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Internet Edition: September 1-15, 2005
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June 1998 - December 2004 2005: Feb 16-28 | Mar 1-15 | Mar 16-31 | Apr 1-15 | Apr 16-30 | May 1-15 | May 16-31 | June 1-15 | June 26-30 | July 1-15 | | July 16-31 | August 1-15 | | August 16-31 |
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Nanavati Commission Report and the Government’s Action Taken Report : No Justice can be expected from the Party that committed the Crime!
Twenty one years ago, the Congress party, then in power at the Center and in most states of India, organised the genocide of Sikhs in November 1984, in Delhi and all over India, following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. People were pulled out of trains and buses and burnt alive with leading politicians of the Congress Party leading and inciting the killer mobs. Homes and shops of Sikhs were systematically looted, young men and boys murdered and women targeted for rape. From remote villages in the hills and the South and East to the bylanes of Delhi, the Sikhs were humiliated, massacred and dispossessed. They were turned into refugees in their own country. Their religious places were desecrated. All this was done by those who wielded the Indian state machinery, headed by the Congress Party with the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the then Home Minister (later Prime Minister) Narasimha Rao supervising the gruesome genocide. The police, the civil services, and the armed forces were all deployed or not deployed in such a manner that the massacres were sucessfully carried out. The Congress Party swept the Lok Sabha elections in 1985 with the slogan, “Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan!” Now 13 Committees and 9 Commissions of enquiry later, Justice Nanavati has produced a report exonerating the high command of the Congress party from any responsibility for the genocide. Nanavati has admitted that the genocide was organised and he has named a few ministers and politicians of the Congress party as “probably” having a hand in the genocide. Justice Nanavati has also raised questions of the role of various police and administration officials in the carnage, who are now retired from service. For six months, the UPA Government sat on this report, after which the Union Home Minister tabled in the Parliament an Action Taken Report, which in effect declared that nothing needs to be done. No wonder, there has been a storm of outrage from the people all over the country. Protest actions in Delhi continued for several days after the submission of the ATR. On August 8, shortly after the tabling in Parliament of the Nanavati Commission Report and the ATR of the government, families of the victims of November ’84 held dharnas and rallies at Tilak Vihar. They organised a chakka jam at Vikaspuri Chowk, holding up traffic movement for several hours. Members of the All-India Sikh Conference held a demonstration at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on August 9, where they burnt copies of the government’s ATR, declaring it an eyewash. They said that the ATR had made it clear that the government was not serious about punishing the guilty. On August 10, several Sikh organisations held a protest demonstration in New Delhi at Jantar Mantar. Armed with traditional spears, they tried to break the police cordon and angrily asked the police “ Where were you when Sikhs were being slaughtered?” They accused the Delhi police of having been passive spectators of the killing of Sikhs in Delhi for over three days. They accused PM Manmohan Singh of having “betrayed his community”. Sikh widows of the ’84 massacre held militant demonstrations on Parliament Street on August 10 and 11. Demonstrations were also held in front of the residences of Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler, two of the main accused in the massacre of November ’84. On August 12, at a protest march organised on Parliament Street, agitated family members of the ’84 victims and other supporters burnt effigies of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar and demanded punishment of the guilty. On August 13, at a meeting in Constitution Club, organised by the Lok Raj Sangathan, Delhi, presided over by veteran journalist and human rights activist, Kuldip Nayyar, a long-time fighter for justice to the ’84 victims, Advocate Phulka and others, activists from numerous mass organisations across the city denounced the ATR of the government and raised the demand for people’s action to punish the guilty of November ’84. Meetings and deliberations were also held in Gurudwara Rakab Ganj and other gurudwaras in Delhi. On August 14, a Virodh Diwas was organised at the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, where members of Sikh organisations took out a peace march in solidarity with the victims of November ’84. In Urban Estate area, Ludhiana, where a large number of the relatives of the November ’84 victims reside, people received the news of the Nanavati Commission report and the ATR of the government with great anger. Most of these families had moved to Ludhiana after they lost their near and dear ones in the genocide of November ’84 and felt too insecure to stay on in Delhi. They held a protest demonstration on August 9, where they declared that this was a grave injustice, that the “main culprits” had been let off and they felt betrayed. They have expressed their intention to take up the matter with the President. In other parts of Punjab also, people held demonstrations and meetings to denounce the Nanavati Commission Report and the government’s ATR. On August 10, at a rally in Bhopal, organised by members of the Sikh community, enraged protestors demanded action on the Nanavati Commission Report and punishment of the accused. Protest actions were reported to have been organised in Kanpur, Mumbai and many other parts of the country, as well as amongst Indians abroad. In both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, all opposition parties, as well as some members of the UPA coalition, denounced the Nanavati Commission Report and the ATR of the government. The wave of mass protests has compelled the Manmohan Singh government to take the cosmetic steps of the Prime Minister providing an ‘apology’and of asking Jagdish Tytler to resign from his post as Minister. There is no move towards actually punishing the guilty. The experience of November 1984 and of other communal holocausts that have occurred since then, including in 1993 following the destruction of Babri Masjid and the Gujarat genocide of 2002, point to one important lesson, namely: that there can be no justice from the very parties that employ communal violence as a tool for electoral gain. Life experience shows that justice cannot prevail as long as such criminal parties continue to dominate the polity and hold political power in their hands. The solution has to be sought in the growing unity among the people and their organisations against communal violence and in defence of their rights and for justice. Those who want justice have to rely on their own initiative and combined strength. In the immediate sense, we must persist to uncompromisingly demand not only the arrest, trial and punishment of all the individuals involved, but also of the political party whose high command masterminded the crime. We must fight for new legislation and enabling mechanisms to take stern action against a political party that organises communal violence. Otherwise such criminal acts will continue to be repeated, as they have been in 1993 and 2002. We must step up our efforts to build local committees in cities, towns and villages to defend and build the unity of the people, cutting across religious and other differences, with the slogan, “An attack on one is an attack on all!” In the strategic sense, we must step up our efforts to renew the political process so as to empower the masses of people. When people become the decision makers, they will decide what kind of party can be allowed and what kind of party must not be allowed to operate in the polity. We, the people, must fight to establish a political system where no individual or party can get away without being punished for organising or inciting violence against any section of the people. We must fight to establish a State that defends the rights of all citizens without exception, without any partiality or favour, and can never become a tool in the hands of narrow minded parties representing narrow class interests. |
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Condemn the arrest of Naxalite leaders in Andhra Pradesh! People’s Voice condemns the arrest of Naxalite leaders, Varavara Rao and G. Kalyan Rao by the Andhra Pradesh government on August 19, 2005 Varavara Rao, a leading activist of the Revolutionary Writers Association (Virasam) was arrested in the early hours of the morning, while G. Kalyan Rao, President of the Revolutionary Writers Association, was picked up by the police after he had addressed a Press Conference the same evening. It may be recalled that Varavara Rao was the main emissary in the peace talks between the government of Andhra Pradesh and the Naxalites, held earlier this year. Both leaders have been charged under the Public Security Act 1992, which the A.P. government had invoked once again, just a few days earlier, banning the CPI(Maoist) and 7 other organisations alleged to be associated with it. They have been charged with the “crime” of “supporting the Maoists”. Human rights organisations and civil rights groups in A.P. and other parts of the country have denounced the arrests of Varavara Rao and Kalyan Rao. Balladeer Gaddar, another popular leader and activist of the CPI(Maoist), who has also been threatened with arrest, has boldly declared that their only “crime” is that they participated in peace talks with the government, in which case the ministers involved in the peace talks should also be arrested! According to the fascist logic of the Indian state, which is also being followed by the government of Andhra Pradesh, the state can continue to defend the savage exploitation of the workers, peasants and all toiling people and launch vicious attacks on their livelihood and rights, while those organisations and individuals who fight in defence of the rights of the poor and oppressed are to be considered a “threat to society” and banned, arrested, etc. Those who seek solutions to political problems beyond the framework of the existing system of parliamentary democracy in India, itself a legacy of the anti – people colonial system, are deemed to pose a threat to “public security” and liable to be charged with waging war against the state. The working and oppressed people of this country do not accept this fascist logic of the exploiters. The Government of India is a signatory to many international agreements on human rights. However, it has a track record of political persecution and blatant violation of the right to conscience. It has a track record state terrorism, of brutally attacking the very right to dissent. We cannot allow ourselves to get diverted by whether we agree or disagree with the specific views of the organisation or individual under attack. The real issue here is that the right to conscience is under attack and tomorrow some other political party, organisation or activist may be targeted. It is the duty of all communists and justice loving peoples to unite in defence of the right to conscience, and in condemnation of state terrorism. The arrest of Varavara Rao and Kalyan Rao must be condemned unconditionally, as an act of state terrorism and political persecution. An attack on one is an attack on all! |
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What is behind the issue of “illegal immigration”? A big furore is being raised over the issue of “illegal immigration” into India, specifically by people from Bangladesh. This follows the recent judgment of the Supreme Court striking down the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act 1983 as unconstitutional. What is the IMDT Act 1983? This is a law that applies only to the state of Assam. In the rest of the country, all cases relating to illegal immigration are covered by the Foreigners Act 1946. The main difference between the IMDT Act and the Foreigners Act is that under the IMDT Act, the burden of proving whether one is an illegal immigrant or not falls on the person or party making the complaint, while under the Foreigners Act, the burden falls on the person who is the target of the complaint. Thus, the IMDT Act is made out to be in favour of illegal immigrants. Who is considered an “illegal immigrant” from Bangladesh? Under the prevailing laws, those who have moved to India from what was formerly East Bengal after 25 March, 1971, are arbitrarily considered “illegal”, while the status of those who immigrated from that region before that date is considered “legal”. The whole issue of illegal immigration from Bangladesh and the laws pertaining to it, is linked to two other issues. One is the agitation that has been going on with varying intensity in Assam over the last two to three decades, over the influx of non-Assamese, especially from both East and West Bengal, into Assam. This agitation has been fuelled by fears among Assamese that non-Assamese are taking over scarce jobs and land, and are also threatening to turn Assamese into a minority in their own state. The second complicating issue is the vicious campaign spearheaded by the BJP and its allies against Muslims. The BJP makes out that immigration by Bangladeshis, the majority of whom are Muslims, represents a “Muslim threat” to the “Hindu” character of India. On this basis, the BJP and allied groups have sought to arouse base communal passions against Bangladeshi migrants. While it is easy to get confused by these overlapping issues and swayed by emotions, it is necessary for the working class to have a clear understanding of what lies behind the phenomenon of migration, and behind the campaign against “illegal immigrants”. Migration is as old as human history itself. It is much older than the phenomenon of national or state boundaries. People have always moved from one place to another in search of livelihood and a better life. Other factors that have led to migration have been natural or man-made disasters, persecution, and so on. Millions of Indians have migrated to all corners of the globe, particularly over the last 150 years. The character of India and Indians as we know it today has also been molded and enriched by the human migratory inflows into this land over centuries. However, in the modern era under the capitalist system of exploitation, migration serves a particular function. Capitalism requires a vast reserve army of labour, much greater than the number that can actually be employed by the capitalists at any given time. This keeps down the cost of labour and helps the capitalists to make superprofits. In India, there is no dearth of people to serve as the reserve army of unemployed labour. Yet the influx of more destitute people from neighbouring regions such as Nepal and Bangladesh, people who are willing to work themselves to the bone at the lowest rates, without being able to claim any rights, is encouraged by the ruling class, and connived at by the state authorities at all levels. Without this tacit encouragement, immigration into India on the present scale would simply not be possible. At the same time, making these immigrants live under constant fear of arrest, deportation or physical violence and persecution, comes in very handy for these same forces that profit from their labour. This ensures that the immigrants submit to their superexploitation without protest. It is also a convenient way to split the working class. Instead of the poor working people, both immigrants and non-immigrants, getting together and fighting as one, against the system that exploits them all, they are incited to look upon each other with fear and suspicion, and consumed in bloody conflicts such as have occurred in Assam. By repeatedly changing the laws relating to migrations; by making it unclear who is “legal” and who is “illegal”; by giving a communal and chauvinist twist to the whole issue; not just all immigrant labour, but other sections of working people and the class as a whole, are made highly insecure and vulnerable. It then becomes easier for the exploiters and their political parties to manipulate them for their own ends. In the case of cross-border migration in our region of South Asia, the problem has been further compounded by the artificial nature of the boundaries handed down as part of the legacy of colonialism. Many of these boundaries were drawn in a completely arbitrary manner, dividing not only nations like the Punjabi and Bengali nations, but also communities, villages and families, and even agricultural fields. Legal and physical hurdles have been put in the way of the traditional free movement of the people in the areas that lie next to the borders. Even worse, they have suffered persecution as “illegal aliens” or “terrorists”. It is against this background that the working class and all Indians of conscience must view the whole issue of “illegal immigration”. The migrants from across the border are not the enemy. They are not the cause of the unemployment, the poverty, the landlessness and general deprivation that affects our working people. The source of these ills is the capitalist system of exploitation and the State. If we take the case of Assam, for example, the truth is that for decades the tea, oil, timber and other immense natural wealth of the region has been systematically drained out of the region by the Central state and the ruling class, and very little has been done to improve the conditions of the people, who continue to eke out a living from the diminishing amount of land available. The just struggle of the Assamese people against this colonial-style exploitation has been deliberately diverted into the dead-end path of demanding expulsion of non-Assamese residents of Assam – many of whom have lived there for generations and know no other home – leaving the State and ruling class free to carry on with their exploitation. Instead of turning their anger against other working people, and letting themselves be manipulated by political parties for their self-serving aims, the working people of all nationalities residing in India should unite against this system. They must oppose the victimization of other toilers on grounds that these are “outsiders”. Those who really deserve to be expelled lock, stock and barrel from our country are those who grow fat on the blood and sweat of the working people, no matter what their nationality. |
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Secret courts and powers to strip citizenship from naturalised citizens Blair uses hysteria to declare that the “rules have changed”
The working people of Britain have a long and glorious history of unitedly resisting attacks on their rights and liberties. The manner in which various sections of airline workers struck work in support of unfairly dismissed staff of a catering contractor, Gate Gourmet, completely paralysing the operations of British Airways for a couple of days, is a recent example of this solidarity. In the course of decades and centuries of struggle, the British people have wrested several rights, including the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, the right to a proper legal defence. The people of Britain have supported the democratic, anti imperialist and anti fascist, revolutionary and national liberation movements of the people world wide, including those of the peoples oppressed by British colonialism and imperialism. The people of the former colonial and dependent countries from all parts of the globe who have made Britain their homeland have also been very much part of these united struggles of the British working people. As opposed to the working class of Britain, the British bourgeoisie has a long and notorious history in the course of establishing its colonial and imperial rule over so many countries and peoples of the world. It has perfected into a fine art, various methods to split, terrorise and subjugate the people of different lands. From Ireland to Africa, from Asia to North America, the British ruling elite has used methods deviously developed over the centuries, to vanquish nations and turn them into colonies, to divide peoples and render their resistance ineffective, to drown struggles in communal bloodbaths as during the Partition of India in the middle of the last century. The British ruling elite has developed the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie into virtually a fine art, with the cloak of being "democratic", but with racism and fascism as its underbelly. US imperialist chieftain Bush used the hysteria and fear psychosis created in the wake of the 9/11 2001 terrorist attacks in the US to introduce a wide range of anti–people and fascist measures, including passing the notorious PATRIOT Act. In a now familiar replay, Blair is using the July 7, 2005 terrorist killings in London to mount tyrannical attacks on the working people of Britain, to divide them on religious and ethnic lines, provoke racist attacks and drum up support for fascism and war. It is not without significance that the tenure of the PATRIOT Act, which came up for review in the US recently, was renewed in the wake of the London bombings. The Anglo-American imperialists are working according to a coordinated plan. The measures which Blair spoke of in his press briefing on August 5, 2005 include: ¨ Secret courts, similar to Special Immigrations Appeals Tribunal, which sits in secret, and defendants are not even told of the complete charges against them! (Defendants are represented by special advocates, who have access to the evidence but do not brief their 'clients' on the details)
These sweeping fascist powers have evoked condemnation from justice loving and democratic people. They are in violation of existing laws and practices, and the European Convention on Human Rights, of which Britain is a signatory. However, Blair has haughtily declared that though he expected challenges in the courts, all legal barriers put up would be torn down by his government. Moreover, in order to circumvent Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Blair government would amend the Human Rights Act and enter into bilateral agreements with about 10 other countries. In an unveiled attack on immigrant communities, Blair condescendingly declared that those who come to Britain from abroad ought not to “meddle in extremism”, else they ran the risk of being sent out again! The proposals outlined by Blair are so sweeping that all liberation struggles, such as those of the Palestinian people, or the struggle against Apartheid waged by the South African people could be termed as “extremist”. Blair has removed the kid gloves from his fascist fists. In the case of the brutal shooting down of an unarmed Brazilian youth on July 22, 2005, it is becoming apparent that it was a cold blooded murder (see box item). In the case of the July 7 bombings too, it is becoming clear that the government is not coming clean. There is evidence that certain agencies were aware of the planned bombings at least two days prior to their occurrence. The British ruling class has profited from the atmosphere of fear and hysteria that it has carefully created by the bombings to advance its plans for fascism and war. People’s Voice calls upon all Indian people to condemn the racism, fascism and war mongering of the Blair government. We hail the work of progressive parties and forces in Britain like the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) who, in extremely difficult times, are striving to defend and strengthen the unity of the people in struggle against the fascist onslaught. |
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President Chavez rebuts US charges on ‘destabilisation’ President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela rebutted US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s charges that Venezuela and Cuba were trying to destabilise Bolivia, where popular revolts by the native people have led to two Presidents leaving office in the last couple of years. Putting things in perspective during a visit to Cuba, President Chavez pointed out that it is in fact the US imperialists who are the greatest destabilisers in the region, having organised countless military coups such as the notorious one in Chile which led to the installation of the Pinochet regime in the seventies. He also pointed out that it is the so – called “free market” policies insisted upon by the US imperialists, which have led to ruin of several national economies and instability. Chavez was speaking on his weekly Venezuelan television show broadcast, live from the town of Sandino, 220km west of Havana in westernmost Cuba, where Venezuelan troops had built 150 prefabricated houses after Hurricane Ivan in September 2004. “We are not conspiring, nor do we want to destabilise any government or any region,” President Fidel Castro said on Saturday at a meeting he hosted with President Chavez and five Caribbean prime ministers to discuss a plan for Venezuelan oil supplies on generous terms. Venezuela ships 90,000 barrels a day of oil to Cuba which Havana is paying for with medical services. Chavez, Panamanian President Martin Torrijos and the five Caribbean leaders were in Cuba to attend the graduation of 1610 doctors from 28 countries trained by Cuba free of cost. |
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Further revelations on the cold blooded murder of Jean Charles de Menezes
Throughout the one month that has elapsed after his murder, several protests have been held, in London as well as in Brazil. In view of the public anger against the cold blooded murder of their countryman, the Brazilian government has sent a senior two–man delegation to London to seek clarifications from the British police. A demonstration was organised to mark one month of the murder, on August 22, 2005. At the demonstration by the Jean Charles de Menezes Family Campaign group, his cousin Alessandro Pereira handed in a letter addressed to the prime minister, calling for a public inquiry. De Menezes's mother, Maria Otoni, urged that those who pulled the trigger be punished. "They took my son's life. I am suffering because of that. I want the policeman who did that punished. They ended not only my son's life but mine as well," she said. | ||
Unequal Trade Relations ails the WTO Trade ministers from thirty WTO Member countries met in July this year at an informal summit in Dalian, China. The aim of this meeting was to step up the pace of the faltering Doha Round trade negotiations. There is focus on WTO and the Doha Declaration Agenda (DDA) once again in the context of the Ministerial Meeting coming up in December 2005 at Hong Kong. This is the Sixth Ministerial Meeting; the fifth was the Cancun meeting in September 2003, when the talks collapsed. That collapse caused panic among those who are pushing for liberalisation of world trade; the WTO office, backed by economically powerful countries like the US, Japan, the counties of the EU, etc. with other aspiring economic powers like India, China, Brazil, South Africa, agreed that the Doha Agenda could not be allowed to collapse altogether, and every effort must be made to keep the talks going and to reach agreement on the various issues before their respective deadlines. The main objective of the Doha Agenda is to push forward world trade liberalisation and investment facilitation so as to “promote development of all economies, especially that of developing ones.” There are obviously different perspectives to how world trade can work for the benefit of a country’s economy, depending upon the country’s relative economic strength in the world. At the same time, within each capitalist country, the minority ruling class is pushing its interests which stand in direct conflict with those of the workers, peasants and other small producers in the economy. Import/export policy, use of barriers to trade, and decisions to open up the market are all made in the interests of the big bourgeoisie. Thus the attempts to come to an agreement have been fraught with deep contradictions between and within countries. This, exacerbated by the domination of the WTO by a few powerful countries and imposition of their will on the majority of countries, has been the reason for the collapse of the trade negotiations. Agreeing to disagree Following Cancun, there have been many “mini-Ministerial meetings and meetings of the General Council, which are sub-sects of the Ministerial Group that includes all of the 147 member countries of the WTO. These have been attempts to hammer out settlements, to get the “troublesome” parties to meet and negotiate prior to and on the side of the main Ministerial meetings. However, even these “mini”-meetings have not always been successful and Dalian is one more evidence of the deep contradictions that exist. The bulk of the meeting in Dalian was taken up by discussions on agriculture. Agriculture, since 1995, has been evading agreement because of the implications of the various proposals in the Agreement on Agriculture made so far. These proposals concerned export subsidies, domestic support and market access. The tussles have been on issues of lowering tariffs, by how much and on what products. The group of G20 counties (including India, Brazil, China and South Africa) had very strongly resisted the tariff formula suggested earlier by the US and EU. The issue is that the EU and US who subsidise agricultural production and exports themselves, want other countries to lower all barriers to trade, allow unimpeded imports and not seek to support their agricultural producers! Besides agriculture, talks on Non Agricultural Market Adjustment (NAMA), which deals with trade of products other than agriculture, and services, also struck an impasse at Dalian. Countries agreed to disagree for now and also said that it would be necessary to set a new deadline for revised offers in 2006. At the end of all the talking, what is being touted as the achievement of the mini-Ministerial meeting, just like earlier ones, is that there is agreement on the need to move forward! It became clear that Members were nowhere near what they had envisioned earlier in the year, i.e., that they would have outlines of a deal in each of the negotiating areas that would give them sufficient optimism to go forward to Hong Kong in December. Intractable contradictions While there has been stark disagreement between the US, EU, Japan, Canada, on the one hand and the G20, the larger G90, G33, etc on the other hand, it has not been a happy consensus between counties within a group either. On the sides of the recent G8 conclave, officials of the EU met with Brazil, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Japan and Kenya, on the WTO agricultural negotiations. Among issues brought up at the meeting was a suggestion by the US that delegates focus on areas where it is realistic to expect progress in the lead-up to Hong Kong. The EU, on the other hand, has been stressing the need to agree on a balanced package for agriculture, especially on export competition, where the EU has agreed to phase out its direct export support on the condition that other countries phase out other forms of export support. EU leaders also failed to agree on the Union's 2007-2013 budget during a 16-17 June summit. Central to the budget disagreement was the funding of the agriculture sector, the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The EU spends 40 percent of its budget on agricultural subsidies. The UK, fiercely opposed by France, argued that the budget as such was too large, and that too much of it was being channeled into the agriculture sector and rural development. The UK is a net payer to the EU, and has received relatively limited support for its agricultural sector, due to the sector's small size in the UK compared with other countries, such as France. In the end, the negotiations collapsed because the UK refused to go along with the proposals for budget rebate in agriculture. Several groups of countries emerged as a bloc to oppose attempts by the United States and European Union (EU) to include the so-called Singapore issues–investment, competition policy, and transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation–in the negotiations in Cancun. Prominent among them were the G20 and G90. In response to this development, the more powerful countries led by the US, made every attempt post-Cancun, to break the unity of these large groups by co-opting Brazil and India into a group of “Five Interested Parties” and trying to get them to come to a common ground on the Agreement on Agriculture. Brazil and India placed the specific interests of their bourgeoisie to the disadvantage of other countries in G20, the cotton exporting countries, and most of the developing countries. For example, removing agricultural subsidies was Brazil's concern, and it got its way in Geneva. The final text affirmed the phase-out of export subsidies as well as certain categories of export credits. The big gainer with the phase-out of subsidies was seen to be Brazil’s agribusiness. It was the pressure of Brazilian agribusiness that allegedly forced the Brazilian representative to stand firm on the subsidy issue at the expense of a strong defence of developing country interests in other areas. The Geneva Council meeting in June-July 2004 was also characterised by a non-transparent, non-inclusive process, dominated by big trading powers and characterised by brinkmanship and power-play. The economically powerful countries also maneuvered the organisational structure of the WTO. Instead of the Ministerial Meetings, which are attended by all the members, they have innovated the General Council (G.C.), making it the de facto supreme institution for decision-making in the World Trade Organisation. What the June-July 2004 meeting came up with was effectively a Ministerial declaration without a Ministerial Meeting. The collapses of the two Ministerial Meetings - Seattle and Cancun - underlined to the WTO Secretariat and the trade superpowers the unwieldiness of the Ministerial as an arena for decision-making. It attracted protests from non-governmental organisations and the people. It brought the press in large numbers, thus making decision-making more transparent against the wishes of the negotiators. Restating the principles of international trade The agenda of ‘trade liberalisation’ is an agenda to subjugate the nations and peoples of all countries and deprive them of their sovereign rights. It is an agenda to subordinate the majority of states and economies to serve the interests of the biggest imperialist powers and capitalist monopoly companies. Resistance to WTO has been on the rise with each Ministerial Meeting. In Seattle, anti-imperialist forces from all over the world took to the streets to mark their disagreement with the imperialist imposition of trading “principles” on the rest of the world. The continued opposition of the people in various countries has brought pressure on their governments to resist the imperialist pressure to come to an agreement, even if a bad one. That is how Doha and Cancun collapsed. The sovereign right of every nation, country and people to their own economic policy, including the right of every state to set its own tax and subsidy policy has to be defended as the cornerstone of international trade. Such trade has to be mutually beneficial and its terms have to be openly agreed to by the nations of the world. Such an agreement should not preclude the right to bilateral or multilateral regional trade that any country may want to engage in for mutual benefit. In the final analysis, trade between countries can and must serve the all-round development and progress in the economic conditions of the working people of all nations and continents of the world. This requires that the peoples who have risen up against the unjust imperialist order begin to lay down the principles of a just international trading system, and set its realisation as their target. |
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The Editor, Sir, It is with regret that we note the news of the assassination of Mr. Laxman Kadirgamar, the Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka. The Kumaratunga Government has been quick to point its fingers at the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, while the latter has said that they had no part in this event, and has advised the Government to look closer to home suggesting that there may have been figures close to the ruling establishment that would have liked to see Mr. Kadirgamar eliminated. The media have dwelt on the fact that Mr. Kadirgamar, himself an ‘ethnic Tamil’, has been long considered as a ‘traitor’ by the LTTE, was a champion of a tough posture towards the LTTE. While the particularities of this debate are never likely to see the light of day, what an interested individual can glean is simply that violence has been a favoured tool of the ruling elites in Sri Lanka. They have never desisted from the use of brute force in attempting to settle the national question in the north and in the east, and have not desisted from its use in settling inter-necine differences. Whether or not Mr. Kadmirgamar is an ethic Tamil is a moot question: the question is whether or not he represented the policies of the ruling elites of the island. It is a fact that this island, like so many other islands in the world is home to a multi-national population. While the natural historical developments of the island were rudely interrupted by colonial rule, the end of the colonial rule was brought about with the collusion and collaboration of elites in back room deals, and the product was a formula that was cast in the mould of classical European nation states. This was meant to facilitate the use of the mineral and natural wealth of the country for the elites, and to make available the labour of the workers and peasants and to provide markets for the ruling elites. The project of nation building was left to this parasitic class, which wrote down a constitution that was discriminatory and prejudicial towards sections of the population. This kind of chauvinistic constitution lies at the heart of the problems of Sri Lanka. The portrayal of the conflict merely as one of a war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army belies the underlying inability of the present system to face up to the national question. Indeed, by dwelling on Mr. Kadirgamar’s ethnic origins, the illusion is created that the Tamil question is merely one of choice that is exercised by this or that individual, and is aimed at denial of the historical necessity of trying to resolve the question. That there is a logical consequence of the argument, which is that these problems cannot be solved so long as the state apparatus lies in the hands of the parasitic class, is an inevitable one. The example of Sri Lanka is closely mirrored in our own country, where there are far larger and far more complex issues of questions of nations and inter-relations between them. Indeed, after the 1947 transfer of power, the colonial state apparatus is also geared at maintaining the European notion of great nation-states. A thorough discussion of the foundations of the Indian nation building project is an imminent task facing those who wish to open the doors to progress. Sincerely, G. Rajan |
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| Iraq Tragedy
The Editor, Sir, I bring to your attention the struggle of Ms. Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier, Casey Sheehan who was killed in Iraq in 2004. She has been camping in the hot Texas sun trying to obtain an audience with Mr. George W. Bush. According to a posting on Workers World internet web-site dated August 9, 2005, she plans to tell Mr. Bush if she were to get such an audience the following: “...Just what was the noble cause Casey died for? Was it freedom and democracy? Bull****! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We’re not freer here, thanks to your Patriot Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop terrorism!” With a single sweep, this brave woman has captured the entire essence of the Bush foreign as well as domestic agendas, and that of his puppets, whether it is in Iraq or in Israel. It may, therefore, be concluded that any thinking individual when facing the realities around her or him would be able to glean from the fog perpetrated by the bourgeoisie and its propaganda, the real light of things as they are. It may be noted that there is a growing disaffection among the American people about the nature of the adventures of the Bush administration world over. They are also of the considered view that their lives have been made more insecure by Bush and his policies. This shade of opinion is so widespread that it permeates all sections of society and the world, irrespective of what an individual’s origins and circumstances are. Noteworthy is the remark from the well-known Indian superstar Mr. Aamir Khan, talking about his film Mangal Pandey, a historical figure associated with India’s first war of independence of 1857. In an interview on the film, he states “...When I am doing a film, I’m doing it because I see something happening in Iraq today, I see something happening in Afghanistan. And I see that one superpower has been doing that for decades now in other parts of the world in one way or the other...” The times are calling for all peace loving people’s to call for an immediate cessation of the US led occupation of Iraq, to compensate the men and women of Iraq for lost limb and life. Sincerely, S. Grover, | ||
58 years of Indian Independence Sir, I am writing to congratulate the CGPI on its bold statement on the eve of the 58th independence day entitled ``58 years of Indian independence: Independence will bloom when the working masses become the masters of India.'' You have pointed out that the events of 1947 have shown that what was achieved was nothing more than a transfer of power from the Imperial British masters to the hands of the big bourgeoisie and the Indian state, which is no more than the old colonial state. While matters stand at this pass, the peoples of the various nations and tribal peoples of India are continuing to fight for their freedom; the fight for the basic necessities of a human life, be it the fight against nature, for livelihood or for a life of dignity. This fight has manifested itself in different forms in different regions of the country where the contradictions have assumed specific contours. I support your call for the fight to not be given up until the working masses become the masters of India. Almost at the same time, in fact a day later, according to reports in the mainstream media, the Left parties hailed the Independence day speech of the Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh as ``good, positive and motivating,'' and praising it for its underlining the Government's priorities to generate employment, social justice for the weaker sections and strengthen Indo-Pak peace process. The leaders of CPI and CPI(M) went on to wonder why the PM had ``missed mentioning the Women's reservation Bill and its introduction in the ongoing session of the Parliament while complimenting him for stressing upon the government's commitment to contain domestic violence against women and other social evils'' (courtesy SIFY news). In other words, by adopting this posture, the left parties are continuing to promote the fraudulent position that the problems in India's economic, political and social life stem from the thus far unachieved policy objectives. In other words, there are weaker social sections in the country only because successive governments have not so far worked hard enough to eradicate social ills. That poverty and unemployment are not inherent features of capitalism where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but it is merely an (incorrect) choice that has been made by the peoples of India thus far. The oppression that women face and the violence they face is not because of the brutal system of exploitation fostered on the people of India by capitalism and its fountainhead the big bourgeoisie, but only because the Government has not provided adequate safeguards in the past. Indeed, if the present parliamentary system were to adopt some corrective measures such as, e.g., ensuring enough women become members of the Lok Sabha, then the problems of the Indian state would resolve themselves as a matter of course. In other words, there is no need for revolution, or for the working Indian masses to be masters of their own destiny, but it would suffice if an enlighened section of the bourgeoisie through its parliament and Government were to lead the peoples of India. It is therefore evident to a discerning observer that the idealogical struggle for the leadership of India's working masses now lies in analyzing the role that the leadership would envisage for it. Indeed, the working masses must be ever watchful of handing over its historical mission to a small section of conciliators who would like to blunt their revolutionary zeal and edge, while sounding very concerned for its future. I remain, | ||
Plans to privatise Delhi’s water supply – a thoroughly anti-people move Delhi’s chief minister, Sheila Dixit, vehemently denied that water supply was going to be privatisaed each time she was asked the question over the last couple of years. However, residents of Delhi have every reason to believe that the opposite is exactly what is on the cards. A proposal - “Towards 24x7”- for privatising water supply has been hatched by some international consultants funded by the World Bank. Recently a presentation of the scheme was made to the Planning Commission by the Delhi Government in which top Delhi. Jal Board (DJB) officials were also present. Although, DJB claims that it is still studying the proposals, it appears to be quietly moving along, behind people’s backs, to implement the recommendations of the proposal.
What is meant by 24x7 is not that residents will have fresh water flowing in their taps 24 hours a day but only that the private water company will make water available at the District Metering Areas through-out the day. The proposal allows full freedom to the private water company to distribute the water as it pleases within a DMA. In other words, if one street doesn’t get any water for days while others get water supply then also water supply will be considered that there was 24 hours so long as enough water was available at the DMA. As it stands today, the water distribution is highly inequitable in Delhi. It is estimated that two-thirds of the population of Delhi are supplied only 5% of the aggregate water supply to the city. This amounts to only 600 litres of water per person per month. Contrast this monthly figure to the average daily consumption of 500 litres per person in Lutyen’s Delhi, where the parliamentarians and big government officials stay. The proposal to hand over water distribution to a private company does not in any way guarantee a redressal of this inequity. On the other hand, it may only get worse as the company pursues its self-interest of maximising its profits and not ensuring that every household in the city should get an adequate supply of such a basic need as water. This brings us to the issue of tariffs. It is not difficult to see that the private water company will be looking to a steep increase in tariffs. In fact, private companies will not enter the market unless the tariffs were high enough to begin with. The tariffs existing in India are not considered high enough for private operation. The proposal therefore recommends that water tariffs be increased substantially and all costs for making water available are recovered fully (not be subsidised at all). Recently water tariff has been hiked steeply, making water cost double or triple of rates one year ago (see box). However, even this is not considered sufficient for the private companies. Based on the experience the world over, water tariff is expected to be further hiked by a factor of at least three with privatisation. A mechanism is recommended in the proposal for inflating the cost of operations by requiring the services of four ‘experts’ in each zone. The proposed recommendation is to pay more than 120 crore Rupees per annum for the 84 experts for the 21 zones in Delhi. As per the cost estimates based on the PwC proposals, the cost of water should be Rs. 33 per kilolitre, which works out to be more than ten times the present cost. Water is a basic necessity. It is therefore the responsibility of any government to make it available to all at an affordable rate. The proposed changes in the water supply system cannot be accepted. This is not a solution to the water supply problem of Delhi but will surely aggravate it. What will serve our interests is neither private service based on profit nor government service that is not accountable to the people. Already, people have come to know the clandestine plans of the government to abdicate its responsibility and have expressed their opposition to these plans in no uncertain terms. Let us step up the struggle against privatisation of public services and demand that government fully accepts its responsibility of fulfilling the basic needs of the people and sincerely discharge it as its top priority.
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Trade Union convention condemns UPA Govt and Demands Comprehensive Law A convention of all major central and state level trade unions, held in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa, on 21 st August, demanded that a comprehensive legislation must be enacted to protect the fundamental rights of workers, including those working in so-called unorganised sectors, and to prevent sexual harassment and torture of women workers. The convention also demanded a halt to privatisation and disinvestment in profit making public enterprises and in priority sectors, implementation of labour laws in special economic zones, halt to foreign investment in defence, coal and mining, freezing FDI in banking and telecom, recovery of outstanding dues from big business houses, rollback of national electricity policy and enactment of a law to protect the right to strike. The convention noted that in spite of the fact that certain issues had been forced on the UPA Government by the working class movement, the course being followed has the imprint of the capitalist reforms triumvirate of Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The speakers at the convention charged that labour laws were being flouted in the name of abolition of ‘inspector raj’ and a ‘hire and fire’ policy was being encouraged, citing the recent incident in Gurgaon. Trade unions represented at the convention included AITUC, CITU, HMS, UTUC-Lenin Sarani, AICCTU and Insurance Employees’ Federation. It was decided at the convention that all efforts would be made by the trade unions of Orissa to make the all-India strike of 29 th September a success. Conventions, demonstrations and dharnas will be held at the district as well as individual industry level by 7 th September, to raise awareness, and all the unions in Orissa will give the strike notice on 15 th September. | ||
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B ritish Prime Minister Tony Blair has used the fear psychosis and hysteria created in the wake of the London bombings in July to signal the end of “British tolerance” and promote openly fascist arbitrariness and authoritarianism. In a speech given to the media on August 5, 2005, he announced that his government planned to promulgate a wide range of measures, including secret courts for “terror” cases, new powers on closing places of worship, banning “extremist” groups, deportation and even stripping citizenship from naturalised citizens. While these proposed measures have drawn round condemnation from democratic forces in Britain and other countries, it is significant that the ruling circles of Britain, including the leadership of the main opposition Conservative party, are fully for these fascist measures. 