anti-caste

AGRICULTURAL LABORERS IN FLOOD-RAVAGED PAKISTAN: BETWEEN A NATURAL DISASTER AND A SOCIAL ONE

Pakistan One Year After the Floods by Christian Parenti (The Nation)

“Why would desperately poor flood victims fight to stay in a dust-choked tent camp on the outskirts of a violent mega-city rather than go back to their homes? [...]

“‘We don’t want to go back because the landlord will double our debt,’ says Hassan Khoso. ‘We want the government to give us land.’ He says that landlords have been coming to the camp urging the haris to return. Khoso and others say that is part of what keeps them close to the city. Along with work, there is access to hospitals and the promise—at least the promise—of education for their children.

“As at the camp on the western edge of Karachi, these people have formed a camp committee. To make their demands heard they marched to the local press club and held a sit-in. And how are such calls for reform and development being met by officials? Dead silence. [...]

“At the camp on the outskirts of Karachi one landlord from Baluchistan came with five armed guards, threatening to take away several brothers from a family named Bux. All the brothers were in debt to the landlord; he threatened to lock them in his private jail if they did not return and start working. But the camp rallied and faced him down.

“All through the Indus flood zone I heard similar stories—landless haris in urban camps preferring to become day laborers rather than return to debt peonage in the districts and landlords complaining that relief aid was keeping the haris away from their obligations. Standing on an earthen levee along a canal in the village of Arazi in the Dadu district of northern Sindh, a stout landlord named Kahari Bhutto exclaimed, ‘The farmworkers—their homes were wiped out, and they are gone. I don’t know where they are. Landowners themselves are having to do the work!’”

See also anti-caste on the 2010 floods in Pakistan and their aftermath

NEW REPORT ON PEASANT SUICIDES AND THE AGRARIAN CRISIS IN INDIA

“Every 30 Minutes”: Crushed by Debt and Neoliberal Reforms, Indian Farmers Commit Suicide at Staggering Rate (Democracy Now!)

Guest: Smita Narula, faculty director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University Law School, co-author of the report, Every Thirty Minutes: Farmer Suicides, Human Rights and the Agrarian Crisis in India

“[U]ltimately, the proximate cause for a number of these suicides is farmer indebtedness. What lies behind that indebtedness is two decades of market liberalization in India, which have resulted in two simultaneous processes. First, the government has withdrawn significantly from the agricultural sector. It has reduced subsidies. It has decreased access to rural credit. Irrigation is insufficient and doesn’t reach most farmers who need it. And at the same time, it has encouraged a switch over to cash crop cultivation, of which cotton is one example.

“Simultaneously, the market has been opened up to global competitors, which makes Indian farmers extremely vulnerable. And at the same time, foreign multinationals now dominate industries, such as the cotton industry, including dominating the key inputs that are needed for cotton. In the case of cotton, in particular, the genetically modified Bt cottonseed has been promoted so effectively in India that it now dominates the entire sector, and between its cost, quality and availability, has an enormous impact on farmer costs and profits and yields to the point that it’s landing them in enormous debt. And many of them, ironically, are actually consuming the very pesticide that they went into debt to purchase, to kill themselves when they can’t escape that cycle of debt.”

See also previous posts on the agrarian crisis

CHILDREN AND CASTE-BASED BONDED LABOR IN NEPAL

Most of Jajarkot Dalit children deprived of education (The Himalayan Times (Kathmandu))

“Based on the findings of a three-month study that it conducted in the district from December-end, the NGO Dalit Women Empowerment Forum states that roughly 60 per cent of the district’s Dalit children — 8,000 of 13,300 — are deprived of education.

“Children from poor Dalit families make the most of the illiterate children.

“According to Gita Sunar, the forum chairperson, most of these children are from landless families. They have been working as khaliya and haliya (farm labourers) to make a living. The report states that 468 Dalit families of the district have been working as haliya and 126 families have been working as khaliya.”

See also:

NEPAL: The Haliya bonded labour slavery system must be abolished without further delay (Asian Legal Resource Centre, August 26, 2010):

“The Haliyas (literally, ‘one who tills land’) are enslaved within a system of bonded labour, and are forced by a landlord or ‘master’ to execute various hard labour duties (usually agricultural) for many years, often for an entire lifetime. Other than the agricultural work, Haliyas fulfil a range of duties, including making tools (such as spades, knives, and sickles) out of iron, grazing animals, sewing clothes, making utensils and pots, and so forth. The labourers are not paid a wage for their extensive work; often they are only provided with a small amount of food. Extreme poverty and debt in the western and far western regions of Nepal has relegated many members of the lower castes, known as Dalits, to Haliya status.

“Haliyas are forced to till a small patch of land in order to repay a debt, and are often held captive with their entire families. The enslaved Haliyas typically have no direct association with any debts; in the overwhelming majority of cases, the laborers are held because of debts accumulated by their ancestors over many generations. Such debts are often so excessive that a Haliya’s work over an entire lifetime will not generate sufficient revenue to even marginally reduce the interest incurred on the debts. [...]

“Despite being malnourished, Haliyas are expected to perform extraordinarily demanding labor duties. According to a custom known as Doli, they must carry exorbitantly heavy wooden carriages on their shoulders for hours at a time. Another custom (Khali) dictates that Haliyas are entitled to no fresh food at all–only leftover goods from the harvest. Despite working excessively long hours to fulfill grueling tasks, Haliyas typically receive only a bowl of white rice per day for their labor. [...]

“The overwhelming majority of Haliyas are Dalits. In fact, Nepal’s system of caste discrimination remains a direct factor leading to both the origins and continuation of the Haliya system.”

And see:

Policy spoke in Haliya rehab wheel: Ad hoc approach exacerbating their woes by Kamal Raj Sigdel (Kathmandu Post, April 25, 2010):

“Although the government outlawed Haliya practice on September 6, 2008, unsurprisingly most of them are still working for their landlords.

“‘When the Kamaiya system [of bonded labor in the Tarai region] was outlawed in 2000, it actually liberated the landlords, not the bonded labourers,’ says Laxman Kumar Hamal, member secretary of the Freed Kamaiya Rehabilitation Execution Committee at the Ministry of Land Reform (MoLR). ‘The same mistake has been repeated in the case of Haliyas.’

“For instance, the form that is being used to collect data on Haliyas does not require landlords to express commitment to help rehabilitate the tillers, which officials say is a serious oversight that will create problems in rehabilitation.”

REPORT DOCUMENTS OPPRESSION OF MUSLIMS, TRIBALS, LOW CASTES, AND UNTOUCHABLES

Tribals, Dalits still at the bottom in most indicators (The Hindu)

“Indigenous groups and Dalits continue to be at the bottom in most indicators of well-being, the Muslims and the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) occupy the middle rung, while forward caste Hindus and other minority religions are at the top. The ‘Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition’ survey has found this.

[...]

“[M]ore than three out of 10 forward caste and minority religion men have salaried jobs, compared with about two out of 10 Muslim, OBC and Dalit men, and even fewer Adivasi men.

“Dalits and Adivasis are further disadvantaged as they either do not own land, or mainly low-productivity land. Not surprisingly, these income differences translate into differences in other indicators of human development.

[...]

“Dalits have long laboured at the margins of a society that depends on that labour, but that has often excluded them. Although some Adivasis in the northeast fared better, other Adivasis living in extremely remote locations have been left out of the recent economic progress or forced to migrate, only to work as low paid labourers. In some cases, such as for the OBCs and the Muslims, historical disadvantages have been exacerbated by structural shifts. A decline in artisan incomes has affected the Muslims disproportionately, while agricultural stagnation has affected the OBCs.”

“OPERATION GREEN HUNT”: INDIAN GOVERNMENT TARGETS TRIBALS AND GUERILLAIST LEFTISTS

India prepares to fight rebel Maoists (UPI)

"India is preparing for a prolonged counterinsurgency fight against Maoist rebels once discounted as a ragtag group of irrelevant ideologues, officials say.

"The Maoists, intent on overthrowing the government, are operating in 20 of India's states, and have become a strong and dangerous insurgency, The New York Times reported on its Web site Saturday.

"Indian leaders are prepared to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for the extended counterinsurgency effort.

"The Maoists say they represent the dispossessed of Indian society. Especially hard-hit, they claim, are indigenous tribal groups burdened with the highest rates of illiteracy, poverty and infant mortality.

"The insurgents charge the government wants to push tribal groups from their lands to grab valuable natural resources, the Times says. Maoists have escalated their efforts to sabotage roads and bridges, and even have attacked an energy pipeline."

The heart of India is under attack by Arundhati Roy (The Guardian (UK), October 30, 2009):

"Right now in central India, the Maoists' guerrilla army is made up almost entirely of desperately poor tribal people living in conditions of such chronic hunger that it verges on famine of the kind we only associate with sub-Saharan Africa. They are people who, even after 60 years of India's so-called independence, have not had access to education, healthcare or legal redress. They are people who have been mercilessly exploited for decades, consistently cheated by small businessmen and moneylenders, the women raped as a matter of right by police and forest department personnel. Their journey back to a semblance of dignity is due in large part to the Maoist cadre who have lived and worked and fought by their side for decades.

"If the tribals have taken up arms, they have done so because a government which has given them nothing but violence and neglect now wants to snatch away the last thing they have—their land. Clearly, they do not believe the government when it says it only wants to 'develop' their region. Clearly, they do not believe that the roads as wide and flat as aircraft runways that are being built through their forests in Dantewada by the National Mineral Development Corporation are being built for them to walk their children to school on. They believe that if they do not fight for their land, they will be annihilated. That is why they have taken up arms.

"Even if the ideologues of the Maoist movement are fighting to eventually overthrow the Indian state, right now even they know that their ragged, malnutritioned army, the bulk of whose soldiers have never seen a train or a bus or even a small town, are fighting only for survival."

anti-caste: Marxists in India would seek to mobilize the working class to defend tribals and leftist guerillas against this threat of massive state repression.

Unlike liberals and reformists, Marxists would not call on the capitalist state to better the conditions of tribals rather than killing and displacing them; to do so is to reinforce the illusion that this state does not necessarily act in the interests of the Indian bourgeoisie and its imperialist masters. The masses of the subcontinent need a revolutionary workers’ state to serve their own, counterposed interests.

While defending them militarily against police and paramilitary forces, Marxists would give no political support to the Naxalite (guerillaist) Maoists who, though presently under the gun, openly seek an alliance with a mythical “progressive national bourgeoisie.” Despite their claims to Marxism, the Maoist guerillas have nothing to do with the working class and base themselves entirely on peasants and the landless. As Trotsky explained, these classes, unlike the industrial proletariat, lack the unity, organization, and social power to play an independent revolutionary role. The burning social questions of the region—including the liberation of tribals, who are among the most oppressed and marginalized populations on earth—will not be settled in the jungles.

See also anti-caste: INDIAN GOVT COMMITTEE: "LARGE LANDOWNERS INVARIABLY BELONG TO THE UPPER CASTES" WHILE TATA AND ESSAR STAGE "THE BIGGEST GRAB OF TRIBAL LANDS SINCE COLUMBUS" (October 25, 2009)

And see anti-caste updates on Operation Green Hunt

INDIAN GOVT COMMITTEE: "LARGE LANDOWNERS INVARIABLY BELONG TO THE UPPER CASTES" WHILE TATA AND ESSAR STAGE "THE BIGGEST GRAB OF TRIBAL LANDS SINCE COLUMBUS"

Experts seek land ceiling like Bengal (The Telegraph (Calcutta))

"The Centre has been asked to impose the Bengal model of land distribution across the country by a panel it appointed to suggest land reforms.

"The non-binding advice, which recommends rural land ceilings more stringent than those in Bengal, comes at a time the [CPM-led] Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government has tried to raise those limits to promote industry but seen its efforts stalled. [...]

"In Bengal, the ceiling in non-irrigated areas is 17 acres and in irrigated areas, 12 acres. Left-ruled Bengal, Kerala and Tripura are the only states with rural land ceilings, the limit for irrigated land in Kerala being 15 acres. Some other states have tried and failed to enact land ceilings.

"So, although the report on 'State Agrarian Relations and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms' was handed in last January, the Centre has been unwilling to reveal its contents given their controversial nature."

anti-caste: The report of the government-appointed panel mentioned above, which is available online here in full, makes interesting reading, with frank and well supported analyses of the near-total failure of capitalist India to solve the land question. And it's only getting dramatically worse, with the current drive to separate poor and middle peasants, landless laborers (who are overwhelmingly untouchable), and tribals from what meager resources they had claim to on behalf of native and foreign-based capital. That shouldn't be news to the government that commissioned the report, since, as documented there, it's the one facilitating it. Liberal reformers regret the state taking on this role; Marxists know it's only doing its job. It's a dirty job, too: just look at Operation Green Hunt.

Excerpts below from the report's fourth chapter, Alienation of Tribal and Dalits Lands (with emphasis added by us throughout):

"Land and Social Hierarchy - Dalits and Adivasis in India

"Land is not merely an important economic asset, its ownership is also socially valued, sought and denied. In rural societies, ownership of land was and to a large extent is still coterminus with social status. Hence, its unequal distribution reflects both prevailing social stratification and also helps maintain the hierarchical structure of the society. In contrast, fair distribution of land strikes directly at the roots of an unequal social order and skewed power relations, and frees the marginalized from the clutches of perpetual bondage, for want of a sustainable livelihood. The landless, whose only remaining asset is their labour, are effectively separated from the other means of production, namely land, and remain dependent on large land holders for their survival. Powerful landlords have always opposed land reforms, fearing not only loss of control of assets, but also their dominant position in society, which straddles the economic and the political realms. The denial of access to land, thereby, functions both as a means of exclusion as also a mechanism of bondage. [...]

"The pattern of land distribution in India, therefore, reflects the existing socioeconomic hierarchy. While large landowners invariably belong to the upper castes, the cultivators belong to the middle castes, and the agricultural workers are largely dalits and tribals. [...T]he data of absolute landless families proves that the feudal society is firmly anchored in large parts of India, notwithstanding claims to the contrary.

"Tribal India – Land and People

"The tribal people, referred to in the law and constitution, considered the descendents of the original inhabitants, are largely located in the hilly tracts of Central and North Eastern India, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. [...] Earlier the temples of modern India reduced millions of tribal people to ecological refugees, now the minerals seen as the building blocks of modern India put the tribal people at risk of losing their land through acquisition and further disruption of their societies and economies. [...] Left without an alternative, either in the government or non government organizations, and left to a harsh fate of unmitigated exploitation, the tribal people initially gave the Naxalites succor and now have become their base. Most tribal areas in Central India are the abode to the naxalites, whose presence is a response both to past and future land alienation, the failure of the government to live up to its constitutional mandate and the withdrawal of the state from its responsibility to protect the tribal realm. [...]

"The data gathered from the village studies and from the records of the various governments all point out to the inescapable conclusion that alienation of tribal land continues unabated and alienation of land has actually accelerated in areas where irrigation and modernization of agriculture are making rapid strides and roadways, industrialization and urbanization is enveloping larger areas in the towns and cities. Four apparent forms of tribal land alienation are listed below. [...]

"Conclusion - The Biggest Grab of Tribal Lands after Columbus

"A civil war like situation has gripped the southern districts of Bastar, Dantewara and Bijapur in Chhattishgarh. The contestants are the armed squads of tribal men and women of the erstwhile Peoples War Group now known as the Communist Party of India (Maoist) on the one side and the armed tribal fighters of the Salva Judum created and encouraged by the government and supported with the firepower and organization of the central police forces. This open declared war will go down as the biggest land grab ever, if it plays out as per the script. The drama being scripted by Tata Steel and Essar Steel who wanted 7 villages or thereabouts, each to mine the richest lode of iron ore available in India.

"There was initial resistance to land acquisition and displacement from the tribals. The state withdrew its plans under fierce resistance. An argument put forward was ‘you don’t play foul with the Murias [a tribal group]’, it’s a matter of life and death and Murias don’t fear death. A new approach was necessary if the rich lodes of iron ore are to be mined.

"The new approach came about with the Salva Judum, euphemistically meaning peace hunt. Ironically the Salva Judum was led by Mahendra Karma, elected on a Congress ticket and the Leader of the Opposition and supported wholeheartedly by the BJP-led government. The Salva Judum was headed and peopled by the Murias, some of them erstwhile cadre and local leaders of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Behind them are the traders, contractors and miners waiting for a successful result of their strategy. The first financiers of the Salva Judum were Tata and the Essar in the quest for ‘peace’. The first onslaught of the Salva Judum was on Muria villagers who still owed allegiance to the Communist Party of India (Maoist). It turned out to be an open war between brothers. 640 villages as per official statistics were laid bare, burnt to the ground and emptied with the force of the gun and the blessings of the state. 350,000 tribals, half the total population of Dantewada district are displaced, their womenfolk raped, their daughters killed, and their youth maimed. Those who could not escape into the jungle were herded together into refugee camps run and managed by the Salva Judum. Others continue to hide in the forest or have migrated to the nearby tribal tracts in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

"640 villages are empty. Villages sitting on tons of iron ore are effectively de-peopled and available for the highest bidder. The latest information that is being circulated is that both Essar Steel and Tata Steel are willing to take over the empty landscape and manage the mines."

See also:

‘The biggest land grab after Columbus’ (Hindustan Times, December 4, 2009):

"It seems no coincidence that India’s mining heartland is also the Maoist heartland.

"'If you map the forest wealth, the mineral and the poverty of India, it’s a complete match,' said Sunita Narain, head of the Centre of Science and Environment."

And see anti-caste: OPERATION GREEN HUNT: INDIA’S DIRTY WAR ON TRIBALS AND LEFTISTS.

WHAT IS THE CLASS NATURE OF THE CONFLICT IN SWAT? (REVISITED)

With Unrest in Swat, Landowners Remain in Exile (The New York Times)

"The landlords, many of whom raised sizable militias to fight the Taliban themselves last year, say the army is again failing to provide enough protection if they return.

"Another deterrent to returning, they say, is that the top Taliban leadership, responsible for taking aim at the landlords and spreading the spoils among the landless, remains unscathed.

"If it continues, the landlords’ absence will have lasting ramifications not only for Swat, but also for Pakistan’s most populated province, Punjab, where the landholdings are vast, and the militants are gaining power, said Vali Nasr, a senior adviser to Mr. Holbrooke, the American envoy.

"'If the large landowners are kept out by the Taliban, the result will in effect be property redistribution,' Mr. Nasr said. 'That will create a vested community of support for the Taliban that will see benefit in the absence of landlords.'"

See also anti-caste: WHAT IS THE CLASS NATURE OF THE CONFLICT IN SWAT? (April 16, 2009) and AFTER PAKISTANI GOVT ACCEPTS TRUCE WITH THE TALIBAN... (February 23, 2009)

And see:

report on peasant uprising in Swat (Pakistan Forum, June-July 1972)

WHAT IS THE CLASS NATURE OF THE CONFLICT IN SWAT?

Taliban Exploit Class Rifts in Pakistan (New York Times)

"In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power.

"To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.

"The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation.

“'This was a bloody revolution in Swat,' said a senior Pakistani official who oversees Swat, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Taliban. 'I wouldn’t be surprised if it sweeps the established order of Pakistan.'

"The Taliban’s ability to exploit class divisions adds a new dimension to the insurgency and is raising alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal."

See also:

Behind the crisis in Swat by Sartaj Khan

reply: No class war in Swat by Farhat Taj

rejoinder: The nature of war in Swat by Sartaj Khan

And see:

Taliban push Robin Hood image in Pakistan (CNN, April 27, 2009)

CAPITALIST "DEVELOPMENT" IN WEST BENGAL

A photo essay on the de-industrialization of Bengal: Real estate SEZs over the ruins of factories (Sanhati)

"The real story behind the much-hyped industrialization of West Bengal is one of continuous de-industrialization, land grab and conversion to real estate.

"This has happened extensively over the last few years, with numerous examples like South City, built on the land of Usha factory and Diamond City, built on the lands of Reckitt and Coleman India Ltd. lying in front of everyones eyes.

"The latest phase is the setting up of real-estate SEZs, with a software company as a front and luxury apartments as the real thing. Two are coming up at two ends of Kolkata, the Sriram Hitec city in the north, being set up on the extensive wetlands (around 300 acres) adjoining the Hind Motors factory (originally designated for ancillary units) near Uttarpara and the other, Hiland-Bata Integrated city at the huge Batanagar factory of Bata India Ltd. near Budge Budge in the south."

photos of Shriram Hitec city and the destruction of Hind Motors

AGRARIAN CRISIS DEEPENING

Report: Over 16,000 farmers committed suicide in India in 2007 (The Earth Times)

"Most of the farmers in Maharashtra, who are engaged in cotton cultivation, had committed suicide owing to crop failures and falling prices.

"Although the national total represented a slight fall from 17,060 in 2006, the broad trend remained unchanged, the report said, adding that the total farmer suicide toll in the country since 1997 stood at 182,936.

"Besides Maharashtra, southern Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and central Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states report nearly two-thirds of the farm suicides in the country.

"According to Indian Agriculture Ministry officials, the main cause of the suicides is indebtedness. Many farmers who work on small land holdings have taken loans from private lenders who charge up to 120 per cent annual interest from the farmers."

See also:

anti-caste: AGRARIAN CRISIS IN INDIA: A SUICIDE EVERY 32 MINUTES (November 17, 2007)

And see:

the Indian Together page on farmer suicides

IN NEW ASSAULT, CPI(M) REIMPOSES ITS BLOODY CONTROL OVER REBELLIOUS VILLAGE

Nandigram carnage by Praful Bidwai (Khaalej Times (Dubai))

"The violence was rooted in the CPM's decision to 'capture' two of Nandigram's three blocks, over which it lost control. Their people had got disenchanted with it because it tried to impose a Special Economic Zone on them. The 25,000-acre SEZ was to be created by forcibly acquiring land for Indonesia's Salim group—a front for the super-corrupt dictator Gen Suharto.

[...]

"The March attempt [of the state to break the Nandigram peasants' resistance—see anti-caste: CAPITALIST STATE TERROR IN WEST BENGAL: POOR VILLAGERS RESISTING LAND SEIZURE—UNTOUCHABLES AND MUSLIMS, MOSTLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN—CUT DOWN BY POLICE AND PARTY ACTIVISTS IN CPI(M)-RULED STATE (March 22, 2007)] failed. But Nandigram's people were collectively punished through a state-imposed economic blockade. No CPM leader visited them to offer relief or compensation. A multi-pronged offensive was launched on November 5-8 after ensuring the police were withdrawn. On November 10, attackers pushed BUPC supporters into a CPM stronghold, taking 600 'prisoner'. The final assault the next day used the prisoners as a 'human shield' to 'liberate' the entire area.

"A particularly disgraceful part of the operation was sexual violence. Another was the treatment of political adversaries as an alien enemy population. Most egregious was the state machinery's complete subordination to party interests."

See also:

India: Urgent Inquiry Needed into Nandigram Violence (Human Rights Watch, January 14, 2008):

"In November, CPI-M supporters and armed thugs forcibly ended the blockade. In retribution for the protest, they attacked villagers supporting the BUPC, burned down their homes, threatened further violence if villagers went to the authorities, and humiliated them by compelling them to join CPI-M rallies. The state administration removed police posts before CPI-M supporters advanced into the area, strongly suggesting governmental complicity in the abuses."

And see:

Final Report of an Independent Citizens' Team from Kolkata (March 8, 2008)

"By November there had been a clear gathering of CPI(M) cadres and militia in the area, as well as stockpiling of arms. In early November 2007, the armed Harmad Bahini struck back with the full support of the state. They violently 'reclaimed' the 'lost' villages in Nandigram that had come under the control of the BUPC. The police was conspicuous by its inaction even as frightened villagers, caught in the violent crossfire between the two main contending political parties, fled their homes for fear of death or injury.

[...]

"On November 12, when the CRPF [Central Reserve Police Force—India's national guard] finally entered Nandigram, the CRPF director S.I.S. Ahmed said, 'The private armies, comprised CPI(M) cadres, have already captured the area. It was only after that the CRPF personnel were allowed in. Now there is not much that the CRPF can do, except the maintain status quo and protect the private armies.' Finally, ‘peace’ reigned in Nandigram, hooded, bloodied and mauled, witness to the terror writ large on people’s faces.

"The CPI(M) has resorted to rampant sexual violence, using it as a weapon of power and intimidation to browbeat all the women of Nandigram who participated in large numbers in the movement against land acquisition."

And see also:

An inconvenient truth for secular CPM: Nandigram victims’ mainly Muslim face (Indian Express, November 20, 2007):

"'The only good thing with regard to Muslims is that in the last 30 years of Left rule in West Bengal, they were safe. What happened in Nandigram now puts question mark on that, too.'—Manzoor Alam, general secretary, All India Milli Council

"This is, perhaps, the worst-kept secret of the Nandigram violence that’s now being talked about openly. And is reason for embarrassment to the CPM which swears by its secular credentials: a majority of those targeted by its party cadres as they reclaim their turf are Muslim."

AGRARIAN CRISIS IN INDIA: A SUICIDE EVERY 32 MINUTES

Neoliberalism's Price Tag: 150,000 Farm Suicides in India from 1997 Through 2005 by P. Sainath (Counterpunch)

"But what has driven the huge increase in farm suicides, particularly in the Big Four or 'Suicide SEZ' States? 'Overall,' says Professor [K.] Nagaraj [of the Madras Institute of Development Studies], 'there exists since the mid-90s, an acute agrarian crisis. That's across the country. In the Big Four and some other states, specific factors compound the problem. These are zones of highly diversified, commercialised agriculture. Cash crops dominate. (And to a lesser extent, coarse cereals.) Water stress has been a common feature - and problems with land and water have worsened as state investment in agriculture disappears. Cultivation costs have shot up in these high input zones, with some inputs seeing cost hikes of several hundred per cent. The lack of regulation of these and other aspects of agriculture have sharpened those problems. Meanwhile, prices have crashed, as in the case of cotton, due to massive U.S.-EU subsidies to their growers. Or due to price rigging with the tightening grip of large corporations over the trade in agricultural commodities.'

"'From the mid-'90s onwards,' points out Professor Nagaraj, 'prices and farm incomes crashed. As costs rose - even as bank credit dried up - so did indebtedness. Even as subsidies for corporate farmers in the West rose, we cut our few, very minimal life supports and subsidies to our own farmers. The collapse of investment in agriculture also meant it was and is most difficult to get out of this trap.'"

SINGUR, WEST BENGAL: CPI(M) CADRES RAPED AND KILLED FOR TATA

CPI-M activists get life term for Singur girl's murder (Indo-Asian News Service)

"A West Bengal court awarded life imprisonment to two Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) activists Wednesday for the 2006 murder of Singur girl Tapasi Malik.

[...]

"The court had convicted the two Tuesday for the murder of 18-year-old Tapasi, who was among those protesting land acquisition for the Tata Motor's Nano car project in Singur."

Tapasi Malik, the daughter of a landless laborer, had been active in the protests against the forced eviction of 6000 families from her locality by the CPI(M)-led state government of West Bengal to create a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for use by Tata Motors, India's largest automaker. The Telegraph (Calcutta) reported on December 20, 2006 that "[e]ighteen-year-old Tapasi had become a hero of sorts for the small section of Singur still resisting Tata Motors’ small-car project. She was throttled, dragged to the Tata plot, dumped into a pit and set on fire."

Tapasi Malik's mother looking at her daughter's photograph

See also:

From Singur to Nandigram & Beyond: Development as dispossession by Praful Bidwai (January 27, 2007)

"If and when ordinary mortals like you and me buy land, we have to search high and low for an affordable piece, hire brokers, make several trips to different sites, and borrow bank loans, which we must repay through our nose over 10 or 15 years. Besides these high transaction costs in time and money, we must pay stamp duty to the government, which is usually a good eight percent of the land’s value.

"None of this applies to India’s biggest business house (and one of its oldest industrial families), namely, the Tatas—at least as far as the Singur car project is concerned. The Tatas are no ordinary mortals. In fact so special are they that West Bengal’s Left Front government woos them with the choice of six different sites, besides the Uttarakhand and Orissa governments. They choose one at Singur, next to an expressway, in one of Bengal’s most fertile tracts, just 45 km from Kolkata. But they do so after stipulating a series of conditions.

"The government must procure the land for them. This will cost Rs 140 crores. But the Tatas will pay only Rs 20 crores for it.

"They will pay no stamp duty.

"They must have a contiguous plot of 997 acres (almost 400 hectares, or 40 lakh square metres), although no Indian car factory has anything approaching this area. (Even Tata Motors’s giant Pune factory has only 188 acres.)

"The factory proper, say the Tatas, will have a built-up area of only 1.5 lakh sq m, or 4 percent of the land acquired.

"The land must be fenced off and Sec 144 must be imposed to suppress protests by the 12,000 affected people.

"That’s not all. The Tatas say the government must 'compensate' them for 'sacrificing' the 16 percent excise duty exemption offered by Uttarakhand if they locate the car factory there. This means 'upfront infrastructural assistance' worth Rs 160 crore.

[...]

"The Tatas claim the Rs 10,000 crore investment will directly generate 2,000 jobs. But noted economist Amit Bhadhuri estimates it will produce just about 300, besides indirect employment for 900. In the process, Singur’s flourishing economy, where two-thirds of land is multi-cropped with vegetables and paddy, will be devastated, along with the livelihoods not just of landowners and sharecroppers (bargadars), but of landless workers and rural artisans.

"Singur will witness counter-reform, a reversal of the most successful land reform ever undertaken in West Bengal. Even the bargadars’ share in the land (75 percent to the absentee landlord’s 25 percent) will be upturned in the land compensation formula. No wonder, the West Bengal government has used repressive methods, including mass arrests, Sec 144 and physical attacks to enforce the sweetheart deal."

REPORT: NANDIGRAM VIOLENCE WAS A "PRE-PLANNED, STATE-SPONSORED MASSACRE"

Report of the People’s Tribunal on Nandigram, Executive Summary (All-India Citizens' Initiative, May 26-28, 2007)

"The population is predominantly a mix of Muslim and lower caste Hindus, who have lived harmoniously together for a long time. The area has been till recently a political stronghold of the CPI and the CPI (M).

"More than anything else the area is famous for its historical role in the struggle against British colonial rule and during the Tebagha movement in the mid-forties when peasants in many parts of pre-Partition Bengal captured vast quantities of land demanding it their right as tillers of the soil.

[...]

"How the Police Firing Started

"On 14 March 2007 around 9.30 a.m. hundreds of policemen gathered at two entry points into Nandigram—one from the Tekhali Bridge, Gokulnagar, Adhikaripara and the other from the side of Bhangabera Bridge, near Sonachura. Apart from policemen local leaders and cadres of Communist Party of India (Marxist) were also present.

"The deponents claim that the people were peaceful. Only one deponent said there was stone throwing by boys and girls. There is no evidence of the carriage of any arms by the villagers.

"There was an announcement by the police party asking the villagers to allow them to repair the 'bund' [embankment, into which the villagers had dug a trench to defend themselves against developers and the state]. People replied that they would undertake this work themselves. There was very little dialogue over this issue and very soon the police went into the offensive. Police fired tear gas and immediately followed with bullets & rubber bullets, chased the people, mostly women & children, hitting out with lathis and iron rods, and firing. They were chased, and many were caught and mercilessly beaten, with sexual assault, including rape.

"The lack of parleying seems to suggest that the carnage caused by police firing on the retreating mass, mainly of women & children, was pre-planned.

"The depositions before the Tribunal also clearly bring out that police went on firing after the people started to flee and that they were not firing towards the legs.

"The police behaviour was brutal. According to one deposition Uttam Pal, after being shot down, was asking for water. Policemen spat on his face and beat up those trying to give him water.

"Several depositions before the Tribunal accused policemen of rape. Apart from rape, many women have deposed about being stripped, molestation (the breasts being frequent targets), indecent exposure, and filthy language. One deponent accuses policemen of having slashed her breasts. Several accuse policemen of forcing rod/lathi/gunbarrel into sex organs and turning the insert in some cases.

"The evidence definitely points towards serious sexual assault, including rape, by policemen.

"CPI (M) Cadre Allegedly In Police Uniform

"The deponents before the Tribunal spoke of the presence among policemen of others in police dress but wearing slippers (chappals [sandals]), black masks and red arm/wrist bands. There is also reference to others in white dress (sari) and 'ghomta' (veil) pointing out people. These persons were also firing guns and assaulting people with iron rods. They were even more vicious than the policemen.

"A large number of deponents agree that they were cadres of the CPI (M) and some of them identify and name the cadres too."

See anti-caste: CAPITALIST STATE TERROR IN WEST BENGAL: POOR VILLAGERS RESISTING LAND SEIZURE—UNTOUCHABLES AND MUSLIMS, MOSTLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN—CUT DOWN BY POLICE AND PARTY ACTIVISTS IN CPI(M)-RULED STATE (March 22, 2007)

CAPITALIST STATE TERROR IN WEST BENGAL: POOR VILLAGERS RESISTING LAND SEIZURE—UNTOUCHABLES AND MUSLIMS, MOSTLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN—CUT DOWN BY POLICE AND PARTY ACTIVISTS IN CPI(M)-RULED STATE

[See also India: The Nandigram Massacre—“Left Front” Government’s State Repression in West Bengal,
Spartacist Canada No. 159 (Winter 2008/2009)]

In late December public notice was given that 25,000 acres of farmland in the Nandigram area of West Bengal was to be forcibly appropriated by a development authority linked to the state, which has been ruled for the past three decades by the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), to allow an Indonesian firm to build a huge chemical manufacturing center there (along with hotels, a golf course, etc.). The local residents immediately began to organize to defend their homes and livelihood. On the morning of March 14, several thousand of them gathered in protest of the seizure and were met by half as many police and CPI(M) cadre disguised as police, whose planned attack on the unarmed crowd—with women and children stationed at the front precisely to deter such an act—is described in the report excerpted below. The government admits to killing fourteen people and injuring over 200 more; residents and others put the actual death toll at over 100.

Report of Investigation into Nandigram Mass Killings by Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) and Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity (PBKMS)

"People were aware that there would be an attempt by the police and party goons to re-enter the area as a first step towards taking over their land. They decided to offer peaceful resistance by organising a Gouranga Puja [Hindu worship ceremony] (incidentally Gouranga is the God believed to be protector of the people nearby). They also planned a Koran recitation ceremony. Once this programme was known, people flocked to the spots where the Puja and Koran recitals were being held. At Bhangabera the Puja was in a trench that had been cut in the road earlier. About 5,000-6,000 people were present, of which 3000 were women and about 400-500 were children. The people were unarmed as they were in religious ceremonies. The women and children decided to stand in front as the people assumed that the police would not be that much violent with women and children.

"A large police force with firearms and tear gas arrived in vehicles and buses on the Khejuri side of the Talpatti Khal in the morning. They were accompanied by many armed CPM goons. They were also carrying truckloads of road repair equipments and materials. At Bhangabera Bridge, they first filled up a large trench near the bridge. None opposed this. They then began advancing across the bridge. There seems to have been no prior warning. It eas reported that, Anup Mondal of the CPM was using a hand mike, but most barring a few nearby heard nothing and were not forewarned about the police action. Without any proper warning the police-CPI(M) combine began throwing bombs and tear gas shells. This blinded the crowd and created confusion and panic. At this juncture, the the police-CPI(M) combine began firing from various firearms and advancing further while firing. Operations, including the firing and the filling up of the trench seemed to have been planned earlier. While the firing continued for about 15 minutes, other forms of violence followed for the next hour and a half or so.

"There are many complaints of horrific and deliberate acts of violence during this phase and afterwards. [...] Women were taken away and raped. Women who tried to hide or wash their burning eyes in ponds were forced to come out and then beaten up again. Houses and shops were looted. Instead of using minimum force necessary to disperse the unarmed people gathered there, maximum possible force appear to have been applied to instil fear and terror in people, to break their morale and teach them a lesson. The large presence of armed CPI(M) men, many also in police fatigue injected the element of vengeance and revenge in the operation.

[...]

"According to all the 200 or more villagers we met and the patients admitted in Tamluk Hospital and Nandigram Hospital, more than 100 persons have died in the firing. They alleged that most of the bodies were taken away by the Police-CPI (M) combine by truck towards Khejuri or buried under the newly repaired road at Bhangabera."

See also, on CPI(M) strategy:

Police and Cadres Kill 125 in Nandigram Massacre (appeal by Sanjay Sanjvai, an activist for the National Alliance of People's movements, at Kafila.org, March 15, 2007)

"The plan to push in police into the trouble-torn and tense area was chalked out by the CPI(M) top brass last Saturday. They were under pressure from the East Midnapur unit of the party led by MP Lakshman Seth who felt that the CPI(M) would permanently lose ground in the area unless barricades were removed and ‘normalcy’ was restored in Nandigram. A large section of the CPI(M) secretariat was also of the same view and felt that the manner villagers were keeping the administration paralyzed for over two months was creating a bad precedent.

"According to the strategy, the police was asked to remove resistance, enter the villages and ‘restore law of the land’. They were to be followed by CPI(M) activists, who would 'reinstall civil society' in Nandigram."

And see, on events leading up to the massacre:

A Bridge Too Far by Satya Sagar (Combat Law, May-June 2007):

"In Singur [where despite resistance local people had their land seized to set up an SEZ for Tata Motors (later abandoned by the company); see anti-caste: SINGUR, WEST BENGAL: CPI(M) CADRES RAPED AND KILLED FOR TATA (November 12, 2007)] while a section of absentee landowners had agreed to sell their land to the state, a bulk of farmers and sharecroppers in the area refused to acquiesce. In response, the state government occupied and fenced the Singur land, imposing section 144 of the Indian penal code to prohibit public protests—in other words using brute force to oust farmers from their own land.

"So when towards the end of 2006 state ministers and CPI(M) leaders started talking publicly of setting up a huge chemical hub in Nandigram under the Salim group, an Indonesian multinational, the local folk here started getting agitated.

"At a public meeting in Nandigram market on December 29, 2006, the CPI(M) member of Parliament, Lakshman Seth, urged farmers to pave the way for development and industrialisation in Nandigram by giving up their lands in return for monetary compensation. Seth, who is also the chairman of the Haldia Development Authority, in his speech, named the villages that would have to make way for the chemical hub. The total area to be acquired was a whopping 14,500 acres to set up the SEZ that would include a mega chemical and petrochemical hub and a shipyard.

"Though, according to CPI(M) leaders, no final decision has yet been taken about the exact location of the projects, an informal notice for public information regarding likely location of this project was circulated by the Haldia Development Authority to all blocks and Gram Panchayat offices of the area.

"This announcement, however, was enough to aggravate tension in the area as resentment grew among villagers at not being consulted on the issue and at the thought of being kicked out of their ancestral lands. 'If we leave our land we will become beggars in the cities,' says Jayanti, another resident of Sonchura, explaining the strong sentiments behind the local resistance.

"On January 3, 2007, villagers clashed with a police patrol that was surveying the Nandigram area. According to the CPI(M), the police had to be called in after members of the opposition Trinamool Congress ransacked the office of the local panchayat pradhan. Four people were injured in the police lathicharge and gunfire that ensued while one police jeep was set on fire by an angry mob.

"On January 5, 2007, several opposition party groups that had already been working in the area—ranging from the Trinamool Congress to the Socialist Unity Centre of India and the Santosh Rana faction of the CPI(Marxist-Leninist Liberation) decided to join hands to form the Bhumi Uchchhed Protirodh Committee (BUPC) loosely translated as ‘committee for resistance to eviction from homeland’.

"According to locals, the response to this political consolidation of opposition forces got a swift response from the ruling CPI(M). In the early morning on January 7, villagers alleged, CPI(M) cadres, armed with sticks, knives and guns attacked Nandigram, crossing the Bangabhera bridge from Khejuri. The official CPI(M) version is that it is the BUPC members who started the fight by attacking their people camped in Khejuri.

"Whoever started the fight, in the process three people from Nandigram—Bharat Mandal, Shekh Salim and Biswajit Maiti (just 12 years old)—died of bullet injuries. In retaliation, enraged villagers lynched Shankar Samanta, a local landlord accused of giving shelter to what they called CPI(M) goons and also taking part in the firings after which they ransacked and burnt down his palatial house close to the bridge.

"It was following this incident that the locals decided to dig a trench on the road connecting the Bangabhera bridge to Nandigram and block the road further with tree-trunks, boulders and bricks.

"In the weeks and months after the violence of early January, the Bangabhera bridge and adjoining areas became a war zone with almost daily attacks by CPI(M) cadre who had gathered in Khejuri, villagers said. These cadres included some of those who had left the Nandigram area, along with their families, due to threats from those opposed to the acquisition of land for the chemical hub project.

"In response, Nandigram villagers blockaded all entry points into their area making it a no-go zone for the state officials, particularly police. There are reports that some arms and ammunition also found its way into the hands of locals to be used against what has been termed as the superior firepower of the CPI(M) cadre, who, after all, also had the backing of state authorities."

And see also:

Nandigram, an atrocity on dalits by Tanveer Kazi, national secretary of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights and member of a fact-finding team in Nandigram on March 16-17 and later from April 20-25 (India Today, May 5, 2007):

"It is clear that the majority of victims did come from the Scheduled Castes – not surprising as in the area and most parts of India the most economically vulnerable are the dalits. Lip service is all that these vulnerable communities receive in place of rehabilitation and compensation, and the same has happened in the case of land seizures too. As villager Santosh Patro reiterated to our team of the former residents of Haldia '...all those who left their land are selling cucumber and cleaning shit.'

"The decision to act with such force and brutality must be seen as pre-meditated and could also be related to caste or the perceived status or lack of, of those living in the area. Effectively the local residents were claiming political autonomy of the area, ridding it of party cadres and asserting themselves. This can be seen to reflect a deeper tension that the SEZ issue finally inflamed. The response was a decidedly brutal one, in order to put residents 'back in their place'. Terror is one of the most effective tools to manufacture submission and in this instance has already been effective; the mere sight of police was enough to disperse a crowd that had gathered after the discovery of charred remains in the area."

Muslims are also heavily represented among the peasants of Nandigram. As noted in the report quoted above, the mass protest that came under attack, though religiously oriented, was explicitly intercommunal (featuring both puja and recital of the Koran).

WOMEN AND THE AGRARIAN CRISIS

Sorry plight of India farm widows (BBC)

"Mr Kelkar [a cotton farmer who hung himself out of despair over debt] had often talked farmers out of taking their lives in the state's cotton growing belt of Vidarbha where, on average, one farmer commits suicide every eight hours.

"In other words, three women become widows here every day.

"Mr Kelkar's wife, Indira, is now one of them.

"She is left with the mammoth responsibility of paying off his debt while looking after their four children."

REPRESSION OF TRIBALS RESISTING SEIZURE OF THEIR LAND

People's Version of Kalinganagar Firing by Independent Media

"At a protest in Kalinganagar, Orissa, on 2nd January, 2006 the State police opened fire on a protest by local tribals against the takeover and seizure of their land by a Tata Steel plant. Sixteen people died on the spot, four more died in the hospital, and a police constable was also killed in the clash."

family of tribal cut down by police

See also:

Resistance and tragedy (Frontline, January 14-27, 2006):

"The demand of tribal people who would be affected by the proposed project was that the government allow the construction of the boundary wall only after the company paid them adequate compensation and ensured proper rehabilitation. Instead, they were silenced with brute force by the government. As shots fired from semi-automatic rifles broke the mid-day stillness, panic-stricken men and women ran helter-skelter. The firing continued for nearly an hour. The policemen appeared bent upon avenging the death of their colleague."

And see:

Police firing at Kalinganagar, A Report by People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Orissa (April 2006)