Madhu Prasad

Dave Hill and Ravi Kumar (ed), Global Neoliberalism and Education and its Consequences, Routledge, 2008.

This is an important collection of articles which focuses on theoretical issues and policy analyses to bring life and meaning to the facts of the crises facing educational institutions the world over.

Neo-liberalism has resulted in the merchandization of knowledge under conditions that subject its content, structures and modes of accessibilty to the pressures of a global market. The impact on the entire gamut of educational policy and practice has been devastating. As Nick Grant states in the 'Foreword' (xv-xvi), the "essentially social and cooperative ethic derived from a natural model of child development, which has informed most educationalists in most countries for centuries, is now challenged by a highly personalized and competitive model of education derived from modern business methodology." Ravi Kumar and Dave Hill's 'Introduction' outlines the significant social repercussions of this shift from pedagogical to market values. In conditions of increasing socio-economic disparities and loss of opportunities for the disadvantaged sections of society, the state is rapidly retreating from its earlier role as provider and guarantor of 'welfare' services, including education, that had ensured the 'massification' of skills required by the productive capitalism  of the 20th century until the '70's. Cuts in public expenditure have since facilitated dependence on markets and opened up avenues for privatization of the education system. As a consequence, fundamental concepts like equality have been called into question. This remains an abiding concern throughout the many contributions to the volume.

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Gautam Navlakha and Asish Gupta

After two months of persistence Bastar Sambhag Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (BSKSS) could hold its first rally cum public meeting on June 1, 2009 in Jagdalpur to protest displacement of adivasi peasants from their land and forest as well as construction of Bodh Ghat Dam, privatization of mines and river water resources. As the only two 'outsiders' we looked on as streams of people at the height of summer month walked raising slogans and their fist. They gathered at College Campus and then from Dharampura the rally made its way to Indira Priyadarshini Stadium. Their short but wiry bodies in terms of age and gender may have been different but the steps they took, many barefoot, were determined and firm. After the rally as people made their way into the Stadium some were seen leaving in a different direction. These were people who had arrived the night before had to travel long distances to return home and anxious to do so before dusk fell. But those who remained behind for the public meeting sat under the shade provided by canopies rented by the organizers. They sat down to listen. Slogans had been shouted now was the time to hear what their own people had to say.

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After the resignation of Pushp Kamal Dahal “ Prachanda” as the prime minister of Nepal, the political parties have once again created a situation that reminds one of the days of the 12-point agreement of November 2005. The 12-point understanding was reached between the CPN-Maoists, which was underground and carrying out the people’s war, and seven parliamentary parties. This turned out to be a historic accord because the programme it articulated not only culminated in the November 2006 peace agreement but also made way for the election to the Constituent Assembly and establishment of a republic in Nepal. Had the 12- point accord not been signed then the monarchy would not have seen the quick exit it did. It might be worth recalling here that the US had launched a brazen campaign against the accord. The then US Ambassador to Nepal, James Moriarty, had advised the parliamentary parties to face the Maoists in tandem with King Gyanendra instead of joining hands with them. He had also attempted to impress on the parties the need to come out of it, once they had signed it, to do some introspection.

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 Bülent Gökay and Darrell Whitman

At the conclusion of his widely popular 1987 study of the global political economy, titled The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, England-born and Oxford-trained Yale historian Paul Kennedy observed, "The task facing American statesmen over the next decades . . . is to recognize that broad trends are under way, and that there is a need to 'manage' affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States' position takes place slowly and smoothly" (Kennedy, 1989: 534). In chronicling the decline of the US as a global power, Kennedy compared measures of US economic health, such as its levels of industrialisation and growth of real gross national product (GDP), against those of Europe, Russia, and Japan. What he found was a shift in the global political economy over the last 50 years generated by underlying structural changes in the organisation of its financial and trading systems.

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 Pratyush Chandra

If we have to name a single industry prototypical of post-second world war capitalism, which to a large extent defined the nature and range of economic activities in this period, the choice would undoubtedly be the automobile industry. With the financial crisis finally taking its toll over this industry (especially the Detroit Three – GM, Chrysler and Ford), the crisis has almost acquired a general character. The most interesting aspect of this long impending collapse in the automobile industry is its bearing for the industrial regime that will evolve out of the present crisis – this will largely depend on the balance between the forces (classes and their agencies) which will see through this process of restructuring. The bailout package has already been declared and it aims to completely disarm the workers, that too with the assent of their own unions.

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 Pothik Ghosh

Jason Lutes, Berlin (Book 1): City of Stones, Drawn & Quarterly, Montreal (2001, Reprinted 2009) & Berlin (Book 2): City of Smoke, Drawn & Quarterly, Montreal (2008) 

Jason Lutes begins at the beginning. The encounter between a man and a woman in a railway carriage with which the first book of his graphic-novel trilogy opens is an archetype. And yet the manner in which it unfolds into the larger narrative of Berlin - the third part of which is yet to appear and which is currently made up of City of Stones and City of Smoke respectively - serves to brush it against its own banal grain. One does not, however, need to get to the middle of Lutes’ yarn about Berlin in the twilight years of the Weimar Republic to figure that such a stock opening has not been forced upon the artist by an imagination overwhelmed and exhausted by the stereotypes of mass culture.

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 S Sivasegaram

By early 2006, the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) had decided to embark on a military course to deal with the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) and was pushed hard in that direction by its extreme chauvinist partners. The build-up for war was nevertheless on between 2002 and 2005 when the ceasefire was effective and even as peace talks continued into 2003. The then prime minister, Ranil Wickramasinghe, claimed credit a year ago for weakening the LTTE by engineering a split (with help from the US) in 2004, and some months ago for purchasing most of the military hardware, with which the GoSL successfully fought the war, between 2002 and 2004. The LTTE too armed itself during the time but did not anticipate the brutal force with which the GoSL would pursue the war and the line-up of international forces against it.

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 Saurobijay Sarkar 

The Spanish Revolution, which spanned the years between 1935 and 1939, will remain a historic event, glorious for the heroic sacrifice of the Communists and other left-wing parties, the struggle of the International Brigade against Fascism. There is, of course, another side to it. And that is the story of some contradictions that dogged the anti-fascist movement. A story that has, for most parts, been left untold. For a more truthful and unbiased assessment of the role of the Communist International (Comintern) and the international Communist movement all available information needs to be thrown open.

The Popular Front policy, scripted by the Comintern secretary-general George Dimitrov and endorsed by Josef Stalin, was preceded by the “third period”, or the ultra-left period of the Comintern.  The Popular Front thesis was in sharp contrast to the new colonial, or shall we say deionization, thesis at the Sixth Congress (1928) of the Comintern –“Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-colonies”. Introduced by Otto Kuusinen, under Stalin’s diktat, the thesis said the colonial bourgeoisie in India had gone over to imperialism and had no progressive role left to play. This was a drift from Lenin’s Theses on the National and Colonial Questions at the Second Congress of Comintern (1920). But we need to remember that Lenin correctly insisted on the temporary alliance with sections of the national bourgeoisie in colonies, while at the same time emphasizing on the independence of the proletariat. The Popular Front (PF) policy in Spain crossed the border of this temporary alliance, when Spanish Communists under the directive of the Comintern, which had by then became an instrumentality for Soviet Foreign policy, advocated the formation of a government with a section of the bourgeoisie, and thus subordinated proletarian independence to “democracy”. Moreover, the thesis of stagiest revolution, which states that in a backward country proletarian revolution cannot succeed, played a key role here.

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 Lars T. Lih

Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela, has just announced on Venezuelan television that the next time he meets with President Barack Obama, he will give the American head of state a short book written in 1902 by one Lenin, entitled What Is to Be Done? (Chto delat’?).

A surprising announcement. The last time Chávez showed his willingness to fill out Obama’s reading list, he gave him a topical book on the situation in Latin America. But what topical interest can be found in a book over a century old, written under the drastically alien circumstances of tsarist Russia? Besides, many of us will remember being taught about this book in a poli sci or history class. Isn’t What Is to Be Done? a ‘blueprint for Soviet tyranny’? Isn’t this the book in which Lenin expressed his contempt for workers - or, in any event, his worry that the workers would never be sufficiently revolutionary? These worries, so we are told, led Lenin to advocate a party of ‘professional revolutionaries’ from the intelligentsia that would replace a genuine democratic mass movement. All in all, isn’t What Is to Be Done? something of an embarrassment for the Left - a book much better forgotten than thrust into the hands of world leaders?

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 Neshat Quaiser

Following is the text of a conversation contained in a total of twelve letters exchanged electronically in January- February 2005 between Neshat Quaiser, Ahmad and Satish Saberwal. Out of twelve letters – seven by Quaiser, two by Ahmad and three are by Saberwal. The text ultimately turns out to be Quaiser’s response in major part to some of the issues raised by Ahmad and Saberwal. Ahmad’s e-mail spellings have been changed to normal and his full name is not given for his unwillingness. Certain explanations have been added in Quaiser’s responses.

Neshat Quaiser (to Ahmad)

I am glad you got the book. Bi Amma’s incident I just shared with you, something that I recently encountered, was a horrible experience telling what kind of scholarship is this that somebody is pursuing a PhD on Indian Muslim nationalism after completing an M. Phil on the related area from JNU, and has not even heard of Bi Amma’s name. 

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