Opinion Labour Intensive
The argument,Patnaik says,does not recognise the issue of workers motivation at all
Labour Intensive
In his article in the CPM mouthpiece Peoples Democracy,Prabhat Patnaik counters the argument that the absence of labour-market flexibility the absolute right of employers to hire and fire workers as and when they please,without any let or hindrance has been holding up employment growth in the country. He says there is no empirical evidence for this claim.
The argument,Patnaik says,does not recognise the issue of workers motivation at all. It believes that fear alone will be enough to make them work,that their motivations are irrelevant. With this fear-instilling mechanism in place,it sees workers as potentially reducible to inhuman objects appended to machines and no different from machines, he says.
The article says that this reduction of the worker to the level of an object is both the premise and the objective of capitalism. It adds,Neo-liberalism,with its insistence upon labour market flexibility,is nothing else but a reassertion of this elemental drive of capitalism.
Obamas Osama
An editorial in the CPI organ New Age says the media frenzy in India over the killing of Osama bin Laden can only be compared to the furore shown by the media and the ruling politicians after Vajpayee governments Pokhran II. At that time too nobody was ready to pay heed to any sensible voice. Anything against the nuclear test was termed unpatriotic and anti-national, it says.
The media,the piece says,is reporting all that is originating from Washington to justify what President Barack Obama has done to boost his own election campaign for the second term. It has also been used to obliterate very serious developments in the Arab world where Obama administration is really in a Catch-22 situation. The editorial says that in the hype,everyone has forgotten that Osama himself was a creation of the CIA. The US imperialists have harvested during the past decade what they had sowed in 1979 by promoting Jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviet forces there… If there is a global network of terrorism,it is for the Americans to shoulder the full blame.
Chase the Drop
An editorial in Peoples Democracy has called for the extradition of Kim Davy,the prime accused in the Purulia arms drop case,who alleged that the Narasimha Rao government had allowed arms to be dropped to destabilise the West Bengal government.
The matter, the article says,is much more serious in the sense that,if this allegation is true,the central government itself permitted a grievous breach of Indian security to allow these arms to be dropped… It is indeed a grave matter that in order to achieve its political and electoral objectives,the central government led by the Congress party was prepared to undermine the very Constitution under whose oath they were in office.
It has demanded a judicial probe into the episode.
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