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These tasks require a new political direction, and the reformist workers parties--the formerly Soviet-backed CPI and the Maoist CPI(M)--are the biggest obstacles to finding one. These two parties are currently the main coalition partners supporting the Congress-led capitalist government. The national secretary of the CPI, D. Raja, responded to the repression in Gurgaon by saying, �There are labor laws in this country and all this could have been avoided if the management [at Honda] had taken care to study them carefully before setting out on a confrontationist path.� In fact, not only do the Indian labor laws apply only to a small fraction of the workforce, what protections they offer are full of loopholes and almost never get enforced on labor�s behalf. Relying on the bosses� rules only ties up struggles in court for years on end. Indian labor can�t play cricket to win! Meanwhile, Nirupam Sen, the CPI(M) Industry Minister of the state of West Bengal--which has been governed by the CPI(M) for three decades--responded to what happened in Gurgaon by reassuring Japanese capitalists who have invested heavily in his state: �Because the Left Front is in power in West Bengal, I can assure you that the Japanese will not face any problem.� No similar assurances were given to Bengali workers. Analyzing the perspective for India in 1930, Trotsky concluded that even though the urban working class there was far outnumbered by poor peasants (and by an even greater proportion at that time than in Russia in 1917), �all those social peculiarities which made possible and unavoidable the October revolution are present in India in still sharper form.� He added: �So far, there is only one �condition� missing: a Bolshevik party.� Seventy-five years later, that�s still the case. A workers-led social revolution in India would do a lot to inspire and aid a political revolution in China--and vice versa. A nuclear-armed workers republic in either country could help defend a proletarian revolution in Japan. For permanent revolution in India, and socialist revolution throughout Asia! CGs,                              see https://span>P. Sainath on Gurgaon in The Hindu anti-caste home email us