If you are in Kolkata between 27 June and 2 July, you may do well to visit the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, Kolkata, for an exhibition of photographs of Singur. There will also be a panel discussion and a film festival.

This information comes to Kafila from Trina Banerji of the Citizens' Initiative which blogs at Development Dialogues.

Programme details:

Photo exhibition: The photographs will remain mounted for viewing everyday from 2 to 8 pm at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre, Kolkata.

Panel discussion and open forum
Friday 27 June, 4:30 pm: ‘On the Representation of Displacement and Development’

Speakers:
- Professor Samik Bandyopadhyay (Senior Film Critic and Scholar)
- Dr Kavita Panjabi (Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University)
- Dr Rajarshi Dasgupta (Fellow in Political Science, CSSSC)
- Dr Paromita Chakravarti (Senior Lecturer, Department of English, Jadavpur University)

Film festival

Saturday 28 June 2008

11.00 am: Bombay: Our City – Anand Patwardhan (India: 1985, 82 min)
2.00 pm: Mahua Memoirs – Vinod Raja (India: 2007, 80 min)
4.30 pm: Czech Dream – Vit Klusak and Felip Remunda (Czechoslovakia: 2004, 90 min)
6.00 pm: An Aura of Development – Shubhasree Bhattacharyya and Sumantra Roy (India: 2008, 65 min)
7.00 pm: Unnayan - Banduker Nole – Pramod Gupta (India: 2007, 44 min)

Sunday 29 July 2008

11.00 am: A Narmada Diary – Anand Patwardhan (India: 1996, 60 min)
2.00 pm: Still Life – Zhang ke Jia (Hong Kong: 2006, 111 min)
4.30 pm: Mahua Memoirs – Vinod Raja (India: 2007, 80 min)
6.00 pm: Teardrops of Karnaphuli – Tanvir Mokammel (Bangladesh: 2006, 60 min)

About Citizens' Initiative:

We at The Citizens’ Initiative are trying to organize a continuing open discussion on the paradigms of development and the relationship, in this context, between politics and ethics. These issues, we feel, are extremely important given the kind of state-sponsored violence that people are facing all over India and particularly in West Bengal.

The group of students, researchers, and teachers that is the CI started out in February 2007 to debate and question the cost of development and the growing schism between ethics and contemporary political culture. Questions have also begun to arise on the naive equation of the 'partisan' with the 'political', and the brushing aside of any non-partisan civil political action as not just irrelevant, but, as in some circles it is fashionable to say, 'anti-political.' The role of the civil society in a democracy is a subject of critical re-examination now, and it is the disregard for non-partisan opinion and the consequences of it that have led us to discuss and take more concrete actions.

We launched this initiative with a one-day seminar on 16 February 2008 on 'Development and Ethics', where the speakers were Dr Dilip Simeon and Dr Aseem Shrivastava. Dr Dilip Simeon taught history at Delhi University for several years and is currently a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. Dr Aseem Shrivastava has a doctorate in Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has taught Economics at various universities in the US and India, and Philosophy at Nordic College in Norway. He is an independent writer who writes on various contemporary themes like globalisation, human rights and US foreign policy. At the seminar, Dr Simeon spoke on ‘Ethics and Contemporary Political Culture’, and Dr Shrivastava’s talk was titled ‘SEZ and the Cost of Development’.

Our next event was a workshop on the legal possibilities of the common citizen’s redress of wrongs. Mr Sabir Ahamed of the RTI Mancha spoke on the Right to Information and Mr Sujato Bhadra of Association for Protection of Democratic Rights spoke on Public Interest Litigations.
We have visited Singur six times since February 2008. A full report of our findings is to be released shortly, and a brief interim report is now ready for dissemination. In the last few months, we have carried relief – in the form of clothes, rice and pulses – to Dobandi in Singur (in March 2008), and organized a medical camp there (on 18 May 2008) with the help of the Centre for Care of Torture Victims. But neither of these efforts reflects our primary objectives. Our most ardent wish is to everywhere induce long-term reflection on models – and ethics – of development, and to contribute to reconstructive thought and efforts in the areas already adversely affected by the present political take on development. We have extensively photographed life in Singur and how it has been affected by the fencing-off of the land for the Tata Motors factory. Very few people in Kolkata have any idea of what Singur looks like, and press photographs can perhaps tell only a minuscule portion of the story. Our photographs are aimed at covering this invisible distance between the affected village and the urban centre – to put it simply, to show what development looks like in reality.

However, we should stress that we have not been to Singur as unaffected photographers who are there to snatch images and leave. We wish to be able to propose/introduce alternative means of livelihood for people who have for generations been based in agriculture. Unhappily, the government’s promises that alternative training and employment shall be the norm rather than the exception among all peoples displaced from land and/or livelihood, have been resoundingly empty. In even our limited ways, we hope that we shall, in a few months, be able to organize in Singur training workshops on certain alternative means of livelihood like machine knitting, embroidery, machine embroidery, and even cultivation of mushrooms.

citizensinitiativecal@gmail.com

by PRASANTA CHAKRAVARTY

In the wake of the development debates around the nation, one witnesses an interesting array of articles—polemical as well as academic—that takes on headlong issues of political intervention by developing the terms of negotiation and deliberation in a certain direction. And that is the story of growing up—that democracy is the story of pragma, of mature understanding of the contestatory space. These are reminders that politics of good intentions is benign self-deception. Worse: it is apolitical, prophetic, self-indulgent.

Indeed, who would deny the role of tactical moves and innovations in our everyday existence? David Runciman once noted that hypocrisy is a noble tribute that vice pays to virtue. It binds together the social contract. Besides, politics is also an ever-evolving domain and newness in ground reality must be complemented with newness in conceptual innovation. It is in such a context that Partha Chatterjee’s recent piece in EPW makes sense. He has indeed clarified to a large extent the role of his foundational idea of the political society in current conditions.

But surely political moves and contestations can take different directions; innovation and gaming evolve sometimes from another significant attribute in politics: vigilance—possibly another name for demokratia—originally the power of the people. The crucial notions of institutional violence, engaging with ethical apathy and consequent watchdog associational formations play an important role in such a concept of the vigilant society. Strategic usages of subjective concerns—simple indignation at the state of affairs, for instance, can also play a distinct part in democratic negotiations. So, in the context of Chatterjee’s piece I wish to address two issues that seem to beg for a larger framework of innovation than he allows: the idea of democracy itself and the issue of affect and solidarity formation in contemporary India.

Democracy as Principled Pragmatism

If we take the term democracy seriously, both as a form of government in India as well as a political principle, one would notice Chatterjee pitches his arguments at the level of what can be called moderate mainstream liberalism, but writing stylistically as a member of the critical left. He carries his legacy of working closely with the subaltern studies initiative ingenuously. There is a sleight of hand involved here. Consider for instance, the works of Joseph Schumpeter, who famously brought back the nihilist idea of creative destruction in order to make a case for corporatism. In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, he advocates a theory of democracy in which the idea of the rule of the people is undesirable and unrealistic. The competitive structure of representative democracy precludes participation in a deeper sense. Rather, sooner the people realize the strategies of democracy and enjoin the game, the better equipped they are for their well being. Chatterjee’s political society is Schumpeter’s dream come true: the use of violence in peasant agitation has “a calculative, almost utilitarian logic” and yet cannot be framed wholly within the structures of govermentality, Chatterjee informs us. The political society works in relative electoral strengths as opposed to majoritarian equations, critiques property and privilege and yet it is desirous of living in the non-corporate structures of capital, fundamentally glad to participate within the ethos of the poverty-removal programs and rehabilitation packages that the managerial class has to offer it. The crucial question is whether this double tendency of the political society is democratic, nay, political in the first place.

Let me address the question of democracy from three angles and view Chatterjee’s diagnosis of the contemporary Indian scenario. This is important also for the historicist argument that Chatterjee offers—that the readings of the demos in India today has to be different than what was offered 25 years ago. One, considering democracy to be coterminous with the evolution of modernity in the West, beginning sometime in the seventeenth century. Two, to bring into the table a more recent and politically influential term: radical democracy, especially while evaluating the idea of the political society. And finally, and more significantly, whether one can salvage and associate an innovative classical notion of the term with what we are witnessing today, in the arguments with the discourse of development from Nandigram to Raigad.

Suppose we take democracy to be coterminous with the story of modernity, we will come across two distinct strands. One begins in the universal rights theory of medieval Europe—one that reaches Thomas Hobbes via Vitoria, Molina, Bodin, Suarez, Grotius and Pufendorf—and which use that very idea as an excuse for building empire in the two Americas to begin with. Most of these apologists of rights are royalist sympathizers and use the idea of individual enterprise, not unlikely as a creative innovation, a la Schumpter. John Locke, famously the designer of The Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas in 1669 was at the same time a co-conspirator in the Rye House Plot, which planned to assassinate Charles II and future James II around 1682-83. Parliamentarians too have routinely played this double game of political innovation.

There is a different line of liberalism though—which has obvious material concerns, believes in political franchise and structures of representative democracy, and yet hark for associations and collectives. Concerns for individual liberty, material equality and communitarian ethics have been the cornerstone for many radical republicans, agnostics and sectarians. John Lilburne, the maverick early modern Leveller talked about democratic principles and property rights in tandem with Coke’s dictum on ancient laws in England. Ideas of common law got transferred into natural, participatory laws in Leveller demands. Significantly, subjective pietistic innovation (without being necessarily messianic) was a prime basis to such associational politics—and I’ll argue still is. But more on this later. In more recent times one recalls people centered governance councils. The Habitat Conservation planning under the US Endangered Species Act emphasizes the holders to evolve governance arrangements that will satisfy human relationship bonding as well as the protection of endangered species. The Participatory Budget of Porte Allegre, Brazil, likewise enables residents siphon off finance away from patronage payoffs to secure common goods that are actual problem centered.

Is India a democracy without association? It would seem that the twin pressures of party politics on one hand and religious and caste affiliations on the other, have paid put to any meaningful democratic associationism in India. But such claims have been discredited at least since the late nineteenth century when voluntary associations worked towards community and public end, and not always pragmatically. Consider especially the associations that sprung forth around JP, taking a cue from the Sarvodaya principles in the seventies. The Navanirman Yuvak Samiti in Gujarat and Chattra Sangharsh Samitis and Janta Sarkars in Bihar in early seventies are sites that remind us of deeply democratic associations in India that worked on principles not congruent with Chatterjee’s political society. One crucial difference, of course, is in the key area of demand of popular control over collective decisions. The political society clearly will be more interested in self-aggrandizement and only secondarily and pragmatically on collective bargaining. Chatterjee’s arguments and examples are historical and contemporary though and he does assert his conclusions on the basis of field study. The groundswell of solidarity, sometimes surely and astutely strategic, in Bengal at least on both sides of the divide, in and around the Nandigram massacre since October last year eludes him, because the interpretive burden of such an analyses will destabilize the neat applecart of the political society. The vigilant society, as I refer to the groups of local organizers, bloggers, community bodies, civic networks that mobilized (and is still working on) itself cautiously and gradually operates, did always operate, via hidden and sometimes not so hidden transcripts. Regardless of the recent panchayat electoral fallout, that has not been too flattering for the strategic political society anyway, the vigilant society carries on crying hoarse over exploitation, and not merely discrimination.

One has to also mark some key points here about a schism that bothers Chatterjee in his formulation of the political society. And that schism has to do with state violence and ethical apathy—attributes that are not part of his imaginative terrain in the transformed democratic India. I am referring to the difference in political gradient between peasant mentalite and formations of the urban lower class. While Chatterjee is almost certain that non-corporate capital in the cities and middling towns are gravitating towards civil society in matters economic, he is less certain about peasants in rural India, what with the spiraling suicide rates and their skepticism about market mechanisms in general.

The idea of civility is also crucial. Partha Chatterjee’s civil society is already sold to acquisitive and possessive incentives and hence is out of bounds for political intervention. This is narrowing down the democratic possibilities from the other end of the spectrum. If one buys to a modern urbane Hegelian notion of the civil society, or to the notion of the patrician or to a purely utilitarian variety of it, Chatterjee’s formulation does make sense. But there is an older definition of the civic that is participatory and other regarding, relying on the principle of vita activa civilis. It relies on messiness and discord in building up political decisions around issues.

This leads us to a more classical notion of democracy, something that has always conceptually eluded Chatterjee. I am thinking of Leo Strauss, Eric Havelock or Josiah Ober’s works on ancient liberalism. I also recall John Pocock on Florentine political ideals, especially the associations around the minor guilds and the subsequent Ciompi (wool carders) revolt n 1378 when republicanism truly took a radical shape. The civic overlapped with the ludic, as it were. A brooding sense of politics, which unites the demos with chaos and cosmos is one reigning concern in such a political imagination. It provides political actors with a sense of humility. Political change is highlighted time and again in conceiving sovereignty. The stakes lie with the polis, not with the purse. Trust is an important notion: not sentimental balderdash but a certain judicious judgment, a state of constant public hope, shall we say, prevail among citoyens. Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy is a good example that highlights such optimism. This sense of buoyancy, paradoxically aligned to forces beyond the immediate, is alien to Chatterjee’s middlebrow political society.

I am not for a moment suggesting a telos around virtue or implying that Bengal has suddenly transformed into such a world. That would be absurd and culturally meaningless. It is the structural reverberations that I refer to rather. What is unmistakable after Nandigram is that there is a momentous realization in certain key sections of the much-vilified middle class that there is more to politics than the usual metaphors of merit or equality. The story from denationalization to the emergence of civil society has not been uniform in India. An altered notion of the civic is in the air for sure. Part of the civil society, I’d argue, is getting radically vigilant; not romantically but at the level of political programmes too. Undoubtedly, such a swing in mood has to do with strategies and maneuverings within existing possibilities, but the intentions and incentives are not always managerial.

Affect and Solidarity

The first end note to the piece narrates an interesting story of the razing of entire village of Gobindapur in 1758 by the British in order to erect Fort William in Calcutta and the surrounding ground called the Maidan, now often revered by radical environmentalist as a gift of Gaia or mother earth to the city. Chatterjee relativizes the issue of violence by harking on to the notion of forgetting: “Forgetfulness is a necessary attribute not only of modernizers but also of its critics,” he ruminates.

It’s a valid point. The division is stark though. There exist a lot of intermediate positions between a deep ecologist and an instrumental rationalist. Some stand outside of that spectrum. Most classically oriented modernizers hardly envisage peppering the city with foliage, nor with doing away with the quotidian humdrum that a city provides. Thus, in poet and litterateur Buddhadeb Bose’s writings we find an intense imagination of the urban soundscape: factory siren taking off, an odd generator whizzing, drone of a steamer plying over Ganga and so forth. Or take Mihir Sengupta, whose literary oeuvre has a direct bearing upon the politics of the subcontinent. He has imagined the experience of a pre-partition Barisal district by evoking the metaphor of a backyard canal— pichharar khaal—in his work Bishadbrikkho. This tour de force is no celebration of unsullied, pristine nature and yet gives us wider ontological connection to our surrounding. Relationships are formed and nurtured within diverse elements, the canal facilitating the ups and downs in the narrative. Forgetfulness is as much a human attribute as memory and belonging, Sengupta reminds us. It is a layered appreciation.

To appreciate this relational structure between diversity is essential if we are to understand the idea of land or property acquisition by some entity that is outside of such structures. I would tend to think that land grabbing has a strong ethical component associated with it, something that primitive accumulation approach does not address fully, in two related senses—one philosophical and the other sociological. Primitive accumulation in its pristine sense is the means of divorcing the producer from the means of production, right? The robbery of the common lands and usurpation of clan property into modern private property under circumstances of reckless terrorism is directly connected to enclosure movement in early modern Europe, a variation of what we are seeing in changed global circumstances today in India. I would think primitive accumulation itself is constitutive of an ethical move: from an ethics of community to that of austere self-discipline. Hindu rate of growth and local ties and affinities must give way to a Weberian ethics of possessive individualism. It surely is impersonal and yet the ethical shift is not lost upon us. Certainly, the welfare entitlements to labour law provisions to provisions for community review of land use decisions that the state now shuns has a collective dimension embedded to it, and hence a particular ethos of living associated to it. This is changing in the era of primitive globalisation and subnational mercantilism, if I may borrow a term from sociology, to denote what has been happening in India of late. There is no sense of concomitant international economic integration. Such state fragmentation inevitably fails to suggest sustainable forms of social action and hence thwart innovative modes of governance. But there is an ethical loss in this shift too, in the sense that severs cross-class, cross-race, cross regional and intergenerational social exchanges that stand in the way of short-term economic activity.

Affect is an elusive entity in Chatterjee. He begins by writing off Gandhi, Gramsci, Mao and Ranajit Guha and effectively doing away with solidarity based on moral economy owing to the deepening reach of the developmental state under conditions of electoral democracy. The state has now solved this existential crisis of rural life and hence romanticism for a pre-capitalist society is useless. But on the other hand, we learn from him towards the end that the political society is not all anaemic and lifeless, even as it functions within the terrain of govermentality. He turns cautious lest his political society looks utterly indifferent and mechanical. Hence, while discussing the rural peasant axis of his political community, he expects from time to time some emotive responses and militant action from them. Emotion is almost a safety valve that legitimizes political society and its negotiations with the state. This fails to take seriously a deluge of events and concomitant critical literature that has burgeoned in the last two decades dealing with the notion of the political in a deeply subjective fashion. The dialectic of enlightenment goes both ways.

Indeed, mutuality of relations based on justice and fairness does not always address relationality in its fullness. Those who function within the moral economy framework may not have delved deep enough in excavating relational entities. Charles Taylor cautions us in The Secular Age that a relational political condition cannot be understood in terms of mere human flourishing but must be located in the interspace between subjectivities. If we are to make sense at all of political passion, one has to give in to a deeply ringing world where relationships happen independently of us. Objects and agents impose themselves upon the members of the vigilant society, bringing them into their field of force. And such agnosticism does function within the material register, within the everyday.

However, there is something to be learnt from Chatterjee in this context. His piece can be effective as a timely reminder that sheer anti-privilege, anti-prerogative prophetic pamphleteering fails to get the broad middle rally along with the margin against the developmental schemes. We cannot afford to go back to varieties Fabianism or cultural conservatism. Nor is it always useful in the long run to form alliances of convenience as is the trend is some places in Bengal today. The deluge of broadsheets and blogs that deal with the subjectivity issue marking it as a bulwark against the economism that marks the liberal state is astonishing, and yet people are not sufficiently enamoured by such purity, such righteousness. In fact, there is a thin line between existential left and emotive right.

In his memoir Rajani Kothari talked about democracy as a powerful myth, the belief in which cannot be questioned. Neither the Liberal nor the Marxist nor even the Gandhian or the still deeper spiritual ideological conceptions provides us with a workable entry point in the emancipator logic of democracy, was his conclusion. Effective dictatorships require great leaders; effective democracies needed great citizens, Kothari said, and such citizens need to dwell deep into their own psychic, cultural and existential areans of striving in order to conceive a throbbing polity. Such grandeur of imagination has been rarely matched in the political imagination of the subcontinent. A political philosophy of principled pragmatism can only aspire to look soulfully at such classicality.

]]> http://palashscape.wordpress.com/?p=145 Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:45:53 +0000 palashbiswaskl http://palashscape.wordpress.com/?p=145 Greatest Atom Bomb happens to be the Himalayas and it is Switched On. Any Slightest Ignition Would Spell Doom`s Day

Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams: Chapter 11

Palash Biswas

Every one in the Himalayas happens to be a Sleeping Dynamite! It may explode anytime, any where! The State power doesn`t have any clue of it and has no solution except Military. Since Himalayas have to be ruled to exploit its manpower and natural resources, the State power has no language to deal with it except the language of continuous repression and persecution! It is happening in Darjeeling once again. Bengali Communalism is reincarnated to bail out the Marxist Gestapo ruling Hegemony from its self employed , suicidal Ways of Capitalist Development resulting in Nandigram and Singur Insurrections and afterwards duster in Panchayat elections threatening its very existence!

Ashok Bahattachary, the Urban development Minister of West Bengal government was looking on Darjeeling and Hill affairs for the Chief minister Brand Buddha Brand Yuddha! Ashok Babu first called all the tourists not to visit Darjeeling. Now, he ahs branded the leader of Gurkha Janamukti Morcha, spearheading the latest version of the movement as anti social!

Who created this Bimal Gurung?

We all know who created Jarnail Singh Bhinderwala. We all Indian had felt well the heat of Khalistan Movement. While the extreme general violence that marked the Gorkhaland movement is now a memory, political violence continues to dog and destabilise these hills.

We witness that. And, forgive me we have to witness this thanks to Ashok Bhattacharya and Buddhadev Bhattachary along with Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi, Somnath Chatterjee, Sunil Gangopaddhyaand Pranab mukherjee. All of these gentlemen belong to elite Bengali Brahmin castes!

I shared the Himalayan experience as I am destined with my community. I am born and brought up in Uttarakhand and I spent my young life in Nainital during intense Chipko Movement. I was also destined to witness the Changes across the Himalayas all over from Kashmir to Nepal, Sikkim to Tibet, Gorkhaland to Nagaland and Bhutan. Himalayas has been victimised all the time and the Himalayan people happen to be the ultimate displaced and disturbed, indigenous Community as a whole where every road happens to be vertical as the rivers are. They flow to the Plains as the Manpower and the Women! I feel the hearts and mind all the time.

In 2002, in the month of September, I visited Darjeeling and Sikkim amidst heavy rain. I had to witness a Bharat Bandh and was stranded in Siliguri before landing in Darjeeling. At that time I tried my best to contact Subas Ghising. But he was not reachable. I visited the Darjeeling Press club where my journalist friends told me all about the Power caucus of Ghising! He was losing the grip since then. The Marxists could not realise the facts of the open secret. Marxists continued the Deal with Ghising and went in accordance with Ghising directives at the cost of the Entire Gurkha population!

Gorkaland is the name given to the area around Darjeeling and the Duars in north West Bengal in India. Residents of the area, mostly Gorkhas have long demanded a separate state for themselves to preserve their Nepali identity and to improve their socio-economic conditions.

It is raining heavily in West Bengal. The State Machinery is busy with ensuring civic facilities to the stranded Metro Privileged people. The crisis is dealt with urgency. This essence of Urgency or priority has been quite absent all these years since the first of Gorkhaland agitation, full two decades. It is as similar as the continuous influx of refugees from the other part of Bengal in West Bengal and all the North east states. Rather the Brahmins of Bengal en-cashed the tragedies of millions of indigenous people uprooted in the power game and bargaining in the best interest of the South Asian ruling class. The Government of India never tried to chalk out a Refugee Policy as far as the East Bengal Refugees are concerned. The Bengali Marxists got the political mileage with a strong Refugee vote Bank. Demographic Balance for the Brahmin dominance was the topmost priorities to hold on state Power for the Brahmins. thus, it became mandatory to export SC refugees out of Bengal to deny Dalit Muslim combination in future. But the refugee influx continued as it proofed a tasty meat for the ruling parties ruling different states. East Bengal refugees proved to be pet and mobile Vote Bank. When they tried to get back in Bengal with Marichjhanpi movement initially initiated by Comrade Jyotiu Basu to constitute a favourable vote bank, Marxists were already at home in the Writers Building. It took no time to massacre the refugees.

Thus, with continuous insurgency problems in Kashmir and North east, Nationality uprisings everywhere, neither the Government of India nor the Sate Governments ever tried to make a Himalayan Policy.

Instead, they chose the Himalayas for continuous Rape. All the concerned Sate Powers of Asia including China and India are habitual to be engaged in this gang rape.

Hence, all political parties ally to crush any movement in Himalayas.

Left Congress combine as well as the Centre and the West Bengal government are speaking in the same language. The language is quite trendy to tame the slaves.The issue of Gorkhaland has come back with a bang this time amidst much protest from Nepalis and Non-Nepalis alike. The Gorkhaland issue was not just a fight for a separate state but it was a battle of identity for the Gorkhas of Darjeeling. The people in the hills of West Bengal have been very touché about the separate identity that they have been craving for, since the early 1900's.It of course did not help that some leaders both regional as well as national in the shadow of ignorance, one would like to believe have called the Gorkhas "illegal immigrants".

If some indigenous nationality or community chose to break the sickles of this infinite slavery the result happens to be the same as it turned out to be in Nepal and Sikkim!

Once the master of the Hills and harbinger of the Gorkhaland movement in the late eighties, Gorkha National Liberation Front chief and former administrator of Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council Subash Ghising is now a lonely man.

Even as the demand for a separate state has been revived, throwing the Hills into a turmoil all over again, the man who started it all remains cut-off from the agitation.

The Gorkhaland Movement which started in the mid 80s had a major impact on the whole social structure of Darjeeling.During this movement which lasted for a few years,Darjeeling saw the finest of schools closing down for months in a row because of strikes ,night life ceased to exist and almost all public activities came to a sudden halt.This also had an impact on the music scenario in Darjeeling and the musicians had to go through the darkest period in the history of Darjeeling.Thus started the downfall of music and the social structure of Darjeeling.

Confined within the four walls of his palatial house on Gandhi Road, a stone's throw from Lal Kothi, the Gorkha leader is now a recluse and doesn't meet people other than a handful of die-hard followers who haven't deserted him.

For the rest of the Hill folks, Ghising is a traitor who bartered their cause and allowed himself to be a puppet in the hands of the state government.

The giant gate leading to the bungalow is manned by a few people who glance at passers-by with suspicion. There's no one else to be seen - a stark contrast from the late eighties and nineties when hundreds would queue up to meet the leader. They included leaders, ministers, party workers and the common people. With DGHC losing its credibility among its own people, Ghising's fall from grace was quick. The Gorkhaland movement died out and the people around him soon disappeared.

The West Bengal government and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) have agreed on tripartite talks involving the Centre on the contentious issue of a separate state of Gorkhaland.
But the GJM has ruled out withdrawing the indefinite strike that it began in Darjeeling on Monday.It says such a decision would depend on the outcome of the tripartite talks.

"We will not call off the bandh. We are for a tripartite meeting and the question of withdrawing the bandh will depend on the course of discussions in a tripartite meeting," GJM President Bimal Gurung was quoted as saying by PTI in Darjeeling on Tuesday.He said West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had earlier set precondition for talks with GJM saying discussion could be held keeping aside the separate statehood demand but now he said the government did not have any precondition for talks.

Officials of the Sikkim government have decided to refrain from commenting on the Gorkhaland issue. The Gorkha Jana Mukti Morcha had appealed to the Sikkim government on Sunday from its meeting at Tribeni in Kalimpong sub-division to press the Centre for the creation of Gorkhaland. Mr BB Gooroong, adviser to the Sikkim chief minister said: “It would be too early to comment anything in this contest,” is all what he offered.
Mr Goorong said: “We want to see Darjeeling prosper and are ready to help. We want the Gorkhas to have their own identity and we morally support them.”
The Sikkim government has pleaded the Centre and the West Bengal government to ensure that the National Highway connecting the hill state with the rest of the country remains open and is not blocked due to the turmoil in the Darjeeling hills.
The state chief secretary Mr ND Chingapa has also sent letters to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and appealed to the Union cabinet secretary, West Bengal chief secretary and home secretary to ensure that the NH-31A, which is the lifeline to Sikkim, is kept open for the supply of essential commodities and services to the state.
“If the bandh in the Darjeeling hills continues, the situation in the state would be unmanageable," Mr Chingapa said. “As part of the emergency measures to meet any eventuality that may occur during the indefinite bandh convened by the GJMM in the Darjeeling hills, the state food and civil supplies department has been asked to ration petrol and LPG and stock up essential foodgrains,” he added.

Earlier, in March this year, the Sikkim Legislative Assembly had adopted a resolution demanding compensation from the West Bengal government and the Centre for the frequent snag of NH-31A.

The Darjeeling town wore a deserted look today following the indefinite bandh convened by the GJMM. Hundreds of Gorkha Jana Mukti Morcha activists took out a rally along the Mall shouting slogans in support of Gorkhaland.
A rally participant, Mrs Anjana Sharma today said that despite the shutdown the party activists would continue to stage rallies everyday to keep the spirit of the movement alive. "Staying quiet would send wrong signals to the state government and the Centre. Our commitment to the cause is fixed,” she said.
The crowd dispersed leaving the town desolate. The people chose to stay indoors as it rained incessantly throughout the day. The bandh, however, passed off peacefully without any untoward incident reported from anywhere in the town

The demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland sharply divided parties on regional lines on Tuesday, with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee reiterating there will be no Gorkhaland at an all-party meeting in Kolkata, while Gorkha Janamukti Morcha chief Bimal Gurung — at another ‘all-party’ meet in the Hills — flaunted the Hill representatives of 13 parties, who not only attended the meet but also endorsed Gurung’s demand.
Bhattacharjee said a political dialogue was the only way out, hinting that a tripartite meeting between the state, Centre and the GJM could be arranged to talk things over. Of the 16 parties invited to the meeting, 12 sent their representatives to the Writers’ Buildings. Those who kept away were the Trinamool Congress, the SUCI, the GNLF and Naren Hansda’s faction of the Jharkhand Party.

The unanimous resolution passed in this meeting read: “More efforts should be made to enhance the standard of living of the people of Darjeeling as well as to improve the economic and social conditions of the people there. Without changing the geographical contours of West Bengal, the issue of expanding the administrative and financial powers of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council can be considered with sympathy.”

Meanwhile, Gurung’s meeting decided the GJM would ask the Centre to create a separate Gorkhaland, comprising areas of Darjeeling and those contiguous to the Dooars.

Hill representatives of the Congress, Trinamool Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and even the CPI have ratified this demand, the GJM claimed. However, except for the state leadership of the BJP, no other party highcommand was too happy about these men.

Trinamool Congress general secretary Partha Chatterjee said, “Party member Gopal Singh Chhetri, who attended Gurung’s meeting, was not authorised to do so by the Kolkata headquarters.”

Meanwhile CPI’s Mohan Singh Rai — the party leader in Darjeeling and a former MLA from Kalimpong— is staring at an angry leadership because he had not taken permission to attend Gurung’s meeting. The party’s state secretary Manju Majumder said, “He has violated the party’s decision and we shall take action against him.”

Congress’ Dasmunsi said, “The politician who attended the Hill meeting, saying he belonged to the Congress, is not even an office-bearer.”

However, BJP’s Rahul Sinha said, “Our representative was sent to attend the meeting, though what he said was entirely his personal opinion.” The BJP favours smaller states, he said.

A copy of the GJM’s resolution has been faxed to the President, the Prime Minister, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, and all important central leader— ¿ both in government and in the Opposition. Chief Minister Bhattacharjee has also got one, GJM’s publicity chief Benoy Tamang said.

Assam, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand, all these states suffered most for the Bengali ruling Hegemony. Even the Dalits and Muslims, the tribals and backwards turned to be the slaves of Brahmins in bengal. East Bengal based dalits were driven out of Bengali History and geopolitics without any resistance.

Thus, the ruling Marxists in West Bengal underestimated the Militant Gorkhas and never expected any change in the Hills. Famine in sick tea gardens was denied. Unemployment never addressed. No serious attempt was made to develop the Hills. For Bengalies all the Himalayas regions including Darjiling happened to be tourist spots or hillsatation with spellbound landscape. They are totally detached with the Humanscape. The story is not different in other parts of Asia, including the Maoist Dragon, China.

Gorkhaland Agitation followed by end of Monarchy in Nepal and a violent uprising in Tibet exposes the Himalayan psyche. You can not kill it. you have to deal with it. But the ruling hegemonies are never habitual to behave.

Gorkhaland is the latest battlefield in this divided bleeding subcontinet where nationalities along with indigenous and underclass people are enslaved for time infinite. Whenever any attempt is made to break the oldest sackles, Ethnic Cleansing and Genocides happen to be only answer from the ruling Hegemony. It happened in Tibet. It occured in east pakistan, now Bangladesh. It continues to happen all over the Himalayas by different State Powers. Sometimes it is Military Islamic Rule. Sometimes it is some great spirit, say ideology as Maoism and Marxism. Sometimes it is Manusmriti and Castebased Hindutva. Sometimes it is colonisation and Imperialism. Sometimes Monarchy and Religion. Sometimes Globalisation, Privatisation and Liberalisation. Sometimes it is War and Civil War. Now it is pure marxism playing Havoc in the Himalayas!

The story is always same. The result is always same.

The West Bengal government on Tuesday hinted it was not averse to discussing the Gorkhaland issue with the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha, saying more power for the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council may be considered, even though an all-party meeting convened .

The crucial Left-UPA meeting on Wednesday evening to discuss the India-US nuclear deal has been postponed by a week till June 25 but the Communist parties are not changing their opposition to the agreement.The official reason for the postponement was that External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee was busy with the delegation of visiting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but sources tell CNN-IBN the Government is buying time to arrive at a consensus with the Left parties.

The four-party Left Front has refused to allow the Government to finalise the India-specific safeguard agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as it believes that the move would put the nuclear agreement with Washington in “auto pilot mode”.

Mukherjee, who heads the 15-member UPA-Left committee, tried hard to convince CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat about the nuclear deal when they met on Monday night and Tuesday night but to no avail.

Sources told CNN-IBN that the Government had again conveyed that it wanted to go ahead with the talks with IAEA but the Left Front wasn’t convinced.

Meanwhile,the deadlock between the Rajasthan government and the Gurjars has finally ended with the community getting a special category reservation of five per cent from within the existing Other Backward Castes (OBC) quota.The government also announced five per cent quota for Rebaris and Banjaras.The stalemate ended at the end of the fifth round of talks between Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and Gurjar leader Colonel (retd) Kirori Singh Bainsla in Jaipur on Wednesday.Raje expressed satisfaction that the talks have been fruitful and that will put and an end to the agitation that has been on for about a month now.

Raje made the announcement in the presence of Col Bainsla and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ram Das Agarwal who had led the government side in the talks with the Gurjars.

The Himalayas is not a Geographical or Geological entity only. It is live. Absolute statepower never understands this. Thus, whenever the Statepower addresses the Hiamalayas is is always a military solution. Thus, we have to bear with AFPSA for full Six decades.

Latest play of Gorkhaland Politics is a classic example how the Ruling Hegemony treats the nationalities, indigenous people, dalits, tribals, backward classes and minorities. There is a rule of silent terror and intimidation in West Bengal under the Brahminical  Marxist Rule for long thirtyone years! Bengal is one of the first states in india which came in contact with the British and imbibed their Imperialist Culture.It is an classic example of feudal communal imperialist system under Caste Hindu hegemony.

They divided India to establish Caste Hindu Brahminical Hegemony . Bengali ruling Class was most instrumental in Partition as they had no hope for governance in United bengal ruled by muslim and dalit majority. Hindu Mahasabha played the key role igniting Communalism and Muslim League politics of two nationalities.

It is well exposed that the West Bengal based Indian Marxist movement banks heavily on West Bengal brand Brahminical bengali Communalism. Thus, they rule. This continuous Communal Mobilisation and Vote Bank Equations with havoc Demographic Readjustment has been halted by Nandigram Singur Indigenous Peasant Uprising. Encashing on peasant movements from preindependence era particularly Tebhaga and Food Movements the Marxists in West Bengal captured Writers Buildings. They enabled Land Reforms and it followed with Rural development. With introduction of Panchayati System, Marxist Gestapo esclated its roots on Grass root level. But Insurrection in Nandigram and Singur undermined the timetested Votebank and demographic equations as Muslims as well as Dalits crossed fences to oppose the marxists. Marxists were able to hold on the most of the district boards, but the results in Gram Panchayats and Gramsabha turned to be alarming as the Left front lost half of the Gram sabha seats. Once again the East Bengal based militant Dalits, the Namoshudras and Paundras in North and South 24 Pargans, Nadia, Howrah and East Midnapur  took the initiative to change the power equation allying with Muslims.
It is quite reminscent with Interim Governments while Fazlul haq, Nazibullah and Suharawardi held the helms of power!

Marxists always used its best tool of Bengali Brahminical Communalis against other castes, groups and communities to ensure nonchallangeable dominance of Hundred or Two hundred ruling Brahmin families in every sphere of life. With introduction of Gorkhaland movement, it was successful to strike a deal with Subas Ghising, then the greatest Gorkha Icon. darjiling Gorkha Autonomous Hill Council was established and the power was transfered to GNLF supremo, Ghisning. he ruled the Hills with lietinents like Bimal Gurung, Subba and others. it was perfect deal to share power without addressing the Gorkha Nationalities and the genuine problems of Hills. The ploy was on despite continuous strategic and security warnings of the Centre. 

No one looks on the Himalays beyond Religious salvation, Expedition, Tourism, Sex, Military recruitment, domestic help and security and the exploitation of resources.

Ruling Class of India is never concerned with the so called Myth of National Integrity, Unity, sovereignity, Democracy , Human rights, Environment, the Himalayas itself with its strategic importance and the Himalayan people beyond its vested intest. Thus the Brahminical media highlights only on revenue losses, not on the plight of Himalayan People.

Turning down Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee's request to hold talks with West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Gorkha Janamukti Morcha on Saturday reiterated it was open to a tripartite dialogue involving the Centre only if the central issue was Gorkhaland.

GJM secretary Roshan Giri said, "We haven't received any formal communication from the external affairs minister. But we have made our point clear. We are interested in a tripartite meeting and nothing else. We will go to Delhi for talks on a one-point agenda - Gorkhaland. We will go to Delhi to meet Central government leaders and tell them our grievances."

Earlier in the day Mukherjee gave a shocker to GJM leaders when he rejected the demand for Gorkhaland. "There is no question of creating a separate state of Gorkhaland. The Centre doesn't want further disintegration of the state." But, he said, the UPA government was open to talks with agitators without any pre-condition.

Later in the day, Union minister and West Bengal Congress chief Priya Ranjan Das Munshi spoke in a similar vein. "We are against division of our state. GJM chief Bimal Gurung may have some genuine issues that he wants to sort out within the ambit of the constitution.

We can always have a discussion on such issues like giving more economic power to the Hill authorities."

With the GJM not invited for talks, and main opposition party Trinamool Congress staying away from the Tuesday's all-party meeting, Buddhadeb isn't likely to make much headway in breaking the impasse in the Hills despite main parties like Congress and BJP too rejecting the demand for a separate state.

The Gorkha protests have hit tourism in Sikkim and North Bengal badly and haven't spared the tea industry too. The political uncertainty in the region has affected the best season for Darjeeling tea, which is another blow to the industry already struggling with problems like labour unrest and rising input costs.

It is said that Darjeeling tea is to India what Champagne is to France. It's also West Bengal's big revenue earner.

This is the time for second-flush tea which fetches anywhere between Rs.800 to Rs.8,000 per kilogram in the West. But in the last six days alone the industry has incurred losses of over Rupees three crores.

''This is the real time when the gardens make profits that will help them carry on their operations for the rest of the year. If they miss out on the high realization for this time of the year, Darjeeling gardens at the end of the year will end up making losses,'' says Aditya Khaitan, Chairman of Tea Association of India.

Its bad news for a tea industry grappling with increasing costs of production and labour unrest. This political instability now threatens to cripple it. (shots of tea gardens)

It is not just the big players. There are several small tea growers also who are affected. Tea can't reach Kolkata until the bandh continues.

''Exports have been hampered in a big way, and over all the image of Indian tea in the sense of giving commitments also has suffered a set back, '' says Roshni Sen, Deputy Chairman,Tea Board of India.

The effects of a strike in India's Darjeeling hills over demands for autonomy have spread to the mountain state of Sikkim, scaring away tourists and causing huge losses to hoteliers, officials said on Wednesday.

Thousands of tourists flock to Sikkim every year, also known as the "Land of Mystic Splendour", nestled below Mount Khangchendzonga, the third highest mountain in the world.

The state is popular for the grandeur of the mountain peaks, its lush green valleys, cascading waterfalls and fast-flowing rivers.

The strike has been called by ethnic Nepalis or Gorkhas living in the Darjeeling hills to demand a separate "Gorkhaland" state be carved out of the eastern state of West Bengal.

Strike supporters have forced tourists out of Darjeeling, a Himalayan resort town, shut down hotels and also blocked a key national highway that connects the state of Sikkim to the north with the rest of the country.

The northeastern state, nestled high in the Himalayas, between Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal, depends on one connecting road from the plains below for supplies. Government officials said tourists were not able to reach the state.

"Sikkim is losing at least 100 million rupees ($2.3 million) every day from the agitation in Darjeeling," Jasbir Singh, a senior government official, said.

"The strike has crushed us," said Raj Kumar Chettri, manager of Denzong Inn, a hotel in Gangtok, Sikkim's capital.

The strike has badly hit the tea industry in the Darjeeling hills, the mainstay of the local economy, and a tea industry official warned exports of premium Darjeeling tea could fall 20-25 percent this year.

On Wednesday, India's defence officials said their soldiers deployed in Sikkim were not getting supplies from the plains. Hundreds of Indian soldiers guard Nathu La, a Himalayan border pass with China, at 14,200 feet (4,328 metres).

"The strike has cut off supplies of fuel, rations and other items to the forward locations guarded by our soldiers," Ramesh Kumar Das, a defence spokesman said from Kolkata, eastern India's biggest city.

Meanwhile, the West Bengal government on Tuesday suggested it was not averse to a tripartite meeting with Gorkha Janamukti Morcha, which is spearheading an agitation for a separate Gorkhaland, and the Centre on the Darjeeling issue and made an unconditional offer of talks with the Gorkha group.

Asked if the government would be ready to discuss a separate Gorkhaland state as demanded by GJM, the Chief Minister told reporters here after an all-party meeting that "in my earlier letter to GJM for talks, we did not set any condition. We still do not have any pre-condition."

Bhattacharjee said he would inform the Centre about the outcome of Tuesday's meeting and ask the political parties which attended the meeting to make efforts in initiating dialogues with the GJM for a solution.

In reply to a question, Bhattacharjee said that he did not have any objection to a bipartite or triparite meeting with the GJM.

"We want a solution to the problem, be it through a bipartite or tripartite meeting. But this requires preparation of the ground. For this, there is a greater need to exchange views with the Centre as also with the agitators," the Chief Minister said.

Appealing to GJM to call off its indefinite bandh in Darjeeling Hills, he said "we will have to stand together and convince the leaders of GJM that bandhs will not solve any problem. What we need is a political dialogue."

He said the meeting, attended by the Congrees, BJP and Left Front partners, unanimously resolved to find a political solution to the impasse through dialogue "with patience and tolerance."

The depression over Gangetic West Bengal and adjoining Bangladesh that moved west-north-westwards and lay centred at 1730 hrs on the 17th June 2008 over Gangetic West Bengal close to Burdwan about 100 kms northwest of Kolkata. It further moved north-westwards and now lies centered at 0830 hrs Ist of today, the 18th June 2008 over Jharkhand, about 50 kms southwest of Dumka. System is likely to move in a north-westerly direction and weaken gradually. The off-shore trough at sea level from Maharashtra coast to Kerala coast persists. The trough at sea level passes through Anupgarh, Alwar, Fatehpur, Daltonganj, centre of Depression and thence south-eastwards to east central Bay of Bengal. The cyclonic circulation extending upto 2.1 kms a.s.l. over east Uttar Pradesh and neighbourhood persists.

The western disturbance as an upper air system extending upto 4.5 kms a.s.l. lies over north Pakistan and adjoining Jammu and Kashmir. The cyclonic circulation extending up to 2.1 kms a.s.l. over central Pakistan and adjoining northwest Rajasthan now lies over Punjab and neighbourhood. Above two systems are likely to move east-northeastwards. A cyclonic circulation extending up to 2.1 kms a.s.l. lies over Haryana and neighbourhood.

In the regions where the southwest Monsoon is yet to set in, the day temperatures were appreciably to markedly below normal in some parts of Rjasthan.

Total India: Total rainfall during the past 24 hours at 169 available stations in the plains, out of 291 stations, is 171 cms. Normal for the above 169 stations is 100 cms.

THE WEST Bengal government called in the army on Wednesday in West and East Midnapore district to assist in rescue and relief operations as floods swept the two districts killing five persons and affecting six lakh people. Three people are missing. Among the missing are Trinamool Congress general secretary and two of his friends.

Mind you, every year Rural West bengal faces this floods. But the Writers Building is never engaged in any longtime planning. Urbanisation and industrialisation with MNCS and Builders have blocked the sponataneous flow of Water bodies everywhere. The result is disastrous. Mangrove forsts once upon a time covered the south suburbs of metro Kolkata. It exists no more. savge deforestation is justified as an excuse for development everytime. The government works on war level to dry up Kolkata. But it never cares for even Howrah across the river Hugli. Festivals are never postponed for any rural tragedy.

It is the sustaing attitude towards indigenous people and the nationalities all over India!

It is the sustaing attitude towards indigenous people and the nationalities all over India!

So far 16 lakh people have been affected by floods in Bengal, the state's finance minister Asim Dasgupta said. He said the flood situation was causing anxiety. Hooghly is another district affected by the floods following incessant downpour since yesterday.

In one of the worst floods since 1978, the state called in the 3 Madras Regiment and Engineers and 200 troops helped in rescue operations in West Midnapore. Soon after, the army was asked to help out in contiguous East Midnapore.  Eight hundred houses have been damaged so far.

The embankment of the swirling Kelaghai river in Midnapore burst.  Eight wards in Midnapore town were flooded as were large parts of Jhargram. The railway town of Kharagpur has also been badly affected. Relief and rescue operations are on in Sabang, Narayangarh and Pungla and other areas of the two districts.

The finance minister said priority is being accorded to rescue and relief operations and evacuating people to safer places. The government is arranging for dry food to be distributed among the affected people amidst allegations that relief is not reaching the affected people.

A number of trains of the South-Eastern Railway have been cancelled since yesterday after there was a cave in under the railway tracks in Panskura in Midnapore. Floods have affected large areas in Howrah district. The West Bengal minister of state for cooperatives, Rabindranath Ghosh has threatened to launch a road blockade if the state government did not take immediate steps to alleviate the miseries of the flood affected people.

That the situation in the two Midnapore districts was turning grim was evident since late yesterday evening, when three people, including the former confidential assistant of the Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee and two others were swept away in the flash floods in the Keleghai river.  Gautam Bose, who is also a Trinamool Congress general secretary, along with six others  tried to cross the swollen river in an SUV at about 7.30 pm. The group was on its way back to Kolkata from Balasore in Orissa and was trying to cross near Poktapole.

According to officials of the district the river was flowing four feet above the danger level when the car tried to cross over. The car sank in the flood waters. The Trinamool Congress office-bearer and the others came out of the car. A police team which was hailed for help rescued four, including the driver with ropes but Bose and two others were swept away. The police and divers from the Haldia Port Trust are trying to trace the bodies Trinamool Congress leader and his friends.

The southwest Monsoon has been vigorous in Gangetic West Bengal, Jharkhand and east Uttar Pradesh and active in Orissa, west Uttar Pradesh and east Madhya Pradesh. It has been subdued in Punjab, west Rajasthan, Gujarat state, Marathwada, Vidarbha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and interior Karnatak.

Realised rainfall and chief amounts (in cms) during past 24 hrs at:

East: most places: Assam and Meghalaya++,Nagaland-Manipur-Mizoram-Tripura, West Bengal and Sikkim+, Orissa+, Jharkhand#, Bihar+, many places: Arunachal Pradesh+. Balasore 9.7, Gaya 8.6, Gangtok 8.5, Digha 7.4, Kolkata(ALP) 6.2, Dibrugarh 5.1, Sambalpur 4.1, Jharsuguda 3.2, Patna 2.7, Chandbali 2.6, Jamshedpur 33.8, Cherrapunji 18.1, Ranchi 13.6, Passighat 12.1, Shillong, Cooch Behar 2.1 each, North Lakhimpur 2.0, Bankura, Malda 1.9 each, Daltonganj 1.8, Jalpaiguri 1.7, Cuttack 1.5, Tezpur, Sriniketan 1.4 each, Bhagalpur 1.1, Imphal 0.9, Kohima 0.8.

North: most places: east Uttar Pradesh, west Uttar Pradesh+, Himachal Pradesh+, a few places: Jammu and Kashmir, east Rajasthan, isolated places: Uttarakhand, Haryana, mainly dry: Punjab, west Rajasthan.

Shimla 9.1, Jhansi 8.1, Bahraich 6.4, Hardoi 6.3, Banda 5.6, Mathura 4.0, Sundernagar 3.7, Gorakhapur 3.6, Lucknow, Jaipur 3.2 each, Shajahanpur 3.1, Una 2.8, Agra 1.9, Sawai Madhopur 1.5, Bareilly 1.4, Sikar 1.0, New Delhi (PLM) 0.7, Quazi Gund, Jammu city 0.5 each, Dehra Dun 0.3, Srinagar, Banihal 0.2 each.

Central: many places: east Madhya Pradesh+, Chattisgarh, a few places: west Madhya Pradesh, mainly dry: Vidarbha. Tikamgarh 10.6, Nowgong 4.8, Khajuraho 3.9, Ambikapur 3.7, Pendra 2.7, Gwalior 2.5, Guna 1.8, Sheopur, Champa 1.5 each.

Peninsula: most places: coastal Karnataka, Kerala, isolated places: Konkan and Goa, Madhya Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu*, interior Karnataka*, mainly dry: Gujarat state, Marathwada, Andhra Pradesh. Cannur 2.8, Mangalore 2.2, Honavar, Alapuzha 1.5 each, Cial cochi 1.2, Thiruvananthapuram ap 1.1, Mahabaleshwar, Punalur, Kozhikode 1.0 each, Mumbai(SCZ) 0.7, Bhira 0.5 Kolhapur 0.4, P0anjim, Sangli, Belgaum(SMB) 0.2 each, Kanyakumari, Gadag 0.1 each.

Islands: a few places: Lakshadweep, isolated places: Andaman and Nicobar*. Minicoy 0.8, Port Blair 0.1.

History

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Historically, Darjeeling and its surrounding terai areas formed a part of the then Kirat kingdom called Bijaypur. After the disintegration of the Bijaypur kingdom, it fell to Sikkim and Bhutan. From 1790-1816, Darjeeling and its immediate contiguous area were overrun by the Gorkhas of Nepal. After the Anglo Nepalese War (1814-1815), the Treaty of Sigauli was signed between the Gorkhas and the East India Company. Darjeeling was taken from the Gorkhas of Nepal by the British and returned to the Sikkimese after the Treaty of Titaliya. In 1835, Col Lloyd became the representative of East India Company for Darjeeling. During his tenure Darjeeling was annexed into the British Indian Empire. However the original map of Darjeeling came into existence only after the induction of Kalimpong and Duars area after the Anlgo-Bhutanese war of 1864 (Treaty of Sinchula). Darjeeling as we know of today was organised in 1866. The ethnic identity "Gorkha" comes from the district of Gorkha within Nepal which was the kingdom of the Prithvi Narayan Shah.

In 1835 there were 10,000 Gorhkas in the Darjeeling Hills. By the start of the twentieth century, Gorkhas made a modest socio-economic advance through government service, and a small anglicized elite developed among them. Following this in 1907, the first ever demand for “a separate administrative setup” for the District of Darjeeling was placed before the British government by the “leaders of the hill people”. The “Hill people” here referred to the Lepchas, Bhutias and the Gorkhas. Their main reason for doing so was their growing sense of insecurity against the educated hordes of the plain. The demand was ignored. In 1917 the Hillmen's Association came into being and petitioned for the administrative separation of Darjeeling in 1917 and again in 1930 and 1934. In 1923 the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League (All India Gorkha League) was formed at Dehradun.It soon spread to Darjeeling. On 15 May 1943, All India Gorkha League came into existence in Darjeeling. It gained additional support after World War II with the influx of ex-soldiers from the Gurkha regiments who had been exposed to nationalist movements in Southeast Asia during service there.

On 19 December 1946, the party's heart and soul, D.S. Gurung even made a plea in the Constitution Hall before the Constituent Assembly for recognition of Gorkhas as a minority community "Sir, the demand of the Gurkhas is that they must be recognized as a minority community and that they must have adequate representation in the Advisory Committee that is going to be formed. When the Anglo-Indians with only 1 lakh 42 thousand population have been recognized as a minority community, and Scheduled Castes among the Hindus have been recognized as a separate community, I do not see any reason why Gurkhas with 30 lakhs population should not be recognized as such."

But leaders within its own ranks such as Randhir Subba, were not satisfied with this meagre demand. Soon after the death of D.S. Gurung, Randhir Subba raised the demand for a separate state within the framework of the Indian Constitution called Uttarakhand. Uttarakhand could be composed one of the following ways.

Darjeeling district only or
Darjeeling district and Sikkim only or
Darjeeling district, Sikkim, Jalpaiguri, Dooars and Coochbehar or
Darjeeling district, Jalpaiguri and Coochbehar
This movement was discussed even by the masses. Initially Randhir Subba was in favor of a militant movement but was dissuaded by other leaders. The movement never gained momentum as its leaders were moblised to other purposes.

On April 6, 1947, two Gorkhas Ganeshlal Subba and Ratanlal Brahmin members of the undivided CPI (Communist Party of India) submitted a Quixotic memorandum to Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Vice President of the Interim Government for the creation of Gorkhasthan – an independent country comprising of the present day Nepal, Darjeeling District and Sikkim (excluding its present North District). The demand was more of an attention seeker. It never was genuine.

During the 1940s, the Communist Party of India (CPI) organized Gorkha tea workers. In presentations to the States Reorganisation Commission in 1954, the CPI favored regional autonomy for Darjeeling within West Bengal, with recognition of Nepali as a Scheduled Language. The All India Gorkha League preferred making the area a union territory under the Central government. In all from the 1950's to the 1985, first the CPI (1954), then the Congress (1955), then the triumvirate of Congress, CPI and AIGL (1957), then the United front (1967 & 1981), then again Congress (1968) and finally CPI(M) 1985 dangled along with the carrot of Regional Autonomy for Darjeeling

Subash Gishing
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Subhash Ghising

 
Born 22 June 1936
Manju Tea Estate, Darjeeling
Occupation Politician
Subhash Gishing was the chairman of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council in West Bengal, India. He spearheaded the Gorkhaland movement in the 1980's and till the late 80's the movement had gained tremendous momemtum.

The Gorkhaland movement grew from the demand of Nepalis living in Darjeeling District of West Bengal for a separate state for themselves. The Gorkhaland National Liberation Front led the movement, which disrupted the district with massive violence between 1986 and 1988. The issue was resolved, at least temporarily, in 1988 with the establishment of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council within West Bengal.

[edit] Life
He was born on 22 June 1936 at Manju Tea Estate in Darjeeling. While a student of class IX in St. Robert’s High School, Darjeeling, his father died. As a result, he left school and joined the Gorkha Rifles of Indian Army as a soldier in 1954. He completed his matriculation in 1959, while working but quit the army in 1960 and returned to Darjeeling.[1]

After working as a teacher in Tindharia Bangla Primary School for about a year, he enrolled in Kalimpong Junior BT College in 1961. As result of an altercation with the college principal he left the college. He joined Darjeeling Government College and passed Pre-University Arts in 1963.[1]

While a second year B.A. student he was arrested for participating in a political agitation against the poor condition of the hills. He had to quit studies. He was then general secretary of Tarun Sangha, it was the beginning of a long political career.[1]

In 1968, Ghisingh was vocal on issues concerning the hills and formed a political outfit, Nili Jhanda, to further the cause. On 22 April 1979, for the first time, he raised the demand for a separate state for the Nepali-speaking people of the Darjeeling hills. On 5 April 1980 he demanded the formation of Gorkhaland. He formed the Gorkha National Liberation Front to achieve statehood. After a prolonged struggle marked by much bloodshed, on 22 August 1988, he signed an agreement with the state and the Centre for creation of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, an autonomous body.[1]

[edit] Demonstration
In 1986 the Gorkhaland National Liberation Front, having failed to obtain a separate regional administrative identity from Parliament, again demanded a separate state of Gorkhaland. The party's leader, Subhash Ghising, highly believed to be an agent of the Research and Analysis Wing, headed a demonstration that turned violent and was severely repressed by the state government. The disturbances almost totally shut down the districts' economic mainstays of tea, tourism, and timber. The Left Front government of West Bengal, which earlier had supported some form of autonomy, now opposed it as "antinational." The state government claimed that Darjiling was no worse off than the state in general and was richer than many districts. Ghising made lavish promises to his followers, including the recruitment of 40,000 Indian Gorkhas into the army and paying Rs100,000 for every Gorkha writer. After two years of fighting and the loss of at least 200 lives, the government of West Bengal and the central government finally agreed on an autonomous hill district. In July 1988, the Gorkhaland National Liberation Front gave up the demand for a separate state, and in August the Darjiling Gorkha Hill Council came into being with Ghising as chairman. The council had authority over economic development programs, education, and culture.

However, difficulties soon arose over the panchayat elections. Ghising wanted the hill council excluded from the national law on panchayat elections. Rajiv Gandhi's government was initially favorable to his request and introduced a constitutional amendment in 1989 to exclude the Darjiling Gorkha Hill Council, along with several other northeast hill states and regions (Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and the hill regions of Manipur), but it did not pass. However, in 1992 Parliament passed the Seventy-third Amendment, which seemed to show a newly serious commitment to the idea of local self-government by panchayats . The amendment excluded all the hill areas just mentioned except Darjiling. Ghising insisted this omission was a machination of West Bengal and threatened to revive militant agitation for a Gorkhaland state. He also said the Gorkhaland National Liberation Front would boycott the village panchayat elections mandated by the amendment. A large portion of his party, however, refused to accept the boycott and split off under the leadership of Chiten Sherpa to form the All India Gorkha League, which won a sizable number of panchayat seats.

In 1995 it was unclear whether the region would remain content with autonomy rather than statehood. In August 1995, Sherpa complained to the state government that Ghising's government had misused hill council funds, and West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu promised to investigate. Both Gorkha parties showed willingness to use general shutdowns to forward their ends. The fact that so many people were willing to follow Sherpa instead of the hitherto unchallenged Ghising may indicate that they will be satisfied with regional autonomy.

Stating that factories and roads could not be built in the skies, Mukherjee said that land was required for this, for which the state government should share the roadmap prepared by the industry and commerce department with all responsible members of society.

Speaking at the annual general meeting of Merchants' Chamber of Commerce here, Mukherjee said, "We must follow this path." Mukherjee's statements assume significance in the light of recent setbacks received by the CPI(M) in panchayat polls in Nandigram and Singur where land acquisition has emerged as a burning issue.

"After our experience in Singur and Nandigram, we must be careful and come out with a proper rehabilitation package," Bhattacharjee said. PTI

The CPRM is a party formed in 1996 by CPM dissidents, including the likes of former MPs Tamang Dawa Lama and R.B. Rai.

The CPRM delegation to the administrative headquarters of the Bengal government in Calcutta was led by Arun Dattani, a central committee member of the party’s youth wing — the Democratic Revolutionary Youth Federation (DRYF).

The CPRM endorsed the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s demand for Gorkhaland and demanded the immediate release of their leader Chhatrey Subba.

Subba was arrested eight years ago for an alleged murder attempt on GNLF chief and former administrator of the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council, Subash Ghisingh.

“Yes, we fully support the Gorkhaland cause, and we want a separate state without further delay. Subba must also be released. The authorities have framed him. He has been behind bars without trial for many years. This should not happen in a democracy,” Dattani said after the meeting.

The CPRM also put forth their demand for Rs 5-lakh — on the lines of the Nandigram package — for the next of kin of 1,200 people who died during the Gorkhaland agitation of the eighties.

“Over two decades ago, 1,200 people were murdered. Relatives of the dead were granted just Rs 8,000 as compensation by the hill council. If the next of kin of those killed in Nandigram can get Rs 5 lakh, why should the families of our martyrs be discriminated against,” asked the DRYF leader.

The CPRM is a part of the People’s Democratic Front, opposed to the GNLF in the hills, together with the ABGL, the Congress, the GNLF(C) and the BJP.

The party has been backing the Morcha from the time it was formed last year.

Economic & Political Weekly
April 19, 2008 [Download PDF]

Democracy and Economic Transformation in India

With the changes in India over the past 25 years, there is now a new dynamic logic that ties the operations of “political society” (comprising the peasantry, artisans and petty producers in the informal sector) with the hegemonic role of the bourgeoisie in “civil society”. This logic is provided by the requirement of reversing the effects of primitive accumulation of capital with activities like anti-poverty programmes. This is a necessary political condition for the continued rapid growth of corporate capital. The state, with its mechanisms of electoral democracy, becomes the field for the political negotiation of demands for the transfer of resources, through fiscal and other means, from the accumulation economy to programmes aimed at providing the livelihood needs of the poor. Electoral democracy makes it unacceptable for the government to leave the marginalised groups without the means of labour and to fend for themselves, since this carries the risk of turning them into the “dangerous classes”.

Partha Chatterjee

The first volume of Subaltern Studies was published in 1982. I was part of the editorial group 25 years ago that launched, under the leadership of Ranajit Guha, this critical engagement with Indian modernity from the standpoint of the subaltern classes, especially the peasantry. In the quarter of a century that has passed since then, there has been, I believe, a fundamental change in the situation prevailing in postcolonial India. The new conditions under which global flows of capital, commodities, information and people are now regulated – a complex set of phenomena generally clubbed under the category of globalisation – have created both new opportunities and new obstacles for the Indian ruling classes. The old idea of a third world, sharing a common history of colonial oppression and backwardness, is no longer as persuasive as it was in the 1960s. The trajectory of economic growth taken by the countries of Asia has diverged radically from that of most African countries. The phenomenal growth of China and India in recent years, involving two of the most populous agrarian countries of the world, has set in motion a process of social change that, in its scale and speed, is unprecedented in human history.

1 Peasant Society Today

In this context, I believe it has become important to revisit the question of the basic structures of power in Indian society, especially the position of the peasantry. This is not because I think that the advance of capitalist industrial growth is inevitably breaking down peasant communities and turning peasants into proletarian workers, as has been predicted innumerable times in the last century and a half. On the contrary, I will argue that the forms of capitalist industrial growth now under way in India will make room for the preservation of the peasantry, but under completely altered conditions. The analysis of these emergent forms of postcolonial capitalism in India under conditions of electoral democracy requires new conceptual work.

Let me begin by referring to the recent incidents of violent agitation in different regions of India, especially in West Bengal and Orissa, against the acquisition of agricultural land for industry. There have also been agitations in several states against the entry of corporate capital into the retail market for food and vegetables. The most talked about incidents occurred in Nandigram in West Bengal, on which much has been written

If these incidents had taken place 25 years ago, we would have seen in them the classic signs of peasant insurgency. Here were the long familiar features of a peasantry, tied to the land and small-scale agriculture, united by the cultural and moral bonds of a local rural community, resisting the agents of an external state and of city-based commercial institutions by using both peaceful and violent means. Our analysis then could have drawn on a long tradition of anthropological studies of peasant societies, focusing on the characteristic forms of dependence of peasant economies on external institutions such as the state and dominant classes such as landlords, moneylenders and traders, but also of the forms of autonomy of peasant cultures based on the solidarity of a local moral community.

We could have also linked our discussion to a long tradition of political debates over the historical role of the peasantry under conditions of capitalist growth, beginning with the Marxist analysis in western Europe of the inevitable dissolution of the peasantry as a result of the process of primitive accumulation of capital, Lenin’s debates in Russia with the Narodniks, Mao Zedong’s analysis of the role of the peasantry in the Chinese Revolution, and the continuing debates over Gandhi’s vision of a free India where a mobilised peasantry in the villages would successfully resist the spread of industrial capitalism and the violence of the modern state. Moreover, using the insights drawn from Antonio Gramsci’s writings, we could have talked about the contradictory consciousness of the peasantry in which it was both dominated by the forms of the elite culture of the ruling classes and, at the same time, resistant to them. Twenty-five years ago, we would have seen these rural agitations in terms of the analysis provided by Ranajit Guha in his classic 1983 work Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India.

I believe that analysis would be inappropriate today. I say this for the following reasons. First, the spread of governmental technologies in India in the last three decades, as a result of the deepening reach of the developmental state under conditions of electoral democracy, has meant that the state is no longer an external entity to the peasant community. Governmental agencies distributing education, health services, food, roadways, water, electricity, agricultural technology, emergency relief and dozens of other welfare services have penetrated deep into the interior of everyday peasant life. Not only are peasants dependent on state agencies for these services, they have also acquired considerable skill, albeit to a different degree in different regions, in manipulating and pressurising these agencies to deliver these benefits. Institutions of the state, or at least governmental agencies (whether state or non-state), have become internal aspects of the peasant community.

Second, the reforms since the 1950s in the structure of agrarian property, even though gradual and piecemeal, have meant that except in isolated areas, for the first time in centuries, small peasants possessing land no longer directly confront an exploiting class within the village, as under feudal or semi-feudal conditions. This has had consequences that are completely new for the range of strategies of peasant politics.

Third, since the tax on land or agricultural produce is no longer a significant source of revenue for the government, as in colonial or pre-colonial times, the relation of the state to the peasantry is no longer directly extractive, as it often was in the past.

Fourth, with the rapid growth of cities and industrial regions, the possibility of peasants making a shift to urban and nonagricultural occupations is no longer a function of their pauperisation and forcible separation from the land, but is often a voluntary choice, shaped by the perception of new opportunities and new desires.

Fifth, with the spread of school education and widespread exposure to modern communications media such as the cinema, television and advertising, there is a strong and widespread desire among younger members, both male and female, of peasant families not to live the life of a peasant in the village and instead to move to the town or the city, with all its hardships and uncertainties, because of its lure of anonymity and upward mobility. This is particularly significant for India where the life of poor peasants in rural society is marked not only by the disadvantage of class but also by the discriminations of caste, compared to which the sheer anonymity of life in the city is often seen as liberating. For agricultural labourers, of whom vast numbers are from the dalit communities, the desired future is to move out of the traditional servitude of rural labour into urban non-agricultural occupations.

2 A New Conceptual Framework

I may have emphasised the novelty of the present situation too sharply; in actual fact, the changes have undoubtedly come more gradually over time. But I do believe that the novelty needs to be stressed at this time in order to ask: how do these new features of peasant life affect our received theories of the place of the peasantry in postcolonial India? Kalyan Sanyal, an economist teaching in Kolkata, has attempted a fundamental revision of these theories in his recent (2007) book Rethinking Capitalist Development. In the following discussion, I will use some of his formulations in order to present my own arguments on this subject.

The key concept in Sanyal’s analysis is the primitive accumulation of capital – sometimes called primary or original accumulation of capital. Like Sanyal, I too prefer to use this term in Marx’s sense to mean the dissociation of the labourer from the means of labour. There is no doubt that this is the key historical process that brings peasant societies into crisis with the rise of capitalist production. Marx’s analysis in the last chapters of volume one of Capital shows that the emergence of modern capitalist industrial production is invariably associated with the parallel process of the loss of the means of production on the part of primary producers such as peasants and artisans. The unity of labour with the means of labour, which is the basis of most pre-capitalist modes of production, is destroyed and a mass of labourers emerge who do not any more possess the means of production. Needless to say, the unity of labour with the means of labour is the conceptual counterpart in political economy of the organic unity of most pre-capitalist rural societies by virtue of which peasants and rural artisans are said to live in close bonds of solidarity in a local rural community. This is the familiar anthropological description of peasant societies as well as the source of inspiration for many romantic writers and artists portraying rural life. This is also the unity that is destroyed in the process of primitive accumulation of capital, throwing peasant societies into crisis.

The analysis of this crisis has produced, as I have already indicated, a variety of historical narratives ranging from the inevitable dissolution of peasant societies to slogans of worker-peasant unity in the building of a future socialist society. Despite their differences, the common feature in all these narratives is the idea of transition. Peasants and peasant societies under conditions of capitalist development are always in a state of transition – whether from feudalism to capitalism or from pre-capitalist backwardness to socialist modernity.

A central argument made by Sanyal in his book is that under present conditions of postcolonial development within a globalised economy, the narrative of transition is no longer valid. That is to say, although capitalist growth in a postcolonial society such as India is inevitably accompanied by the primitive accumulation of capital, the social changes that are brought about cannot be understood as a transition. How is that possible?

The explanation has to do with the transformations in the last two decades in the globally dispersed understanding about the minimum functions as well as the available technologies of government. There is a growing sense now that certain basic conditions of life must be provided to people everywhere and that if the national or local governments do not provide them, someone else must, whether it is other states or international agencies or non-governmental organisations. Thus, while there is a dominant discourse about the importance of growth, which in recent times has come to mean almost exclusively capitalist growth, it is, at the same time, considered unacceptable that those who are dispossessed of their means of labour because of the primitive accumulation of capital should have no means of subsistence. This produces, says Sanyal, a curious process in which, on the one side, primary producers such as peasants, craftspeople and petty manufacturers lose their land and other means of production, but, on the other, are also provided by governmental agencies with the conditions for meeting their basic needs of livelihood. There is, says Sanyal, primitive accumulation as well as a parallel process of the reversal of the effects of primitive accumulation.

Examples of Processes

It would be useful to illustrate this process with some examples. Historically, the process of industrialisation in all agrarian countries has meant the eviction of peasants from the land, either because the land was taken over for urban or industrial development or because the peasant no longer had the means to cultivate the land. Market forces were usually strong enough to force peasants to give up the land, but often direct coercion was used by means of the legal and fiscal powers of the state. From colonial times, government authorities in India have used the right of eminent domain to acquire lands to be used for “public purposes”, offering only a token compensation, if any.1 The idea that peasants losing land must be resettled somewhere else and rehabilitated into a new livelihood was rarely acknowledged. Historically, it has been said that the opportunities of migration of the surplus population from Europe to the settler colonies in the Americas and elsewhere made it possible to politically manage the consequences of primitive accumulation in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. No such opportunities exist today for India. More importantly, the technological conditions of early industrialisation which created the demand for a substantial mass of industrial labour have long passed. Capitalist growth today is far more capital-intensive and technology-dependent than it was even some decades ago. Large sections of peasants who are today the victims of the primitive accumulation of capital are completely unlikely to be absorbed into the new capitalist sectors of growth. Therefore, without a specific government policy of resettlement, the peasants losing their land face the possibility of the complete loss of their means of livelihood. Under present globally prevailing normative ideas, this is considered unacceptable. Hence, the old-fashioned methods of putting down peasant resistance by armed repression have little chance of gaining legitimacy. The result is the widespread demand today for the rehabilitation of displaced people who lose their means of subsistence because of industrial and urban development. It is not, says Sanyal, as though primitive accumulation is halted or even slowed down, for primitive accumulation is the inevitable companion to capitalist growth. Rather, governmental agencies have to find the resources to, as it were, reverse the consequences of primitive accumulation by providing alternative means of livelihood to those who have lost them.

We know that it is not uncommon for developmental states to protect certain sectors of production that are currently the domain of peasants, artisans and small manufacturers against competition from large corporate firms. But this may be interpreted as an attempt to forestall primitive accumulation itself by preventing corporate capital from entering into areas such as food crop or vegetable production or handicraft manufacture. However, there are many examples in many countries, including India, of governments and non-government agencies offering easy loans to enable those without the means of sustenance to find some gainful employment. Such loans are often advanced without serious concern for profitability or the prospect of the loan being repaid, since the money advanced here is not driven by the motive of further accumulation of capital but rather by that of providing the livelihood needs of the debtors – that is to say, by the motive of reversal of the effects of primitive accumulation. In recent years, these efforts have acquired the status of a globally circulating technology of poverty management: a notable instance is the microcredit movement initiated by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and its founder, the Nobel Prize winner Mohammed Yunus. Most of us are familiar now with stories of peasant women in rural Bangladesh forming groups to take loans from the Grameen Bank to undertake small activities to supplement their livelihood and putting pressure on one another to repay the loan so that they can qualify for another round of credit. Similar activities have been introduced quite extensively in India in recent years.

Finally, as in other countries, government agencies in India provide some direct benefits to people who, because of poverty or other reasons, are unable to meet their basic consumption needs. This could be in the form of special poverty-removal programmes, or schemes of guaranteed employment in public works, or even direct delivery of subsidised or free food. Thus, there are programmes of supplying subsidised foodgrains to those designated as “below the poverty line”, guaranteed employment for up to 100 days in a year for those who need it, and free meals to children in primary schools. All of these may be regarded, in terms of our analysis, as direct interventions to reverse the effects of primitive accumulation.

It is important to point out that except for the last example of direct provision of consumption needs, most of the other mechanisms of reversing the effects of primitive accumulation involve the intervention of the market. This is the other significant difference in the present conditions of peasant life from the traditional models we have known. Except in certain marginal pockets, peasant and craft production in India today is fully integrated into a market economy. Unlike a few decades ago, there is almost no sector of household production that can be described as intended wholly for self-consumption or non-monetised exchange within a local community. Virtually all peasant and artisan production is for sale in the market and all consumption needs are purchased from the market. This, as we shall see, has an important bearing on recent changes in the conditions of peasant politics.

It is also necessary to point out that “livelihood needs” do not indicate a fixed quantum of goods determined by biological or other ahistorical criteria. It is a contextually determined, socially produced, sense of what is necessary to lead a decent life of some worth and self-respect. The composition of the set of elements that constitute “livelihood needs” will, therefore, vary with social location, cultural context and time. Thus, the expected minimum standards of healthcare for the family or minimum levels of education for one’s children will vary, as will the specific composition of the commodities of consumption such as food, clothes or domestic appliances. What is important here is a culturally determined sense of what is minimally necessary for a decent life, one that is neither unacceptably impoverished nor excessive and luxurious.

3 Transformed Structures of Political Power

To place these changes within a structural frame that describes how political power is held and exercised in postcolonial India, I also need to provide an outline of the transformation that, I believe, has taken place in that structure in recent years. Twentyfive years ago, the structure of state power in India was usually described in terms of a coalition of dominant class interests.
Pranab Bardhan (1984) identified the capitalists, the rich farmers and the bureaucracy as the three dominant classes, competing and aligning with one another within a political space supervised by a relatively autonomous state. Achin Vanaik (1990) also endorsed the dominant coalition model, emphasising in particular the relative political strength of the agrarian bourgeoisie which, he stressed, was far greater than its economic importance. He also insisted that even though India had never had a classical bourgeois revolution, its political system was nevertheless a bourgeois democracy that enjoyed a considerable degree of legitimacy
not only with the dominant classes but also with the mass of the people. Several scholars writing in the 1980s, such as for instance, Ashutosh Varshney (1995) and Lloyd and Rudolph (1987), emphasised the growing political clout of the rich farmers or agrarian capitalists within the dominant coalition.

The dominant class coalition model was given a robust theoretical shape in a classic essay by Sudipta Kaviraj (1989) in which, by using Antonio Gramsci’s idea of the “passive revolution” as a blocked dialectic, he was able to ascribe to the process of class domination in postcolonial India its own dynamic. Power had to be shared between the dominant classes because no one class
had the ability to exercise hegemony on its own. But “sharing” was a process of ceaseless push and pull, with one class gaining a relative ascendancy at one point, only to lose it at another. Kaviraj provided us with a synoptic political history of the relative dominance and decline of the industrial capitalists, the rural elites and the bureaucratic-managerial elite within the
framework of the passive revolution of capital. In my early work, I too adopted the idea of the passive revolution of capital in my account of the emergence of the postcolonial state in India [Chatterjee 1986, 1998 and Chatterjee and Malik 1975].

The characteristic features of the passive revolution in India were the relative autonomy of the state as a whole from the bourgeoisie and the landed elites; the supervision of the state by an elected political leadership, a permanent bureaucracy and an independent judiciary; the negotiation of class interests through a multi-party electoral system; a protectionist regime discouraging
the entry of foreign capital and promoting import substitution; the leading role of the state sector in heavy industry, infrastructure, transport, telecommunications; mining, banking and insurance; state control over the private manufacturing sector through a regime of licensing; and the relatively greater influence of industrial capitalists over the central government and that of the landed elites on the state governments. Passive revolution was a form that was marked by its difference from classical bourgeois democracy. But to the extent that capitalist democracy as established in western Europe or north America served as the normative standard of bourgeois revolution, discussions of passive revolution in India carried with them the sense of a transitional system – from pre-colonial and colonial regimes to some yet-to-be-defined authentic modernity. The changes introduced since the 1990s have, I believe, transformed this framework of class dominance. The crucial difference now is the dismantling of the licence regime, greater entry of foreign capital and foreign consumer goods; and the opening up of sectors such as telecommunications, transport, infrastructure, mining, banking, insurance, etc, to private capital. This has led to a change in the very composition of the capitalist class. Instead of the earlier dominance of a few “monopoly” houses drawn from
traditional merchant backgrounds and protected by the licence and import substitution regime, there are now many more entrants into the capitalist class at all levels and much greater mobility within its formation. Unlike the earlier fear of foreign competition, there appears to be much greater confidence among Indian capitalists to make use of the opportunities opened up by global flows of capital, goods and services, including, in recent times, significant exports of capital. The most dramatic event has been the rise of the Indian information technology industry. But domestic manufacturing and services have also received a major spurt, leading to annual growth rates of 8 or 9 per cent for the economy as a whole in the last few years. There have been several political changes as a result. Let me list a few that are relevant for our present discussion. First, there is a distinct ascendancy in the relative power of the corporate capitalist class as compared to the landed elites. The political means by which this recent dominance has been achieved needs to be investigated more carefully, because it was not achieved through the mechanism of electoral mobilisation (which used to be the source of the political power of the landed elites). Second, the dismantling of the licence regime has opened up a new field of competition between state governments to woo capitalist
investment, both domestic and foreign. This has resulted in the involvement of state-level political parties and leaders with the interests of national and international corporate capital in unprecedented ways. Third, although the state continues to be the most important mediating apparatus in negotiating between conflicting class interests, the autonomy of the state in relation to
the dominant classes appears to have been redefined. Crucially, the earlier role of the bureaucratic-managerial class, or more generally of the urban middle classes, in leading and operating, both socially and ideologically, the autonomous interventionist activities of the developmental state has significantly weakened. There is a strong ideological tendency among the urban middle classes today to view the state apparatus as ridden with corruption, inefficiency and populist political venality and a much greater social acceptance of the professionalism and commitment to growth and efficiency of the corporate capitalist sector. The urban middle class, which once played such a crucial role in producing and running the autonomous developmental state of the passive revolution, appears now to have largely come under the moral-political sway of the bourgeoisie. It would be a mistake, however, to think that the result is a convergence of the Indian political system with the classical models of capitalist democracy. The critical difference, as I have pointed out elsewhere, has been produced by a split in the field of the political between a domain of properly constituted civil society and a more ill-defined and contingently activated domain of
political society [Chatterjee 2004]. Civil society in India today, peopled largely by the urban middle classes, is the sphere that seeks to be congruent with the normative models of bourgeois civil society and represents the domain of capitalist hegemony. If this were the only relevant political domain, then India today would probably be indistinguishable from other western capitalist democracies. But there is the other domain of what I have called political society which includes large sections of the rural population
and the urban poor. These people do, of course, have the formal status of citizens and can exercise their franchise as an instrument of political bargaining. But they do not relate to the organs of the state in the same way that the middle classes do, nor do governmental agencies treat them as proper citizens belonging to civil society. Those in political society make their claims on government, and in turn are governed, not within the framework of stable constitutionally defined rights and laws, but rather through temporary, contextual and unstable arrangements arrived at through direct political negotiations. The latter domain, which represents the vast bulk of democratic politics in India, is not under the moral-political leadership of the capitalist class. Hence, my argument is that the framework of passive revolution is still valid for India. But its structure and dynamic have undergone a change. The capitalist class has come to acquire a position of moral-political hegemony over civil society, consisting principally of the urban middle classes. It exercises its considerable influence over both the central and the state governments not through electoral mobilisation of political parties and movements but largely through the bureaucratic-managerial class, the increasingly influential print and visual media, and the judiciary and other independent regulatory bodies. The dominance of the capitalist class within the state structure as a whole can be
inferred from the virtual consensus among all major political parties about the priorities of rapid economic growth led by private investment, both domestic and foreign. It is striking that even the CPI(M) in West Bengal, and slightly more ambiguously in Kerala, have, in practice if not in theory, joined this consensus. This means that as far as the party system is concerned, it does not matter which particular combination of parties comes to power
at the centre or even in most of the states; state support for rapid economic growth is guaranteed to continue. This is evidence of the current success of the passive revolution. However, the practices of the state also include the large range of governmental activities in political society. Here there are
locally dominant interests, such as those of landed elites, small producers and local traders, who are able to exercise political influence through their powers of electoral mobilisation. In the old understanding of the passive revolution, these interests would have been seen as potentially opposed to those of the industrial bourgeoisie; the conflicts would have been temporarily resolved through a compromise worked out within the party system and the autonomous apparatus of the state. Now, I believe, there is a
new dynamic logic that ties the operations of political society with the hegemonic role of the bourgeoisie in civil society and its dominance over the state structure as a whole. This logic is supplied by the requirement, explained earlier, of reversing the effects of primitive accumulation of capital. To describe how this logic serves to integrate civil and political society into a new structure of the passive revolution, let me return to the subject of the peasantry.

4 Management of Non-Corporate Capital

The integration with the market has meant that large sections of what used to be called the subsistence economy, which was once the classic description of small peasant agriculture, have now come fully under the sway of capital. This is a key development that must crucially affect our understanding of peasant society in India today. There is now a degree of connectedness between peasant cultivation, trade and credit networks in agricultural commodities, transport networks, petty manufacturing and
services in rural markets and small towns, etc, that makes it necessary for us to categorise all of them as part of a single, but stratified, complex. A common description of this is the unorganised or informal sector. Usually, a unit belonging to the informal sector is identified in terms of the small size of the enterprise, the small number of labourers employed, or the relatively unregulated nature of the business. In terms of the analytical framework I have presented here, I will propose a distinction between the formal and the informal sectors of today’s economy in terms of a difference between corporate and noncorporate forms of capital.

My argument is that the characteristics I have described of peasant societies today are best understood as the marks of non-corporate capital. To the extent that peasant production is deeply embedded within market structures, investments and returns are conditioned by forces emanating from the operations of capital. In this sense, peasant production shares many connections with informal units in manufacturing, trade and services
operating in rural markets, small towns and even in large cities. We can draw many refined distinctions between corporate and non-corporate forms of capital. But the key distinction I wish to emphasise is the following. The fundamental logic that underlies the operations of corporate capital is further accumulation of capital, usually signified by the maximisation of profit. For noncorporate organisations of capital, while profit is not irrelevant, it is dominated by another logic – that of providing the livelihood
needs of those working in the units. This difference is crucial for the understanding of the so-called informal economy and, by extension, as I will argue, of peasant society. Let me illustrate with a couple of familiar examples from the non-agricultural informal sector and then return to the subject of peasants. Most of us are familiar with the phenomenon of street
vendors in Indian cities. They occupy street space, usually violating municipal laws; they often erect permanent stalls, use municipal services such as water and electricity, and do not pay taxes. To carry on their trade under these conditions, they usually organise themselves into associations to deal with the municipal authorities, the police, credit agencies such as banks and corporate firms that manufacture and distribute the commodities they sell on the streets. These associations are often large and the volume of business they encompass can be quite considerable. Obviously, operating within a public and anonymous market situation, the vendors are subject to the standard conditions of profitability of their businesses. But to ensure that everyone is able to meet their livelihood needs, the association will usually try to limit the number of vendors who can operate in a given area and prevent the entry of newcomers. On the other hand, there are many examples where, if the businesses are doing particularly well, the vendors do not, like corporate capitalists, continue to accumulate on an expanded scale, but rather agree to extend their membership and allow new entrants. To cite another example, in most cities and towns of India, the transport system
depends heavily on private operators who run buses and autorickshaws.
Here too there is frequent violation of regulations such as licences, safety standards and pollution norms – violations that allow these units to survive economically. Although most operators own only one or two vehicles each, they form associations to negotiate with transport authorities and the police over fares and routes, and control the frequency of services and entry of new
operators to ensure that a minimum income, and not much more than a minimum income, is guaranteed to all. In my book The Politics of the Governed, I have described the form of governmental regulation of population groups such as street vendors, illegal squatters and others, whose habitation or livelihood verge on the margins of legality, as political society. In political society, I have argued, people are not regarded by the
state as proper citizens possessing rights and belonging to the properly constituted civil society. Rather, they are seen to belong to particular population groups, with specific empirically established and statistically described characteristics, which are targets of particular governmental policies. Since dealing with many of these groups imply the tacit acknowledgement of various illegal practices, governmental agencies will often treat such cases as exceptions, justified by very specific and special circumstances, so that the structure of general rules and principles is not compromised. Thus, illegal squatters may be given water supply or
electricity connections but on exceptional grounds so as not to club them with regular customers having secure legal title to their property, or street vendors may be allowed to trade under specific conditions that distinguish them from regular shops and businesses which comply with the laws and pay taxes. All of this makes the claims of people in political society a matter of constant political negotiation and the results are never secure or permanent. Their entitlements, even when recognised, never quite become rights. To connect the question of political society with my earlier
discussion on the process of primitive accumulation of capital, I now wish to advance the following proposition: Civil society is where corporate capital is hegemonic, whereas political society is the space of management of non-corporate capital. I have argued above that since the 1990s, corporate capital, and along with it the class of corporate capitalists, have achieved a hegemonic position over civil society in India. This means that the logic of accumulation, expressed at this time in the demand that national economic growth be maintained at a very high rate and that the requirements of corporate capital be given priority, holds sway over civil society – that is to say, over the urban middle classes. It also means that the educational, professional and social aspirations of the middle classes have become tied with the fortunes of corporate capital. There is now a powerful tendency to insist on the legal rights of proper citizens, to impose civic order in public
places and institutions and to treat the messy world of the informal sector and political society with a degree of intolerance. A vague but powerful feeling seems to prevail among the urban middle classes that rapid growth will solve all problems of poverty and unequal opportunities.

Organisation of Informal Sector

The informal sector, which does not have a corporate structure and does not function principally according to the logic of accumulation, does not, however, lack organisation. As I have indicated in my examples, those who function in the informal sector often have large, and in many cases quite powerful and effective, organisations. They need to organise precisely to function in the modern market and governmental spaces. Traditional
organisations of peasant and artisan societies are not adequate for the task. I believe this organisation is as much of a political activity as it is an economic one. Given the logic of non-corporate capital that I have described above, the function of these organisations is precisely to successfully operate within the rules of the market and of governmental regulations in order to ensure the livelihood needs of its members. Most of those who provide leadership in organising people, both owners and workers, operating in the informal sector are actually or potentially political leaders. Many such leaders are prominent local politicians and many such organisations are directly or indirectly affiliated to political parties. Thus, it is not incorrect to say that the management of non-corporate capital under such conditions is a political function that is carried out by political leaders. The existence and
survival of the vast assemblage of so-called informal units of production in India today, including peasant production, is directly dependent on the successful operation of certain political functions. That is what is fac