retelling all the known facts leading to India’s September 24 vote, the Indian government has been repeatedly showing that whatever it did was its own sovereign decision. Further, on the question of national material interests too, Indian policies pro-US tilt can be explained on the basis of India’s dependence on the Western (especially the US’) market and investment.

The mainstream presentation of ‘national interest” allows the hegemonic political economic interests to homogenise the ‘nation’ behind their designs. In a class divided and stratified society any such homogenisation ultimately harnesses the ‘people’ for the royal ride of the state and the ruling classes in pursuit of a “national” political economic expansion. Instead of recognising and sharpening the class conflict underlying the neo-liberal polity, while fighting its ideological transcendence in the discourse of nation and “national interests”, the Indian Left in its eagerness to become part of the ‘national mainstream’ is helping in conserving the national pomposity that characterises the Indian foreign policy, which politically sustains the Indian capital’s global pursuit. It seeks a nationalist compromise that can synchronise its “interests” with the State’s “national interests”. In the event of this uncritical acceptance of the political philosophy that underlies the Indian state policies, even anti-Americanism in the Indian leftist discourse is well utilised in supplying versatility and strength to the Indian state’s manoeuvrings and bargaining.

Notes

(1) Stand at Vienna will be in national interest, says Saran, The Hindu, November 17, 2005

(2) Iran’s armtwisting begins: fix Vienna mistake or else, The Indian Express, November 13, 2005

(3) Delhi will tell Iran: Keep N-politics out of pipeline, The Indian Express, November 16, 2005

(4) Ibid

(5) US backs Russian Plan to resolve Iran Crisis, The Washington Post, November 19, 2005

(6) Left apprised of stand on Iran issue, The Hindu, November 22, 2005

(7) PTI, India must have independent foreign policy: Karat, posted on November 20, 2005

Volcker's Report Reread: Business, not Corruption

2005-11-09T20:11:00.000-05:00

Pratyush Chandra

The Report on Programme Manipulation (Volcker Report) brought out by the Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) into the United Nations’ Oil-for-Food Programme provides a graphic account of how Saddam Hussein’s regime struggled to “launder” a meager sum of 1.8 billion dollars in the span of more than two years. The Report seeks to demonstrate how Iraq had to manipulate the sanction regime and play on various companies and agencies involved in the OFFP to obtain that amount.

I Saddam meant business!

The timing of the Volcker Report makes it an efficient tool for providing legitimacy to the American occupation and delegitimizing the UN’s ability to act as a multilateral world power opposed to the unilateralist US. Despite this, one may commend Volcker and his associates for describing Saddam Hussein’s scheme in such minute details. It seems that they used every real, half-real fact to complete this picture, putting many politicians and businessmen, who shook hands with Saddam Hussein when he was Iraq’s head-of-state, in the range of ‘suspicion’. However, a brief scrutiny shows that the whole exercise is an exposition of what every petty businessman does to survive in the world of competition, monopolies and surveillance. Of course, the Iraqi ruling elite and its “national” oil bourgeoisie had to be smarter as, on the one hand, the eyes of the competitors in the fellow oil economies and Western corporate oil companies were constantly watching the effect of Iraq’s primitive “in kind” oil sale on their own “in cash” transactions; while, on the other hand, any slack would have only hastened the execution of “what was already written” – the pending invasion by the US.

Iraq tried to make good use of its only privilege under the OFFP, choosing its oil buyers. The Volcker Report complains:

“Yet the decision to allow Iraq to choose its buyers empowered Iraq with economic and political leverage to advance its broader interest in overturning the sanctions regime. Iraq selected oil recipients in order to influence foreign policy and international public opinion in its favor. Several years into the Programme, Iraq realized that it could generate illicit income outside of the United Nations’ oversight by requiring its oil buyers to pay “surcharges” of generally between ten to thirty cents per barrel of oil.”

Only this privilege provided Iraq a degree of economic sovereignty, which other countries enjoyed more amply. And what it did with this privilege was nothing different from other countries. Every country requires a friendly international atmosphere to survive and grow, and it utilizes every means under its command to build it, and Iraq had only one way to mobilize “international public opinion in its favor” – by selecting oil recipients. Others, too, do have this privilege, but they have more than simply this.

The Volcker Report notes that Iraqis started by appeasing US companies, but found no effect on the US government’s attitude towards Iraq. So they had to approach other Security Council members to influence international bodies, like Russia and France. But this did not mean that the US companies didn’t gain by these arrangements. The report itself finds, “a substantial volume of oil under contract with Russian companies was purchased and financed by companies based in the United States and other countries.” So it was really, business as usual!

As far as “surcharges” are concerned, they were ‘illicit’ because Iraq was exceptionally segregated from involving itself in the ‘licit’ price war in which its competitors were engaged. And even the Bretton Woods institutions (WB/IMF) would admit it is not illegitimate to ‘curb’ the laws if they put hurdles in the ‘natural’ dynamics of market and capital. What Iraq did was nothing exceptional for a businessman facing a legal system adverse to his business interests. It was doing what was best for it in the face of UN induced ‘market imperfections’.

The other source of illicit income obtained by Iraq was “kickbacks paid by companies that it selected to receive contracts for humanitarian goods under the Programme”. The Volcker Report notes that here too “political considerations influenced Iraq’s selection of humanitarian vendors”. Interestingly, the Report itself accepts the legitimacy of this kickback policy by stating that it “began in mid-1999 from Iraq’s effort to recoup purported costs it incurred to transport goods to inland destinations after their arrival by sea at the Persian Gulf port of Umm Qasr”. However, the Report complains that Iraq could have sought approval from the United Nations for compensation of such costs, without noting that under normal circumstances any intermediation in such bilateral arrangements are abhorred. So why will Iraq like any other country or even business entity not covet sovereignty in its contractual engagements? Why will it allow UN surveillance in whatever it does? Why cannot it have its own business secrets? Why will it not engage in profiteering in the limited ‘market’ and opportunity that it is granted?

What Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and agencies dealing with it did were the only ‘rational’ business options before them under the exceptional regime of politico-economic sanctions. Its few loopholes were the only source of opportunities available for them, from which, even the Volcker Report admits, Iraq could not gain much except a few billion dollars. Whatever else it could acquire under the Oil-for-Food Programme was just enough to survive in destitution – food, medicines etc. The Programme was not meant for the reconstruction of the economy destroyed by bombs and isolation.

II Committee’s Unintended Conclusion

Less known is another report brought out by a Working Group instituted by Volcker’s Independent Inquiry Committee, The Impact of the Oil-for-food Programme on the Iraqi People (7 September 2005), which explicitly puts the very purpose of the OFFP as its main negative aspect:

“The short-term approach of the OFFP, essentially as a relief operation, led to many missed opportunities for greater impact, and indeed to some actual harm. A more effective humanitarian approach would have aimed to restore productive capacity, repair infrastructure, generate employment, and use the extensive capabilities of the Iraqi people to support their own livelihood. The basis for the “relief” approach was presumably at first the perceived urgency of the deteriorating situation – food had to be supplied – but the opportunity to move towards support to livelihood was not taken, for reasons such as the policy of reducing the Government of Iraq’s access to hard currency.”

The so-called “corruption” in the OFFP was fundamentally linked with the struggle over the “access to hard currency”. The UN and the hegemonic forces were hell bent upon enfeebling the Iraqi economy by making it cash-stricken; while Iraq was determined to utilize whatever limited opportunities the loopholes in the OFFP granted it. It even went on offensive by attempting to cut on dollar’s seigniorage by selling its oil in euro. (The Observer, 16 February 2003) Against all these, the OFFP’s realpolitik was rendered ineffective.

Hence, the dual purpose of the Programme was to allow the Iraqi population survive, while inciting them against the ‘intransigent’ regime of Saddam Hussein by providing opposed images of this intransigence against the “humanitarian” external forces. When the lingering sanctions and hardships seemed to homogenize the society furthermore making the possibility of any internal revolt very remote, and Iraq was able to “corrupt” the realpolitik of the Programme, the Security Council’s bosses began finding it obsolete. As the Report on the OFFP’s impact clearly states, the Programme as a “relief operation” was a marvelous success on almost every humanitarian account despite administrative problems and “corruption”. But this success could never be a reason for its continuance. Hence, the invasion took place.

Defining "National Interests" in Indian Foreign Policy

2005-10-30T09:46:00.000-05:00

Pratyush Chandra

There has been a tremendous growth in politico-intellectual interest in interpreting Indian foreign policy. On the one hand, journals and newspapers are overflowing with analyses of India’s international activism, and on the other, we find a rise in institutions or ‘think-tanks’ specializing in it, both within India and abroad. However, it can be effectively contended that there is rarely any novelty in the approaches taken by these intellectuals, institutions and politicians on the issue. Most of them are restricted to producing permutation and combination of preconceived and ill-defined notions of “national interests”, “security interests”, “terrorism”, “pre-emptive measures” etc. Even progressive and ‘counter-hegemonic’ discourses are unable to go beyond conceiving the Indian policies as those of a ‘comprador’ third world ruling class, submitting to external pressures. This leads to analyses limiting themselves to mere tautological descriptions of the policies, different only in tone and of course in humanist tenor, but rarely disputing on the basic foundations of policy-making, that inform even the rightist jingoism and centrist pragmatism.

1. Indian “National Interests” – the Left-Right-Center Combined

The domestic opposition to Indian rulers’ intervention in international politics today is broadly confined on the following lines:
(1) They are compromising on the “national interests”,
(2) They are coming under the “American pressure”,
(3) As the consequence of (1) and (2), they are betraying their erstwhile “Non-Aligned Movement” (NAM) comrades.

Such tenor of opposition itself provides the Indian state a viable framework to rationalize its position. It can restrict itself to demonstrating how “national interests” are being served and sovereignty is not compromised, that it is taking its own decision and is being treated as an equal partner in the international strategic forums; further, that it is “leading” its erstwhile NAM comrades by actively representing them and supporting their political and economic sovereignty. This is effortless defense since there exists no need to defend the basic premises of the Indian foreign policy. There is unanimity across-the-board over the sanctity of “national interests”, sovereignty, the principle of “not coming under any external pressure” and India as a leader of the “third world” or “NAM” countries. The opposition counts on the evidences on which these sanctified principles are being violated, while the government in power provides counter-evidence on the same lines.

Recent debates “on the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP), the July 18 Agreement with the United States, the September vote in the IAEA and the recent deliberations of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG)” are typically confined to this mode of discourse – whether led by the leftists, rightists or centrists.

Seemingly, there is no disagreement on India’s right to be a “Nuclear Weapon State” while remaining “committed to the goal of complete elimination of nuclear weapons”. Not long ago, when with the rightist Vajpayee government’s nuclear tests in 1998, political forces of all hues and colors not only refrained from criticizing the act, but on the contrary they fought to take the credit for promoting researches which led to India’s nuclear capability. Nobody apparently denies the ideal “that the best and most effective nuclear non-proliferation measure would be a credible and time-bound commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons from existing arsenals, including India’s own nuclear weapons” and that we should “have no desire to perpetuate the division between nuclear-haves and have-nots”. However still, the left, right and center all are guilty of aspiring to see India as “a permanent member of the Security Council”. They all want India to demonstrate “a growing capability to shoulder regional and global responsibilities”, and “focus … increasingly on trans-national issues that today constitute the priority challenges – whether it is terrorism or proliferation, pandemics or disaster relief”. Further, “we cannot sit out the debates on the big issues of our times. Our interests demand a vigorous and articulate diplomatic effort that explains our positions and advances our interests.”

The quotes above are taken from a single lecture by the Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran on “Nuclear Non-Proliferation and International Security” (1), wherein, despite its usual diplomatic nature, he eloquently presents the unanimous aspirations of the Indian political elites. Everybody (left, right and center) will agree with him that India’s approach to nuclear non-proliferation [or on everything] should be “a consistent one, a principled one and one grounded as much in our national security interests as in our commitment to a rule-based international system.”

While defending the recent decisions by the Indian government and its agreements with the US, he says,

“There is a continuity and consistency in our approach that may sometimes be masked by the particularities of a specific decision…. What appears to some observers as inordinate external influence over our decision-making in sensitive areas is, in fact, rooted in our own well-considered and independent judgment of where our best interests lie. This is in keeping with our tradition of non-alignment… We must adjust to change, change inherent in our emergence as a Nuclear Weapon State, change inherent in the sustained dynamism and technological sophistication of the Indian economy, and, as a consequence, change in global expectations of India as an increasingly influential actor on the international stage.”(2)

As a bureaucrat who is supposed to be “above politics”, Shyam Saran is not wary of making it a point to stress on the continuity and consistency in the policies of the Indian state, always reminding of the consonance of the present left-supported ‘centrist’ government’s policies with those of the erstwhile rightist Vajpayee government. In his defense of the Indian vote on the IAEA resolution on Iran, he stressed in his press briefings:

“I do not think that you should interpret India’s position as being aligned on the Left or on the Right or aligned with this group of countries or that group of countries. I think India has all along taken decisions on issues of concern to itself on the basis of its own assessment, and on the basis of its own national interest. So, the question of this representing a shift in India’s policy does not arise.”(3)

And he is obviously not wrong. All depends on how you define the “national interests”. And on their definition there is hardly any difference between various parties involved in the debate. One side says the government serves them, other side denies it; but nobody seeks to describe what those interests are and which sections of the society determine them.

2. "Uses of Domestic Dissent"

This fact of unanimity makes all mainstream approaches on the Indian foreign policy merely repetitive. They rarely question the basic foundation of the policy decisions. One says “compromises”, other notes “cooperation”; one notes “subjugation”, other says “equal partnership” etc. But this discursive exercise has a definite ideological role. Howsoever, this exercise seems futile, it significantly emasculates any decisive domestic opposition to the Indian state as they combine in unity on making it evermore “stronger” in the name of challenging ‘external pressure’, giving ‘international leadership’, and serving ‘national interests’ etc. It is this unanimous ‘nationalist’ tone in the Indian politics that has left the Indian hegemonic [militarist] exercises complementing and supporting the expansion of ‘national capitalist’ interests internationally unchecked.

The Indian interventions in the politics and economy of its neighboring countries and elsewhere are universally termed self-conceited and ‘big-brotherly’, but not imperialist. Hence what is seen as required is simply correcting this ‘aberration’, making the Indian policy towards these small and weak neighboring countries more ‘responsible’. The preconceived notion of a ‘third-world’ country imposed on the late capitalist countries does not allow the analysts to perceive their leadership as serving ‘national’ political economic interests by maneuvering internationally.

Further, any gesture of confrontation with the First World is termed ‘anti-imperialist’. This ‘anti-imperialism’ stresses the importance of the reconstruction of a ‘non-aligned movement’ and ‘south-south’ cooperation. But it does not take into account the material basis of a state-to-state cooperation between the “third world” countries. It does not consider the contradiction inherent in the ‘nationalist anti-imperialism’ in countries like India. At the juncture when India owns 35 percent of the FDI in Nepal, when it is the biggest investor in Sri Lanka since 2002 and has Bhutan and Maldives as perfect clienteles, do we expect India to lead another NAM? And if it does, what will be its role? Will it not be similar to that of Germany’s in EU, howsoever subservient to the US or any other global hegemonic power? Backwardness or lopsidedness of the Indian capitalism and society does not stop it from becoming expansionist and imperialist.

The indigenous corporate capitalist interests (immaterial of the adjectives we might choose to characterize them) today frame the agenda for the Indian state in the international scenario, whether pro-US or otherwise. These interests are formidably conscious and mature, as can be seen from the way the Indian state and capital combines their various strategies – a militarist combination with the US-Israel nexus, supposedly “progressive” alliance with various “third world” powers in WTO, independent oil dealings with varied forces, investments in oil fields, offer of lines of credit to developing countries in Africa and Tsunami affected countries, pipeline diplomacy and readiness to militarily-politically support all these. We cannot simply isolate one aspect of the Indian capitalist interests and generalize it to grasp their hydra-like nature. Competition and collaboration are inherent in the capitalist political economy. Will it not be just and appropriate to use this same principle to assess the “Indian designs”? Or else, we will only support them asking the Indian state to be “stronger” and will convert the opposing voices to mere instrument in its international bargaining. (4)

References:

(1) Lecture on “Nuclear Non-Proliferation and International Security” by Foreign Secretary Shri Shyam Saran at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, October 24, 2005, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.
(2) Ibid.
(3) “Press Briefing by the Foreign Secretary on the events in UN and IAEA”, September 26, 2005, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.
(4) In fact in a recent article by Harish Khare such use of dissent has been proudly advocated. See Harish Khare, “Uses of Domestic Dissent in Foreign Policy”, The Hindu, October 26, 2005.

For a different interpretation of Shyam Saran’s lecture, see Siddhartha Varadarajan’s India submits to the Bush doctrine?

India’s “Persian Puzzle” – A Possible Solution

2005-10-02T09:44:00.000-04:00

Pratyush Chandra

[The recent Indian vote on the IAEA resolution is being generally interpreted as a sign of the Indian state’s subservience to the US. However, the reality belies this simplistic analysis. At the risk of being labelled economic determinist, this article brings out some facts that indicate towards the growing expansionist interest of the Indian capital. It is this expansionism that drives the Indian state to defy its ‘non-alignment’ past and design its own game-plan, which at least for now coheres with the US global strategies.]

India has finally voted in favor of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution on Iran. Everybody was speculating that at last an issue has come up that will break the pace and uniformity of the growing Indo-US relations. But India has made its choice clear in the world market of strategies and alignments. There are various lines of explanation that dominate the discussion on the rationale of India’s choice on the issue. The most prevalent one is of course based on the belief that the “third world” states are congenitally incapable of taking such decisions except under the pressure from the West. This view generally presumes these states to be ‘soft’ and their ‘national’ hegemonic interests to be weak, which can easily be swayed by the external pressures. Further, any gesture of confrontation between these states and the Western states especially the US is generally taken as potentially anti-imperialist. However, this view cannot explain the Indian case as it does not capture the basic political economic processes that are increasingly integrating the Indian hegemonic interests within the global strategic alignments and realignments.

The Official Justification

Even before voting for the resolution, the Indian government had been categorically stressing that there was “no difference in objectives between India and the United States vis-à-vis Iran even if the two sides differ on tactics”.(1) Further, even when India stressed on “diplomatic consultations to evolve an international consensus on how to deal with Teheran's decision to continue its uranium enrichment programme”, it never wanted “another nuclear weapon state in its neighbourhood”.(2) Under these circumstances India’s vote must not be taken as a surprise.

The Indian foreign ministry is not wrong when it says that India’s vote on the resolution was actually in line with whatever had already been happening. This continuity is what constitutes the “evolutionary” foreign policy of India, as envisaged by its present Foreign Minister. The Indian leadership has consistently expressed all its international dealings in terms of “national interests”, “security interests”, etc. Once again, with regard to its vote on the IAEA resolution, the justification given by the Indian state is based on an ideological depoliticization of the so-called “national interests”. In the words of the Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran:

“I do not think that you should interpret India’s position as being aligned on the Left or on the Right or aligned with this group of countries or that group of countries. I think India has all along taken decisions on issues of concern to itself on the basis of its own assessment, and on the basis of its own national interest. So, the question of this representing a shift in India’s policy does not arise.” (3)

However, it all depends on the way you define the “national interest” which under neoliberalism (the professed ideology of the Indian state at least since 1991) means nothing but what provides leverage to the Indian businessmen and their businesses.

The Context

While analyzing India’s strategic maneuverings internationally, the analysts very rarely note their economic dimensions. It is scarcely admitted that India’s relationship with other developing countries after 1991 has been increasingly based on the export of capital and the Indian investment abroad. And in most of the cases, such economic relationship has been simultaneously equipped with militaristic aid to those states. India has been offering credit lines to many Afro-Asian countries that they can utilize for infrastructure building and other business purposes with a condition that they will employ Indian companies. India’s ‘non-aligned’ past has allowed it to have a major share in the capitalist subordination of the backward economies in Africa and Asia. In fact, the rhetoric of non-alignment (“South-South cooperation”) plays an efficient ideological role in rationalizing the expansionist drive of the Indian capital. Recently after India refused the foreign aid for its own Tsunami victims, the Indian External Affairs Minister, Natwar Singh, while offering Indonesians “concessional credit for reconstructing roads, buildings, harbours, ten units of fully equipped hospitals", rattled proudly that “they were lumping us with the others but now we are seen separate offering our help and assistance”. (4)

Definitely, since 1991 India has been consistently endeavoring to be recognized as a faithful ally of the US. Its nuclear graduation and global politico-economic interests have shown the US leadership that it is a force to be reckoned with, and its subordination provides one of the most reliable allies to oversee the Indian Ocean and meet up with China. In recent years the growing energy needs of the Indian capital has forced the Indian State to invest in the oilfields abroad – India has operating assets in Sudan, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Myanmar, Libya, Syria, Sakhalin Islands, etc. It has been acquiring competitive amounts of shares in foreign oil companies. All these make India a player in the global oil politics too both as an investor and a consumer.

The Indo-US relationship is thriving in this context, and has a clear-cut ‘material’ semantics. India requires not having a confrontation with the “global police” state when its capital is struggling to stabilize its share in the global pool of surplus value, of which a major portion comes from the American market and the Indian investment in the US. Further, by providing dual citizenship to the Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) recently, the Indian state has further increased its own responsibility of protecting NRI capital in exchange of ‘rent’ and the assurance of repatriation of profit.

In this scenario, apparently one may interpret the Indian vote on the IAEA resolution as an appeasement of the US-led ‘coalition’. But here too there is a vital interest of the Indian capital that is playing an important role. The recent pipline diplomacy between Iran, India and Pakistan is quite well known. It is impossible to interpret the Indian vote, which is unequivocally affirmative (not even abstention!) on a resolution that is meant to isolate Iran, without connecting it to the facts of the Indian ‘oil politics’ in general and its pipeline diplomacy with Iran in particular.

The Nature of India’s Oil Interests and the Global Coalition

Recently, while rationalizing the Indian nuclearization, the Indian Defense Minister noted:

“India is a heavily energy deficient country. Of all the variables that could hinder India's economic progress, energy scarcity and dependence are probably the most serious. Seventy percent of our crude oil is imported. Per capita energy consumption presently is only 1/5th of the world average. Considering a high growth rate of around 8 percent of GDP per year in the coming years, growth of oil demand is projected to be 6 percent per annum. If so, dependence on oil imports could rise from 70 percent to 80 (percent), to 85 percent over the next two decades. It is therefore imperative for us to look for cost-effective and long-term alternatives to meet our energy requirements. Indian oil companies are currently actively involved in a search for energy in the form of oil and gas fields, pipelines, LNG, and other new and non-conventional sources. But most hydrocarbon resources underline our dependence on limited reserves and others for this critical requirement. They also carry scope for avoidable strategic energy rivalries.” (5)

The clue to India’s alignment with the US hegemony in the Middle East lies here. Its energy deficiency, yet the desire and ability to proactively make up for it, makes the Indian rulers a player in the Middle East conflicts. Major, yet low productive oil producing industrialized countries, including the United States (6) and oil deficient industrialized economies can influence the global oil price only by appeasing or isolating OPEC countries. Since a major determinant of the oil price today is the differential oil rent appropriated by the highly productive oil economies like those of the Middle East, “cost effective” energy appropriation requires reducing this rent. The bully tactics (“either with us or against us”) of the US and other Western powers in the Middle East has been mainly geared towards this purpose.

The increasing Indian investment in the oilfields abroad was definitely triggered by the need to satisfy the domestic energy requirements, but ultimately as it happens with all capitalist ventures, these investments eventually develop their own logic of earning profit. With increasing divestment in the state owned oil companies of India and intrusion of private capital, this becomes furthermore true. Hence, the need to minimize the differential oil rent, which the oil companies have to pay to the oil producing countries, becomes an important aspect of India’s international political intervention, too. So this unity of ‘economic’ interest serves as the background for the increasing Indian intervention in the Gulf politics and that too in consonance with the US hegemony and other non-OPEC powers. India’s readiness to refuel the American warships during the First Gulf War and later during the Afghan War all point out that there exists an Indian consciousness of possible material gains from its subservience to the US led coalition. However, because of a formidable domestic anti-imperialist opposition, until now the capitalist preference in India could not come out as openly as it has in the vote on the IAEA resolution.

It is worthwhile to note that that a major hitch in the Indo-Iranian negotiations on the proposed pipeline was also related to pricing. “India has taken the position that any price above the US$3 per million British thermal units (BTUs) currently being paid by its power and fertilizer sectors for gas on the international market is unacceptable. Iran, in contrast, appears to be seeking more than US$4 per million BTUs, a rate that will only go higher if Pakistani transit fees are added.” (7) This might have been one of the major reasons in persuading the Indian state to go with the scheme of the West, since the isolation of the Iranian regime and its consequent desperation to earn revenues in the midst of enveloping sanctions can make the Iranians more compliant to the Indian demands and increase the weight on the side of the Indians in the negotiations for the pipeline.

References

(1) The Times of India, September 16, 2005
(2) The Hindu, September 21, 2005
(3) “Press Briefing by the Foreign Secretary on the events in UN and IAEA”, September 26, 2005
(4) Indian Express, January 8, 2005
(5) Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s Talk on “India’s Strategic Perspective”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, June 27, 2005
(6) Cyrus Bina, “The Economics of the Oil Crisis: Theories of Oil Crisis, Oil Rent & Internationalization of Capital in the Oil Industry”, Merlin Press, London, 1985.
(7) A.J. Tellis, “India As a New Global Power: An Action Agenda for the United States”, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, 2005

Pre-1990 ‘Democratic’ Experiments in Nepal

2005-09-04T12:36:00.000-04:00

THE EVOLVING PATTERN

Pratyush Chandra

ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 2005)

“Democracy refers to a system of governance in which the elite elements based in the business community control the state by virtue of their dominance of the private society, while the population observes quietly. So understood, democracy is a system of elite decision and public ratification. Correspondingly, popular involvement in the formation of public policy is considered a serious threat. It is not a step towards democracy; rather, it constitutes a ‘crisis of democracy’ that must be overcome.”(1)

Recently, political developments in Nepal have started getting considerable attention throughout the globe. The past negligence has been partly due to reading of the Nepalese situation as inherent in the so-called global process of democratisation triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even the stark instability of the Nepalese democracy did not attract attention as it was thought to be a general characteristic of what was happening in all the newly ‘democratised’ nations, and was considered to be a birth pang. But it is commonly forgotten that this birth pang of democracy in Nepal is tremendously long drawn. In this short survey of pre-1990 ‘democratic’ experiments in Nepal, I wish to indicate a recurring pattern of ‘royal regression’ (2) accompanying these experiments, which seeks to de-legitimise the democratic aspirations of the people of Nepal, and all in the name of democracy. It shows that what followed after 1990 was scarcely different. Every time there is an increased people’s assertion from below, emergency measures are taken to overcome the ‘crisis of democracy’. Unlike advanced bourgeois democracies, which have created numerous self-sustaining mechanisms of dealing with such crises by reducing militant opposition to debates and lobby groups, the democratic farce in Nepal is quite evident at the wake of continuous refusal of the downtrodden classes to be reduced in that manner. Hence, Nepal faces a perpetual ‘crisis of democracy’.

Episode 1: 1951 Democratic Revolution

Nepal’s flirtation with democracy has been continuous since the fall of Ranas in 1951. The Democracy Day that is commemorated every year on Feb 18 was in fact the day in the year 1951 when King Tribhuvan was reinstated with the help of India. It was the day that marked the transfer of absolute power from the dynasty of Prime Ministers to that of the Kings. It so happened that after the withdrawal of the British from the Indian soil, the Ranas of Nepal, the unique dynasty of Prime Ministers found themselves without any support in the subcontinent and faced an energised force of insurgents, whose leadership was trained in the Indian Freedom Struggle. Sensing the insecurity of the Ranas, King Tribhuvan found it opportune to gather India’s support to buy off the lost glory of the Shahs, the dynasty of the Kings. The Indian rulers (still struggling to outmanoeuvre the Communist revolt against Nizam, the democratic revolt against Hindu royalty and landlordism in Kashmir) were too ready for such a deal, as they were alarmed by growing radicalism among insurgency with the birth of the Nepalese Communist Party (in the year of the great Chinese Revolution) and evolving socialistic tenor of a section within the Congress. Hence, this “Delhi Compromise established the palace as paramount over a basically unchanged state machinery and class regime and subordinated the Ranas to the palace within a cabinet consisting of a combination of the old rulers and the compliant leadership from among the insurgents (the insurgent leadership was nearly all from landholding families of the old regime as well).”(3)

Nothing changed except the promise for a constituent assembly, which remains unfulfilled to this day. And of course, neighbouring the theatre of a continuous revolution, China, Nepal could be sold off as a strategic location to check the spread of socialism in the subcontinent. The American aid came showering in – “this began the creation of a whole class of commission agents and contractors who took their tithe of the foreign aid… [Further] Indian advisors arrived to expand India’s corrupt and unwieldy colonial bureaucracy to Nepal, which set about in turn to extending its control over local communities to undermine their autonomy, dispossess them of their natural and biological resources, and generally destroy their social and ecological viability and productive base.”(4)

Episode 2: The First Congress Government and the Coup

Nepalese people waited 6 years to see a constitution drafted by the royalty in 1957 and in 1959 they experienced the miasmic electoralist democracy, but to be vanished soon. Shrewd as he was, King Trubhuvan’s son Mahendra knew the meaning of a democratic government in Nepal – howsoever weak – a rise in democratic aspirations. The Congress Government under B.P. Koirala swept the first elections in Nepal on the platform that included abolishing Birta land tenure system (under which individuals were granted land on an inheritable and tax-exempt basis by the king), on the motto that “As long as land was not in the hands of the tiller…industrial development was infeasible”. It was not important whether the state machinery was equipped and consistent enough to undertake such a step, since the rise in democratic aspirations in an agrarian society is enough to disturb the patrimonial state apparatuses and superstructure that sustain the agrarian relations nurturing the absolutist state. Mahendra found his natural allies among shivering landlords. He had every means to undermine the first democratic experiment. As Nepali kings always know that power flows from the barrel of a gun, they never relinquish their control over armed forces and other coercive state apparatuses. But Mahendra needed an appropriate moment to draw the curtain on this first democratic drama. This moment came right away - India was beginning to engage itself in border conflicts with China and could not afford to see troubles right on its nose despite its democratic rhetoric, and the US aid was always ready to maintain the status quo for its own interest in the Cold War. For internal legitimacy, violent riots against the Koirala government were staged especially “in Bajhang, a feudal rajya in the midwestern Hill region with some degree of local autonomy, and in Gorkha, the ancestral home of the Shah dynasty (Mahendra’s forefathers)”.(5) In a night time palace coup d’etat in December 1960 the parliament was dissolved, its members were arrested, and subsequently all parties were outlawed for introducing divisions in the country.

Subsequently, the Constitution of December 1962 installed a system, which formalised the ‘cut and commission’ hierarchy in the society perpetuated through foreign aid along with stabilising the landlordist interests and absolute monarchy. “In the Royal Proclamation promulgating the new Constitution, King Mahendra inferred that the parliamentary system, being a foreign creation, was not as much in “step with the history and traditions of the country” as the panchayat system.”(6) Land reforms too were introduced imposing land ceilings. However, they allowed parcellization of “family plots in the names of brothers, sons, household servants, retainers, and even dogs to make it seem that no one individual owned all the land”(7).

Episode 3: Referendum

In 1970s with increasing commercialisation of the economy and society in Nepal, new ‘modern’ interests and economic relations arose. On the one hand, the statisation of the commons – forest and pasture lands – led to a privileged access to these lands allowing land monopolisation in the hands of the people close to power and bureaucracy. Rural poverty increased. This led to the ‘illegality’ and incrimination of land ‘encroachment’ by the rural poor resulting into rural tensions, which were frequently channelled into regional conflicts and some times into open class struggles. On the other hand, growing commercialisation led to an increased urbanisation and diversification of economic activities in urban centres. There was a tremendous growth in informal non-production sector especially with tourism and road linkages between different locations within Nepal and with India. There was an unprecedented increase in urban unemployment and especially educated unemployment, which led to the radicalisation of campuses and radical organising. Jhapali Khand of the Nepalese Communist Party along with other radical groups (in the All Nepal Communist Coordination Committee) reorganised under CPN(ML) systematically developed its organisations among rural and urban working classes. It was at this juncture, when ML had launched its student movement in 1979, that the ruling class under King Birendra agreed with the Congress leadership to hold another democratic drama – a referendum on the panchayat system. “Military and bureaucratic control of the ballot boxes along with violent intimidation of the voters under the then Prime Minister Suraya Bahadur Thapa allowed the pro-panchayat forces to swing the election by adding far more ballots than there were registered voters to quash the referendum”.(8)

Conclusion

The next episode of the ‘democracy’ drama in Nepal began in 1990. However, one might say that things after 1990 are different, but are they so? The backbone of the royal regression and aggression has always been the control over coercive state apparatuses, and of course, the non-implementation of land reforms, capable of destroying the rentier control over the rural economy. Further, why do the ruling classes of Nepal remain wary of forming a democratic constituent assembly? Seeing the levels of polarisation in the Nepalese society and political consciousness of the rural and urban poor, the Congress and the parliamentary left, which has been able to get accommodation within the evolving power structure, too have muted their opinions on the constituent assembly. The only purpose that all these democratic experiments in Nepal have fulfilled is time-to-time refurbishing of power structure by accommodating newer elements in the ruling class, while consistently marginalizing the working classes. Further, the royal ‘regression’ or takeover, on the one hand, asserts the hegemony of the rent-oriented classes and big corporates and on the other hand, demonstrates the weakness of the petty bourgeois political formations which have consistently been utilised for the competitive and corporatist interests of various sections of the ruling class, which includes the articulated interests of the multinational capital, irrespective of its origin.

References

(1) Noam Chomsky, “On Power and Ideology”, 1987

(2) Baburam Bhattarai, ‘Royal Regression and the Question of a Democratic Republic in Nepal’, Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), April 9 2005

(3) Stephen Lawrence Mikesell (1999), “Class, State and Struggle in Nepal: Writings 1989-1995”, Manohar, Delhi, pp 94

(4) Ibid.

(5) Nanda R. Shrestha (2001), “The Political Economy of Land, Landlessness and Migration in Nepal”, Nirala, Delhi, pp 156

(6) Frederick H. Gaige (1975), “Regionalism and National Unity in Nepal”, University of California Press, Berkeley, pp 137

(7) See (3), pp 97

(8) See (3), pp 100

State, Economy & Class Struggle in Nepal

2005-08-16T10:52:00.000-04:00

Pratyush Chandra

ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER (JULY-AUGUST, 2005)

1. Monarchy & Democracy in Nepal – Myth & Reality

The foremost reason that is cited in support of monarchy in Nepal is to ensure politico-economic stability. Inherent in this thesis is a criticism of the Nepali society that democracy by itself cannot sustain stability there. Parliamentary democracy that enlivens various local interest groups has to be tempered and controlled by an overseeing authority that can police them. Both the monarchists and ‘legal’ democrats in the country uphold this bias against the Nepali ‘demos’. The latter perhaps will counter this assessment by saying that they support constitutional monarchy, as in Britain, where monarchy is simply allegoric. But, this is not what was established in Nepal with their agreement in the 1990s – the arrangement to which they agreed keeps monarchy as the final authority. Given the internal class dynamics in Nepal and international scenario, is their any reason to hope for a successful reformist road to Nepali democracy, even in the pattern of constitutional monarchies in some European countries?

The comparison of Britain and Nepal is not only hilarious but mischievous too. A sense of being equal to the royal whites placates many hearts in Nepal. After all, many times in the 19th and 20th Centuries the Nepali royalty struggled to be treated equally. In the world of big powers, where Nepal is evidently powerless and on the receiving end, it gives some Nepalis an easy sense of national pride, history and identity. Understandably, it gives them a heart in this heartless world of competition and race. A handful of Nepali middle class immigrants and children of Nepali high and low nobility in Europe and the US may get a source of emotional and even material sustenance through the exotic image of a Hindu Nepal.

Britain in the 16th-19th centuries as the pioneer of world capitalism was going through tremendous internal transformations as a result of fierce struggle for hegemony between the rentier interests and profiteers – between landlords, merchants and industrialists. It was this struggle that determined the fate of monarchy in Britain. The situation in Nepal is obviously nowhere near Britain. Definitely like in Britain, in Nepal too the rentier interests are the most consistent support bases for monarchy. But the comparison has to stop here. These rentier interests are not complemented and countered by the forces rising from trade and industry within the country as in Britain. The formidable presence of foreign economic interests in the case of Nepal destroys any scope of such internal ‘class’ struggles among the exploiting classes for hegemony. These foreign forces find Nepali rentiers, at least till now, better equipped to regulate the superstructure to sustain their interests on the Nepali soil.

The class base sustaining monarchy in Nepal is that of the financial ‘capital’/moneylenders/landlords, ‘corporate’ interests in many joint ventures with Indian and other foreign capitalists, the mercantile establishments and the upper crust of civil servants and armed forces. The mass base for monarchy is constituted by sections of rich and middle peasantry, petty bourgeoisie and urban intellectuals who waver according to the strength of the working class struggles and their own class-conscious elements. Most of the ‘legal democratic’ forces at grassroots’ level represent this mass base. However, the post-1990s political economic development has developed a ‘democratic’ elite who has consistently interacted with the new institutions and has formidable interest in sustaining them. It is this section that today constitutes the leadership of all the mainstream ‘democratic’ forces in the country. The post-February development this year characteristically attests this fact. Even when the younger generation of democrats occasionally displayed republican sentiment, the leadership almost consistently refrained from attacking the institution of monarchy in their criticism of the monarch. In fact, many of them called for the preservation of the ‘heritage’ of monarchy.

2. Nepali Economy – Problems & Prospects

In order to understand the Nepali situation we must look at its economic contours. In 2003, Nepal’s population was around 24.7 millions, of which around 86% resided in the rural areas, suggesting their dependence on agriculture. The per capita income (PCA) is US $240, which is far below the average PCA in low-income countries ($430) and in South Asia ($460). The share of agriculture in the total Gross Domestic Product has come down from 60.3% in 1983 to 40.6% in 2003. On the other hand, the services sector has increased its share from 26.9% in 1983 to 37.8% in 2003, while the industrial sector too has increased its share in GDP from 12.8% to 21.6%. Even though the increasing share of services and industrial sectors in GDP in comparison to the agriculture sector is a universal trend, it is a peculiar South Asian phenomenon that this is not accompanied with a proportionate shift of the working force from the agriculture sector to the other two sectors. As mentioned above, 86% of the population is directly dependent on agriculture and allied activities, while 80.2% of the labour force is employed in this sector. The services absorb 17% of the labour force, while the industrial sector employs just 2.8%. This situation is aggravated by a tremendous sluggishness in average annual growth (AAG) in the overall productive sectors (agriculture and industrial) and stagnation in services sector. The AAG in agriculture decreased from 3.4 in 1983-93 to 3.3 in 1993-2003 (2.2/2.5 in 2002/03) and in the industrial sector for the same periods it decreased from 9.2 to 4.9 (-2.8/2.3 in 2002/03). In the manufacturing sector, specifically, the AAG declined from 10.1 in 1983-93 to 4.3 in 1993-2003, while it was –10.0 in 2002. On the other hand, in the services sector it remained constant during both decades at 4.9 (-1.7/3.2 in 2002/03).

These facts have several grave implications for the Nepali society. We can enumerate some of them here. Firstly, there is a tremendous rural/urban divide, which provides the topological glimpse of poverty in Nepal – an immense sea of rural poor encircling a few islands of urban affluence. Officially, people living below poverty line amount to 42%. The lowest 20% of population gets 11.5 % of national income whereas the highest 20% gets 44.8%. Taking into consideration the extent of rural inequality and the persistence of semi-feudal forms of exploitation in an increasingly monetised rural setting one can only imagine the state of the poor peasantry, the semi-proletarians and the landless. In 1994, 43.1% of rural household were marginal farmers (less than 0.5 hectares) occupying just 11.3% of the total land, 45.9% were small farmers (0.5-2.0 hectares) owning 46.8% of the total land, and 11% were large farmers (more than 2.0 hectares) owning 41.9% of the total land. Even the World Bank admits that the poverty cannot be reduced in Nepal since “growth has been concentrated primarily in the urban areas and particularly in Kathmandu valley, largely excluding 86 percent of the population who live in rural areas, where per capita agricultural production has grown minimally and the overall level of economic activity has been sluggish”.

Secondly, the disproportion between the share of industrial sector in the GDP and the amount of employment generated there demonstrates that whatever growth we find in this sector is in capital-intensive industries controlled by foreign capital collaborating with a handful of Nepali mercantilist corporates. (A major section of this Nepali big capital is in fact from the Indian business community of Marwaris who migrated a hundred years ago. Since Marwaris are largely endogamous, they have strong familial ties with their Indian counterparts.) In the post-liberalisation phase in the Indian subcontinent, where the Indian big capital overwhelmingly dominates, the employment-generation potentiality of the profit-driven industrial growth is very limited. Whatever employment is generated in the peripheral small scale industries fall in the informal sector, with rampant casualisation, no job security and very low wage. The extent of informalisation in the overall Nepali economy can be gathered from the fact that, even if the “market agricultural workforce” employed in commercialised farming activities is excluded, the informal sector employment, officially, comes to 90.7% of the total labour force. Further, in Nepal unemployment is at 4.89%, which by the head count methodology goes up to 15%, and underemployment is 45% of the total man-days.

Thirdly, the stress on the services sector, especially on tourism, has led to critical consequences. On the one hand, it too has been unable to absorb workforce proportional to its share in GDP, and the labour market in this sector is rampantly informal. Further, the Shangri-la image of Nepal that is sold in this sector, especially in tourism, has degenerating fallouts with a tremendous increase in drug abusage and prostitution. There are people in command who seek to sustain Nepal’s image as South Asia’s Las Vegas or even Bangkok.

Fourthly, the impoverishment in rural and urban areas has resulted in sluggishness in domestic demand for industrial goods, which has further eroded the possibility of an increased industrial growth in Nepal. This fact coupled with the backlash of liberalisation (export-oriented production) has made the industries in Nepal increasingly dependent on external markets – depleting internal resources to feed external demand. This further perpetuates the need for capital-intensity and an import of technologies to compete globally. The World Bank, in 2002, itself provided the glimpse of Nepali dependence while prognosticating slower growth in non-agricultural sectors and a contraction in manufacturing. It speculated that this sluggishness would be due to “(i) drop in domestic demand due to falling agriculture growth that especially affects small industries and services; (ii) decline in export demand as growth in both OECD countries and India has decelerated; (iii) cancellation of export orders caused by trade disruptions and higher insurance costs after the events of September 11th; and (iv) rising costs and uncertainty due to power disruptions, bandhs (general strikes) and direct terrorist attacks by Maoists and other groups on carpet and garment factories and on the liquor business” (these industries are most exploitative, and are heavily dependent on casualised workforce). Hence, there is not much in store for the Nepali industrial sector due to service sector-based (rent-oriented) development strategy and turbulent external market. Moreover, the Indian Multinationals in Nepal have added another dimension to the Nepali economy, they prefer employing Indian labour instead of Nepalis to avoid any investment in human resource development and, of course, class-conscious native proletarians.

3. Finance, Foreign Aid & Politics in Nepal

Interestingly, the fastest growing sub-sectors among services are financial/real estate and community/social services. Moreover, these are the areas that concern the rentier interests (in and out of the State apparatuses) the most. They have been trying everything to make these sub-sectors stable and rewarding. It is the financial sector that is the force behind the neoliberal revolution throughout the world, which motivates the commercialisation of economies and breaks every boundary even if it is meant to attain a degree of self-reliance to be able to compete in the market. While, on the one hand, it helps in the capitalist control over local resources by funding economic activities, on the other hand, it rewards the peripheral agencies who facilitate such acquisitions.

The financial sector in these efforts is complemented by foreign aid driven ‘social sector’, the other sub-sector that has never slackened in Nepal since the initial American efforts under the Truman Doctrine to buy off the Nepali rulers to counter the ‘second world’ influence in South Asia. A foremost radical political economist from Nepal, Nanda R. Shrestha rightly concludes in his “The Political Economy of Land, Landlessness and Migration in Nepal” (Delhi, 2001), “This is what so-called development or foreign aid had achieved: mesmerization of the restless Nepali intellectuals into submission to the reality of consumerism and family sustenance.” It has created a slavish middle class fully trained in protecting and serving the imperialist interests on the Nepali soil. It has created a vast population of “development victims”, too. While enticing the rural producers into commercial ventures without providing them training and peripheral infrastructure, and motivating them to a reckless utilisation of fertilisers, chemicals and genetically transformed seeds for immediate profits regardless of their ecological repercussions, they have made their survival dependent on the ups and downs of the market and on creditors, thus enforcing a form of archaic primitive accumulation and mercantilist exploitation. Once again quoting Shrestha from “In the Name of Development: A Reflection on Nepal” (University Press of America, 1997):

“Development funds have proved to be not only a fantastic boon for the elites, but also a powerful tool of control in their class (power) relations with the poor, an instrument that helps to keep the poor in check while issuing themselves fat checks…To wit, some of the development money has certainly trickled down to a few poor, mainly in the urban-commercial contexts. Consequently, one can find a few poor who have become rich, thus providing good anecdotes of development (capitalist) success. And development advocates are quick to hail such anecdotal rags-to-riches stories to stress their message that the development works. For instance, a poor butcher in Kathmandu has become the owner of a relatively large supermarket-like grocery store which is quite popular among Kathmandu’s elites and Westerners. But what they fail to announce openly is that, for the poor, development is a lottery game and that buried under every success story are scores of tragic stories of development victims. Simply put, poverty remains the stepchild of development, with foreign aid now acting as its sponsor.”

4. Political Changes in Nepal

We provided an overview of the Nepali economy above, and briefly touched upon the various processes in its formation. But underneath these processes one must recognise the semi-conscious designs of hegemonic forces to stabilise their hegemony – their struggle to sustain the roots that gave birth to them. Hence, the people who talk about stability and peace at this juncture must clarify whose stability and peace they want. If they say the forces that came to power in the 1990s must be stabilised to be able to deliver goods, then one must identify who came to power during that time. Did they do anything to curb the continuity and ‘stability’ of the above-mentioned economic processes, which have sustained the rule of the people thriving on foreign aid and squeezing the indigenous productive sectors? The liberal inflow of imperialist capital has been further smoothened. The overstress on attracting aid has become another government enterprise. A finance minister in 1993 while enumerating the Nepali Congress government’s successes added – “there has been a noteworthy increase in the volume of foreign assistance after the formation of the elected government”, even when most of this assistance were in the form of loans, increasing Nepal’s indebtedness. Further, data presented above clearly shows the deepening of dependency of the Nepali economy during 1990s after the ‘democratic takover’, rather than any move to counter it. The contribution of the 1990 ‘revolution’ was simply that it served to bring the neo-rich rural and urban gentry close to the state power, which was earlier monopolised by the royalty and armed forces directly representing the Nepali rentier-corporate class and negotiating with the global capital. In fact, the 1990 ‘revolution’ was a culmination of the Panchayat system and commercialisation of the economy undertaken during that time, which created numerous local facilitating agencies and elites. In their urge to find a sustainable political accommodation, they utilised the general unrest and eventually compromised its revolutionary potential by agreeing to the arrangement that kept the monarch at the helm. It was this intermediate ‘class’ representing neo-rich and petty bourgeois interests in the society that entered the parliament. So, effectively the Panchayat System was repainted as parliamentary democracy, leaving the institution of monarchy to play the same gimmicks of diminishing the vitality of the forces of change by accommodation and repression.

However, this 1990 incident can be called a revolution only in this respect that it was only after it that for the first time in the history of Nepal that the labouring classes – proletarians, landless and poor peasantry – could nationally and independently organise themselves, independent of the wavering petty-bourgeois leadership. The successes of Maoist revolutionaries, despite the news about their recent errors and ‘sectist’ infightings, show that the exploited masses of Nepal can be organised above localism and beyond reformist concessionary movements. What the spontaneous Sukumbasi (landless) movement of 1979 in Tarai lacked, and thus was suppressed brutally and quickly, the Maoists have provided – an organisation with a clear political vision.

When we talk of the working class’ struggle against exploitation in societies like Nepal, which is predominantly an agrarian society with a few enclaves of industrialisation, we need to avoid the schematic ‘pigeon hole’ framework of class analysis. In fact, class boundaries in sociological sense are always fuzzy and their solidification (in a sense, of ‘class solidarity’) depends on the level of class struggle. The level of class struggle in turn depends not only on local production relations, but also on the locus of these production relations in the overall national, regional and global political economy. An agrarian society in South Asia, where agriculture is heavily dependent on seasonal variations, where low technological development and population pressure characterise the whole economy, there is always an organic linkage between the proletarian and rural poor (poor peasants and the landless). This linkage if, on the one hand, depreciates the overall wage-levels and perpetuates casualisation of workforce, on the other hand, it allows a self-organisation of the labouring masses across the rural-urban divide. If on the one hand, villages act as depositories of cheap labour, to be pulled out and pushed forth, whenever capital needs it, on the other hand, these same villages act as the zones of political and economic solidarity among labouring masses. The experience of the Chinese Revolution, the glorious history of Latin American workers and peasant movements and the ongoing struggles in Nepal attest the presence of such potentiality in agrarian societies.

(Note: The data utilised here are taken from various World Bank reports on Nepal and from the studies published by a Nepalese trade union, GEFONT, available on its website, http://www.gefont.org)

For an analysis of the February "Coup": The Royal Coup in Nepal

Ways of Waste Management

2005-08-08T11:48:00.000-04:00

Economic Times, Sunday, August 7, 2005

Even the most rabid globalist would admit that globalisation, too, has its “discontents”, although most likely he would reason them to be due to insufficient effort towards globalisation on the part of governments, or ignorance on the part of the general public or its inclination towards immediate results.

In fact, there has been an increasing trend in social researches, coming out of premier First World institutions, of moralising social conflicts. They see them as “greed disguised”. But at least this much everybody will admit that the dream of a peaceful, post-Cold War global village has not materialised.

...

This leads to a general apathy towards legal political processes as they do not allow the “multitude” even the illusion of influencing the institutions that affect their economic well-being. The recent nos against the new EU constitution are symptomatic of the general mood against such depoliticisation.

That apart, the general unrest in Latin America against free-trade agreements originates from similar political consciousness. And though one should not draw up any definitive blueprints and conclusions for the future, history does force us to imagine limited possibilities.

Full Text:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1193605.cms

Advani's Jinnah Drama

2005-06-11T19:51:00.000-04:00

Advani’s Jinnah Drama – An exercise in Goebbelsian parliamentarism

Advani’s recent visit to Pakistan was quite meaningful. Perhaps the most apparent reason was to assuage his aggressive communalist image, which is seen as a hindrance in posing him as a ‘national’ leader of a ‘secular’ India. Vajpayee’s image of a moderate rightist made him more acceptable, despite Advani’s unique popularity among the ranks and files of all the rightist forces in the country, due to the latter’s leadership in the movement that led to the demolition of the Babri Mosque and communal riots across the country (although he denies his own participation in the actual demolition). If we understand this purpose, the total game plan behind the just finished Jinnah ‘controversy’ seems deliberate and well designed. It shows the strength of the fascist forces in India and their ability to manipulate opinions and coordinate their own organs skilfully. How does it matter, at least, to BJP, VHP and RSS whether Jinnah was secular or not? Taking into consideration their perception regarding the state and the role of religion in defining it, it is highly suspicious that they are reacting against Jinnah being called secular. They could have made it an occasion to tell people that Pakistan is the result of what they call ‘pseudo-secularism’, as they are always ready to reinterpret their leaders’ meaningless utterances. But they did not choose to do that, or rather they wanted to take time in doing so. It was only after the drama that BJP started convincing its bewildered cadres that Advani was actually suggesting that despite Jinnah’s secular speech at the time of independence, he created a theocratic state. However, the collaboration between the different organs of the ten-headed (dashanan) RSS was perfect as always, and it corroborates the Italian anti-fascist leader Togliatti’s characterisation of fascism as a chameleon –
1. Advani calls Jinnah secular,
2. VHP’s Togadia croaks immediately in his regular spirit of mindless denunciations,
3. RSS too does some chastising,
4. Advani is defiant; he resigns and calls for an open debate,
5. BJP is in temporary crisis,
6. “Secular” toadies in NDA, like Nitish Kumar, come in support of Advani, and threatens to pull out of the coalition,
7. Vajpayee and the BJP leadership soothe Advani and,
8. Advani withdraws his resignation.

Logical Conclusion: Within a few days of drama, Advani has become fit for leading a ‘secular’ India. Togadia’s abuses, RSS’ chastising and Nitish’s mediation all are necessary for such qualifications.

Tsunami, Aid & Imperialism

2005-04-04T01:31:00.000-04:00

Pratyush Chandra

ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER (MARCH-APRIL 2005)

1. The Tragedy Engineered!

Colin Powell while heralding the American aid missions for tsunami affected areas rightly summed up the American Spirit, “I think it does give to the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action”.(1) As if the Christian god has created the devastation to allow the American angels to show kindness, and the third world simpletons to hail the virtuosity, lordship and “freedom” of the Americans. That their wretchedness would make them understand that it is for their good that the Americans make war, as it is for them that now the Americans give aid, and that they must not hate America’s “freedom”. But it was William Blake who once said in one of his prophetic poems:

Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor

You make us poor to serve us! Facts do sufficiently tell us that the enormity of the devastation caused by tsunami could have been avoided. Even if it was not consciously designed, the callousness with which the warning of the impending disaster was treated and disseminated is peculiar of the imperialist mind set and work strategy. Their techniques fail and targets are misfired only when others are victims, giving the imperialists opportunity to show off all those things what they say. It happened in Bush’s first tenure on 9/11 (he found a mission!) and it happened now during Bush’s second tenure.

The bulletins issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PWTC) show a striking irregularity exclusively with regard to the particular “megathrust” earthquake that hit Indonesia on December 26 leading to the Tsunami waves. It had predicted and reported every small and big seismic event before that particular quake in the region judging their implications. However, this biggest earthquake was casually reported. Even when the warning was issued, it was selectively disseminated – “according to the statement of the Hawaii based PTWC, advanced warning was released but on a selective basis. Indonesia was already hit, so the warning was in any event redundant and Australia was several thousand miles from the epicentre of the earthquake and was, therefore, under no immediate threat.” Of course, “the US Military and the State Department were given advanced warning. America's Navy base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean was notified.” The excuse came, “We didn't have a contact in place where you could just pick up the phone.” But several Indian Ocean countries are members of the Tsunami Warning System! One witnesses the unprecedented activism of the US military in the region after the disaster, yet they did not care to disseminate their foreknowledge of the impending calamity!(2) Although the monopoly over information and its selective dissemination are necessary to remain powerful and are strategically very important to have an edge in the imperialist (politico-economic and military) competition in the era of “imperialism without colonies”, it would be premature to assess the degree of deliberation in this particular case, without the danger of being hounded as a conspiracy theorist (poor Ward Churchill!).

2. The Game Plan

The immediate effect of the Tsunami disaster was that it shifted the whole attention away from Iraq where the American imperialism was caught compromised and naked in bloody orgy. Lately the invasion in Iraq was increasingly marred by the revelation of sex ‘scandals’ and other heinous atrocities committed by the American torturers to humble insurgencies. Insurgencies themselves were on increase along with the intensification of global protests against the illegitimate elections. Moreover, the US needed other venues of expansion for further strengthening its strategic and political economic control globally, while its lesser allies went on with cleaning the mess it has left, and its competitors still coping with the shocks in the money market due to the dollar’s instability (showing their dependence on the US economy).

On the other hand, the European impotence was starkly evident right from the beginning. Initially, the European powers accused the US for being indifferent in providing aid to the devastated region, but later they were themselves left behind as militarist activism allowed the latter to be swifter and far more visible in the whole effort. The unilateral announcement of the coalition, with only Japan, Australia and India invited, came as a jolt to the European confidence. However, after a few days only, Powell announced that “the coalition will be disbanded and folded into the broader UN-led operations” as “it served its purpose”. In fact, “the “core group” was announced by President George W. Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch on December 29 as he tried to dispel criticism that his initial reaction to the disaster was slow and the initial US financial aid of $15 million stingy.” (3) The “stingy” US made others feel stingier. The European countries were found concentrating “support in areas where their nationals have suffered more”.(4) Jeremy Seabrook rightly concludes, “For the western media, it is clear that a tourist's tragedy is more important than that of the 'locals'”. This is true not only of the media but even the governments there. They seem to believe that “in death, there should be hierarchy”.(5)

Further, the US (like its competitors) found a new veil of aid to cover its shame and new accomplices, like India and Sri Lanka, with old ones once again readied for the occasion. Regarding what foreign aid is, Hattori has rightly pointed out, “What most clearly defines foreign aid is the symbolic power politics between donor and recipient. Aid practice transforms material dominance and subordination into gestures of generosity and gratitude. This symbolic transformation, in turn, euphemizes the material hierarchy underlying the donor-recipient relation. In this process, recipients become complicit in the existing order that enables donors to give in the first place.”(6) Powell’s tenor in the statement quoted in the beginning starkly attests this conceptualization of the foreign aid. The tsunami tragedy provided US imperialism an opportunity to refurbish its old bases established at the time of the Korean, Vietnamese Wars and other occasions, and to articulate actively with regional forces and “powers” once again. It allowed the regeneration of the “donor-recipient” relation in the region, which was getting loose in the post-Cold War era. The regional ‘rentier’ interests that were once precious allies in the coalition against the Soviets went dissatisfied and independent due to a divergence of the imperialist concentration, and even posed threat to global hegemonies by fuelling fundamentalist populisms (which in essence diverted genuine popular anti-systemic sentiments). In the tsunami aid drive, these interests in Indonesia, Malaysia etc can once again be harnessed and militarized. On the other hand, the US military for the first time openly traversed through South Asia, which was relatively independent due to its ‘relative’ non-alignment. Thus, one can say that the Tsunami tragedy has allowed an overhauling of the “international” power relations in the region under the US hegemony.

3. The Politics and Economics of the Indian Aid

India, which has been ever ready to respond to the slightest gesture from the US for military cooperation in the post-Cold war era, was flattered to find the open invitation to join the US led “tsunami coalition”. It did not wait to rethink its old stance to strengthen the UN, which is increasingly being used as toilet paper by the imperialist forces. However, what they call, “inter-operability” and “mil-to-mil” relations were already at place after 9/11, where they could jointly visualise, “The U.S.-India defense relationship has grown to a stage where the future is clear. It is one in which the two militaries can work in unison to combat the regional and global challenges of terrorism, administer peacekeeping and humanitarian action, keep the high seas safe for the movement of commerce and energy, take the lead in preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and be a force for stability in Asia.”(7) Joint military and naval exercises in the regions of insurgencies like Northeast India and in the Indian Ocean have already become frequent. Tsunami ‘coalition’ gives this cooperation an immediate purpose and provides an opportunity to legitimize the relationship. It creates, at the cost of the victims, an occasion to have an overview of the region and to build up the infrastructure necessary for pre-empting any future bellicosity in the region uncomfortable for the global power relations.

The snake charmers of non-alignment themselves seem to be charmed away by Bush’s infantile abracadabra of “strong partners”, “against evil”, “for virtues”. However, who knows better about the materialist function of such chants than we Indians whose ancestors would bring rain and grow plants using magical spells and incantations. The Indian ruling class has its politico-economic motive to go into the relationship with the cowboy. After India refused the foreign aid for its own victims, and the Indonesian President thanked India for its aid and assistance to Indonesia, the Indian External Affairs Minister, Natwar Singh’s rattled proudly that “they were lumping us with the others but now we are seen separate offering our help and assistance”.(8) But is this pride mere vanity? Does not the politics of foreign aid, which applies to the assessment of every other imperialist forces hold true for India too? Is India the only country devoid of any crass Shylockian motive behind “its gestures of generosity and gratitude”? Do they not euphemize the “material hierarchy”?

One pop intellectual in India, while writing an eulogy on the tsunami “coalition”, says, “The immediate motivation for the four-nation cooperation involving India and the U.S. is one simple fact that no one country can manage the consequences of the extraordinary disaster we are confronted with today.” But he himself provides the clue to the hidden motive – “India and the U.S. also want to ensure the security of energy supplies from the Gulf region. They also seek to ensure the safety of sea-lanes, which carry oil and a lot other commerce in the Indian Ocean. While these broad common objectives were recognised, there had been no real occasion for the two countries to actually work together in managing security in the Indian Ocean. The tsunami disaster has provided such an opportunity.”(9)

The Sri Lankan socialists perhaps know the meaning of aid in clearer terms. The United Socialist Party has demanded the withdrawal of all the foreign (American, British and Indian) armies that have arrived in the name of tsunami aid. They claim to have “received a very good response when they exposed the hypocrisy and true intentions of US imperialism and also of Indian imperialism. Both are allegedly deploying troops for humanitarian reasons but, in truth, are aiming for increased economic and military control in the region.”(10) For them the danger is quite evident as both the US and India have the similar reading of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, where both have dubbed the LTTE to be terrorist.(11) Further, India has increasingly defined its “national security interests” in Bushist terms – perceiving every conflict in its neighbourhood and South Asia as threat to its security. It recently pulled out of the SAARC meeting explicitly citing the recent events in Bangladesh and Nepal as reasons.

In the particular case of Sri Lanka, India has sufficient political economic interests to take care of. “India has recently become an important investor as a result of the India–Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement… Indeed, India was the largest investor in Sri Lanka in 2002.”(12) Further, with regard to the aid to Indonesia, too, the cat was almost out of the bag, when Natwar Singh met the Indonesian President. "Apart from the assistance sent so far, we could also offer them concessional credit for reconstructing roads, buildings, harbours, ten units of fully equipped hospitals".(13) Washington Post saw India’s contribution in relief efforts as a sign of its emergence as regional power, and finds, “Although India still accepts some foreign aid, such help is declining in importance with the country's rapid economic growth. In the last few years, India has begun to transform itself into a donor nation, offering lines of credit to developing countries in Africa and elsewhere.”(14) Hence, India is perfectly in line with the other imperialist forces in capitalizing on other people’s sufferings.

4. Conclusion

All shades of progressives, leftists and relatively conscious human beings booed when Bush talked about the American compassion and generosity. The tactic to divert attention from the brutality of Iraqi occupation was evident to everybody. Anti-imperialists consistently and timely exposed the real facts behind Bush’s rhetoric and Tsunami tragedy, while continuing to irritate the imperialists and their media hogs by not allowing them any rest and exposing their plans and blunders in the Middle East.

In the tsunami-affected regions, as in Sri Lanka, people are categorically stating that, “The tsunami aid which is a product of the sacrifices of the working people around the world should go to the needy people directly, as quickly as possible. All the reconstruction and relief distribution should be in the hands of democratically-elected committees of the affected people and the trade unions.”(15) Voices are being increasingly raised against the covert agenda of the new coalitions between the indigenous ruling interests and global hegemonies in the tsunami-affected regions. The Thai people are protesting the increased American military presence after December 26 and disapprove of the proposed build-up of the American military at Utapao air base and in the Gulf of Thailand, which were used in 1967 to station aircrafts for bombing North Vietnam.(16) Further, the Indonesian ruling elite had considered the American ‘humanitarian’ and military aid an opportunity to bring back political legitimacy and stability, similar to what the Americans visualized in it for themselves, according to one American historian, “an opportunity to try to move beyond the frustration of Iraq and pre-emption and tensions with the Islamic world… an area where the U.S., with its financial resources and its logistical capability, can work in a cause that no one can argue.”(17) But all these seem to be illusory at least till now; the corrupt polity in Indonesia seems to make things furthermore complex, while the Americans always find their dream of being welcome as liberators rebuffed – Vietnamese rebuffed it, Iraqis are continuing to do so, and even the tsunami victims, howsoever they are helpless, are not inclined to do any different.

NOTES

(1) “Powell: US values in action”, CNN (5 January 2005), available at http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/tsunami.disaster/

(2) Michel Chossudovsky, “Discrepancies in the Tsunami Warning System” (14 January 2005) available at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO501C.html and “Foreknowledge of a Natural Disaster” (29 December 2004) available at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO412C.html

(3) “US disbands India, Japan, Aus tsunami group”, posted on Indian Express website (6 January 2005) http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=40427

(4) “EU downplays transatlantic row over Asia aid”, posted (5 January 2005) on http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/050105162445.jhwxapg9

(5) Jeremy Seabrook, “In Death, Imperialism lives on”, The Guardian (31 December 2004)

(6) Tomohisa Hattori, “Reconceptualizing Foreign Aid”, Review of International Political Economy 8:4 (Winter 2001)

(7) 'People , Progress, Partnership - The Transformation of US -India Relations', available at http://usembassy.state.gov/posts/in1/wwwhppp.html

(8) PTI, “Indonesia praises India for tsunami help”, Indian Express (8 January 2005), available at http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=40490

(9) C. Raja Mohan, “India and the Indian Ocean: from isolation to multilateralism”, The New Nation, (7 January 2005), available at http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/printer_15238.shtml

(10) “Sri Lanka after the Tsunami”, The Socialist (22 January 2005), available at http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/2005/377/index.html?id=pp4.htm

(11) C. Raja Mohan, op cit. “India and America also now share the objective of peace and stability in South Asia. They have a joint interest in countering terrorism and extremism in the region. In Sri Lanka for example, New Delhi and Washington are both opposed to terrorism by the Tamil Tigers and seek to maintain the unity and territorial integrity of the island nation.”

(12) UNCTAD 2003 Investment Policy Review: Sri Lanka

(13) PTI, op cit.

(14) John Lancaster, “India Takes Major Role In Sri Lanka Relief Effort: Aid Is Sign of Nation's Emergence as Regional Power”, Washington Post (20 January 2005). Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22194-2005Jan19?language=printer

(15) Same as in (8)

(16) “Tsunami Relief as a Subterfuge? The Pentagon Scrambles to Reenter its Old Thai Air Base”, available at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/SIR502A.html

(17) David E. Sanger, “Aid Summit Talks in Jakarta: U.S. Is Facing a Choice and an Opportunity”, The New York Times (02 January 2005), available at
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/02/international/worldspecial4/02diplo.html

Bush’s Re-Election and the ‘Indian Dream’

2005-02-04T01:15:00.000-05:00

Pratyush Chandra

ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER JAN-FEB 2005

Interesting reactions over the US elections came from two sections of the Indian society – those vocalised by different associations of the Indian capitalist class, and those coming from the right reactionary forces of the country. More interesting is their open concurrence not only with regard to their assessment of the economic impact of Bush’s victory, but also with regard to their politico-militarist tenor. In my opinion this concurrence speaks a lot about the character of the so-called “national” bourgeoisie and their immediate interests.

Generally, it is assumed that the Indian ruling interests in the foreign political developments are rent-oriented, i.e., gathering favours for offering Indian markets. This judgement is too simplistic and does not match up to the complexity of capitalist international relations. Further, it fails to grasp the nature of capitalist development in India. Marxists enriched the concept of “imperialism” in the second decade of the 20th century to grasp this very complexity of relationships in capitalism. They saw in imperialism a “dense and widespread network of relationships and connections” causing “the propertied classes to go over entirely to the side of imperialism”. (Lenin: 133) They recognised the crisscross nature of international associations and treaties between “national” ruling classes. With the later development of “shareholder” capitalism and MNCs/TNCs, inter-national relationships have become more complicated, which cannot be explained by strict geographical conceptualisation of core/periphery divide. The Indian ruling interests have to be explained as embedded in the global logic of capitalist accumulation, their aim, like their competitors’, being to siphon away as much profit from the global pool of surplus value as they can, by collaborative or aggressive tactics.

This complex relationship between the Indian capitalist class, their political representatives and global politico-economic developments is evident in reactions to Bush’s victory. Strategic and militaristic concerns are predominant in them. They perceive Bush’s victory as an opportunity to ensure the implementation of "Next Steps in Strategic Partnership" (NSSP) with India, which was elaborated in his first tenure. NSSP outlined collaborations in high technology, civil and nuclear space programs and trade. Bush’s commitment to the partnership was taken to be evident in the setting up of the U.S. India High Technology Cooperation Group, U.S. India Cyber Security Forum and the Joint Working Group on Terrorism.

The Indian political and economic elites rely strictly on the “strategic calculus” that would garner Bush’s attractions for India. Since the collapse of Soviet Union, the Indian ruling class has been trying hard to sell themselves as a regional force that can act as a reliable watchdog for global imperialism. The decision to refuel the Anglo-American warplanes in 1991 during Chandrashekhar’s regime, India’s desperate graduation as a nuclear power and bargaining favours on its basis, and sycophant persuasion to get employment during the Afghan War – all amount to the same goal of selling themselves as a power to be reckoned with for any strategic building up in Asia. And they feel now the time has come to realise the “Indian Dream”.

Just after the elections the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) hoped for President Bush’s visit to India early in his second term to provide a new thrust to U.S.-India relations. Rumsfield has already arrived to pave the way for the mission. The CII finds, "Bilateral defense relations are at record highs with the two countries organizing joint military exercises and patrols and are now looking at cooperating in newer areas such as missile defense", and "a second term now provides an opportunity to build on these initiatives." The CII being a prime association of the Indian corporates finds the economic gains packaged in this aggressive military relation that puts the government-to-government agreement for cooperation in place. The Indian bourgeoisie seem to agree with the pop-intellectual of American imperialism, Thomas Friedman (1999) that “the hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnel-Douglas, the designer of the F-15”, and that the hidden fist that keeps Silicon Valleys and their technologies safe is the army, navy and air-force. I think he forgot to add private armies and “Ku Klux Klan” rioters, who do what “legal” forces can’t do. Further, with the Indian stakes in McDonalds, why will not F-15s be refuelled in India?

A representative of the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Prasanta Biswal, voiced a similar hope and found that “the republican administration has been pro-India with people like the under secretary of Commerce, Ken Juster, and former ambassador to India Robert Blackwill. We just hope that the initiatives that have been taken will be carried forward and at the same time, they will take newer initiatives."

A presentiment, definitely, existed that the Democrats would have faced difficulty in avoiding the nationalist pressure of the biggest labour union in the US, the AFL-CIO, which has been the most formidable support base for the Democratic Party. This could have resulted into the curtailment on outsourcing etc., which is an important source of tapping on low wage zones for global profit making which then is shared by the MNCs in the first world and their collaborators in the Third World. In India especially in the IT industry there was an uneasiness and apprehension. The Hindu (Nov 5, 2004) reported, “The re-election of George Bush as President of the U.S. has ended the brief period of uncertainty for the Indian IT industry. Mr. Bush's rival John Kerry's protectionist promises that included ending the outflow of call centre and software development business from the U.S. to other countries had made the Indian industry, one of the biggest beneficiaries of this relocation, apprehensive.”

However this fear was false because, on the one hand, any “mature” democracy and its parties are fully trained to dupe such support base while still maintaining it. On the other hand, both Republicans and Democrats have always been involved in propaganda competition on who fulfils the “American Dream”, hence both play on chauvinism to hoodwink the American masses, while remaining consistently married to the expansionist drive of the capitalist class. Even the “democratic” Clinton sagely commends the “conservatives” for drawing “lines that should not be crossed”. (Walsh, 2004)

In fact, the chauvinist tenor of the American Dream and American values herds together the masses behind expansionism as supposed “resolution” to their plight. It is true, the organised labour everywhere has been on defensive in the phase of globalisation, when capital flight works as the regimenting factor. In the face of non-availability of any immediate revolutionary option in the society, they revert to the ideology of desperation, of introversion, to slogans like “buy American, be American”. On the one hand, this forces them to convince the capitalists of their commitment to the industrial “peace”, to make “national” industries competitive in the global market! On the other hand, it consolidates the domestic market for the “national” bourgeoisie of the US. Hence, the “labour support” nowhere binds the hands of the US state or any capitalist state to do what it is meant to do as the governing body of the ruling class.

Particularly interesting is the response of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS); though one never knows which part of its sounding zone will be claimed official – fascism is always cacophonous. A few months ago RSS Chief Sudarshan “discovered” about the US funded programme to christianise India completely by 2010 or so, and propounded the US to be India’s worst enemy. But now in the columns of RSS’ mouthpiece, Organiser (Nov 21, 2004), one finds Bush as the emancipator of the world from “oriental Talibanism and occidental anarchy” and by re-electing him the Americans have salvaged their civil society. In this column entitled “America, America … says the PM, Comrades want him to shut up” (a usual and unimpressive stuff of anti-communism), Rajendra Prabhu finds “the relationship between India and the United States has been transformed from the cold war suspicion to strategic partnership where the two have deepening mutual interests”. He praises Bush for bringing democracy and freedom to Afghanis and Iraqis. “Today our companies, our government, our experts are building roads, hospitals and schools in that country.” Afghan war was in “our national interest” (one of the Bushisms).

Prabhu, further, notes, “the Presidential election campaign in the US has thrown up the deep divide within that country over Bush’s action and strategy in Iraq.” But then “it was Iraq action that sent the shivers in Pakistan also that the American President could act if the Musharraf regime refused to tango with it in suppressing the Islamic fundamentalists”, thus the US action once again fulfilled “our national interest”.

In a sycophantic tone, peculiar to the “liberal” section of RSS, he lauds Bush’s messianic goals. “From Indonesia to Egypt, the historic Muslim Crescent did get a message in various intensities that the days of oppressive regimes are numbered. Regimes have changed no doubt through elections in Indonesia and Malaysia, and stirrings of a more liberal approach are buffeting the royal regimes and semi-autocracies. If finally an elected government takes office in Baghdad, the President would be vindicated. It looks doubtful at present given the rising level of violence. It looked impossible in Afghanistan also even six months back. But it has happened.” The cowboy spirit of Bush makes possible all Missions Impossible.

Finally, Prabhu concludes – “In this US election, besides Iraq and terrorism, the most divisive issue was the destruction of family values through such aberrations as gay marriages, legalization of lesbianism and such social viruses. For years it seemed the New England liberal establishment and California’s aberrant communities would hijack core values of the country. But suddenly the silent majority gave up its silence and spoke through the ballot to restore the social balance. American ultra liberals may be in mourning. And the Islamic fundamentalists are angry. Civil society needs to be saved both from oriental Talibanism and occidental anarchy. At least that is what the Americans accomplished in this election.”

Both the Indian capitalist class and the rightist forces find strategic and militaristic collaboration between India and the US as crucial for the Indian “national interests”. The only difference is that the latter provides the former with a voice that can draw the general masses behind these national interests with the help of the homogenising effect of aggressive chauvinism. It allows the ruling class interest to become a national interest. Sudarshan’s rabid anti-Christian rhetoric ghettoising masses on communal lines uniquely combines with the “secular” urge of profit-making that can be fulfilled only by joining forces with the US imperialism.

Sections of the Indian capitalists suffered a heavy shock a few months ago to see Vajpayee government voted out of power. It was the government that represented their interests while perfectly taming the masses with its rightist rhetoric. It is not that they were averse to the Congress, which has been their representative for the longest period of time. But the Congress could not sustain itself as such because of its inability to combine various sectional interests within the rural/urban ruling classes while simultaneously regimenting the general masses. In the neo-liberal phase of global capitalism it could not provide a stable government with an aggressive tenor required to support the domestic capital to collaborate and compete in the post-Cold War globalising market. After numerous ups and downs, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) graduated as that political power. But its defeat and moreover the parliamentary left’s position in a crucial role of stabilising the new government made the capitalists desperate.

Now, the new Congress government has the dual task of competing with the rightist political gymnastics and moderating the damage on the state’s legitimacy by the earlier government by its naïve open communal preferences. Further, it has to continue with the act of settling in the evolving global polity. The biggest contribution of the earlier rightist regime was its determination to fashion its international surroundings in favour of the corporatist interests in the country. Its tactics ranged from the hype of nuclear blasts to the laughable sycophant persuasion of the Anglo-American masters to get employment in the Afghan war. The Indian oil interests and other corporates had their heyday during Vajpayee government. It was the first consistently “outward”- oriented (even if not expansionist in the normal sense of the word) regime, concentrating on building a place in the global polity as a junior partner in global imperialism. As a result, Manmohan’s government has the major task of internal re-legitimisation of the Indian state with a furtherance of the basic orientation of the earlier government, i.e., its economic and foreign policies. In fact, the left support gives his government the essential political legitimacy to pursue these tasks. The parliamentary left was quite easily tamed by the manipulated stock exchange turbulences just after the general elections. It is being time and again forced to reassure the “business” community of its moderated nature. Even when it says that its support must not be taken for granted, it is extremely afraid of the immediate fallout of any hard-line on its part. This situation has become another self-justification for not waging “class struggle” leading to their further reduction as a distinct force of the working class. This tamed radical has become the biggest asset of the capitalist state, which was struggling for its legitimacy right from the initial days of liberalisation in the country.

Frankly as regards to the American policies it hardly mattered who won the election – Bush or Kerry. But for the Indian politics Bush’s victory is significant in the sense, that it allows the rightist forces to once again pose themselves as the smarter representative of the capitalist class attuned to the global needs, which is evident in their respective reactions to Bush’s victory. Further, it pressurises Manmohan to be on the “right” track even with a left support, as he has already demonstrated recently. His initial efforts to start a dialogue with nationalist and left extremists were perhaps laudable, but he has not shown any sign of doing away with Vajpayee government’s belligerent rhetoric and apparatus to wage its own regional “war against terrorism” that includes fighting the left insurgency in Nepal. Bush’s re-election is definitely a gift to the Indian capitalist class and the rightist forces in India, as it would continue to build an atmosphere of aggressive globalism. And they have aptly interpreted the result of the American elections – a victory for militarism and rightism.

References:

Dutt, Rimin (2004) “Indian business groups welcome Bush's re-election”, IndUS Business Journal Online Nov 15, http://www.indusbusinessjournal.com

Friedman, Thomas (1999) “What the World Needs Now”, New York Times, March 28

Lenin, V.I. (2000) Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Left Word Books, New Delhi

Prabhu, Rajendra (2004) “America, America … says the PM Comrades want him to shut up”, Organiser Nov 21, http://www.organiser.org

Special Correspondent (2004) “IT Sector greets Bush’s Re-elections”, The Hindu Nov 05, http://www.hindu.com/2004/11/05/stories/2004110503541500.htm

Walsh, David (2004) “Opening of Bill Clinton’s library: a sordid gathering of the “fat cats””, World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) Nov 20, http://www.wsws.org/

Tsunami, US & India

2005-02-02T07:59:00.000-05:00

Pratyush Chandra

[This article analyses the ‘confident’ moves of the Indian state during the Tsunami crisis. It seeks to demonstrate that India’s increasing integration with the imperialist camp is not driven by any “ideological” illusion but rather is a manifestation of the definite material needs of the Indian capital, which are essentially expansionist.]

1. ‘Tsunami’ Coalition – Context & Implications

In India, the ruling Congress Party has finally buried the remains of the Nehruvian foreign policy. In 1992, Narasimha Rao destroyed one of the major pillars of the so-called “nonalignment” that guided India’s international relations during the Cold War, when he established full ties with Israel. Before this, Chandrashekhar’s desire to allow the refuelling of the American warplanes in 1991 had already announced the way things were going to shape up. The Vajpayee government stretched this to the extent of a complete abandonment of the principle of nonalignment. Manmohan Singh has now completed the process, by abandoning the formal Indian stand for strengthening the UNO as the global coalition to resolve international disputes and provide humanitarian aids. Becoming a part of the US-led 4-nation coalition (which includes its most stable allies in the region, Japan and Australia) for tsunami relief efforts, the “pragmatic” India has shown the world, other western powers and its former comrades in the NAM (non-aligned movement) that it sides with the US. It has aligned with the US’ unilateral strategy to impose its own designs on the world community, by announcing its moves and then using the UN as a rubber stamp.

The coalition came as the American response to the initial criticism from its European competitors for late rising to the occasion for providing relief to tsunami victims. Only Australia, Japan and India were invited, excluding not only the European nations, but also the time-tested militarist allies of the US in the region. India’s initial ‘displeasure’ over deploying of the 1500 US Marines in Sri Lanka was shut up in the sheen and prospects of being close to the US. The latter, knowing that it cannot compete economically with other Western powers, nevertheless is aware of its only strength – its military might and the capacity to go anywhere and bully anybody. Even the European Union foreign policy head Javier Solana’s spokesperson had to admit that the United States’ military muscle allows it a higher visibility in the current crisis around the Indian Ocean.

The US is effectively using the occasion to extend its militarist tentacles in Southeast Asia and Indian Ocean. It is returning to its Vietnam War bases like Utapao Royal Thai Naval Air Force Base on the Bay of Thailand, in the name of setting up a “command centre” for the tsunami emergency relief effort. It has revamped all its ties in the region. Sri Lanka’s ruling elites have found new muscle support allowing the US Marines to venture its terrain. Most importantly, it is the occasion for the US to strengthen and test its relation with India, as its most stable support in the region. In the name of humanitarian aid it has established sweeping ties with the regimes in the region and refurbished its strategic machinery within a few days after the tragedy.

But what does the Indian refusal to “humanitarian aid” for its own victims signify? Is it not ideological, “anti-imperialist” stand? Not at all. If it had happened 20 years ago one could submit to such illusions. This refusal along with its readiness to provide aid to other victim countries involves something more than this simplistic rhetoric. Definitely, India seeks to demonstrate to the world that it is self-dependent and a power in itself with which western powers must reckon to pursue any strategic designs in the Indian Ocean. Its “ambitions” must be understood as culmination of the particular configuration of material interests composing the character of the state in India, its assessment of its own capacity to hegemonise the region.

2. US Interests in India

The US knows how to pamper such “ambition”, and aptly responded. Bush lauded India’s “very strong leadership” thanking it “for taking a lead in this issue”. Regarding the coalition he said, “one of the first things that we did was to put together a core group of nations, nations that are capable of organising relief efforts around the region, and the Indian Government has been especially strong, as a part of this core group”.

The European powers, not in the Anglo-American coalition, understand the American design, but cannot do anything about it. France thinking it an opportunity came in defence of India, when it was criticised around the globe for refusing the aid. The French Defence Minister Michelle Aillot Marie said, “Those who criticised the Indian government’s decision not to accept the aid don’t really understand or know the country’s technological, financial and economic strength and its capability to deal with such crises.” However, it is clear in this competition, for the present at least, the US military prowess allows it to go so far, where others still fumble to tread.

It was arguably the greatest “mainstream” economist of the 20th Century, John M. Keynes, who once said “Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth.” The present century was already going through endless wars, when the tragedy of tsunami occurred. It would be a matter of immense research and controversies to assess the exact “positive” economic value of these disasters. But Powell has already made it clear that the US aid for tsunami victims will be beneficial for its strategic designs and “war against terror”. He said in the tone typical of the Yankee politicians, “I think it does give to the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action”.

The induction of India in this design signifies a clear extension of the American front throughout the Indian Ocean. The growing economic and consequent political might of China is a concern for the US and the erstwhile “Asian Miracle” states, who are invariably its allies. China plays a crucial role in the global rivalry for hegemony between the US and EU. The US cannot depend on Chinese road to capitalism, which has its own peculiarities and strength, as it cannot depend on Russia or any other East European states, humbled and weakened as they are now. China has been “unbalancing” the hegemony of dollar in the region and world. Indian clientele therefore acts as a definite respite, as no other economy has the potentiality in making up to the Chinese with regard to size, strength, resources and stability. Further, it is the only credible state, which can oversee or even intervene in the political, military and economic activities in the Indian Ocean. The submission of India, being a growing economy (though with its own uneven pace and specificities) and with a stable political system, unlike other American allies in the region, provides an immense potentiality for the strategic interests of the US. What could be a more auspicious opportunity for such alignment than the relief efforts for tsunami victims? It is the time when only a few can smell deception, and those who do are so humbled by the disaster that they lack guts to point fingers.

3. Reasoning Indian Interests – Mere Big Brotherly or Imperialist?

On the other hand, the growing expansionist motivation of the Indian capital drives the Indian state to muster its own strategic plans. There are evident political economic reasons underlying these designs, but characteristically these are generally ignored even by the radical “anti-imperialist” forces in favour of arguments based on the simplistic rhetoric like “big brotherhood”, etc. Perhaps this is due to the overwhelming persistence of the ossified conceptualisation of the strict division between core and periphery, where both are homogenously and geographically defined. However, below are cited some relevant facts, which demonstrate that there are sufficient reasons for the Indian State to give aggressive support to the hegemonic material interests of the Indian capital, which are perfectly attuned to the dynamism of global capitalist accumulation.

Firstly, India’s tiny, yet growing oil interests, forces it to be with the US’ “war on terrorism” (although, toned down because of the domestic pressures), play love-hate relationship with Pakistan, have rightist love affair with Israel, nourish its little-known interest in Sudanese and other African and Arab conflicts. Although most of the Indian manoeuvrings in the international oil market is through the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Oil India Ltd (OIL) etc., there is considerable private motivation directing them. The upcoming “oil baronage” of Reliance Industries taking over the state’s Indian Petroleum Corporation Ltd. (IPCL) and divestment in other public sector undertakings in core sector including ONGC are increasingly solidifying the oil interest in the country. Until the Indian “private” capital is confident enough in the world of petro-oligopolies, the State’s mantle can provide the essential leverage required to make up to these oil giants. In fact, states in the OPEC countries are virtually the “organized body” of the “oil” capitalists and business negotiations are executed state-to-state. As an example of recent achievements in this regard is the ONGC being “in the race for picking up Canadian firm EnCana's stake in a cluster of oil fields in Ecuador. The state-owned company is also in talks with Russia for picking up stake in the assets of oil major Yukos.” (Business Line, “ONGC eyeing EnCana's stake in Ecuadorian fields — In race for Yukos assets” (11/01/2005)) Further, Business Line (08/01/2005) informs “ONGC Ltd is negotiating a 12-year loan to raise $600 million for financing a Sudan refinery expansion project for its subsidiary ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL)”. Sudan is already hosting the largest Indian investment abroad in the oil sector. This sufficiently explains India’s defence dealing with the Sudanese regime when Sudan’s defence minister visited India in December 2003 preceded by its oil minister’s visit. Besides Sudan, ONGC has operating assets in Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Myanmar, Libya, Syria and Sakhalin Islands. On Sep 3 2004, ONGC Videsh Ltd announced that it reached agreement with Vanco Energy Company, USA to acquire 30% participating interest in an exploratory block, Offshore Ivory Coast.

But more importantly, throughout the 90s and afterwards, India has sought to make South Asia its own political economic regional base by playing crucial role in the political conflicts of other countries in the region, like Nepal and Sri Lanka, whose economies are heavily dependent on the Indian capital. In Nepal, seven countries account “for over four fifths of cumulative FDI. India alone accounted for one third, followed by the United States and then China.” India being the biggest investor in Nepal since 1996, owns 35% of the enterprises with FDI and 35.8% share in the total FDI. (UNCTAD 2003 Investment Policy Review: Nepal) Taking into consideration the enormity of the Indian “imperialist” stakes in Nepal’s economy, India’s growing interest in Nepali politics and the dependence of Nepali political elites (the king, the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML) are not at all unanticipated. Similarly, “India has recently become an important investor as a result of the India–Sri Lanka Free Trade Agreement. This agreement has huge potential for generating FDI focused on the Indian market. Indeed, India was the largest investor in Sri Lanka in 2002.” (UNCTAD 2003 Investment Policy Review: Sri Lanka) In both cases, low tariffs on import-export in post-liberalisation trade agreements have given the Indian investors the ability to re-export to India goods they could manufacture cheaply in Nepal and Sri Lanka. Even investors from other countries have expressed interest in investing in Sri Lanka and Nepal to export to the Indian market. This gives India further advantage since these investors in Sri Lanka, Nepal and other countries in the subcontinent force their own respective political representatives to seek ties with India to have access to its market.

All these facts, at least, evidence that India has much on stake now to be simply non-aligned to the “hooks and crooks” of global imperialism, and the Indian capitalist class with their political representatives are definitely aware of this. India is defining its own “war on terrorism” and is not wary of having “pro-active” militarist build up for “pre-empting” attacks. It is not at all uncomfortable now with the idea of having “national security interests” across the border, and is ready to cross it if it must. All these add up to graduate India as a strong ideological, economic and military partner of the emerging “Global Right” under the leadership of the US. Tsunami relief efforts are only strengthening this partnership.

Articles on Tsunami and Imperialism

2004-11-27T20:15:00.000-05:00

Tsunami, Aid & Imperialism, ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER, March-April 2005

Tsunami, US and India, February 2005

Articles on Nepal

2004-11-27T20:11:00.000-05:00

Ambush Journalism, August 05, 2006, INSN, ZNet

The Historic Agreement in Nepal and the Immediate Challenge, June 19 2006, ZNet

Angels and Demons in the People's Movement in Nepal, May 22, 2006, INSN, Counterpunch, ZNet

The Royal Nepalese Army and the imperialist agency in Nepal, May 10, 2006, INSN. A slightly different version in Counterpunch (May 11, 2006), Countercurrents, ZNet

In Nepal, the saga of compromise and struggle continues, April 26, 2006, Countercurrents, Counterpunch , ZNet

Pure-and-Simple Revolutions in Nepal and Venezuela, April 21, 2006, Counterpunch, Countercurrents

And now, Nepalis say - YA BASTA!!!, April 10, 2006, Versions - INSN, COUNTERCURRENTS, COUNTERPUNCH

Ceasefire and Democracy in Nepal - The Global Semantics, April 5 2006, ZNET INSN COUNTERCURRENTS

Nepal & Venezuela, INTERNATIONAL NEPAL SOLIDARITY NETWORK. Reproduced in znet, dissident voice, countercurrents, MRzine

Recent Developments in Nepal: Problems & Prospects, ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER, March-April 2006. Reproduced in INSN

What the US Ambassador Taught Nepalis, COUNTERPUNCH & ZNET

The 12-point Agreement and the Future of Democracy in Nepal, ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER, January-February 2006

Pre-1990 ‘Democratic’ Experiments in Nepal, ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER, September-October 2005

State, Economy & Class Struggle in Nepal, ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER, July-August 2005

The Royal Coup in Nepal, COUNTERPUNCH, February 25, 2005

Articles on Labour

2004-11-27T20:03:00.000-05:00

Ways of Waste Management, The Economic Times, August 08, 2005

Marxism and Labour History II, Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) Letter to Editor, January 4, 2003

Marxism and Labour History I, Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) Letter to Editor, February 23, 2002

Disorganising the Organised - Proposed Changes in Labour Laws, Liberation, April 2001

New Textile Policy - A Policy of Dark Intent, Liberation, December 2000 (with some modifications)

Articles on Indian Politics

2004-11-27T20:00:00.000-05:00

Indian Fascists find Bush their "National"

Stability in West Bengal: The CPI(M)’s Secret

Indian Politics in the context of the Iranian Crisis, November 2005

Advani's Jinnah Drama, June 2005

Bush’s Re-Election and the ‘Indian Dream’, ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER, January-February 2005

Linguistic-Communal Politics and Class Conflict in India, SOCIALIST REGISTER 2003: FIGHTING IDENTITIES

Articles on Indian Foreign Policy & International Political Economy

2004-11-27T19:49:00.000-05:00

Dinner with George and Manmohan: Bush in India, Counterpunch, March 03 2006

Bush's Passage to India: Why Does India Carry His Water?, Counterpunch, February 25 2006

The India-China relationship: What we need to know, January 2006

India's Strategy of Realignment, December 2005

Indian Politics in the context of the Iranian Crisis, November 2005

Defining "National Interests" in Indian Foreign Policy, October 2005

India’s “Persian Puzzle” – A Possible Solution, October 2005 (Republished in INSAF NEWSLETTER, November 2005)

Tsunami, Aid & Imperialism, ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER, March-April 2005

The Royal Coup in Nepal & Global Imperialist Designs, COUNTERPUNCH, February 25, 2005

Bush’s Re-Election and the ‘Indian Dream’, ML INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER, January-February 2005

Tsunami, US and India, February 2005

Articles on World Politics

2004-11-13T17:07:00.000-05:00

"The last shall be first, and the first last"

Hobson's Imperialism And The Desperate Uncle Sam As Naked As Ever, Countercurrents, March 29 2006

Bush's Ports Affair, Countercurrents, March 13 2006

Cartoons, Anti-Semitism and the “Aestheticisation of Politics”, February 7 2006

Volcker's Report Reread: Business, not Corruption, November 2005

The Politics of Imperialism and Counterstrategies

2004-11-13T09:58:00.000-05:00

THE POLITICS OF IMPERIALISM AND COUNTERSTRATEGIES

Edited by: by Pratyush Chandra . Anuradha Ghosh . Ravi Kumar
Aakar Books, New Delhi, 2004
Buy: Amazon

Contributors
Samir Amin . Massimo De Angelis . Werner Bonefeld . Ronald H. Chilcote . Ana Cecilia Dinerstein . John Bellamy Foster . John Holloway . Nathalia E. Jaramillo . Doug Lorimer . Peter McLaren . Prabhat Patnaik . James Petras . William K. Tabb

The God's Cowboy Warrior holds world to ransom. White, Green and Saffron guards all play their part in this Grand Inquisition, extending and intensifying it. The papers in this collection grounding themselves in diverse Marxist traditions are united in their pursuit to understand the ongoing political conflicts around the globe. Imperialism and all its de-humanised representations are realisations of the systemic logic of capitalism. If alternative has to be anti-capitalist, its evolving forms/contents have to be identified. One cannot simply go on rhetoricising ad infinitum - "another world is possible". Even if we refrain from identifying that 'world', the system will define it in its own way. "Anti-capitalist indifference" leads to barbaric conclusions, reflected in nationalist vandalism of RSS and Shiv Sena in India, Al Qaeda in the Middle East, anti-immigrant racist resurgence in the "advanced" societies - "anti-capitalist capitalism". There is always a danger of being trapped in the systemic dungeon of mystifications reproducing the bourgeois society if the processes leading towards it are not comprehended; and it needs courage to break that trap. The Argentine, Venezuelan, Mexican and Bolivian upheavals and the officialisation of sections of the dissent require explanation. Here, we have some representative Marxist modes of understanding the politics in present-day Capitalism, i.e., the politics of Imperialism and forces against it.

ISBN 81-87879-35-1
ISBN 81-87879-36-X

Reviews (available online):
Anjan Chakrabarti, Searching for Imperialism in the Era of Globalisation, Contemporary Issues and Ideas in Social Sciences, November 2005,

Arindam Sen, Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century, Liberation, November 2004

New Textile Policy

2000-12-01T06:52:00.000-05:00

– A Policy of Dark Intent

Pratyush Chandra

LIBERATION, Vol.7 No.10, December 2000
(Published with some modifications)

It was way back in 1765 when Adam Ferguson declared that capitalist industries “prosper most where the mind is least consulted.” Hence, it is but natural that the Government decided the fate of the millions of “helots” toiling in the textile industry without consulting the trade unions, by proclaiming the New Textile Policy (NTP) on 2nd November.

The textile industry contributes 20 percent of the value addition in the manufacturing sector. Its contribution to GDP is 4 to 5 percent and export earnings exceed 30% of the total exports of the country. Garment exports stand out as the single largest foreign exchange earner. It becomes obvious for the global profiteers to stress upon the opening (or de-reservation) of this sector to prosper on its potentiality.

Even prior to the constitution of Sathyam Committee, which became the basis for the formulation of the NTP, the Government(s) had started responding to the global ‘cry’. The whole approach could be seen from the annual rate of closing down of the units dramatically being crossed within the very first few months of the year 1998-99 when 64 textile mills (57 spinning and 7 composite mills) were closed down till December ’98. 8 out of the 9 subsidiary corporations of the National Textile Corporation Ltd. (NTC) had already been referred to BIFR, which declared them as sick companies. Proclamation of sickness and closure has been the most prominent mechanism to discredit the public sector industrial units and in building consensus on their sell-off, ever since the Indian State embraced the monetarist logic of IMF/WB. Regarding the organised textile industry, the main reason cited by the governments for sickness and closure is “structural transformation resulting in the composite units in the organised sector losing ground to powerlooms in the decentralised sector, on account of the latter’s greater cost effectiveness” (Ministry of Textiles, Annual Report 1998-99, pp.15).

Sathyam Committee appointed in 1998 by the state thus oriented, could not be expected to come out with anything but solid rationalisations for the policy, make it more target-oriented and evolve an efficient strategy for its implementation. It categorically stated that reservation is meaningless in a liberal and global economy. Hence along with the deregulation of Public Sector Mills, the protection of Small-scale Industrial (SSI) Sector has also to be revoked.

Since immediate full-fledged implementation of these recommendations could be outrageous, the swadeshi government has decided to implement them in instalments. The New Textile Policy as the first dose sets off a target to increase textiles and apparel exports to $50 billion by 2010 from the present level of $11 billion. It commits “to encourage the private sector to set up integrated complexes and units and to assist it in setting up special financial arrangements to fund the diverse needs of the industry.” Effectively, since the State itself diagnosed the composite character of the textile mills to be problematic, the new policy tends to erase it through the transference of weaving sections to the big monopolies-run decentralised powerloom sector.

Leaving the Handloom Reservation Act (HRA) and the Hank Yarn Obligation Scheme (HYOS) untouched for the time being, the new policy has already started building a consensual regime by adopting a slow dose policy towards de-reservation. It envisages a cent percent opening up of the garment sector. The ‘decentralised’ small-scale garments industry, which (despite all kinds of legal protection for SSIs) is already oppressively harnessed by the big finance and mercantile capital through credits and ‘putting-out’ system, would now be legally subjugated. It is not at all a secret that the so-called decentralised sector’s efficacy thrives essentially on the insecurity of contractual/casual workforce.

Regarding the untouched HRA and HYOS, it would suffice to mention that waiving-off the quantitative restrictions on imports has already delimited their provisions by de-reserving various handloom items. Further, the government has already accepted the proposal for restructuring the handloom and powerloom sectors into three tiers. Sathyam Committee on the basis of changes in the post-WTO phase has itself recommended a search for “alternative avenues of livelihood for the weavers of the second and third tiers” of the handlooms sector, which would eventually close down.

The policy claims that the dismantling of the quota regime (multi-fibre arrangement) by the year 2004 would further enhance the export of the textile products and garments. The protectionist posture by the developed countries in the name of anti-dumping policy belies this optimism. In fact, duty-liberalisation on our part would further make the balance-of-payments unfavourable for us.

Regarding the hype of “technology mission”, modernisation and mechanisation for a labour intensive industry like textile, in general, would definitely raise the level of redundancy further and in order to tame its implications, labour laws would be further revamped and authoritative socio-political laws would be framed to curb any social fall out. Despite vows like raising cotton production by 50%, the ‘profiteer’-oriented NTP continues with a pro-synthetic policy followed over the last many years and would further add to the sad plight of the cotton-growers.

The NTP is undemocratic in its very essence and content. In its desperation to serve the interests of the owner of capital, it betrays the vast majority of the variables in the “complex sectoral dispersal matrix” constituting the textile industry – workers, artisans, weavers and farmers. The unceasing demand of the workers’ organisations to even discuss the Sathyam Committee Report on the basis of which the NTP was framed, was never taken heed of. It only corroborates the fact that “the ‘retreat from the state’ has not, in general, reduced the role of the state or made society less bureaucratic, but it has meant a direct (re-) commodification of many aspects of social life.” (Bonefield & Holloway, Global Capital, National State & Politics of Money, pp.1)