Editorial

60 Years of the Indian Republic:
Constitutional Charter of Rights Being Crushed Underfoot

Every year, Republic Day presents an occasion for the Indian State to showcase the country’s economic progress and military prowess. The 60th Republic Day this year additionally comes in the midst of Operation Greenhunt, when the military might of the State is being deployed against its poorest people in the most backward regions – in the defence of corporate capital....Full text

Commentary

Stop Racist Attacks on Indians in Australia!

Kavita Krishnan

The attacks on Indians in Australia show no signs of abating, and have now claimed two lives. A 21-year old young man Nitin Garg was stabbed on his way to work, and some days later, the half-burnt body of another Indian man was discovered – both incidents have happened in the vicinity of Melbourne. Another recent victim, 29-year old Jaspreet Singh, is now recovering from burns to 15 per cent of his body on his hands, face and legs.....Full text

Special Feature

Stop the Corporate Loot of Mineral Resources!

Nationalise Minerals, Oil, Gas !

[With the court battle between the Ambani brothers over natural gas, the Madhu Koda scam in Jharkhand, the recent crisis in which the Reddy brothers (owners of private mining companies) brought the Karnataka Government to its knees, and exposure of widespread illegal mining in Karnataka, AP, Chhattisgarh and Orissa, the issue of corporate loot of the country’s precious resources has come to the fore.
In mineral-rich states all over the country, corporate players are cornering the country’s minerals for private profit. Government policy has moved steadily towards undermining the public sector, rolling out the red carpet for private corporations and MNC miners, and facilitating export of mineral resources. The regions which are richest in minerals are home to the poorest people, who are not only deprived of any share in or benefit from mineral wealth, but are evicted from land, forests and means of livelihood to boot.
The following is a fact-sheet for a campaign to be undertaken by the party in all mineral-rich states. Many of the facts and figures are courtesy Rich Lands Poor People, a Citizen’s Report published by the Centre for Science and Environment in 2008 as well as inputs from Radhika Krishnan. Cartoons courtesy Khalil Bendib, www.corpwatch.org- Ed]....Full text  

Student Movement

AISA to Hold 7th National Conference

For Education, Employment, Democracy!

In the past month (December-January), 20 students (in high school and college) committed suicide in Maharashtra; most due to intense fear of poor academic performance.  
India has the second highest suicide rate in the world and 40 per cent of the cases are in the adolescent age group. In 2006, 5,857 students — or 16 a day — committed suicide across India due to exam stress.....Full text

Article

‘Maoism’, State and the Communist Movement in India

Arindam Sen

Part III

We promised to share with readers the experience of our encounter with Maoists in different parts of the country in this issue. Due to some unavoidable reasons, we are saving that for the fourth and last installment, taking up here the story of evolution of Maoist anarchism.

In part II we have seen how the historic conflict and overlap between anarchism (understood in the sense or senses in which founders of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought encountered it in their practical work, that is in the course of organising the working people for revolution, and hence also in theory, as outlined above) and revolutionary Marxism – or more generally between petty bourgeois and proletarian revolutionisms – took different shapes in different countries. ...Full text

“Democracy is nothing but a political reflection of the ‘free’ market”

- Dipankar Bhattacharya
(Civil Society Magazine interviewed CPI(ML) General Secretary Comrade Dipankar for their December 2009 Issue, ‘Beyond Maoism.’ The transcript of the interview is reproduced below. – Ed/-)  

1. Your party was underground for a long time. But you came over ground. Why?
The CPI(ML) was not formed as an underground organization. With the state coming down heavily on the fledgling organization and waging a veritable war of extermination against all leaders and activists of the party, there was little choice but to move underground. When the party was reorganized in July 1974, dark clouds had begun to envelope the entire framework of parliamentary democracy. Indeed, within a year Emergency became the official order. It was therefore only natural that the reorganized CPI(ML) would also have to work underground. Also, mass struggles were not central to the party’s scheme of things in those days....Full text

Obituary

The Legacy of Jyoti Basu

Dipankar Bhattacharya

Jyoti Basu, arguably the most familiar face of the CPI(M) in the country and the last surviving member of the party’s founding polit bureau, passed away in Kolkata on 17 January. In the course of his marathon political journey spanning nearly seven decades, he served for an unprecedented 23 consecutive years as the Chief Minister of West Bengal. Basu is also famously remembered as the only Left leader who had been offered the Prime Ministership of the country in 1996, an offer that was declined by his party even as Basu openly differed with the party calling its decision a ‘historic blunder’. Four years later, Basu stepped down from power in November 2000 when his health started failing, a graceful act which never really received the popular recognition it deserved. Yet, even as he relinquished his official responsibility as Chief Minister, he never ‘retired’ from his role as a leader of his party. “Communists never retire”, was his famous statement and he really lived it....Full text

Updates

Displaced Poor Struggle Against Eviction in Patna

Kunal

Protest dharnas were  held in all thirteen blocks of the Patna Rural district on 12 January 2010 against the forcible eviction by the BJP-JD(U) protected feudal forces. The evicted people demanded immediate rehabilitation, and a district-level protest will now be held on 27 January in Patna. The protests were organised for rehabilitation of 307 displaced families from 7 villages in Patna Rural district, who have been displaced for years thanks to feudal terror and oppression. These people have been forced to live a life of deprivation, deprived of dignity. Till now 57 of them have died of poverty, starvation and lack of medical care....Full text

Jharkhand Elections and After

As widely expected, the recent elections in Jharkhand once again threw up a hung Assembly. None of the pre-poll combinations could come anywhere near the majority mark, with the Congress-JVM combination securing 25 seats and the BJP-JD(U) combine managing only 20. In terms of seats the NDA thus emerged the biggest loser. In the previous Assembly, the BJP had as many as 30 members while its ally JD(U) had 6. Even in the recent Lok Sabha elections in May 2009, the BJP had won as many as 8 of the 14 LS seats in Jharkhand. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had campaigned quite extensively in Jharkhand, promising Bihar-type ‘development’ and ‘good governance’ in Jharkhand if NDA were voted to power. The electorate of Jharkhand did not obviously show any particular interest in these claims and promises.....Full text

Pricol Struggle Update:
TN Women’s Commission Shows
Pro-Pricol Bias

Within a span of 6 days, from 24 September to 29 September 2009, Coimbatore police, as part of its systematic campaign to harass Pricol workers in the wake of the death of a management official, had baselessly targeted several women workers. They arrested two women workers of Pricol after 11.30 pm (in violation of regulations about arrests of women) and took them to the police station only the next day morning. These women were asked to identify the houses of other Pricol workers. They were detained in the police station till the police figured out a case under which to remand them. 6 women workers were arrested inside the factory premises and later remanded and sent to jail. The police also detained two other women workers of Pricol for 2 days in the police station in the name of investigation.....Full text

Protests Against Power Plant

After the November protests against the proposed power plant near Sirkazhi in Nagapattinam district on January 21st, angry agricultural labourers and poor peasants once more held a protest demonstration in front of the Sub-Collectors’ office at Myiladuthurai. The protest was organized by AIALA-CPI(ML) as part of the 'No-Power-Plant’ campaign. The protesters, more than 200 in number, demanded scraping of the proposed power plant, distribution of the land already acquired to the landless and poor peasants under the 2-acre land scheme, and complete withdrawal of false cases against activists protesting the land acquisition. A delegation of the AIALA-CPI(ML) also met the Sub-Collector under the leadership of Com. Ilangovan (National councilor of AIALA and CPI(ML) state committee member).....Full text

Film

Avatar:
Anti-imperialism in 3-D
- Nagesh Rao

(Excerpted from a review that appeared in the Socialist Worker, January 7, 2010)

Avatar is a visually stunning marvel of film technology, as many reviewers will tell you, but what really stands out in James Cameron's newest film is its unabashed critique of corporate greed and its inspiring tale of solidarity and resistance against occupation....Full text

It’s the Market, Idiot!  

Radhika Krishnan

3 Idiots has been hailed as a film that asks uncomfortable questions about the nature of learning and academics in our ‘premier’ institutes of education. The filmmakers have apparently offered a private screening of the film for HRD Minister Kapil Sibal....Full text

International

Haiti: the Disaster Both Natural and Political

Shashwat Sinha

At around 5 pm on January 13, 2010 a massive earthquake measuring 7.0 on Richter scale hit Port-au-Prince, the heavily populated capital city of Haiti.  Within the next few days more than 200,000 people were reported dead with over one third of the population of Haiti rendered homeless. The city looks like an ancient ruin with the infrastructure of the city, including the presidential palace, rich and poor localities completely razed to ground.  At least another 300,000 have been rendered homeless. The government and all essential public services - hospitals, ports, communication, transportation, water, electricity, sewage – which were bad even at the best of times, have now totally collapsed.....Full text

Cover

Why is Mr. Chidambaram Silent on the Adivasi Ruchikas of Bastar? 
Why is Sodi Sambho being stopped from meeting her lawyer and the public?
Sodi Sambho is one of 13 eyewitnesses who have petitioned the Supreme Court in the case of a massacre by police and security forces at Gompad, Bastar on October 1, 2009, in which 9 adivasis were killed; the breasts of an old woman cut off, fingers and tongue of a two-year-old baby cut off, and many, including Sodi herself, severely injured. .....Full text

In Memory of Faiz Ahmad Faiz
(February 13 1911- November 20 1984)

You Tell Us What To Do

Speak.....Full text