Opinion View from the left

Apart from Indo-Pak relations,the article also claims the Sharif government inherits formidable challenges: “With its economy in a bad shape,it needs to get an economic package from the IMF and initiate a new package of economic reforms. This is only possible through the active support of the USA. However,all through the election campaign,the US ‘drone’ attacks have come under strong criticism. This is a difficult balance that Sharif has to achieve…”Besides,“how the ongoing war in Afghanistan is going to resolve and what happens from now to 2014 when the US-led forces are scheduled to pull out will be crucial for Pakistan.” The enthusiasm shown by the Pakistani electorate also puts the burden of strengthening the democratic process and its institutions on the new government’s shoulders.

MAMATA’s TEST

The latest edition of the CPI(ML)’s ML Update hits out at the Mamata Banerjee government for her government’s tussle with the state election commission on the panchayat elections. The battle,it says,must be seen in the evolving political context of West Bengal and the hostile and contemptuous attitude of the TMC government towards institutions of democracy. The panchayat polls will be the first major electoral test for the government: “The TMC has now been in power for two years and by all indications disillusionment has already started setting in among large sections of the society in West Bengal. Like most other states,West Bengal is also in the grip of a deepening economic crisis,and the state government has hardly done anything to provide any relief to the people,” the editorial says. While peasant suicides are on the rise,the chit fund scam has hit the rural population,it adds.

“In a good majority of panchayats,the TMC has already ruled for five years and has proved itself one up on corrupt and degenerated CPI(M) panchayat lords. This is why the TMC regime is wary of the people venting their anger through free and fair panchayat polls,” says the editorial,arguing that the TMC was simply imitating CPM-style politics of control and domination.

VANISHING LAND

An article in CPI mouthpiece New Age calls for a ban on conversion of agricultural land for non-farming purposes,arguing that the situation has already become alarming and is going to cause irreparable damage to India’s food availability and food security: “The government as usual ignored the warnings and stuck to its blind pursuit of neo-liberal policies which solely aim at profits and super profits.” There are now nearly nine million fewer farmers than there were in 2001,the first time in four decades that the absolute number of cultivators has fallen: “Over the last 50 years,the proportion of farmers to the total population has been in steady decline,but the fall has not been big enough for the absolute number to go down,given population increases. But in the last decade,the fall in farming has combined with the slowing rate of population growth to create a fall in the absolute numbers of farmers,” it adds.