More SEZs ahead

Elsewhere he writes: “If there are going to be SEZs all over the country, there will be SEZs in West Bengal.” His charge is Left-led governments will “always be circumscribed” by the fact that states have very limited powers and resources actually rest with the Centre.

Remembering 1857

To mark the 250th anniversary of the ‘Revolt of 1857’, a series of articles are being published in the CPM’s weekly organ, the first of which is Irfan Habib’s ‘Remembering 1857’, along with rare photos and sketches.

Habib suggests that 1857 weakened the capacity of British imperialism since it could no longer rely on Indian troops. He says before 1857 there were over 2,00,000 Indian sepoys in the three presidency armies. But, this was reduced to 1,21,000 by 1862-63, while European soldiers in India was increased from 38,000 to 76,000. There was now one European soldier to watch over every two Indian sepoys. “The grand designs of British imperialism which had been based on the use of Indian troops as cannon fodder, could no longer be pursued with the same élan. To this extent, 1857 helped to shield other Asian nations from British onslaughts for a long time,” says the well-known historian.

Crisis in countryside

Leftist economist Prabhat Patnaik focuses on the crisis in India’s countryside saying the government only visualises it as an agricultural crisis, while the Left perspective points to a crisis leading from neo-liberal economic policies. Patnaik points out that the Left remedy requires organisational changes “away from atomised, individual farming with dubious resilience”. The move must be towards co-operative and collective forms in which the peasants have to organise themselves to take advantage of the economies of scale and acquire greater bargaining strength. They must ensure that technological change, when it reduces labour demand, does not cause destitution. Patnaik urges that ‘investment’, ‘modernisation’, ‘efficiency’ and ‘productivity increases’ are terms which have to be looked at within a class context.

Compiled by Ananda Majumdar