Falling Back or Falling Apart? – Impressions from a Visit in Babripur Village

February 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Gurgaon Workers News

There are lot of ‘village case studies’ being published, contributing to the debate on ‘class stratification’ and general changes of the old village structure. There is less debate – and less empirical work – on the question of how urban wage work impacts on village conditions and vice versa. Based on his research in Gujarat, Breman states that ‘the landless lack resources in order to make the jump into urban wage work’, but this might not be the general case.

A classical position states that the ‘landed’ worker, who comes to the urban industrial landscape and shares the same experience of work with his landless co-worker, will mentally and materially relate to the wage as ‘future capital’. He acts in the hope that the urban wages will help him to secure his social position back in the village – as a peasant or petty bourgeois engaging in trade or other business. He will be less inclined to ‘act as a worker’, he has more to lose, he doesn’t depend solely on ‘better wages’ in order to survive.

This position – although sound from a materialistic point of view – seems to lack the ‘historic dynamic element’. It reduces the experience of factory work to the relation of the worker towards his monthly payment and it does not take into account the changes within the village and the changing aspirations of ‘peasant-workers’ after the urban experience.

With similar questions we went to visit our friends village in the North-East of Uttar Pradesh, Babripur near Kadipur, about 80km from Sultanpur. The following is a rather impressionistic account between ganna harvest and buffalo grazing, less of an empirical study.

There are about 5,000 people living in Babripur. Around half of the village population own around 0.5 hectar, there are few ‘landless’. Electricity and tube wells arrived around 20 years ago, there are only three to four tractors in Babripur. Most peasants engage in multiple agricultural production: sugar cane, pulses, wheat, potatoes, mustard, vegetables. Although Delhi is quite far away – around 800 km or 14 hours by train – labour migration from Babripur area towards Delhi and Faridabad started in the mid-1960s and has been passed on to the next generation. We met two old workers who both left Babripur area in order to work in Faridabad factories in the 1970s. One worker belongs to the Brahmin caste, the other to the ‘Scheduled Caste’ (Dalit).

“My grandfather – besides working as an artisan – had an additional income as an exorcist. This had been a family tradition for some 150 years or so. As a kid I would gather people around him, sometimes up to 100, and he would perform his miracles. On his deathbed he told us that we should not continue this family tradition, that it was useless work. My father had too little land to work on, he got engaged in leather contract work. I myself managed to get a government job, I would go around and collect certain kinds of taxes. I then worked as a bus conductor. There were problems – a lot of wheeling and dealing connected to this types of jobs – so I decided to go to Faridabad to work. Initially I was rather naive, I thought that I would not have to stick to one job too long, because there seemed to be many jobs on offer. I had a dozen different jobs during the first years. Then Emergency came, they erased the slum settlement where I used to live. We built a new place a bit further out. At that time it was not too expensive to ‘but some unauthorised land’ and to build a small house. I got a permanent job and stuck with it till the company closed in the 1990s. I am retired now, I still live in Faridabad, we have two small houses here. My children had a good education, they now all work, one is an engineer, the other runs a shop”.

“My grandfather performed religious ceremonies, he was also the head of the village council of Babripur after 1947. He implemented the land reform, some land was redistributed. Before the land reform hardly any of the Scheduled Caste members had land, after the reform around 60 per cent had at least some land. My father did farming. He built the house we now live in. He had three sons, there were about eight hectares of land. I decided to leave the village and work in Faridabad. I started working in a plastic factory. In the late 1980s I returned. My daughter got married, both sons live in Delhi. What is our situation now? We have four buffalos to take care of, they give us milk and we can sell some. We have four hectares of land, some potato, some rice, some sugar cane and so on. Most of our food comes from the fields – what we don’t consume, we sell. The money income from agriculture is unstable. Take the example of a 0.5 hectare potato field. A good harvest will provide you with 10 to 12 tons of potatoes. You might manage two harvests a year, depending on weather. Production costs are around 20,000 Rs, this includes the labour we hire, the seeds, the fertilizer, the petrol for the tube well and so on. You can imagine the market rate for a kilo of potato? It will hardly be more than 3 Rs. So this is our basic situation: there is little surplus, my wife and me still work either around the house or taking care of the machinery and organise the field-work. The actual field-work is done by wage workers. We pay them 100 Rs a day. We used to pay them 50 Rs, but when NREGA came in, they demanded 100 Rs and we paid them. They obviously live in worse conditions here in the village, in smaller huts – and they depend on wage work, having little land themselves. Our situation as small peasants depends on previous wage work: some of the machinery has been bought be wage savings. If prices change – either of produce or of wages of the rural labourers – we might be forced to either reduce hired labour or to compensate the loss by our own wage work. Our condition is the suicidal condition of millions”.

The routes of labour migration have been inherited by the next generation. By chance, during a stroll through the fields, we met several ‘(ex-)workers’ from Gurgaon and Delhi.

“I am from the same (Brahmin) family. I worked seven-eight years as a metal polisher in an export company based in Okhla. I came back to the village two years ago, I think I came back for good. I am 28 years old now and I run this mobile phone shop.”

“I belong to the same caste. I left Babripur in 2000 and started working as a supervisor at FCI. I came back last year, I bought some extra-land. I don’t think I will go back to Gurgaon.”

“I normally work at Orient Craft in Gurgaon. I am here for a short visit, my family has little land in Babripur, I help with the harvest, although it does not amount to much. I also do some extra-work repairing machines for other people in the village.”

“I worked as a temporary worker at Honda HMSI in Manesar. The company interrupted my employment two months ago – they enforced a break of one, two months in order not to have to grant permanent employment. I will stay here for another month or so and then go back to my uncle in Manesar. I might try to get a job at Honda again.”

While the old ‘peasant’ comrade says that the ‘progressive’ industrial workers’ consciousness is wiped out as soon as workers get back to their village and re-enter the old village hierarchies, we think it is quite astonishing how direct the exchange between the village and the industrial zones have become. We can also see that ‘the land question’ clutches the new generation of workers from two sides and defines the more precarious status compared to their fore-mothers-and-fathers: it is not only more difficult to survive as a small scale peasant, it is also near to impossible to buy land in Delhi-Faridabad-Gurgaon area in order to ‘settle down’ in a family home. Wages are relatively lower and land prices have gone up.

A week after the return from Babripur we distributed Faridabad Majdoor Samachar in Manesar and asked workers whether they have heard of the 24 hours wildcat strike at Honda HMSI in December. Most workers haven’t heard of the incident, even those workers who work in the main supplier just across the road from Honda factory. It seems that proletarian organisation will not only have to be based – and can be based! – on the urban and rural exchange, but that it sometimes will have to help crossing the street…

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Tunis, Algiers, Cairo, …Shahajanpur? – The Social Significance of an ‘Accident’

February 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Gurgaon Workers News

There is no lack of triggers, there is no lack of social explosives…

Rising ‘graduate unemployment’, massive hike in food prices, increasing signs of capitalist decadence in the form of rapidly aggravating ‘inequality’ and its symbolisation in a rich new oligarchy with strong links to the political class (corruption)… if these were the basic ingredients of the popular uprisings in North Africa, we find the same social explosives here in India. Both regions also share similar rhythms of debt crisis, (IMF) credit regimes and popular discontent: 1974 (“Bihar Movement”), 1981 (IMF loan and re-structuring), 1991 (external debt crisis). The rhythm becomes global. Desperation and anger of the youth spreads from the ‘illegal’ vegetable markets of Tunis, to the Parisian banlieus, to the textile industrial suburbs of Mahalla… across this world of widening contradictions between what is and what could be. The Shahajanpur accident – see below – could have been a sad trigger, there are hundreds of triggers every day. If we had to name the two main social aspects distinguishing the current social situation in India from the conditions in Egypt or Tunisia we would come up with:

a) a still more dynamic tri-angle relation between temporary village fall-back, rural industry / seasonal labour and scattered attracting/ejecting industrial boom regions; the rural-urban-rural migration, the back-and-forth between short stays in the village and another round of job hunts still expresses and diffuses the vast amount of social unrest – see report of village visit in this issue of GurgaonWorkersNews; the fact that labour migration from North Africa to the Euro-zone has become more difficult, crisis and all, has contributed to the explosion;

b) a still more dynamic economic and political middlemen culture; this culture reaches from modern ‘democratic’ and legal mediation of industrial disputes, to frequent usage of paid thugs to quell workers’ discontent; the local state in form of the modern ‘village council’ combined with ‘old’ forms of caste dominance and micro-credit liquidity; the state in form of middlemen in each slum and ‘state run ration shops’ (subsidised food shops); a vast ‘entrepreneurial’ and ‘empowering’ NGO sector and liberal ‘civil society’ sphere in combination with mass bases of paramilitary forces and ‘fake encounter culture’; a multi-layered ‘contract system’ which enables many permanent factory workers to become ‘small contractors’ themselves, or turns ‘local peasantry’ into landlords for migrant workers; a state-defined ‘reservation/promotion’ for middle(wo)men of all castes and gender; in summary: the ‘individualisation’ of misery here in India, e.g. in the form of mass suicides of small peasants, has little to do with the ‘cultural heritage of fate-obeying Hinduism’, but a lot to do with the brutal internalisation of ‘liberal democratic individual freedom’ in an ‘upwardly/downwardly mobile’ modern market society, which leaves us isolated when facing the systemic crisis;

In the following we summarise the news on the Shahajanpur ‘accident’:
“On 1st of February 2011 – while riots rocked the Kasbah and downtown Cairo – around 150,000 young people arrived in Bareilly, near Shahajanpur in Uttar Pradesh, India. They came in order to apply for 416 vacancies at the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). Facing the enormous mass of applicants the local administration called off the hiring procedure. The angry youth started smashing the place up, burnt cars, government and media buildings. Around six state-owned buses and several other vehicles were set on fire and several shops were damaged and looted by them. The agitating youths also pelted stones at AIR and Doordarshan offices (public media). They then tried to return home. “The Railway staff were taken by surprise when they found the station swarmed by thousands of young men, who looked very agitated,” a senior Railway official said on condition of anonymity from Bareilly. “We promptly got the Railway police into action, but the station was jam-packed with these young men who went about damaging Railway property while raising anti-ITBP slogans,” he said. “No sooner did the Himgiri Express roll into the station than a large group climbed over it, clutching on to all sides of the train, including the rooftop and the engine. There was no way the youth could have been prevented from crowding the train and no one realised that barely 60 km ahead they would fatally encounter a low overbridge,” the official added. Many young people died when the train hit the bridge. The accident triggered violent protests as angry youths torched the train and attacked the station.”

Facing the Uprising, Facing the Daily Accident – What to be done?

The insurrection is permanent – from Argentina to Egypt we see that it does not take much to chase away the police or management, to take the things we need (homes, food, items), to break out of prisons or to fraternise with soldiers, in short, it does not take much to overthrow a government, but what comes next? The uprising asks the question whether we will we continue to live and work in a way, which leaves us having to buy the products we produce, which separates us from bread and roses by price; in a way, which puts a price tag on our time and energy itself and forces us to sell it on the market, competing with others; in a way, which leaves it to the development of prices whether a ‘we are pushed into a job’ or whether a factory is closed; in a way, which – in the end – will force us to call for the ‘good politicians’ to do something about the ‘bad market’: the very same politicians we have just chased away because they are useless – confronted with the global crisis of a system…

It is ironic to see how the regime – be it in Greece, the UK or in Egypt – uses the ‘democratic appeal’ in order to contain social discontent. While in Egypt the uprising is publicly reduced to ‘strife for democracy’ and rulers and twitter rulers to be call for a ‘return to work and return to the ballot box’… in Greece, in the UK or in other ‘democratic’ states the anti-government protests against the austerity measures are told that they will have to let the ‘elected parliament do their work, in the spirit of the democratic process’ – hinting at the fact that otherwise there are other forms of rule waiting in the back rooms…

The uprising, the strike waves have to become the process of discovery of our social cooperation; a cooperation, which so far has been organised as the fragmented ensemble of the ‘capitalist social production process’. The discovery will be both, appropriation for immediate needs and material transformation of production itself. Each struggle will meet the limits of imposed capitalist division of labour: in form of company walls, sector boundaries, ‘institutionalised’ knowledge separation, ‘political’ division between rural and urban. Each struggle will cause its unexpected chain-reactions, will cause shortages and ruptures of social life beyond their ‘capitalist’ boundaries, as proof of its previously hidden social dimension. The struggles will raise the question of direct, instead of mediated cooperation in order to overcome shortages and to make plans for the new day – the economic and political social separation dissolves. The extension of struggles along these lines of social cooperation might take violent forms, but given the historic degree of socialisation of labour (intertwinement of ‘science’ and industry, of ‘administration’ and production’, of agriculture and the industrial complex/market), ‘separate power’ has turned into a mere obstacle which has to be pushed aside; it has lost its productive function and is not worth fighting over.

The managers of capital can only succeed in ‘legitimating their power’ as long as they are able to make ‘capital’ appear as the pre-condition of social cooperation, as long as they are able to separate the social experience of over-productive labour from the poverty of un-/underemployment. Obviously this separation does not take a pure form of working-class on one side, proletariat on the other. This separation appears in its various shades of development and underdevelopment, of high-tech and labour intensity, of regional deprivation and boom centres, of respectable workmen and lumpen, of hire and fire. This separation will appear in all imaginable ethnic colours. With the disappearance of the old buffer-classes, with the social death of peasantry and artisans in the global South, the demise of the self-employed educated middle-classes and petty bourgeoisie, capital has to face up to it’s living self. While being in it’s essence the violent coordinator of social labour – globalisation, international supply-chains etc. – in this crisis more than ever capital has to hide and segment the global character of social cooperation from the emerging global working class. In the attempt to segment and re-combinate capital becomes a burden to social cooperation. It gets in its own way.

Therefore the challenge for working-class communists is to discover and point-out this ‘general global character’ of labour in the concrete local disputes, to discover and point-out the ‘political separation’ of development and underdevelopment, the potential of abundance in the face of stark misery. That means to argue not from the abstract level of ‘class consciousness’, but from the perspective of the collective worker. The challenge for ‘communists’ is not separate from what workers’ themselves are forced to do: As we can see in front of our eyes, most current workers’ struggles have to find answers to their own global dimensions – not to proclaim their communist demands – but to simply avoid being defeated.

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Discussion: Chinese Working Class Rising Like Phoenix from the Ashes (Delhi University, Feb 23)

February 21, 2011 by 1 Comment

Chinese Working Class Rising Like Phoenix from the Ashes:
Problems & Prospects of the Working Class Movement in China

Speaker : Jackson
(A Political Activist from China)
Venue : Activity Centre, Above Spic Macay Canteen, Arts Faculty, D.U.
Date : Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
Time : 1.30 P.M. Onwards

KYSKrantikari Yuva Sangathan
Contact: 9312654851, 9313343753

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A New Threat to Forest Dwellers and Protected Areas

February 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Campaign for Survival and Dignity

Having cleared the destructive Chiria mines and the POSCO project in violation of the law, the Environment Ministry has proceeded to grossly violate people’s rights in protected areas – to the detriment of both people and wildlife. On February 8th, it issued new guidelines for the declaration of “critical wildlife habitats” under the Forest Rights Act. These guidelines are in direct violation of the Forest Rights Act and will encourage the kind of brutal forced relocation that harms people, increases conflict with wildlife and leads to more destruction in protected areas. Everyone from the Tiger Task Force through numerous conservationists themselves have pointed out the dangers in the current relocation process.

Once again, we see that the primary interest of this system is not in wildlife, forests, people or even “development”: it is retaining its own power.

The guidelines are in violation of law on the following counts (for a quick summary see table below):

  • Identification of CWHs: As is admitted by most wildlife organisations and by the government itself, existing national parks and sanctuaries have often been demarcated arbitrarily without consulting either the people of the area or scientists; as a result many are of limited wildlife significance. Therefore the FRA requires that a consultative and scientific process, “case by case, on the basis of scientific and objective criteria” (s. 2(b)) for identification of critical wildlife habitats should be undertaken in all existing protected areas. In order to ensure that this process is actually sound (and not arbitrary again), it should be done by an Expert Committee including experts from the locality and a Tribal Ministry representative. The new guidelines do not satisfy any of these requirements.
    • Scientific basis:The new guidelines say nothing about which “scientific and objective criteria” are to be used. They also ignore the requirement that critical wildlife habitats should only be established where it can be scientifically proven that the presence of forest dwellers is causing irreversible damage to wildlife and that co-existence is not possible. The only reference to any of this is a vague statement that studies on human impact should be carried out – but this is in Annexure 2, a list of points to be taken into account for financial planning, long after identification is over. Finally, the process of identification is to be carried out by the DFO and a “local scientific institution” in the space of a mere 60 days. The result can only be imagined – exactly as occurred in the case of critical tiger habitats, all existing protected areas will simply be sought to be converted into critical wildlife habitats, followed by pressurising people living inside them to relocate. The guidelines also sneak in the intent of extending CWHs to areas “in and around” protected areas (point 5.6.2) thereby leaving room to extend PA boundaries to larger areas. This is a total perversion of the intent of the law.
    • Consultation: On consultation, the guidelines are a farce. The identification of the habitat, as said above, will first be carried out by the DFO; whereupon the guidelines say there should be “extensive consultation” with forest dwellers by an Expert Committee. What will happen to the results of this “extensive consultation” and the comments of the people? Nothing. They are never referred to in the guidelines again. Thus this consultation process is actually non-existent.
    • No Expert Committee:Indeed, the role of the Expert Committee – which is to identify the critical wildlife habitat – has been reduced to “motivating” villagers for relocation, after the two technical members have on their own decided the area to be demarcated as a CWH. In sum, the guidelines reduce the process of identification to an administrative exercise controlled by the Forest Department.
  • Relocation: In addition to the scientific evidence of irreversible damage from people, the law requires that relocation from a critical wildlife habitat requires the free informed consent of the gram sabha (s. 4(2)(e)), must provide a secure livelihood (s. 4(2)(d)), and can only take place after rights are recognised (s.4(2)(a)), and facilities are complete (s. 4(2)(f)). Every one of these conditions is violated:
    • Consent of gram sabha: There is no reference in the guidelines to taking the consent of the gram sabha for relocation at any point, except when the section itself is quoted. Instead there is talk of relocating even if “a small number of families agree”, which by implication means that the majority do not do so – and hence the gram sabha could not have consented. This will open the way for individually pressurising families and pushing relocation step by step, once again in violation of the law.
    • Secure livelihood: The guidelines again say nothing about providing any livelihood at all, leave alone a secure one acceptable to the people. Instead, they say that two “options” will be offered (based on the Project Tiger package) – Rs. 10 lakhs per family or a vague reference to “rehabilitation by the Forest Department.” In fact, the law does nota allow such provision of mere cash compensation, as this is at the root of all the rehabilitation failures of the past. It is also a total violation of people’s rights, since they lose their livelihoods and access to the forest and only get a sum of cash – which itself often doesn’t reach them.
    • Completion of recognition of rights: Once again there is no reference to this except in Annexure 2, where it is irrelevant. Since rights are hardly being recognised in protected areas and the guideline imposes an absurd 60 day time limit, relocation will now proceed without bothering with people’s rights – making harassment and pressure on forest dwellers more likely.
    • Completion of facilities: This was intended to protect against hasty relocation without any facilities being provided. In the last year alone, two people have died (in Similipal in Orissa and Achanakmar in Chhattisgarh) after being forcibly relocated from tiger reserves and not provided any proper shelter.There is not a word about this requirement anywhere in the guideline.

Despite some weaknesses and internal inconsistencies, the October 2007 guidelines that this order replaces had covered all these issues. This new set of guidelines completely throws to wind the law and violates all the Act’s provisions on procedures of determining and notification of critical wildlife habitats. Indeed, relocating anyone on the basis of these guidelines would be in direct violation of the law; and hence a criminal offence under section 7 of the Act. Following this policy will only ensure the continuance of the earlier form of forced arbitrary relocation, harming both people and wildlife.

Summary of Violations of Law

Provision Requirement of Law What Guidelines Actually Do
s. 2(b) Decide wildlife habitats on basis of scientific and objective criteria No criteria specified; left to administrative fiat
s. 2(b) On a case by case basis Left to concerned DFO “in consultation” with “local scientific institution”
s. 2(b) Decide through a process of consultation by an Expert Committee Identification entirely by DFO and “local scientific institution”, without any consultation; role of Expert Committee is restricted to “sensitising” people to the relocation package after the proposal is sent to MoEF
s. 2(b) Recognition of rights and other pre-conditions to be met prior to any relocation (s.4(1) and 4(2)) Ignores and therefore violates both
s. 4(2)(a) Rights have to be recognised first Completely ignored except irrelevant reference in Annexure 2
s. 4(2)(b),(c) No relocation unless can be shown that human presence causing irreversible damage and co-existence not possible Completely ignored
s. 4(2)(d) Relocation must provide a secure livelihood Rs. 10 lakh compensation or vague “rehabilitation” mentioned; no reference to providing a livelihood
s. 4(2)(e) Free informed consent of the gram sabha to be taken in writing Ignored; no procedure stated, implicitly refers to consent of individual families
s. 4(2)(f) No relocation until facilities at new site (by implication including livelihood) are complete Completely ignored

In sum, every provision of the law has been violated.

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The Arup Bhuyan Verdict – A Departure?

February 8, 2011 by 1 Comment

Rahul Choudhary

The Supreme Court’s verdict of February 03 in Arup Bhuyan vs State of Assam is significant at the time when the Indian state seems to be on the prowl looking for victims to assert its exceptional sovereignty. On the one hand, it rekindles the ‘liberal’ hope which wanes every time Sen-s are put behind the bars. In fact, by raising this hope, such judicial correctives help, in an inverted manner, in consensual containment of protests that might add up to form a threat to the state’s sovereignty. But on the other hand, they give an opportunity to consolidate critical voices within, strengthening the struggle for showing the limits of the present system and providing a relief to the struggling masses.

In this particular case in review, the appellant disputes the allegation of his association with ULFA, which was made on the basis of his confession before the police, in which he identified the house of a deceased. Such non-judicial confessions are generally not valid because of the involvement of tortures etc, but in TADA cases they are considered admissible. Going with the convention of rejecting such confessional statements before the police, the court has questioned their admissibility even in these ‘exceptional’ cases. It says, “in the absence of corroborative material, the courts must be hesitant before they accept such extra-judicial confessional statements.”

However, the major portion of the verdict is directed against the TADA Court’s conviction of the appellant under Section 3(5) of the TADA which makes mere membership of a banned organisation criminal.

Here, Justices Katju and Misra have simply extended their own arguments presented in another recent case – State of Kerala Vs Raneef, 2011 (1) SCALE 8. The accused was asking for bail in this case where he was booked for giving medical treatment to one of the assailants. The accused person’s association with an Islamic organisation was taken as incriminating evidence. The judges opined that as that particular organisation was not a terrorist organisation, the accused could not be penalised for his membership. However, what makes this verdict consequential for the Feb 3 judgement is its clear opinion against the doctrine of “guilty by association”, which has become the cornerstone of recent criminal legislations and anti-terrorist measures. The judges in the previous verdict concurred with three famous American judgements:

1) Scales vs. United States 367 U.S. 203 where Mr. Justice Harlan of the U.S. Supreme Court observed:

“The clause does not make criminal all association with an organization which has been shown to engage in illegal activity. A person may be foolish, deluded, or perhaps mere optimistic, but he is not by this statute made a criminal. There must be clear proof that the defendant specifically intends to accomplish the aims of the organization by resort to violence.”

2) In Elfbrandt vs. Russell 384 US 17-19 (1966) Justice Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court observed:

“Those who join an organization but do not share its unlawful purpose and who do not participate in its unlawful activities surely pose no threat, either as citizens or as public employees. A law which applies to membership without the `specific intent’ to further the illegal aims of the organization infringes unnecessarily on protected freedoms. It rests on the doctrine of `guilt by association’ which has no place here.”

3) In Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee vs. McGrath 341 US 123 at 174 (1951) Mr. Justice Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court observed :

“In days of great tension when feelings run high, it is a temptation to take shortcuts by borrowing from the totalitarian techniques of our opponents. But when we do, we set in motion a subversive influence of our own design that destroys us from within.”

The judges thus summarises their views on the doctrine of ‘guilty by association’ that they presented in State of Kerala Vs. Raneef:

“Mere membership of a banned organisation will not incriminate a person unless he resorts to violence or incites people to violence or does an act intended to create disorder or disturbance of public peace by resort to violence (See : also the Constitution Bench judgment of this Court in Kedar Nath Vs. State of Bihar, AIR 1962 SCC 955 para 26).

In the present Arup Bhuyan judgement, the judges have continued exploring the international cases. The following para is crucial in this regard:

In Clarence Brandenburg Vs. State of Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) the U.S. Supreme Court went further and held that mere “advocacy or teaching the duty, necessity, or propriety” of violence as a means of accomplishing political or industrial reform, or publishing or circulating or displaying any book or paper containing such advocacy, or justifying the commission of violent acts with intent to exemplify, spread or advocate the propriety of the doctrines of criminal syndicalism, or to voluntarily assemble with a group formed “to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism” is not per se illegal. It will become illegal only if it incites to imminent lawless action. (emphasis mine)

The judges conclude:

“We respectfully agree with the above decisions, and are of the opinion that they apply to India too, as our fundamental rights are similar to the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. In our opinion, Section 3(5) cannot be read literally otherwise it will violate Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution. It has to be read in the light of our observations made above. Hence, mere membership of a banned organisation will not make a person a criminal unless he resorts to violence or incites people to violence or creates public disorder by violence or incitement to violence.”

The importance of these two judgements lies in the fact that through them the Supreme Court has initiated a significant departure from the tenor set by the two earlier landmark cases which were fully in consonance with the policing needs of the neoliberal policy makers – Kartar Singh’s case, 1994(3) SCC569 (which upheld the TADA Act) and PUCL Vs Union of India, 2005 SCC(Crl)1905 (which upheld the POTA provisions).

In his book published in 2008, one of the doyens of the Indian judicial system, Justice Chinnappa Reddy wrote:

“The Fundamental Rights guaranteed by the Constitution under Articles 14, 21, and 22 are undoubtedly negated by some of the provisions of the new POTA as well as the provisions of TADA which are capable of much mischief. It is to be hoped that very soon the Supreme Court will take a second view at any new enactment containing similar provisions.”

Considering their views in these two recent cases, Justices Katju and Misra have definitely taken a second view at the old enactments and case laws.

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Book Notice: P Eric Louw’s “Roots of the Pax Americana”

February 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Michael Perelman

Louw, P. Eric. 2010. Roots of the Pax Americana: Decolonization, Development, Democratization and Trade (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

The United States, like Germany, came late to the empire business. It did not aspire to informal Empire, but rather went to great lengths to undermine the existing empires to open them up for US business. Eric Louw tells the story very well.

In his account, the US was going to great lengths to undermine Britain’s Empire, especially India, even when those powers were allies during the Second World War. He attributes Chamberlain’s behavior in Munich to a justifiable fear that dependence on US support in fighting the Nazis posed a greater threat to the empire than the Nazis themselves. He shows that the US made good use of Gandhi in discrediting the British Empire.

Rather than going to the expense and trouble of maintaining a formal Empire, the US preferred finding compliant regimes in important venues. For example, the US could have kept Cuba as a colony, but it got what it needed much more cheaply by keeping friendly governments in place. In contrast, Puerto Rico, which was much smaller, would not pose much trouble as a territory controlled by the US.

The book does not seem to be intended as a radical critique. It does not discuss how this Pax (Pox) Americana proved to be a disaster, leaving people under the rule of Marcos, Mubarak, the Shah, and other such klepocrats and thugs I am anxiously waiting new chapter being written today in the streets of the Middle East.

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An Arab 1848: Despots Totter and Fall

February 4, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Tariq Ali, Counterpunch

He can’t stay any longer because the military has declared that they will not shoot their own people. This excludes a Tiananmen Square option. Were the Generals (who have so far sustained this regime) to go back on their word it would divide the army, opening up a vista of civil war. Nobody wants that at the moment, not even the Israelis who would like their American friends to keep their point man in Cairo for as long as possible. But this, too, is impossible.

So, will Mubarak go this weekend or the next? Washington wants an ‘orderly transition’, but the hands of Suleiman the Spook (or Sheikh Al-Torture as some of his victims refer to him), the Vice-President they have forced Mubarak to accept, are also stained with blood. To replace one corrupt torturer with another is no longer acceptable. The Egyptian masses want a total regime change, not a Pakistan-style operation where a civilian crook replaces a uniformed dictator and nothing changes.

The Tunis infection has spread much more rapidly than anyone imagined. After a long sleep induced by defeats—military, political moral—the Arab nation is reawakening. Tunis impacted immediately on neighboring Algeria and the mood then crossed over to Jordan and reached Cairo a week later. What we are witnessing are a wave of national-democratic uprisings, reminiscent more of the 1848 upheavals — against Tsar and Emperor and those who collaborated with them — fthat swept Europe and were the harbingers of subsequent turbulence. This is the Arab 1848. The Tsar-Emperor today is the President in the White House. That is what differentiates these proto-revolutions from the 1989 business: That and the fact that with few exceptions, the masses did not mobilize themselves to the same degree. The Eastern Europeans lay down before the West, seeing in it a happy future and singing ‘Take Us, Take Us. We’re Yours Now.’

The Arab masses want to break from the ugly embrace. The US-EU has supported the dictators they’re getting rid off. These are revolts against the universe of permanent misery: an elite blinded by its own wealth, corruption, mass unemployment, torture and subjugation by the West. The rediscovery of Arab solidarity against the repellent dictatorships and those who sustain them is a new turning point in the Middle East. It is renewing the historical memory of the Arab nation that was brutally destroyed soon after the 1967 war. Here the contrast in leadership could not be more glaring. Gamal Abdel Nasser, despite his many weaknesses and mistakes, saw the defeat of 1967 as something for which he had to accept responsibility. He resigned. Over a million Egyptians poured into the heart of Cairo to plead with him to stay in power. And changed his mind. He died in office a few years later, broken-hearted and with no money. His successors surrendered the country to Washington and Tel Aviv for a mess of pottage.

The events of the last month mark the first real revival of the Arab world since the defeat of 1967. All the weathercocks ever-alert so as never to be on the wrong side of history, thus always avoiding any experience of defeat, were caught unawares by these uprisings. They forget that revolts and revolutions, shaped by existing circumstances, happen when the masses, the crowd, the citizenry—call it what you will— decide that life is so unbearable and they will be stifled no longer. For them a poor childhood and injustice are as natural as a kick in the head on the street or a brutal interrogation in prison. They have experienced this, but when the same conditions are still present and they are now adults, then the fear of death recedes. When this stage is reached a single spark can light a prairie fire. In this case literally as the tragedy of the stallholder in Tunis who set himself on fire demonstrates.

We are at the beginning of the change. The Arab masses have not been overwhelmed by force this time and they will not succumb. What will those who replace the despots in Tunis and Cairo offer their people? Democracy alone cannot feed or employ them…

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The Political Significance of Arab Turmoil

February 4, 2011 by 1 Comment

Marzouq Al-Nusf, Sanhati

For more than a month now, the Arab world has been witnessing events unprecedented in its modern history. The self-immolation of a Tunisian college graduate on the 17th of December, 2010, has sparked a chain of events that resulted in the effective ousting of a dictator and the threatening of numerous others. After the departure of Tunisian president Zain Al Abideen Bin Ali this month, the 30 years old reign of Egyptian president Husni Mubarak is facing a serious challenge from its own rebelling people. Protests continue in many of the 22 Arab nations, either in solidarity with the Tunisian and Egyptian rebellions, or in hopes of instigating their own corresponding rebellions against their authoritarian regimes.

One reason for viewing the Arab rebellions as significant is that they are unprecedented in the modern history of the region. Specifically, it is the civilian character of the rebellions that is key. Traditionally, transitions in political regimes in the Arab world have been carried out either by foreign powers, as in the 19th century and earlier, or by military coups, which was the trend in the 20th century. Indeed, the fact that the Tunisian army, and more recently the Egyptian one, has elected to abstain from actively shaping the course of events reinforces the crucial break with previous historical trends of military interventions in domestic politics.

More generally, the robustness and effectiveness of the rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt have surprised even the keenest political observers, many of whom were more inclined to look for turmoil emerging from Europe in response to the global economic crisis. The Tunisian situation is a case in point. The country was perceived as so stable and uninteresting that the media, including the Arab speaking, could not excavate any worthy archival interviews with the Tunisian dictator to use in commenting on his character and inclinations. As for Egypt, the fact that there is a rebellion of any sort is seen as an anomaly in a national culture sometimes characterized, in a rather simplistic and prejudiced fashion, as submissive to the ruling figure from as old a time as when pharaohs ruled the land.

So far, the trajectory seems to point towards an increase in the spread and effect of rebellions in the region. The wave of civil unrest has spread from the relatively small Tunisia, with a population of around 10 million, to Egypt and its population of over 80 million. The rebellion against dictatorship has now taken root in the most populated, and arguably the most important, Arab nation. Hence, the remarkable significance of events in the Arab world has not yet exhausted itself, and may well continue to surprise the world.

It remains to be seen who will ultimately gain state power in the troubled Arab regimes, nonetheless it is possible to draw some implications of the very fact that regimes are being toppled by popular uprisings. Specifically, the fact that the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes have long been favored and supported by western powers means that the regimes’ uprooting will have ramifications on an international scale. France, as the primary guardian of the Tunisian dictatorship, has not only suffered strategic defeat with the dismantling of one of its strongholds in North Africa, but it had to endure public shame for its reluctance to give up its support to the Tunisian president, even when it was clear that his chances of survival were dismal. Right now, the United States seems to be hoping to avoid the French’s bluntness in suppressing Arab populations by carefully measuring its responses to the Egyptian situation.

A mapping of the Arab world’s alliances in pro and anti US hegemony terms is helpful. It is rather simple. The anti US policy regimes are 3: the Syrian regime, itself a dictatorship; the Hamas government in Gaza, which is an offspring of the islamist Muslim Brotherhood that was democratically elected to power; and potentially the new Lebanese government, where the former pro-US prime minister was voted out of office last month and replaced by a new one named by Hezbollah. As for the pro-US regimes, they are the other 20 governments in the region, including the Palestinian Authority. The camp’s members range from near-absolute monarchies of the Arabian Peninsula to secular dictatorships, such as the one in Algeria. Sudan and Libya are not considered in the anti US camp because they are not in fundamental contradiction with imperialist policy; rather their disputes with US hegemony can be resolved with minimal adjustments in policy.

From the US’s perspective, the alliances in the region thus far seem unproblematic, unless significant shuffling of regimes occurs. If democratic order is established in Tunisia and Egypt, then it is possible that the resulting governments will not align themselves with imperialist demands, if not oppose them diametrically. Aside from mere counting of numbers of allies, regime changes in the Arab world by people’s power could directly affect the US’s two main interests in the region, oil and Israel, particularly the latter. At this moment, two countries that border historical Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt, are experiencing regime shifts that are likely to lead to less compromising policy on the part of the Arabs. The rebellion in Egypt, if it brings a form of democracy, and the new democratically formed government in Lebanon might not instigate war in the region immediately. Nonetheless, if Israel decides to engage in warfare against Hams in Gaza or Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, then it is more likely for these new regimes to more actively participate in the resistance efforts against Israel, as opposed to the previously observed complacency with Israeli and US dictates.

As for the perspective of rebelling Arabs on the streets, it is probably safe to assume that they do not have US hegemony as their primary focal point, but that does not mean that they look favourably upon it. The US, as the chief foreign player in the region, has itself to blame if its name is implicated further as the enemy. The US’s support for notoriously corrupt and ruthless regimes has left little doubt in the minds of suppressed Arabs about the gap between US flowery rhetoric and grim action. If its unconditional support for Israel is added to the picture, then the US is virtually making it impossible for any genuinely democratic Arab government, if one emerges, not to oppose its policy.

As a matter of fact, there have been precedents of western powers planting through their own policy the seeds of antagonism in the region. Perhaps the most famous example is that of president Nasser of Egypt, who emerged as the leader of the first major Arab military-lead revolution in 1952. Although Nasser proclaimed progressive programs early on, he had no particular preferences when it came to choosing between the socialist and capitalist camps. He was not opposed to securing ties of cooperation with the west because of its historical interest in the region. However, in 1956 when Britain and the US drew their funding from his flagship development project, the High Dam in Aswan, Nasser nationalized the Suez canal and looked to fortify his anti imperialist stance through strengthening relations with the USSR and leading non-aligned nations, including India and Yugoslavia at the time.

What the rebellions in the Arab world have brought forth is the possibility of resurrecting a solid anti-imperialist block in the Middle East. At the moment, two nations that border the Arab world, Turkey and Iran, are at odds with US and Israeli policy in the region. If progressive forces are to gain power in key Arab states such as Egypt, then the US-Israeli agenda of war and domination could face a serious obstacle. On an interregional scale, the leftist and anti-imperialist governments in Latin America may finally have allies in the new emerging block of Middle Eastern states defiant of US hegemony.

All that being said, there remain a number of open questions, the answer to which will significantly influence the course of analysis. Will the interim government in Tunisia complete its promised transition to democracy? Will the Egyptian rebellion succeed in brining about democracy? Will the uprisings continue to spread in the Arab world? And perhaps more importantly, what are the prospects of a genuinely emancipatory political force gaining power in the newly emerging regimes? These matters deserve a more thorough analysis. One thing is certain, however, and that is that the future of dictatorships in the Arab world has never looked bleaker.

(The author is a graduate student at the Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.)

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The POSCO “Green Signal”

February 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Campaign for Survival and Dignity

On January 31st the Environment Ministry finally gave its long delayed decision on the POSCO project. The brazen chicanery of this decision is already well known. It asks the Orissa governmen,t already caught lying, to lie again, and promises a forest clearance in exchange; it imposes wonderfully meaningless conditions, such as the craven request that the company “voluntarily sacrifice” water which does not belong to it; and it violates the Forest Rights Act, the Forest Conservation Act and the Environment Protection Act. All this is hardly surprising from a government that has shown time and again that it cares a fig for the rights of people.

But the true message of this decision has nothing to do with the “environment” alone. It is quite simple: when a government is faced with real democracy, when it confronts organised people’s power, it will brush aside law, constitution and environment to destroy it. POSCO, the government and the business media all agreed on one point – how could they possibly accept that people themselves could decide on the fate of a project? How could they tolerate the idea – now required by law – that the project could not take forests and forest lands without the consent of the local community? Bring on the guns and the numbers – 51,000 crores, etc. etc. – to justify brazen illegality. Never mind that an international study exposed that this project will destroy far more livelihoods than it creates. Never mind that an official enquiry committee said “such attempts, if allowed to succeed, will result in neither development nor environmental protection, but merely in profiteering.” Who needs to know the facts when bigger issues are at stake. The key question that jarred our nation’s “best minds” was – who are these people to say we cannot take their resources? So what if the law is on their side?

Today land and forests are too important to be left to democracy and the rule of law. Even as the resource grabbing proceeds apace, a great charade has been played out in the media between our supposedly “green” Environment Minister and our supposedly “anti-green” industrialists, all of whom, however, agree at the end: they must control the decisions, not the people. Even when they don’t, they will act like they do; thus, after six years of determined people’s resistance to POSCO, the entire media today talks as if the only opponent of POSCO in India was the Minister. January 31st exposed this “debate” for what it always was: a farcical dance between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. On the one side, a Ministry whose only consistent act has been to deny people’s rights; on the other, a big business class that knows only too well that the state is on its side (as a CII representative said, “We know most clearances get through”) but likes to deflect the debate away from the issues and on to personalities.

After the Vedanta mining decision, we called it “a victory for the heroic struggle of the Dongaria Kondhs and for the spirit of democracy; and a betrayal, because the government will not comply with its own words.” That betrayal has come true today. Whatever law, democracy and human rights exist in this country are a reflection of the struggles of people. The “rule of law” is upheld by resistance, not by the state. The same is true of environmental protection; it was people’s resistance that stopped Vedanta and it is people’s resistance that will stop POSCO. At least now let us not hear of “green” Ministries and caring policies; the mask has been torn off to show the face of pitiless greed underneath.

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‘Too precious to have people’s rights snatched away’: Michael Perelman

February 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Modern civilization began in the Middle East. Modern imperialism has blotted out much of what is valuable in a civilized society. Rather than being encumbered by the expense and responsibility of ruling such societies, the imperial powers have relied on corrupt and brutal dictators to enforce the needs of capital.


The people want to bring down the regime
Courtesy: occupiedlondon.org

Bleeding the country to maintain the lavish lifestyles of their families and friends, these dictators left ordinary people to languish. A few months ago, the expectation of revolutionary activity in the Middle East would seem highly unlikely, yet the people rose up with great courage. The numbers of protesters were great enough that violent measures would be unacceptable around the world.


“Revolution, People, Revolution”
Courtesy: occupiedlondon.org

The danger is that their revolutionary courage will pave the way for a dictatorship with a more human face; not the direct dictatorship of a brutal and corrupt individual, but rather the more insidious dictatorship of capital managed by obedient bureaucrats.


“This is the end of justice”
Courtesy: occupiedlondon.org

The present opportunity is too precious to have people’s rights snatched away under the pretense of democracy. The courageous people in the streets today deserve whatever support we can offer.

Michael Perelman’s latest book: The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism: How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers, Monthly Review, 2011

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