• Tony Blair greeted with militant demonstrations in Delhi

• Down with the fascist war criminal Tony Blair!

ECONOMY

• Outcome Budget – an exercise in deceiving people in the name of ‘good governance’

WORLD

• US Court orders retrial of Cuban patriots

• Cuba and Panama restore relations

LETTER TO EDIROE

• No Justification for a new law

• Natural disaster heightens man made misery

• Growing militarisation of Indian Economy

Tony Blair greeted with militant demonstrations in Delhi

On September 7, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in New Delhi, to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with the purpose of advancing the strategic partnership between the Indian government and the European Union, he was greeted with militant demonstrations by the people of the capital.

At the call of Lok Raj Sangathan and the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), hundreds of activists of numerous mass organisations, human rights organisations, women’s organisations, youth and student organisations, trade unions, journalists and cultural organisations gathered at 11 a.m. at Mandi House Chowk and staged a militant protest march. At the head of the demonstration was a massive black banner bearing the slogan “War criminal Tony Blair, go back!” Holding aloft the banners of all the constituent organisations, the joint demonstration, boldly marched towards the venue of the Blair-Manmohan Singh meeting. The demonstrators carried placards in their hands, on which were inscribed slogans such as “Fascist Blair go back!”, “Assassin of Baghdad go back!”, “Murderer of Basra go back!”, “Down with criminal Blair!”, “Stop racist attacks!”, etc. These slogans were a vivid testimony to the sentiments of the hundreds of people gathered there, towards the fascist and criminal Tony Blair. The streets resounded with slogans such as “Down with the collaboration of the Indian government with the British imperialists!”, “End the illegal occupation of Iraq!”, “Murderer of the Iraqi people get out!”, “Fascist, racist, assassin Blair go back!”, “Down with imperialism!”, “Inquilab Zindabad!”. Hundreds of passers-by stopped to join the demonstrators in denouncing Blair.

At the police barricades, the demonstration took the form of a militant and enthusiastic mass rally. Protestors shouted slogans against Tony Blair and vociferously denounced the Indian state for its collaboration with British imperialism and for welcoming this war criminal and racist to our country. Several youth activists mounted the police barricades with placards in their hands, to demonstrate their protest.

Prior to the demonstration, all the university campuses and major centres in the city had been plastered with hundreds of posters, calling on all democratic and progressive forces to join in denouncing the visit of Tony Blair. A joint leaflet issued by the participating organisations was also distributed in large numbers all over the city. Declaring Blair to be the closest ally of US imperialism today, a war criminal whose hands are bloody with the murder of thousands of innocents in Iraq, the leaflet roundly criticised the racist and fascist hysteria being spread by the Blair government in Britain in the aftermath of the bombings on July 7. Voicing the sentiments of the Indian working class and people, the leaflet resolutely declared that we will never allow a fascist and racist like Blair to set foot in our country.

The demonstration was jointly organised by Lok Raj Sangathan and CNDP. Other organisations participating in the demonstration included AIFTU, People’s Front, PUDR, Saheli, ANHAD, INSAF, Hind Naujawan Ekta Sabha, PSU, DWSC, CITU, AIDWA, SFI, DYFI, DSF, JANAM, AITUC, AIPSO, AISF, AIYF, NFIW, AISA and Forum for democratic initiative.

Down with the fascist war criminal Tony Blair!

With great anger, People’s Voice denounces the visit of the fascist war criminal Tony Blair to India, and salutes all those in India who came out on the streets to protest against his setting foot in Indian soil.

Tony Blair has been synonymous with the cold–blooded butchery of thousands upon thousands of innocent children, women and men in Iraq. He is one of the two principal chieftains of the Anglo–American “coalition of the willing”, formed to aggress upon Iraq and other sovereign states. At a time when many of the governments who were once part of this coalition have abandoned it, Blair continues to be one of the staunchest allies of the warmonger Bush. He is a champion of the illegal and unjust aggression and occupation of Iraq. Blair was one of the chief ideologues of,the elaborate campaign to discredit the erstwhile regime and the nation of Iraq, using deceit and deception. Tony Blair is one of the chief architects of the notorious lie that the entire civilised world was under threat from “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, which were later proved to have never existed at all!

Blair shamelessly upholds the war of aggression and occupation of Iraq as justified; while it was based on deceiving world public opinion, it has helped to secure the strategic interests of Anglo – American imperialism. It has served the interests of the big corporates to reap super profits, first from weapons and military supplies and then from contracts for “reconstruction” of what they themselves wantonly destroyed in the first place.

Blair continues to be one of the foremost saber – rattlers of Anglo–American imperialism, threatening and attacking all governments and peoples who do not fall in line with it, while aiding and abetting the thoroughly discredited and isolated Bush regime. His government is busy drafting plans to threaten Iran with sanctions from the UN Security Council and to discredit and isolate Zimbabwe, and has been involved with every major strategic initiative of US imperialism in the last few years.

Tony Blair has an out and out fascist record with respect to domestic affairs. He has completely negated the will of the people of Britain, so vocally expressed through countless marches, rallies and other means, in dragging Britain into the war of aggression and occupation of Iraq. He has adroitly used state terror to disorient and extinguish the struggles of the people. One of the most massive gatherings of protest against the world’s rich and powerful countries took place during the G 8 conference at Scotland in July this year, which was disrupted by a series of bomb blasts, organised in London. Blair used these blasts to whip up hysteria against the immigrant communities – against Asians in general and Muslims in particular.

The cold blooded shooting down of an unarmed, innocent Brazilian in the frenzy created in the wake of these bombings signaled that the British elite under Blair are ready to cast away the hypocritical shell of bourgeois Parliamentary democracy and unleash a bloody reign of terror in their country. Continuing in the same vein, Blair recently announced a slew of ultra–draconian measures, including secret kangaroo courts in which defendants would not even know of the charges against them, let alone be able to defend themselves! He has threatened naturalised citizens with the hitherto unheard of measure of having their citizenship revoked should they support causes not to the liking of his government!

The Indian working class and people cannot consider such a war criminal and fascist to be a “friend of India”, to be welcomed into our country. We cannot and must not accept the stand of the rulers of India, who have welcomed this war criminal with open arms, just as they have invited the warmonger Bush for a visit in early 2006. It is up to the working class, peasants and patriotic peoples of this subcontinent to develop such conditions that would force imperialist warmongers such as Bush or Blair to think twice before deciding to set foot on Indian soil.

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Outcome Budget – an exercise in deceiving people in the name of ‘good governance’

On 25 August, there was much euphoria in Parliament and in the media as the government presented its first Outcome Budget, which set a time-table for implementing key plan programmes and projects. In a 723-page document tabled in Parliament, Finance Minister P Chidambaram proposed a mechanism to allegedly measure the development outcomes of all major programmes.

Every year the Annual Budget exercise allocates monies to programmes approved under the prevailing Five-Year Plan, taking into accont what has already been spent till then by the concerned ministry or department. The proposed annual allocations are submitted to the Finance Ministry, as part of the pre-budget exercises. What the government is now saying is that it is not enough to know how much money has been spent on planned programmes, but it is also necessary to monitor what has been achieved in terms of physical targets.

The claim of the government is that this will be a performance measurement tool that will help in better service delivery and improved programme effectiveness. It will allegedly help the government make its budgets more cost effective, double up as a major device to fix accountability, and help the government manage its schemes better.

This exercise has been initiated in response to the increasing disgust and anger being expressed by the people at the fraud that is committed against them in the name of planned development. They are seeing that grand plans with lofty objectives are announced by the government, but moneys that are budgeted for these programmes are siphoned off and never reach the targeted population. These “crime” and “misdeeds” have led to demands for greater accountability and transparency.

This is what the imperialist funding agencies call “good governance”, by which the leakages and siphoning of public funds are kept under control; the people are made to feel that the administration is clean. “Good governance” has been a demand of the imperialist funding agencies to stem the discredit of governments that so brazenly divert funds meant for public programmes. Now, the UPA Government has introduced, with great fanfare, the Outcome Budget, as a step towards “good governance”.

What implications does this exercise in ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ have for the workers, peasants and other working people? The problem is not merely a lack of information. It is not that people who are currently being cheated of budget allocations for schemes that are meant for them are not aware of the leakage and corruption. The truth is that people are very much aware of what is happening, but have no means to stop it. In every state and district, people are aware that a few politically and economically powerful people are using funds meant for public programmes. But they are unable to do anything in the absence of any mechanism that will give the people the power to punish these criminals, and wrest control over the way that people’s resources get spent.

The Outcome Budget does not talk of any enforcing mechanism for the people to ensure that public funds are not diverted for private gain. In fact, at the very outset it has admitted to the limitations of its aims. Firstly, the government has only begun to monitor the component called “plan expenditure”. This means that the entire non-plan expenditure – including defense and arms spending, interest payments, fertilizer and food subsidies and other establishment costs including the central bureaucracy, judiciary, funds in the hands of MPs, upkeep and deployment of paramilitary forces – will not be called to question at all. Secondly, the government has already provided alibis for its non-performance in providing very important social services like health, education, drinking water supply and sanitation (see table). It is as if these constraints cannot be tackled and overcome by a government that has vast resources at its command.

The Outcome Budget, the government claims, is also aimed at changing the outlook of the government officials, by making government representatives more ‘result-oriented’. This attempts to conceal the fact that official outlook is shaped by the prevailing socio-economic system. The colonial style official machinery of the Indian Union that defends imperialist plunder and capitalist accumulation while perpetuating the remnants of feudalism, is not geared to serve the people.

Take the recent example of the encephalitis issue – hundreds of children have been dying, and this happens every year. A vaccine is actually being produced in Kasauli, and is available elsewhere in the world too, and should have been used to prevent the outbreak of the epidemic. But like in earlier years, timely steps were not taken and now the officials are throwing their hands up helplessly! Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is now saying that no child shall die, after so many have died already! Such examples of official callousness are not aberrations, but a reflection of the system.

Serving to hide the real cause of the problems

The Outcome Budget very clearly is not meant to address the basis for the crisis in society today – the capitalist-imperialist system that breeds unbearable exploitation and poverty, disease, unemployment, illiteracy and inhuman conditions of life for the majority of people. It does not address the lopsided priorities governing budget allocations, wherein the unproductive claims of debt servicing, militarisation and internal security take priority over providing essential services for the people. The basic orientation of the economy, towards capitalist growth with maximum rate of profit guaranteed to the financial oligopolies and big corporations, is not under question. Then what good is the Outcome Budget for the people? It will change nothing in their lives. The economy is not being altered in their interests. They are being served with 723 pages of useless paper, merely to create the impression that something is being done.

The working class, peasantry and vast majority of peoples of our country want a real solution. They want a state power that guarantees, in theory and practice, that every member of society can lead a life of dignity. We want a system of rule that is committed to provide protection and prosperity for all members of society. In order to realise this, we need to a radical rupture with the existing state machinery of the Indian Union, which is colonial and imperialist in nature. We need to build an alternative machinery of people’s control from the local to national levels. In the absence of such a radical transformation involving the renewal of democracy, it is not possible to make the Indian state work for the people and not rule over them and facilitate the plunder of their resources by a super rich minority.

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No Justification for a new law

The Editor,

Sir,

According to The Tribune of Chandigrah of August 31, 2005, ``the CPM general secretary Prakash Karat today urged the UPA government to bring in a legislation to deal with communal violence at the earliest as the state administrations and the police were foundwanting as witnessed in Gujarat violence, in the aftermath of demolition of disputed structure in Ayodhya and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.'' Mr. Karat is supposed to have gone on and added that "...a system of accountability of the administration and officials dealing with law and order must be ensured.'' In other words, communal violence takes place in India because of failure of the state machinery, and therefore lays the blame for the occurence of riots at the doorstep of the masses of the country. These words from a Communist makes the world stand on its head: years of hard work on the part of peace loving people of India has proved that communal violence is the favoured tool of the rulers to divide and disorient the masses of the country. The so-called failure of the state machinery is to negate the findings that indeed it is the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie that is responsible for the organizing of communal violence. Given these hard facts, how is it possible for a Communist to justify new laws that would "prevent" communal violence? Communal violence can be prevented in India only when the parasitic rulers of the country are thrown out and their state is replaced by the state of the workers and peasants. Adding a new law to the already existing arsenal of draconian laws of the bourgeois state is to empower it to carry out further acts of fascism, including arbitrary arrest, detention and incarceration, and needless to say to eliminate its enemies with impunity. A true Communist should call for the punishing of all the guilty in all the horrendous acts of communal violence that the country has seen since 'independence', including the communal holocaust of the partition.

Sincerely,
A. Narayan, Bangalore

Natural disaster heightens man made misery

Dear Sir,

I am sure the other readers of People’s Voice will join me in offering heartfelt condolences to the dear ones of the thousands upon thousands of people in New Orleans and other places in the US killed in the wake of the hurricane Katrina in early September 2005.

However, what makes one really angry rather than sad was that a large number of deaths and much of the misery which people have faced in these places is because of man – made, rather than natural causes. The Mayor of New Orleans has said that it is possible that 10,000 people could have died.

What is most reprehensible however is that most of those who died were simply unable to leave the place in time just because they did not own a car or have access to other means of transport! As a US Congressman, James Clyburn pointed out, "It is one thing to receive a warning to get out - it's something else to have the ability to get out". More than a quarter of the population of New Orleans, overwhelmingly black people, is poor by US standards. This is in itself a most damning indictment of the capitalist system.

Many of those trapped by Katrina's floodwaters lived in dilapidated neighbourhoods that were long known to be exposed to flooding in case of storms and other calamities. In the most powerful land on earth, the authorities have done absolutely nothing to make even the physical condition of these localities of New Orleans safer in case of natural disasters! According to estimates, it will take months before the mud is drained out and the city of New Orleans is made fit for human habitation again. Over a million people from the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have been turned into refugees in their own country, having had to flee away to other areas where they will have to fend for their livelihood afresh, not to speak of disruption in the education of several young people and other consequences.

Moreover, it is well known that the response of the Federal government of the US was not only tardy, it was callous and inadequate. It is clear that this was because most of the affected people were poor and black. In fact, several witnesses have alleged that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) turned away volunteers who were ready to help New Orleans residents and people trapped in their flooded homes. Other witnesses have said that FEMA turned away offers of aid, prevented water and fuel from reaching people on the ground, and cut emergency communications lines! They did this allegedly on grounds of “safety and security”!!!

Truly, Katrina has exposed, as never before, the ugly sores of moribund capitalism – which concentrates wealth at one pole and poverty and misery at the other, in which humans are not even allowed to help other humans in dire straits! In order to prevent such man – made misery from prevailing, this man – eating system of capitalism needs to be overthrown and replaced with one in which humans can live as humans and at least be able to help other human beings in need.

Yours sincerely,
Abhijit Khandke
Mumbai

Growing militarisation of Indian Economy

The Editor

Sir,

The BBC newsservice of August 31, 2005 repors that ``India was the leading buyer of conventional arms among developing nations in 2004, a report for the US Congress says.'' India is supposed to have sealed 10% of all arms deals in the period 1997-2004 in the so-called 'developing world.' and the USA remains the largest supplier. Ironically the US State Department insisted that arms transfers were carried out under a very rigorous set of rules and regulations and laws, and claims great restraint (sic!) in transfers.

This innocuous news item opens up great possibilities for progressive forces in India and across the world to ask of its ruling circles who is truly responsible for the existing gruesome order they impose on the people's of the world. In the same period in which

India has militarized its economy on a scale not seen before, the deterioration of life for its millions and the abject povery in which the vast majority of its citizens lives has grown by leaps and bounds. But for a miniscule minority based in the metropolises the conditions of the rest are there for every one to see --- the myriad stories of suicides by farmers, of the vast impoverishment of the countryside, the growth of homelessness and destitution for the displaced millions in the cities, and their subjection to the worst imaginable man made and natural calamities (natural occurences turned into calamities by horrendous manmade conditions, to be precise) are now a daily occurence. It must also be pointed out that this militarization of the economy is at an intolerable price, and that the policies are independent of which parties constitutes the ruling coalition.

Today all progressive forces must unite to demand of the Government that it de-esclates military expenditure, especially in purchases of hardware and spares from the USA, the worst arms peddler of all, and use the hard earned wealth of its toiling masses for its own upliftment. No problem between India and its neighbours is so great that it calls for military solution. The movement towards peace and demilitarization will greatly assist in the liberation of the workers and the toilers of the country.

Sincerely,
A. Narayan, Bangalore

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US Court orders retrial of Cuban patriots

Five Cubans had been maliciously convicted by a kangaroo court in Miami of ‘spying’ four years ago, and sentenced to over fifteen years imprisonment each. These men were patriots who were actually trying to prevent attacks on the Cuban government and President, and are hailed as heroes in Cuba. The Cuban government had fought an international campaign for their release, and in July 2005, a United Nations panel also questioned the impartiality of the verdict and called the sentences unduly harsh. The Appeals court accepted that the original trial was unfair because the large presence of Cuban exiles in the city had created a biased atmosphere. In Havana, National Assembly speaker Ricardo Alarcon hailed the court's ruling, saying, "This is a victory against those who promote terrorism... and jail young men who only acted to oppose terrorism in the United States."

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Cuba and Panama restore relations