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Journalism of Courage
The editorial in the latest issue of CPM mouthpiece People’s Democracy comments on the trust vote alleging that Parliamentary democracy in independent India reached the lowest depths of political immorality during the trial of strength. It says the brazen display of currency notes amounting to crores of rupees spoke volumes about the sordid bargaining behind the scenes to ensure the government’s victory. “The PM may have won the vote, but his government has lost the trust of the nation. By all accounts, this was no ‘trust’ vote at all. At best, it can be described as a ‘betrayal’ vote on many counts,” it claims.
To begin with, it says, the vote was taken to endorse the PM’s betrayal of the assurances given to the Left on the nuclear deal and secondly if the brazen horse-trading were not indulged in, then the government would have fallen short of majority. “Such political immorality constitutes yet another betrayal of the nation,” it notes.
Reversal of neo-liberalism?
An article titled ‘Capitalism’s Open Secret’ asks whether the next general elections would serve as a much-needed second referendum on the kind of economic policies that the NDA and the UPA governments have followed.
The debate is currently focussed on issues like the nuclear deal and signs of communal polarisation “but underlying these trends is a clear rightward shift in the agenda of the leading political formations, epitomised by the neo-liberal policies that have been pushed by them for close to two decades now.”
The damage wrought by those neo-liberal economic policies, it claims, are reflected in a crisis in agriculture, a high rate of inflation, a volatile exchange rate, increasingly fragile financial markets, and the likely return to much slower growth. It claims that when the crisis turns intense, as it did in many Latin American countries during the last two decades, policy reversal is a real possibility. “The elections, therefore, may still tip the scales against neoliberalism,” it concludes.
The first revolution
Another article titled the ‘Centenary of First Political Strike In India’ looks back at the first militant political action of the Indian working class in July, 1908 when thousands of mill workers hit the streets of Bombay to protest against the arrest of Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The full significance of this memorable event was not understood by anybody in the country, workers included. “But when they struck work in thousands in different mills and factories and came together in the battle ground, to participate in the street fighting… they became the working class of Bombay fighting together as a class against imperialism,” says the article.
