Sir,

I am writing to thank you for the article entitled " Loan Waiver for the peasantry: Neither a sincere nor a comprehensive response to the crisis'' in the April 1-15, 2008 issue of People's Voice. Indeed, any alert reader of the article or student of the current economic climate in the India can conclude that the proposal is an eyewash and is possibly an electoral gimmick. It is now some months since the proposal has been made by the Finance Minister, and already the effort to get political mileage out of this has spent itself. There have been other efforts by leaders of the UPA to present themselves as friends of tribals, and of peasants, all of which have fallen flat. This is only to be contrasted with other political leaders of the opposition who are trying to portray themselves as friends of Dalits, or of OBCs at one place, then there are others who portray themselves as champions of the 'majority community' while someone else is a friend of 'minorities'.

What then should be the communist approach to these kind of activities of the parties of the ruling circles? The first and foremost thing is the recognition that the people of India cannot ever find any redemption in the existing economic and political system. The peasantry has been at the receiving end of this lethal stick, with immiseration of vast sections of the peasantry due to the policies of the Government, which is the agency for the advance of capitalism into agriculture. This trend is acute in some regions, and perhaps less so in others. At no time in the history of India has anyone seen the kind of suicides of farmers as we have in the recent past. The blight arose in Andhra, spread to Vidarbha, to Karnataka on an unparalleled scale. It is present virtually everywhere in the country. In such a scenario, to merely talk about waiver of a small class of unpaid loans is hardly a solution to anything. The Finance Minister should be ashamed of himself, trying to make political capital out of the vast suffering of millions of his countrymen. A comprehensive solution to the problems of the peasantry can only arise when the present economic and political system is replaced by one which feeds the people and places power in the hands of the working people. Communists today have to be at the forefront of the struggle for the rights of all the peoples of India, of the working people, of the peasantry, of the tribal peoples, of women, and of youth. By articulating what a modern theory of rights is and how it is to be achieved they can work towards achieving this goal. To repudiate the thesis of the bourgeoisie that through this or that measure, or scheme of theirs, there can be any salvation is an important step in this direction. The statement on loan waivers is one such, and I thank you once more for printing it in the columns of People's Voice.

Sincerely,
S. Nair, Kochi