Though communists in West Bengal did try to run a doctrinaire administration, Kerala communist government did a much better job.
Congress , on most part , ran a liberal looking government, which balanced even communal and communist elements in the polity. It was a remarkable achievement.
Didn’t devour this brilliant essay. I chewed it slowly - the writing too beautiful to swallow whole. Please read this essay how liberals spent most of their time on puerile vacuity while either the commies or the fascists run the state.
India is a very young country. younger people tend to be liberals; they turn into fiscal conservatives when (and if) they have to get a job, pay taxes, and buy a house/car/etc. many turn into social conservatives when they have kids or become old/sensible enough to disapprove of new fashions/marketing campaigns.
there is a lot of media focus on the youth and future of the country. decades of bawlywood violins have made many Indians an emotional lot. it doesnt take much for many in India to start looking at hollywood movies for a sense of normalcy and escape from the emotionalism/abuse of bollywood. hollywood actively markets its celebrities to the Indian middle-class and yuppies. its like bollywood's purpose is to disgust Indian middle-class into watching western cinema.
added to this volatile mix is goonda crony-capitalism disguised as religious revivalism funded by state- and non-state actors whose objective appears to perpetuate a narrative dictated by countries that have historically shafted India.
young population + emotionality + state-funded history-blinders = a generation of Indian yuppies who think Americana is the epitome of liberalism.
the danger, imho, is when fiscal conservatives become a controlling majority. they might declare India capitalist country and millions will die due to lack of state support.
maybe a solution is to talk about past benefits schemes to show where the money went and what could/should have been done better. this educates people about the pitfalls and loopholes that need to be closed. has to be done at a grassroots level for it to have a lasting effect.
it would certainly help to have an alternate movie industry that makes realistic art school type films instead of escapist abusive nonsense.
realistic art type films ? what like Parasite ?, Okja ?, Snow piercer ?
Dream on. shilling for more Agitprop lite is like asking for more feces despite being neck deep in cesspit.
As for the fiscal conservatives why shouldn't people declare India a capitalist country ? You rage against crony capitalism yet you don't even know why its bad. Ever heard of S.Korea and their entire development model not to mention the Japanese who based their entire political economy on what you deride as crony capitalism or at least a refined version of it = state + corporate nexus best embodied by (at least in Japans case) MITI.
India already has a surplus of economic parasites subsidized by the state which in itself is incompetent by nature, pathetic and largely useless to society, its a long list featuring bureaucrats to liberal arts and social science grads from govt institutions to left wing politicians to the vast array of workers unions who form the crux of the dead weight in Indian economy that's after excluding the dysfunctional regulatory system, laughably pathetic status quo of port-rail-road infrastructure, economically illiterate(at least in practice) politicians, consequential effect of past hairbrained and frankly infuriating policies starting from the economically carcinogenic Industrial Policy Resolution 1956 that set the soft precedent for the fetishization of poverty and industrial incompetency in India, then there is the MRTP act of 1969 .
India will develop when the state and society sets aside its moronic redistributive fetishes(a poor and pathetic nations with already very little relative to what it needs is divvying up what little it has, how very socialist of you ) and focus exclusively on capital accumulation for the foreseeable future and employment generation through labor intensive industries. I don't see that happening any time soon.
And now you want to justify redistributive delusions instead of actually encouraging employment generation ? do you know how many people there are in India ? can you even read a map ? Wasn't until the start of the 2010s that Indian states actively considered the necessity of industrialization, which requires capital, lots of it. Scarce capital a capital poor country like India simply fcking lacks. Get that and you are a quarter way there. India doesn't have massive resource reserves like Canada or the US or Australia or even China. India might be comparable to China in terms of population but in term of resources relative to its size its no different from South Korea, Japan or Taiwan. All three nations suppressed and even obliterated militant labor activism and labor led industrial unrests to get to where they are that's not even counting PRC and Vietnam.
I don't mind state subsidized education and healthcare for the under privileged and socially oppressed but wasteful spending on economically useless elements ? fck No.
I agree with you about the Communist capture of economic policy-making under Indira Gandhi. But you have not accounted for the radical leftward tilt under the Janata Party. The expansion of the list of items reserved exclusively for manufacture by SSIs expanded hugely when George Fernandes was industries minister. He also forced MNCs to dilute their equity to 40 percent. Coca-Cola and IBM fled the country. (2) Communist trade unions created solidarity among the working classes, regardless of religion or caste. The ascendance of the right-wing owes much to the weakening of the trade union movement across the world, not just in India. (3) The private sector is deeply unpopular in India; it is regarded with suspicion. Except for a few companies and business groups, the private sector is seen as a thieving sector. It is low of ethics. This is why the nationalisation of the banking and insurance sectors was not unpopular. (4) The Hindu majoritarian tendency has its roots in pre-Independence India. It was not just a reaction to Communism. It had support even when Gandhi was alive. We must locate the resurgence of religious majoritarianism in the reaction against globalisation, the self-aggrandizement by globalised elites, and the communications revolution brought about by social media.
Not expected from a seasoned political commentator who does some research...trying to superpose the Russian Revolution on Indian Communists and declare them illiberal! Private armies in West Bengal communist party? You serious? You have not understood the concept of the bhadralok at all.....anyway, one is entitled to one's own views, but deliberate inaccuracies take away the credibility from an otherwise good body of work. Sadly disappointed!
Indian communists esp few states never followed true ideology of marx. It was in wrong hands and they exploited. When they tried to become liberal for eg singur , didi opposed it and gave them their medicine. That was the end. So however good is the ideology if it is in wrong hands ,will perish.
Singapore has social inclusiveness looks very different there.
YOU don't seem to understand what that actually entails. As for communism is dead , every crisis is an opportunity for parasites like communist's to imbed themselves into society. I'll take a naïve idealistic moron of a socialist over a communist any day
You are branding nearly half the country as fascists. That is quite amusing. But apart from that, largely a good article.
Though communists in West Bengal did try to run a doctrinaire administration, Kerala communist government did a much better job.
Congress , on most part , ran a liberal looking government, which balanced even communal and communist elements in the polity. It was a remarkable achievement.
Didn’t devour this brilliant essay. I chewed it slowly - the writing too beautiful to swallow whole. Please read this essay how liberals spent most of their time on puerile vacuity while either the commies or the fascists run the state.
thanks for the eye-opening article.
India is a very young country. younger people tend to be liberals; they turn into fiscal conservatives when (and if) they have to get a job, pay taxes, and buy a house/car/etc. many turn into social conservatives when they have kids or become old/sensible enough to disapprove of new fashions/marketing campaigns.
there is a lot of media focus on the youth and future of the country. decades of bawlywood violins have made many Indians an emotional lot. it doesnt take much for many in India to start looking at hollywood movies for a sense of normalcy and escape from the emotionalism/abuse of bollywood. hollywood actively markets its celebrities to the Indian middle-class and yuppies. its like bollywood's purpose is to disgust Indian middle-class into watching western cinema.
added to this volatile mix is goonda crony-capitalism disguised as religious revivalism funded by state- and non-state actors whose objective appears to perpetuate a narrative dictated by countries that have historically shafted India.
young population + emotionality + state-funded history-blinders = a generation of Indian yuppies who think Americana is the epitome of liberalism.
the danger, imho, is when fiscal conservatives become a controlling majority. they might declare India capitalist country and millions will die due to lack of state support.
maybe a solution is to talk about past benefits schemes to show where the money went and what could/should have been done better. this educates people about the pitfalls and loopholes that need to be closed. has to be done at a grassroots level for it to have a lasting effect.
it would certainly help to have an alternate movie industry that makes realistic art school type films instead of escapist abusive nonsense.
realistic art type films ? what like Parasite ?, Okja ?, Snow piercer ?
Dream on. shilling for more Agitprop lite is like asking for more feces despite being neck deep in cesspit.
As for the fiscal conservatives why shouldn't people declare India a capitalist country ? You rage against crony capitalism yet you don't even know why its bad. Ever heard of S.Korea and their entire development model not to mention the Japanese who based their entire political economy on what you deride as crony capitalism or at least a refined version of it = state + corporate nexus best embodied by (at least in Japans case) MITI.
India already has a surplus of economic parasites subsidized by the state which in itself is incompetent by nature, pathetic and largely useless to society, its a long list featuring bureaucrats to liberal arts and social science grads from govt institutions to left wing politicians to the vast array of workers unions who form the crux of the dead weight in Indian economy that's after excluding the dysfunctional regulatory system, laughably pathetic status quo of port-rail-road infrastructure, economically illiterate(at least in practice) politicians, consequential effect of past hairbrained and frankly infuriating policies starting from the economically carcinogenic Industrial Policy Resolution 1956 that set the soft precedent for the fetishization of poverty and industrial incompetency in India, then there is the MRTP act of 1969 .
India will develop when the state and society sets aside its moronic redistributive fetishes(a poor and pathetic nations with already very little relative to what it needs is divvying up what little it has, how very socialist of you ) and focus exclusively on capital accumulation for the foreseeable future and employment generation through labor intensive industries. I don't see that happening any time soon.
And now you want to justify redistributive delusions instead of actually encouraging employment generation ? do you know how many people there are in India ? can you even read a map ? Wasn't until the start of the 2010s that Indian states actively considered the necessity of industrialization, which requires capital, lots of it. Scarce capital a capital poor country like India simply fcking lacks. Get that and you are a quarter way there. India doesn't have massive resource reserves like Canada or the US or Australia or even China. India might be comparable to China in terms of population but in term of resources relative to its size its no different from South Korea, Japan or Taiwan. All three nations suppressed and even obliterated militant labor activism and labor led industrial unrests to get to where they are that's not even counting PRC and Vietnam.
I don't mind state subsidized education and healthcare for the under privileged and socially oppressed but wasteful spending on economically useless elements ? fck No.
I agree with you about the Communist capture of economic policy-making under Indira Gandhi. But you have not accounted for the radical leftward tilt under the Janata Party. The expansion of the list of items reserved exclusively for manufacture by SSIs expanded hugely when George Fernandes was industries minister. He also forced MNCs to dilute their equity to 40 percent. Coca-Cola and IBM fled the country. (2) Communist trade unions created solidarity among the working classes, regardless of religion or caste. The ascendance of the right-wing owes much to the weakening of the trade union movement across the world, not just in India. (3) The private sector is deeply unpopular in India; it is regarded with suspicion. Except for a few companies and business groups, the private sector is seen as a thieving sector. It is low of ethics. This is why the nationalisation of the banking and insurance sectors was not unpopular. (4) The Hindu majoritarian tendency has its roots in pre-Independence India. It was not just a reaction to Communism. It had support even when Gandhi was alive. We must locate the resurgence of religious majoritarianism in the reaction against globalisation, the self-aggrandizement by globalised elites, and the communications revolution brought about by social media.
Not expected from a seasoned political commentator who does some research...trying to superpose the Russian Revolution on Indian Communists and declare them illiberal! Private armies in West Bengal communist party? You serious? You have not understood the concept of the bhadralok at all.....anyway, one is entitled to one's own views, but deliberate inaccuracies take away the credibility from an otherwise good body of work. Sadly disappointed!
Indian communists esp few states never followed true ideology of marx. It was in wrong hands and they exploited. When they tried to become liberal for eg singur , didi opposed it and gave them their medicine. That was the end. So however good is the ideology if it is in wrong hands ,will perish.
India cannot do without Social Inclusiveness ...you may call it Communism, which is so, so, so DEAD...please change the Narrative...
Singapore has social inclusiveness looks very different there.
YOU don't seem to understand what that actually entails. As for communism is dead , every crisis is an opportunity for parasites like communist's to imbed themselves into society. I'll take a naïve idealistic moron of a socialist over a communist any day