Editorial

Calling It Home Again

India and its parliamentary culture with the self-congratu lating tag of world’s biggest democracy, has long been a staple of media around the globe is so often spoken of it that it has really become something of a cliché. And the Singhs and Gandhis seem to be enjoying it as they finally managed to have the last laugh by winning the vote in both houses of parliament, on the contentious issue of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in retail through dubious means, of course. Dinner Party works and it worked nicely for the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi combine. That casteist and parochial Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) would be too eager to bail out the minority Congress-led UPA-II government at the centre on FDI-retail, was a foregone conclusion. The hard fact is that all political parties believe in market god and it is quite natural for them not to deny the rightful place of market ghost in an economy where the price of ‘social welfare’ is misery.

The days of East India Company are back. In a sense India in under company rule, albeit still in a refined process. Despite their notorious and cruel trade practices John Company didn’t succeed in monopolising every aspect of Indian life. But the flag-ship bearers of American empire, rather the evil empire, are so big that the very momentum they generate in business operations is enough to destablise Indian society beyond repair. Americans are coming in a big way. And all politicians despite their conflicting political interests and, ideology they subscribe to, accept the ground reality as a fait accompli. They look ‘helpless’ and they are continually giving impression that countrymen have nothing to do, other than swimming along the tide.

SP and BSP are against FDI in retail in principle but their hidden compulsions—may be the CBI factor as suggested by the Opposition Leader Mrs Sushma Swaraj—force them to allow it in practice. Opportunism unlimited. Then it is the hallmark of India’s ever-growing parliamentary tribe. They talk of people’s interest, their communities’ interest all the time while do just the opposite in the field. Strangely, they have long been in the corridors of power despite hypocrisy they indulge in.

Communists are no better than  their anti-communist parliamentary counterparts. Their  anti-American stance is so skin-deep that multinationals do hardly bother about their street noises or mellowed voices of dissent in parliament. Realising that Congress would be able to muster the requisite number to have their way the communist left began to murmur that their opposition to FDI in retail would not end with a vote in parliament. They would like to take the movement to the streets. Better late than never!

No doubt Congress is getting accolades from the Bank-Fund lobby for its bold stand even by risking electoral future. Hardliners always argue that inadequate social benefit system that has been built over the years is no longer financially sustainable. So they are harsh to phase out subsidies from all sectors forcing more people to chase the wild goose of uncertainty round the year. Despite smooth march of neoliberal juggernaut in the West education and medical care are still totally or partly free. Social welfare in developed countries usually takes up relatively high percentage of GDP. ‘The figure is 34.9 percent  in France, 21 percent in the US, 25.9 percent in the UK, 38.2 percent in Sweden and over 30 percent in Denmark and Norway’.  But in India, social welfare, if it can be so called, is so scanty and limited that even a cap on subsidised gas cylinders is going to adversely affect a vast section of middle class and lower middle class people in urban areas, not to speak of rural poor. The official left has not yet taken to the streets; they are just talking about it. Their innocuous press statements on this issue or that cannot motivate people against the system that is now openly biased against the under-privileged and the marginalised.

How far the main opposition—Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—can go over the FDI-retail issue is anybody’s guess. Not too far! They are more interested in harassing Congress than doing anything concrete to mobilise masses in their millions against ‘reforms’. After all they are not against ‘reforms’. They are not against denationalisation either. In truth they are much in league with Congress to privatise India’s ‘ailing’ public sector units as early as possible. Their only pre-occupation is with corruption in high places and now the disclosure of Wal-Mart report.

The left is no less opportunistic than non-left opposition. In many ways, the very survival of official communists, particularly in Bengal, depends on Congress, the standard torch bearer of secularism though FDI-retail has nothing to do with secularism or communalism. In due season they too like SP, BSP and DMK will fall in line to thwart communal forces from coming to power! In other words Congress won’t have much difficulty to push through more hard measures in the coming days, notwithstanding their minority status in parliament.

Indian situation cannot be compared with China when it is the question of Foreign Direct Investment. The Chinese never allow the overseas players to change the rules of the game to their disadvantage. Nor do they lose control over their destiny. But foreign investors in India are above the law of the land. It is not really the case in China otherwise it could not have been the world’s second largest economy with per-capita GDP exceeding US $5000 within such a short period.

Given the fear psychosis and passivity that has gripped the society, a mass upheaval, rather a spontaneous revolt, against the second coming of East India Company with American flag, is unthinkable. But without a mass upheaval charged with a strong urge for a radical change this ‘reforms’ business will go unchallenged. The sole purpose of ‘reforms’ is to loot public money and allow foreign collaborators to do the same, all in the name of development and growth, as it happened in Russia after the demise of Soviet Union. Working people and wage-earners, for the most part, have long since worked out that communists and ‘non-communist socialists’ will not be leading them into some socialist paradise, a fact restated time and again, by their calculated strategy of inaction at the time of grave social crisis and attack on the population by the ruling elites. Neither the recurring economic crises nor the steady descent into climate chaos can be abolished through the electoral process and parliamentary debate. What is desperately needed is the kind of leap to freedom that can only come from below, from masses in motion, from the unity of all communities, organised and unorganised.       11-12-2012

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 23, Dec 16-22, 2012

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