Pothik Ghosh

Can the decimation of an institutionalised and bureaucratised working-class force like the CPI(M)-led Left Front in West Bengal be a legitimate revolutionary task of the proletariat? The answer to that must, doubtless, be a resounding yes! But does that make the Trinamool Congress juggernaut that demolished the 34-year-old decadent LF regime in the state the bearer of a progressive, working-class impulse? Strange as it may sound, the reply to that has to be an equally emphatic no! This paradox stems from the fact that the politics which helped Mamata Banerjee slay the "Stalinist" demon of Bengal has simultaneously enabled her alliance with the Congress to seek the perpetuation of its ideological project of discrediting the revolutionary working-class horizon that goes under the name of Communism. The open propaganda by the spinmeisters of Mamata Banerjee's extended "family of democracy" on sundry 'public' fora, where they held up her decisive electoral triumph in West Bengal as an example of  the 'indisputable demise' of the Communist political project and its Marxist 'ideology', bears that out.

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 Paresh Chandra  

Andrew Kolin, State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W. Bush, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

It is not hard to find texts that defy the lies of the state by presenting facts that contradict them. This method of 'uncovering' the status quo, which can be called Chomskyan (the political Chomsky, not the linguistic one), works by trying to shock its reader out of their ideological slumber. Unfortunately, the vast array of ugly facts that these texts bring out usually remains ungrounded in a unified, alternative perception of reality. The attempt is to falsify particular claims of the state, by producing facts to the contrary, without trying to understand the 'deep structure' that gives birth to this state of affairs. The reader, not drawn out into a critique of present-day life in its entirety, is able to go back to that life, as if what these books uncover is simply another aspect of reality that s/he need not be concerned with.

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 Ankit Sharma

Bharati Chaturvedi (ed.) Finding Delhi: Loss and Renewal in a Mega City, Penguin Books India, New Delhi, 2010

Delhi is often thought of as the culturally best endowed city in the country. It has had a rich heritage, from the Walled City of the Mughals (presently called Old Delhi) to the Lutyens' capital of the British raj; now there are chains of multinational corporations working in the peripheral areas of the city, and the city has declared its "world-classiness", reshaping its infrastructure to host the grand spectacle that was the Commonwealth Games. Hence, most writings on the city stick to celebrating the warm-heartedness of the "dilliwallas," its ever increasing count of flyovers and shopping-malls. Weighed down by such images that flood the media Finding Delhi comes as a relief to its reader because it tries to engage with that part of Delhi that is left out in the sort of accounts mentioned above: the not too pretty underbelly of the Indian capital.  The book offers an account of the city culled out of the experiences of fourteen different writers, ranging from urban planners to informal-sector workers, concentrating on diverse urgent issues like public transport, women in the city, housing rights of the poor, problems faced by street vendors, and the situation of the homeless ahead of the Commonwealth Games. The writers try to represent the city from an unconventional angle, where they concentrate on the living conditions of the poor living in the city, and the damage done to their lives due to the infrastructural developments that have taken Delhi way "ahead" of cities like Mumbai and Kolkata. It can, in fact, be argued that the book aims to confront the middle class, whose India is "shining", with this "other angle" in an attempt to make them to realize that the actual cost of this accelerated drive toward "development" is being paid by the poor, in the form of ever deteriorating living conditions; presumably the monologues of a waste collector, a domestic worker, a dhobi and a fruit vendor are included in book to fulfill this end.

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Anu Muhammad is an eminent Marxist and a renowned academician from Bangladesh. He is currently serving as Professor in the Department of Economics in Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka. He is also the general secretary of National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources Power and Ports and has been involved in various people's movements in Bangladesh. He, along with the committee, played an instrumental role in the success of the Phulbari Movement against Open Pit Mining in Phulbari, Bangladesh. He writes extensively on globalisation, social transformation, gender, NGO and energy issues and has authored more than 20 books. In this interview Prof Muhammad speaks to Manoranjan Pegu on the politico-economic trajectory of Bangladesh, in the context of capitalist globalisation and ensuing geo-political changes in South Asia, and assesses the significance of recent popular unrest in the country.

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 Ravi Kumar  

That the instruments of imparting education extend beyond the classical notions of classroom learning is a fact few can disagree with today. It is, however, not enough to realise that the process of educating a human being transcends the limited universe of whatever form of formalised institution of teaching-learning transactions and is finally linked to the approach that one adopts to comprehend the processes of knowledge formation. This process of education is also closely linked to the desires of the dominant social structures to limit our view of the complex processes of knowledge creation. A limited and fragmented view of the world not only hides the systemic contradictions but also makes possible a process of regimentation. For instance, one can never fully appreciate the fact that the elite castes of India - not unlike the entrenched hegemonic class interests in any social order - need to segment the processes of education so that it in turn sustains the segmentation of the social order. Not unless one overcomes one's ideological myopia to grasp the link between the processes of knowledge production in a society and its larger logic of production.  It is this myopia that compels us to explain the teacher-taught relationship through the undemocratic metaphor of teacher as god. It is the intrinsic uncritical appeal of such a metaphor that leads us even today to claim that the teacher reveals the path to the kingdom of god. And it is this belief in the existence of a particular kind of system that celebrates the existence of gods - which bases itself on uncriticality and opposition to dissent, and concomitant subordination to spiritual and/or temporal authorities - that is responsible for our failure to understand how, for example, the Dronacharya-Eklavya relationship, by virtue of it being embedded in class-caste relations, is an expression of the segmentation of society along class lines through segmentation of education. And this holds true as much for ancient India, as for us in our times, wherein a vision of understanding educational processes as going beyond classroom and institutionalised structures is seldom encouraged. Even if it is done the connections between the mode of production and educational systems is rarely explored.

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 Raju J Das

The reason for the power of saffron politics is only partly political. India's business class is not unconnected to this. The power of saffron politics also raises troubling questions about the sense of citizenship.

Some commentators focus on the political factors behind the success of the saffron electoral-machine. One argument has been that Congress has played a 'soft' hindutva (for example, by giving tickets to some disgruntled members of hindutva forces as in Gujarat). Others say that Congress' secularism has not cut much ice with the voters who fall for the communal propaganda. There is some truth in the political interpretations of electoral success of communal politics. What is neglected in these discussions - both on TV and in newspapers - is often what tends to be neglected in many discussions of India's polity as such: the role of business. What is the possible connection between the business houses and communal politics? Are the business houses - the so-called corporate citizens - a secular force? This issue needs to be more thoroughly investigated. I can only indicate a few things.

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 Gilbert Sebastian  

T.K. Oommen (ed.) Social Movements I: Issues of Identity (pp.252+x, HB), & Social Movements II: Concerns of Equity and Security, (pp.352+xii, HB), Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2010.

The volumes edited by T.K. Oommen constitute a sociological contribution to the study of social movements in India. The first volume deals with identitarian movements and the second, with movements for equity and security. For spatial constraints, we do not attempt a review and critique of individual articles but confine ourselves to the theoretical issues identified by the editor himself.

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 Satyabrata  

Though I am not a part of the ongoing movement in Delhi University, being a student compels me to engage with the polemics – especially between Paresh Chandra and KYS – it has given rise to. Its relevance for politics conducted on the terrain of the university, of which I happen to be an integral part, cannot be overstated. 

“It is impossible to grasp Marx's Capital without understanding Hegel's logic.” – V.I. Lenin

In its critique of Paresh Chandra's article, the KYS has tried to draw lessons from the French May'68 movement as interpreted by one of its key leaders, Daniel Cohn-Bendit. I would like to quote some lines from a book by the same author before I return to the KYS's critique:

"The French crisis was first of all a crisis within a single institution – the university.[…][Quoting Touraine] 'The more modern and scientific a university becomes, the stronger grows its political and ideological commitment. The more young people are taught to think for themselves, the more they will challenge, criticize, and protest. The university continually creates its own opposition'."[1]

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