India’s headlong rush to open up its economy to foreign capital and exploitation by multinational corporations is meeting increasing militant resistance from workers and peasants, Dalits and indigenous peoples.
A Maoist inspired two-day strike and economic blockade in parts of Eastern India last month culminated in rail lines and freight trains being blown up and the burning down of a train station, severely disrupting train services to parts of North Eastern India.
The action was called in the wake of the government’s decision to approve another 24 Special Economic Zones (SEZ’s) bringing the total agreed over the past two years to 111.
SEZ’s allow companies to acquire huge tracts of rural land to convert into giant industrial parks where they are exempt from many local taxes, labour laws and red tape.
A further 100 SEZ’s are earmarked for approval before the end of 2007 and many more are in the pipeline which will bring the total up to nearly 500. These enterprise zones are set to displace millions of poor farmers and peasants as the Indian government strives to emulate Chinese growth rates, where similar zones have led to an explosion of new mega cities or enormous expansion to existing ones, seemingly overnight.
In the largest of these proposed developments, in the Western coastal state of Maharashtra 45,000 farmers will be uprooted as Reliance Industries takes over 2,140 hectares of what was previously fertile farmland and salt flats.
India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described SEZ’s as “an idea whose time has come”. His Congress led UPA led coalition government which is supported in central government by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is keen to step up the pace of industrialisation in a country where 600 million people still live on farms.
Despite posting growth rates of up to 9% and its new image of a burgeoning high-tech industry, buzzing call centres and glittering malls, 260 million of India’s 1.1 billion population are living on less than a dollar a day and over half it’s population remain unable to read or write.
Congress’s surprise win in the 2004 general election was largely attributed to a huge swing vote in rural areas, backlash against the ruling BJP’s agenda of privatisation and other economic reforms that failed to bring prosperity to millions of peasants and the rural poor. However, in the three years since taking power, as well as the SEZ’s, the Congress led coalition have sold off state assets, allowing private control over community resources – water, biodiversity, forests, seeds, agriculture markets, and mineral resources.
The agricultural sector, for so long the bedrock of the Indian economy is being particularly squeezed by reforms that favour contract farming which in turn favour large private companies leaving little room for subsistence farmers. Some World Bank estimates suggest more than 400 million Indians will be compelled to move to urban areas over the next period.
Whilst much of the coverage we see of India in the age of globalisation focuses on the emerging middle classes it is the new rural migrants and rural and urban poor who have rattled the politicians. In the May state elections in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically influential state, Congress and the other main political parties, committed to the neo-liberal agenda fared badly. A landslide victory was won by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), traditionally seen as the party for Dalits and poor communities. Dalits are literally the “suppressed” strata outside and at the bottom of the traditional Hindu caste system.
Struggles against specific SEZ’s have taken place around the country, the most widely reported being against the infamous proposed chemical plant in Nandigram, West Bengal where thousands of local villagers and farmers fought to defend their land against state government backed troops leading to at least 14 deaths. The incident drew widespread condemnation from around India and helped to galvanise opponents of the SEZ schemes.
Nandigram drew particular attention because the attacks on the villagers were backed by the CPI (M), which has ruled West Bengal for thirty years. Their Left Front coalition is fully supportive of the SEZ programme and plans to press ahead with at least five other schemes in the state. In 2002 West Bengal also outlawed strikes in information technology and information technology-enabled industries in a bid to reassure potential investors.
The pressure of globalisation has also been felt by other sectors in India. Riots in Rajastan earlier this year were sparked by members of the Nomadic Gujjar tribe campaigning for official recognition to qualify them for quotas under India’s affirmative action programme. They have argued that this is the only way that members of their 15 million strong tribe, who live right across northern India, can gain access to government jobs as well as places in state-supported schools and colleges.
This summer ground staff at state-owned Indian Airlines have been on strike to defend jobs following plans to merge with the national carrier Air India in the face of growing competition from private airlines and reduced market share. In the CPI (M) affiliated trade union CITU has called for a one-day strike in August among workers in unorganised sectors to demand legislative protection and social security.
Despite the willingness to struggle of the Indian working class, peasants and the poor a unified working class party that can lead and unite their struggles is absent.
The CPI (M) is increasingly discredited in it’s heartland of West Bengal and it remains to be seen if it can win back the support of millions to whom it has been exposed following the events at Nandigram.
The Maoists in contrast have grown in influence through active involvement in many of the anti-SEZ campaigns but do not offer a strategy focused on the leadership of the urban working class. They retain the confusion typical of Stalinism whereby prior to the decisive revolution against capital, some form of governmental collaboration with an exploiting class (a “national”, “anti-imperialist” or “democratic” bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie) dictates the delay of socialist tasks for a whole historic stage. The result of this can be seen in Nepal, where instead of taking power at the head of the workers, peasants and youth the Maoists have entered a coalition with the King still in place.
The uprisings against the SEZ’s around the country offer the opportunity to build a mass campaign against neo-liberal reform and globalisation. To succeed it will need a revolutionary strategy that can unite all those in struggle, a new working class party armed with a revolutionary programme needs to be built by the most conscious militants.