Public wrath needed for Naya (realised justice) in Rizwanur case

There are many occassions in life when it really feels nice to be proved wrong. Yesterday [Aug 14, 2008] happens to be one of those days since, during the day, Calcutta High Court, instead of taking the cover-up route, directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s premier body of sleuths, to file charge sheets against the accused in the Rizwanur Rehman case.

I had written that chances are, the whole case will end up in a clever cover-up. Thank God that with this order, the chances of a complete and clever cover-up have more or less vanished.

But the truth? I don’t think that will come out ever.

With the kind of evidence tampering that Kolkata Police has done, we shall never know who killed Rizwanur. And killed he must have been because a suicide theory simply does not fit the young man’s psychological profile. Even if Riz had to suffer the heart-breaking betrayal of someone he apparently loved quite dearly, suicide seems to be the last thing that a fighter like him would have opted for.

He would have fought till death and that’s what really happened – they killed him because there was no way out. Riz would not give up whatever the temptations or humiliations.

Even then just chargesheeting the accused is one huge step forward. At least let these vermins face some harrassment – even that is some punishment, however mild compared to their crime.

But I have little doubt that the accused will ultimately go scot free as the CBI will not be able to amass enough evidence to get a conviction.

Moreover, the High Court has not directed any charge sheet against Ashok Todi. Only Pradip Todi, A. Saraogi and Pappu apart from three policemen – deputy commissioner Ajay Kumar, assistant commissioner Sukanti Chakroborty and sub-inspector Krishnendu Das – will be charge sheeted. So, former police commissioner Prasun Mukherjee too will stay unscathed.

Unfortunately, however, even this little step towards some kind of justice has to be taken with a pinch of salt because the charge sheet will be only under the anti-rowdy section – a relatively minor offence compared to murder or abatement of suicide.

So, even as I write, I realise that, after all, what we are really witnessing is unmistakeably a cover-up in one way or another – directly or indirectly. The truth will not come out, the murderers will not be charge sheeted for either murder or abatement of suicide, justice will be denied. There is little doubt about that. The only consolation is: these killers may have to spend a few days in the cooler.

But there are, hopefully, larger implications. By confirming that the seven accused should at least be chargesheeted, even if it is only under the anti-rowdy section, the Calcutta High Court has again brought the issue back into public discourse. Let us hope this will lead to some more public pressure to punish those who helped to snuff out a completely innocent but young life.

I must reiterate once again that the only way these murderers can be punished is through what may be called public punishment. Concerned members of the public should unite and launch a concerted campaign against the Todi’s and their products and the accused policemen should be socially boycotted.

If these two moves can be carried out with sufficient intensity then these killers will hopefully be forced to commit suicide themselves, thus ridding our society of their excresence-like existence. 

There will be many who will try to point out that in a democratic country where there exists the rule of law no one is guilty till proven guilty. Very true, but such an argument would be only looking at what Amartya Sen would call the Niti approach to justice – an approach that gives importance only to legal and behaviourial propriety and what could create a perfectly just society. It would completely ignore the Naya approach that gives importance to removing gross injustices here and now to realise justice in actual reality.

For global readers, if any, Niti and Naya are two Sanskrit words that mean the same thing – justice. Amartya Sen, the nobel-winning economist, however, made the above distinction while delivering the Hiren Mukherjee Memorial lecture in the Indian Parliament recently. I will discuss Amartya’s ideas in a later post in more detail but let us come back to the issue at hand.    

Even if we accept that the general principle should certainly be that no one should be declared guilty till proven guilty, in the Rizwanur case, little proof is required to know for an absolute certainty that the 7 people accused and Ashok Todi and Prasun Mukherjee are guilty and should be punished with the severest of punishments in this country – death by hanging because they are guilty of murder.

Of course, getting a conviction in a court of law along these lines is an entirely different matter altogether because some of these accused, as the very guardians of law, were quick to completely erase and destroy every single bit of evidence against them. This compounds their crime and in no way makes them deserving of a so-called fair trial.

Unfair people have to be dealt with unfairly. Gross injustice must be removed here and now by whatever means that may yield this justice in reality, in actuality, instead of trying to be a stickler for propriety and perfect/ideal justice and in the process deny realised justice.

Let us hope public conscience will be strong enough to generate more than sufficient public wrath that is needed to actually bring the guilty to justice!

One can only hope and go on hoping – like Rizwanur had done till he was attacked from behind and killed, probably by a couple of “policemen” in plain clothes!

Why Fix The Climate? Change The World Environment Day Slogan Instead!

I waited till this morning’s newspapers before writing this post. I was looking for a media story on how and why the Indian government has forced a change in the slogan for this year’s World Environment Day.

The actual slogan worked out by the United Nations Environment Programme for the World Environment Day 2008 is CO2: Kick the habit! Towards a Low Carbon Economy. While the whole world is going by this slogan, in India it has been changed to simply “Pick Right! Making the right choices”.

For the last three years I have been tracking the WED slogan mainly because of my daughter’s WED school projects as well as to help organize WED programs for a local NGO and a strong advocate of protecting natural waterbodies, Vasaman.

As I also do a fair amount of English to Bengali translation work, for a fee, of course, the slogan is particularly interesting to me because I look out for the Bangla version of the English slogan – usually, the UNEP guys come up with extremely good translations which are worth learning from. For example, the Bengali version of the 2006 slogan: Don’t Desert Drylands is a case in point. The Bengali version punned on the Bengali word “Bandhur” which means “of a friend” and also “drylands” or “arid lands” in Bengali and which said “be a friend to dry lands”.

This year too , I had checked up the WED slogan and was waiting for the usual UNEP and Environment Ministry, GoI, sponsored WED ad in Bengali newspapers on June 5 (WED) to find out how they had translated this year’s slogan. We (me and my daughter) had already worked out a Bengali version and were sort of waiting for our exam results to come – how close was our version to the UNEP/GoI version?

When we saw the UNEP/GoI WED ads in the newspapers yesterday, we were shocked: the slogan had changed! A quick check on the Internet showed that the UNEP had stuck to its slogan – there had been no change there. The obvious conclusion was that the slogan had been changed by the Indian government for consumption by the Indian public. I told my daughter here is a story that environment beat journos should be covering in tomorrow’s newspapers, of course, if they are good enough and if they are doing their jobs assiduously. That the change had been made by the government was confirmed when I read the government’s Press Information Bureau release on the subject. Further confirmation came from President Pratibha Patil’s address on Thursday during a meet on WED.

Today’s newspapers are as shocking as yesterday’s. Not one newspaper or for that matter any electronic media (as far as I know no TV channel has carried such a story nor have I found any on the Internet) has written or broadcast a single word on the subject. With my ungagged professional colleagues failing to do their job, I now have no option but to cry out loud through my gags. Although I don’t have the opportunity or resources to interview the Cabinet minister for environment and forests, Dr Manmohan Singh (yes, in case you did not know, the PM holds charge of this ministry and there is no minister of state to help him – so much for the importance we attach to this subject! You may, of course, interpret this any which way you like – the PM looking after environment? See how much importance we give to this subject! Or you could argue – the PM? With no MoS to help? How can the PM find time to look after a ministry that needs more than whole-time attention if that were at all possible?), and find out from the horse’s mouth why we have changed the slogan in India, as a citizen journalist let me post my 2 cents and hazard a guess. So, here goes:

Obviously the Indian government cannot agree to a slogan that calls for kicking the habit of high carbon usage because in its eyes high carbon usage is synonymous with economic development. And economic development is synonymous with poverty eradication. And the government is naturally committed to poverty eradication in case you didn’t know by now! So, the slogan had to change as it attacks the very process of economic development which is naturally energy-intensive and high-carbon in nature. (But more on this later).

Of course, the fact that economic development means economic development of people who are either owners of resources (industrialists, businessmen, big landowners) or are gainfully employed with high salaries (top notch professionals – managers/technocrats/lawyers/doctors etc) or, in short, all those 20-30% of Indians at most who happen to earn high incomes and have money to spend, and increased poverty for the rest 70-80% Indians who by being mere sellers of human labor power create all the wealth by getting paid only a subsistence wage and also bear the brunt of the pain of development – being driven out and dispossessed of home and hearth and means of livelihood, rising prices, shrinking employment for unskilled/low-skilled workers and no opportunity to become skilled because if they were given those opportunities then there would be too many skilled unemployed which can be socially dangerous, short supply of essentials and oversupply of luxury goods etc., – though known to one and all is conveniently forgotten in all elitist/illuminati discussions of India’s role and contribution to global warming and climate change.

Development means more cars on the road, more a/cs bought off the shelves, more refrigerators , more TVs, more home theatres….(the more energy-intensive and bigger the better), more energy-intensive high-rise buildings, more energy intensive malls, super markets and multiplexes, more enrgy-intensive entertainment such as the IPL being played at night under floodlights, cheaper air fares so that more people travel by the fuel guzzling airplanes, and so on – the developmental tamasha that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer is known to all and especially the poor. They know best what development means and it is no wonder that they are unwilling to give up their lands for the sake of development that they know will only enrich the rich and super-rich.

As President Patil says “India has no international obligation to reduce emissions”, so we need not go along with a slogan that calls for kicking the habit, the addiction for carbon, and to strive for a low carbon economy. But then as President Patil says “as a responsible member of world community” we are “taking action to domestically contribute to the global efforts. Climate change is receiving high-level and focused attention in India. Prime Minister’s Climate Change Council is comprehensively examining country’s response to this global challenge.” In short, we have found a typical Indian way of responding to the challenge of climate change and global warming – we have formed a grandiose Climate Change Council to comprehensively examine the country’s response to this global challenge and the whole ballyhoo is receiving high-level and focused attention. Yes, we are giving the whole thing a lot of high level focused attention and we have got a gang of gabbers to gab about it and spend some more public money in energy-intensive five star hotels with a few energy-intensive international junkets thrown in as well so that the gabbers can learn from each other and come back and do an ever better job of gabbing in an uninterrupted fashion – after all we don’t like coitus interruptus – but taking any concrete action to curb emissions is simply ruled out. How can we do that? Development will stop. The rich people will stop getting richer, the poor will step getting poorer – we obviously cannot stop this wonderful process of economic development.

So what do we do? We simply change the WED slogan and remove all mention of carbon emissions from it. Now what do we have? The changed slogan – “Pick right! Making the right choices” is quite impotent – it says nothing about carbon emissions and in any case it means exactly what we want it to mean – that is nothing – just a lot of gas – of course, everyone’s got to pick right and make the right choices – and of course our choice is development – so how can we talk about moving towads a low-carbon economy when we know very well that the more developed we become the more high-carbon economy we will have. So, we are definitely making the right choice about climate change – let all that ballyhoo go to hell, we are making the right choice baby!

So, just like the US, we have no international obligations to meet. People in the US have an average ecological footprint of over 4 hectacres when the per capita arable land availability in the world is less than 0.25 hectares. Environmental scientists Dr Mathis Wackernagel and Dr William Rees write “Since the beginning of this century, the available ecologically productive land has decreased from over five hectares to less than 1.5 hectares per person in 1995. At the same time, the average North American’s footprint has grown to over 4 hectares. These opposing trends are in fundamental conflict: the ecological demands of average citizens in rich countries exceed per capita supply by more than a factor of three. This means that the earth could not support even today’s population of 5.8 billion sustainably at North American material standards.”

In short, the Indian and Chinese dreams of catching up with America through the American model of market capitalism is simply nothing more than a dream – in fact, the discrepancies between land availability and eco footprint of rich people is so much that any kind of development today along the path of market capitalism is unsustainable because for more than several decades now we have already been living in a totally unsustainable era.

Indian economists who still try to argue about development along the path of market capitalism are either plain morons or are deliberating and knowingly talking about development because they know the rich can’t get richer without development, and to hell with climate change!

[Click the link on morons to get a counter view point - that of a US Congressman with an unpronouncable name - I am asking the same question Congressman! Now dear readers: Pick the right moron! Make the right choice baby!]

Market capitalism and economic development within market capitalism can never ever succeed in halting climate change or moving towards a low carbon economy. A low carbon economy can be created only when we move towards a structural change – when collectively owned Firm-Household combines directly manage resources and produce only those things that we need for existence. All industries which produce “destructive” goods and services or goods and services that we do not need for existence have to be simply shut down – all the arms and ammunition factories, all the spending on armed forces and the military has to be completely abolished – something that cannot be done in market capitalism but can be done in a collectively owned world where there are no national boundaries and no states – only self-administered, self-managed and more or less self-sufficient collectively owned Firm-Household combines.

Such a model will also do away with the need for daily commuting of workers as workers will live where they work, will drastically reduce the need for transporting materials from one corner of the world to the other because humans can easily exist in self-sufficient rural communities largely powered by solar and other renewable forms of energy, will do away with the need for energy-guzzling and highly polluting cities, will drastically reduce the need for using non-renewable resources irrespective of whether it is fossil fuels or minerals such as iron ore, bauxite etc so that the energy spent on mining too will drastically come down, and so on. I will try to write another post on this aspect later. Interested readers can take a look at Jeremy Rifkin’s book Entropy for a brilliant discussion of the energy question and how we can move towards a low carbon economy. He also happens to be one of those who writes about worker run companies.

For the moment, it is enough to point out that at present nearly 50% of the world’s total GDP of about $30 trillion is spent on the military or for keeping the world’s states armed to the teeth to impose the rule of the rich over the poor. Another roughly 10-20% of today’s GDP comes from industries that feed and power the arms economy – industries such as steel, petroleum, aluminium, thermoplastics, petrochemicals, thermal and nuclear power plants and all kinds of materials and minerals (zinc, tungsten, etc and of course the radioactive elements such as uranium, thorium, plutonium etc).

In a structurally new world geared to ensure human existence rather than the mad way it is configured now to ensure human destruction, these industries too can be shut down more or less totally – the little of these materials that we may still need can be mined at one or two locations and we may have a few steel or other such mineral/material/energy producing plants around the world to meet this much lower demand once the arms economy is shut down and we transit into a low carbon solar-intensive (read mainly organic/natural) economy.

Of course, no one is going to listen to either the scientists or other sane people around the world – least of all to a gagged journalist. So, we have to wait for the deluge to begin – the poles to melt, the Himalyas to melt, the environmental refugees to start causing havoc and then perhaps we will begin to stop gabbing and start taking action. It might be too late by then – but if you are like me and dreaming of a Noah’s Ark think hard – we will not only need a boat but we will need a craft floating about 5000 feet high up in the atmosphere. Anywhere closer to land would be too hot and humid for sustaining human life.

The rich, of course, will fly off into space and live in a Mars colony till things cool down on earth! You don’t believe me? Just ask the Google Guys Larry and Sergey what they think about a Mars colony or Project Virgle? They also happen to be among the ten youngest billionaires in the world – they are worried man!

[Also try and check out The Google Story by fellow journo David A.Vise if you haven't read it already - it's a great book!]

The future does look good!

Till it hits us – let’s pick Right and make the Right choices Baby!

To hell with turning Left and towards a low carbon economy! Are we all morons?

I Have To Write – IV – Elections For Death?

Talking about Maoists one is forced to come back to the issue of Dr Binayak Sen. Maoist or not he has to be released simply because he saves human lives. And, the truth is there is not an iota of evidence against him about any so-called “anti-state” activity.

But his whole life is anti-state, there is little doubt about that  – because it is pro-poor!

The admin knows it, so they are so adamant even when they don’t have any case! The case is too heavy against them!

Melodramatic?

Bollywood/Tollywood? But it is always like that! The poor die, the State goes on – Kanunki jai!

State vs Poor!

In India, human lives do not matter. Official death figures for a local level elections in one state of India having about a tenth of the country’s population comes to 30-35, reported in the Press.

The number of people who actually died directly due to this very ‘democratic’ election was as many as 300 if my sources are right and I have no reason to disbelieve them.

So, if a very democratic election can lead to a death toll of between 30 and 300 why should someone like Dr Binayak Sen who saves at least 3 lives every day be put behind bars – what is his crime? Who is he killing?

And, how do you, the state, that needs killing of anything between 30 and 300 citizens at the least every time to simply get elected (and how many more to stay in power?) and form “democratic” governments acquire the right to go about killing/almost killing people who save people’s lives? Who the fucking hell gives you this fucking right?

The numbers I am crunching are not real numbers at all! They are horrible underestimates!

Think about it! Work out the real numbers!

You will be stunned – how many people die to support something that we do not need?

Despite it being the very epitome of democracy – the democratically elected government – at what cost? The state – do we need it?

At the cost of 300 citizens every time there is an election?

And, with people who save lives having to be put behind bars to uphold your “democratically-elected”, 300 plus-killer, totally VIOLENT State?

I get fuddled! Am I depressed? Should I write? Am i fit enough to write?

I Have To Write – III

Trilogies are treacherous – this one is certainly one – I have no idea whether I can link this one with the other two that have gone before!

But I have to write! So, I write! Too much is going on!

Panchayat elections!

I am an unabashed running dog of the CPI(M). Despite all their inhumanities! Despite the violence! Despite all the anti-democratic incidents that have been reported in the Press!

Oh, Yes! Anti-democratic, was it ? Violence?

We thought only the Maoists resorted to political violence and that’s why anybody faintly/remotely, somehow, falsely or truly, someone like Dr Binayak Sen, has been claimed to be connected with the Maoists and on the basis of this flimsy claim had to be jailed and sent to hell without any kind of democratic justice!

Who is violent? Dr Sen? Or, the State?

Where does violence start and where does it end?

If the state is always and consistently violent, how do you fight the state in a democracy?

I think, think Gandhi! Think Munnabhai!

Or, come to democratic power like the CPI(M) and retain it! Why not? Why should a democratically elected Communist party give up power to Ram,Shyam, Jadhu or Madhu? And, Violence? Oh, come on! Baccche log! How many of our comrades have died to bullets aimed at ending Communist rule in West Bengal?

Yes, the Maoists – Big Dadas of Communism and Revolution – what is Mr Prachanda doing in Kathmandu? How is it that he is talking about market forces, inviting foreign investment, inviting world monopoly capital to come and take over Nepal now that it has been freed for you (world monopoly capital) by the Maoists – so, Indian Maoists are doing the same thing, is it?

Freeing India from all previous fetters so that world monopoly capital can take over! Wonderful, what a role for the Maoists? But, it is actually a great role, if they understand its historical significance!

Don’t you understand silly fools that capturing state power gets you nowhere – it only leads you to accepting world monopoly capital?!?

You have to first have a model for an alternative economy – a communist economy – only then having state power makes any sense – CPI(M) is doing that – learning it the hard way – as it always happens – the way of history – I am only an observer – I cannot support everything nor oppose everything but I can always float along with history!

I Have To Write – II

As far as writing is concerned I am going through some kind of depression  – I just can’t get down to writing – I mean writing  the rantings of a gagged journalist. I seem to be otherwise normal – spending a fairly active day – writing for money, translating, editing, playing with my children, quarreling with my wife, going to the bazaar, doing some household chores, a bit of cooking once in a while, bird watching – both varieties, even taking my poisons more than just occasionally………. simply because I seem to have a little bit more in my pockets these days – not a pennyless beggar anymore, as it were – but pennyless anyway because, yes, I have finished spending (as if there is no tomorrow) whatever little I had earned over the last three/four months as a freelance writer/translator/editor/researcher – Oh yes, I have a pretty multi-tasking CV to my name – but now I have to write! I have to rant!

There is too much pressure on me – I am supposed to be a Citizen Journalist. On top of that I have the additional pressure that I am really a journalist despite being merely a citizen – not a professionally employed journalist in a media house, but a freelance journalist, just a citizen journalist in every sense of the term and yet a true professional journalist – so that there is additional responsibility – not only a citizen but a real journalist as well – so how can I abstain from my duties as a citizen journalist? Specially, when so much is happening around me – how can I abstain from reacting?

I am trying to react but as I said I am going through some kind of a depression – I react in my mind but have no energy to put those thoughts into action – into writing – into some positive project – I simply feel kind of defeated – what’s the point? Why should I do it? Nothing will happen – I am conscious and aware of the negativity influencing my thinking and I am also very much aware of the Gurus of positive thinking and their advice and yet……………I guess that’s why it’s a mental condition – it beats logic!

But then depression or not, the pressure to write is unbearable – it almost adds to the depression, so here goes:

• How do you react to what’s happening to the Rizwanur case?
• How do you react to what has happened to the Nepal Maoists?
• How do you react to the blatant strong arm tactics of the CPI (M) in the Panchayat polls?
• How do you react to what the “Intellectuals” of Kolkata led by Aparna Sen are doing?
• How do you react to Bush/Other US leaders blaming/talking tough about India & China for food crisis and greenhouse emissions
• How do you react to IPL. ICL, BCCI, ICC, CA, Harbhajan, Sreesanth, Sledging, Cheating and all other issues related to cricket
• How do you react to inflation and slow down in industrial growth?
• How do you react to people smugly talking about polar and Himalyan/Andes/Rockies/Alps melt downs as if they are either myths or even if they do happen won’t be much of a headache?

So that’s the starting list – too many issues – how do you react?

My only reaction is depression because when I see so few people feeling the need to react to what is an obvious and  clear pattern of injustice, exploitation, inhumanity, greed, falsification, hypocrisy, abuse of power, denial of human rights, general inhumanity in all its ugly forms and all other possible evil that you can think of, all around you – in every nook and corner – in every space, in every pore – in the horizon, in the clean blue sea or sky, in every dark or lighted hole – everywhere, as it were – then how do you react?  Depression!

But I know as a Citizen Journalist I still have to write. Stir the conscience – big jobs we have to do – we journalists – we are told!

I am trying. I have just tried. Join me in my efforts if you can!

I Have To Write!

When you write it is difficult not to get immersed in yourself and your thoughts and become conceited in one way or another, but you still have to write. So much is happening – the Panchyat Elections – Aparna Sen and her dramabaji – wow! If only ….

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I have often wondered why is it that writing truthfully on something like sex – something that most everyone has experienced – is called pornography? Why do we have to use euphemisms/images (?) in literature and accepted writing to describe actions that you normally do while having sex? Like say, oral sex – most everyone who has enjoyed sex would have done it not once but several times throughout adult life! So, why is it pornographic to describe in some graphic detail some event that happens to most everyone and whether we like it or not literally or figuratively is  the very quintessence of life – oh, my God! Sex! Don’t you like it, dear Reader? And didn’t you come of it my dear friend? Through your Mo…..’s ….?

Anyway, I was talking about Rinadi, and no doubt one shouldn’t have incestuous thoughts – we  decided to abolish them some ten thousand or more years back – I should update myself and be comfortable with divorce, live-in relationships and that sort of thing you know? But the hassle, no Sir, issue is (You know I have to keep updating myself about these IT ways – a hassle is an issue in IT World – a child-birth like problem, you know – just explaining! just explaining! No issues. No issues.)

Anywayz, yes I keep updating myself, you see, I try my best, just check my last para – but the issue, the problem , the fuckin’ hassle is that there is an issue – a big one at that – Civil Society! It’s birth and rapid progress into teenage has caused all the problems – its begun to feel sex! Its sexcited!

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The Panchayat Elections are going on in a quiet and grim way. Some reports are creeping into the media about the Maoists and their killings of unarmed poor people in rural Bengal, the CPI(M) as usual is ruthless, it has to maintain it’s rule and if it cannot do it in a good way then it will do it in an evil way, but rule they will, if you can beat them at their game you are welcome, but till then you have to bear them, better to befriend them – that is the hidden logic – very similar to the Maoist logic – no say for the really poor and disenfranchised – no democracy – and, of course, no Communism, at all Sir – but …..

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Who is Aparna Sen fighting for – the Bhumi Ucched, that is opposition people or the Party – CPI(M)?  There is a saying in Bengali when translated would read something like Kings fight, but it’s the grass that dies.  I think if you dig deeper you will find it is the CPI(M) that is still holding on to ground – in a good way  or evil way is for you to judge  – but, no capitulation!

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Look at the Nepal Maoists – we had predicted as much – ha! ha!

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History is all about capture of land – empire-building – the Communists have been trying – at one time – in the early 1980’s more than two third’s of the world’s land area and a similar proportion of its population were under Communism, today, that empire, like the Mughal empire after Aurangzeb that collapsed within less than 7 years from his death, has collapsed within a few years after reaching it’s peak – just as happened so many times before in history – yet, it survives in a few pockets – where Leftists have realized the importance of winning elections in any and every democratic polity. They deserve a special respect! And violence? Who is abstaining from violence? Come on, don’t be silly!

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The next step is to  make changes in structural conditions -  I am happy to note that it is happening in West Bengal automatically because of Left Front rule – the hullaballoo is only because a Silent Revolution is on!
If things are changing, won’t there be any opposition?

And the Maoists? Will they have a place to hide?

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Notes From The Book Fair’s Underground

The well-known villains of Bangla publishing – the monopoly seekers – Ananda Bazar Patrika Group – has now come out in the open with its ugly and disgusting ways. What something that book lovers, lovers of literature, language and culture have always known, has now become known to the world. The ABP Group has bared its fangs and has openly come out from behind their legal hiding places and has shown to the world that it is they who are behind scuttling one of the greatest annual people’s cultural events held in Kolkata – a celebration of the people’s greatest weapon against the rich thieves (see my comment in the previous post and several other previous posts) that the ABP Group always shamelessly tries to protect (including in the Rizwanur and Nandigram cases) – knowledge and literacy.

They, the despicable ABP Group, are afraid that the people with the help of small publishers will get easier access to good books and good literature , something that they try so hard to stop through their monopoly over the publishing business. Hence, their attacks on the Kolkata Boi Mela (Kolkata Book Fair)- a people’s event that provides sustenance to all those small publishers who publish people’s literature, a people’s event where the people celebrate their love for knowledge and culture knowing very well that an army without culture is a dim-witted army and a dim-witted army cannot defeat the enemy. So, we the poor, want knowledge and culture – so that our army can defeat the rich.

And ABP is at the forefront of stopping that – the less space is granted to Boi Mela the more can all small publishers be destroyed and only the monopoly seeking big houses with their pornographic trash and their big books of big lies and gobbledygook can hog all the “knowledge” space. A total boycott of everything from the ABP stable would be a fitting reply from Kolkatans and all those who love books, knowledge and culture – a day should be devoted to burning all ABP products – and people from all walks of life should be urged to spurn their products till they are driven out of business – whatever intellectual products they own right now can then be reclaimed by the people as their collective property and republished through a people’s publishing collective.

But down with ABP and all those big publishers who are trying to scuttle the Kolkata Boi Mela (Kolkata Book Fair)! They should remember they are the biggest polluters of Kolkata and not all the book lovers, readers, small publishers, authors, musicians, artists and creative people who celebrate knowledge and culture once every year through a mega international event, a pride of Kolkata – the Boi Mela, and raise some dust for a few days of the year. These monopolists and running dogs of the rich such as the ABP Group should thank their stars that we, the people, have not yet begun to raise enough dust to suffocate the ABP, the rich and their Courts – but if provoked strongly enough will be forced to do so to completely wipe them off the face of the Earth.

Instead of attacking what is a people’s fair, these enemies of knowledge, literature, arts and culture should flee Kolkata during those few days when people’s knowledge and people’s power pollutes their peaceful, pornographic pastimes. Alternatively, by staying and participating they can learn to be a little better than the scum of earth that they presently are.

To give some idea of what it really is to foreign readers who may not be familiar with the kind of knowledge and culture carnival that the Kolkata Book Fair is, (comparable cultural carnivals such as the Rio De Janeiro carnival in Brazil or the Mardi Gras carnival in New Orleans are more disruptive of city life and a lot more polluting but they do not directly celebrate books, learning, knowledge or culture like the Kolkata Book Fair but unfortunately those opposed to the Kolkata Book Fair, such as the ABP Group or the environmentalist Shubhash Dutta are naturally illiterate or are clever and want to ensure illiteracy among the people, as is to be expected), I am reproducing below an impressionist report that I had written for The Economic Times, the official organ of the rich in India, and published there as well during the 1995 Kolkata Book Fair. By the time it was unceremoniously ousted from the Maidan (a green area in the heart of the city much like Hyde Park of London or Central Park of New York although much smaller at around 250 acres compared to 350 and 850 acres of Hyde Park and Central Park respectively) and its size truncated in 2007, it had become at least double the size indicated in the report below.

With the villains winning the battle for now, the Kolkata Book Fair is not being held for the first time in the last 33 years. A shame on Kolkata, on its biggest and sickest media house, the ABP Group, all those enemies of the public who have filed “public interest” litigations against the Book Fair and all those Kolkata High Court judges who in their great wisdom have gone against public interest to oust the Book Fair first from the Maidan and now from the city itself.

This article’s contention, that the Kolkata Book Fair is a people’s event, that it nurtures “subversives” and “subalterns” and those who practice counter-culture, however, remains valid even today! And it remains to be seen what the so-called “civil society” of Kolkata, apparently now aroused out of its slumber and which now ostensibly claims to be very much active in taking pro-people stands, will do to bring back the Book Fair to its rightful place – the vast stretches of the Maidan – so that one and all – the big and the small publisher – the protagonists of culture and counter-culture – the established celebrity writer and the unheralded people’s pen pusher – can all celebrate their annual festival of books, learning and culture.

KOLKATA, FEBRUARY, 1995: For 12 days nearly 2 million people thronged the dusty alleys of Calcutta Book Fair, 1995. The number of titles on display was inestimable because even the computerized database did not include all the titles. Over 400 regular stalls and innumerable exchange points all over the fair sold books worth over Rs 12 crore. It was a world event. Recorded by BBC for its world news service! Amazing!

*********

The ticket counters had closed more than an hour back. I used my Press card to persuade fair security to let me in. I had entered the book fair’s underground!

There was Somnath Adhikari showing his pictures to a motley group of people. These pictures were not for sale. Merely for display. Only to get a few words of encouraging appreciation. More importantly, understanding.

With his paintings in an ordinary drawing book, Somnath was trying to build a bridge of communication with other “isolated, alienated individuals in this wide wide world.”

Somnath presents his “psychedelic” pictures any which way he feels like. When I turned one picture into what I thought was the right way up and randomly said “the soul of the picture seems to me a suffering man protesting against something,” Somnath literally jumped up from his hunched position on the grass in front of the `Graffiti’ stall. “Yes, Soul, that’s the name of that picture, how did you know?” For a fleeting second at least we had achieved some kind of communication.

His paintings are haunting and mysterious. Despite being a dabbler in painting myself, I was left clueless as to the technique he had used to create his images. It wasn’t spray painting, it wasn’t brushwork, it wasn’t random splashing of colors and then folding the paper to create a symmetrical kaleidoscope. It was a mixture of all three techniques. I asked him, but he didn’t tell me. I still don’t know how he had created those images.

*********

There is always a throbbing underground in every Calcutta Book Fair. An underground peopled by what may be called “subversives”. They represent counter-culture in one form or another. Some are honest, dedicated, committed. Some are merely climbing on to what appears to them to be a fashionable bandwagon. But there are many people. Open-air stalls on the grass. Little magazines in specifically allotted Little Magazine stalls. Some even in regular numbered stalls. And some have even infiltrated the commercial big publishing houses. But the common strand that unites them all is that they all believe in destroying existing form, content and technique of artistic expression in a bid to create something new. For some, this exercise is not informed by any clear and conscious social commitment, it is art for art’s sake. It is merely an effort to create something new. For others, the exercise is deliberate and conscious, their efforts are determined by a social commitment. A deliberate, conscious protest against established norms, a deliberate anti-establishment action. But they are all part of the underground. Unknown names. But not willing to refrain from creative activity — whether you like it or not.

********

“I don’t want my readers to give me a pat on the back and say ah! you are writing well. I want them to spit at me and say why the hell do you want to bring out the syphilitic sores in our body politic,” says Subimal Misra. In the past 24 years, Subimal has sold a total of over 12,000 copies of his 17 books till date. And Subimal publishes, prints and sells his books himself. He has never written a word in any magazine or publication of any recognised, well-known big publishing house. He has never got any of his books reviewed. His books are not available in any bookstore, College Street or otherwise. You can get his books at the fair where he sells personally or by writing to him. For most, postage is free. He has never allowed any of his books to become what he calls “a commodity”. In these circumstances, selling on an average 700-odd copies of each of his 17 books is no mean achievement. Because, if you meet the man, you will know he doesn’t want to sell books to anybody. He sells his books only to those who literally want to snatch copies out of him. He is impossible! You may not think he is a great literary figure, but you will have to ungrudgingly admit he is a pioneer and creative experimenter par excellence. Most of his books have a few pages blank. He believes no book is complete until the reader writes his reactions at the end. And he is happy even if he finds one serious reader willing to snatch a book out of him. He wants serious readers. Not a big readership. When it comes to deliberate, conscious anti-establishment creative activity in Bengali literature, Subimal Mishra stands out alone. Yet, reading his books you may feel he is just an individualist. He will never be able to succeed in achieving his own stated goals. Others will disagree. No one will doubt his honesty. The debate will continue. That is how the underground throbs. Dialectics, polemics, black vs white. When the reality is really different shades of grey!

*******

According to my estimates out of the 2 million people who thronged the Book Fair this year, over at least half a million were part of the underground. Creative writers, painters, singers and their readers, patrons and audience. But, there is no unity in the underground. There are hundreds and thousands of them. They are all protesting against the existing socio-economic-political-cultural establishment. They are all rebels. At least they want to believe they are rebels. Despite this common strand there is no unity. Each in his own world. Each doing what he or she thinks is right. Some have insulated themselves and turned fascists in one way or another — they would unceremoniously throw out a dissenter from their group or stall. They are convinced adherence to their line of thinking is more important than unity. Others are more democratic. Yet isolated. They constitute the underground, unknown, isolated, insecure. Once united they would be able to come out of the underground and stand on the surface.

**********

Tapas Banerjee has come all the way from Sitarampur near Asansol (an industrial city 200 km west of Kolkata) to the Book Fair. He has nothing to sell nor display. His book of rhymes is still being printed. Yet he is there. If you get to know him he will quite willingly recite a few rhymes for you. “Donadoni scores a goal, 18 bucks a sugar kg is the toll,” rhymes he in a rhyme on the World Cup. He is a rebel. So is in a sense Ashok Dasgupta, editor of the vernacular daily AajKal, the newspaper which led the media coverage of the labor movement at Kanoria Jute Mill. He believes the Kanoria workers’ agitation is a great social movement. “But nothing will happen in small pockets,” he says. He dreams of a future where workers of more units will join the Kanoria bandwagon and at last create a superb work culture — where workers are willing to work so hard that it is the managements who will be at a loss as to how to create the work environment which can realize the full productive potential of workers. Azizul Haq, once a top leader of the Naxalite movement, too is a rebel. Some of his young followers were seen singing patriotic songs in one corner of the book fair. Even Asim Chatterjee (Kaka) also of the 70s Naxalite fame, Amitava Dasgupta, communist editor of `Parichay’ a paper associated with the CPI, could all be seen within a few feet of each other. Ashok, Azizul, his followers, Asim, his followers, Amitabh, all within a few feet of each other. Yet, each an island. Isolated. “Everyone has his own line. And everyone is convinced that is the correct line,” Ashok Dasgupta commented sarcastically. There are far two many undercurrents in the underground.

*******

Rebels. Artists. Politicians. Musicians. Writers. Creative and cultural workers in general. And, yes, publishers. A throbbing underground in the very heart of the city. All of them declare they do not bother about commercial success. But we sane people know all want success in one form or another. Otherwise, why go to the book fair? Why not stick to one’s private study? And why try to take one’s creation to a large audience, the kind that is provided by the book fair? After all, everyone is looking for success. Recognition. Acceptance.

*******

One has to be a little on the side of the “rich” to get published in The Economic Times but dear reader please read between the lines and see through my flimsy camouflage to know where my heart really lies!

Post in Bengali and bridge the digital divide!

My good friend Anindya (lifeselsewhere/lovesragpicker) has wanted to know how to make posts in Bengali.

While I am no expert, I can still share the process I used. I first wrote in MS Word format and then copy pasted it here. The software I used for Bangla writing is Avro which can be used for blogging as well as e-mails. The beauty of the software is you can write in Bangla and send e-mails in Bangla or make posts in Bangla and the reader can read without having the same software. Moreover, the software is freely downloadable so that procuring is hassle-free. It also has a phonetic English keyboard so that you do not need to know the inscript Bangla keyboard or any other Bangla typing keyboard to write/input in Bangla. You use the English keyboard and write Bangla phonetically. For example, if you want to write “Arjun” in Bangla you simply type “orrjun” – the typing rules are so simple that you can learn them in a few minutes using the help feature. For free download of Avro simply visit their site by clicking here.

You can also use Avro to directly write in Bangla in e-mails and blogs but then you may face a formating problem – that is, you will not be able to change fonts, point size etc, nor will you get other formating features such as coloring alphabets, highlighting text, making alphabets bold or italics etc. But if you first type out what you want to write in MS Word format then you can format at will and then simply copy-paste on to your e-mail or blog.

Although I am sure this will solve Anindya’s problem, still, in line with my irritating and quarrelsome nature, I would like to take this opportunity to raise a more general issue. Actually, not one but two issues – the first issue is that of Bangla writing on computers and the second, that of bridging the digital divide.

At present there are several Bangla writing softwares in the market and hundreds of Bangla fonts. Many of them are Unicode compliant as also compatible with most standard OS such as Microsoft Windows, Unix or Linux. But except for Avro I do not know of any other Bangla software which can be used to write in Bangla and which can also be read by the general reader not having the same software. For example, there is a software called Bijoy but readers can read only if they too have Bijoy installed on their computers. Moreover, as far as I know it cannot be used for blogging or e-mails. Microsoft provides a default Bangla option using the Vrinda font but it is hardly feature-rich and I do not know or have not been able to figure out how to write/input in Bangla using Vrinda without resorting to some standard Bangla keyboard such as Avro.

Besides Bijoy, there are several other softwares such as Bangla Word (it also has a free download option), Tanmatra, iLEAP (from C-DAC) and many others. I have used all the softwares whose names I have mentioned and my favorite is Avro because of the factors mentioned above. As far as I know none of the other softwares provide these benefits. So, for writing in Bangla I would strongly recommend Avro and since it is freely downloadable anybody can start using it within a few minutes of deciding to do so.

Now, my question is why are Bengalis having competence in software development or other non-Bengali software developers working with fonts and writing platforms not coming together to develop a standard Bangla/regional language software that can be used by one and all so that there are no compatibility problems? Why is writing in Bangla/regional Indian languages still such a huge problem? And, what is more galling is that even if you have writing software, in almost all cases except Avro, the reader cannot read what you have written unless he/she also has the same software installed. In these circumstances, why aren’t all developers interested in Bangla/Indian language writing coming together to work out a standardized Bangla/Indian language software that will work with all platforms and applications?

This brings me to the second issue of digital divide. While the setting up of common service centers throughout India under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) will go a long way to provide access to the Internet and general computing to most all Indians within the next few months (perhaps, within 6 months in case of West Bengal which is leading in implementing CSCs), the digital divide still cannot be bridged unless common people can access the knowledge/information on the Internet in their own language.

From my experience as an editor of a Bengali magazine on information technology, I know first hand that there are even software developers and IT professionals who want information in their mother tongue, who are more comfortable working in their own vernacular languages rather than English. Young people in rural areas of India will be immensely benefited once they begin to get information from the Internet in their own language.

To me this is a vital issue as I firmly believe that any major revolutionary social change requires that common people, the poor and the working class, have access to information through the Internet and are able to reap the benefits of modern information and communication technologies. As long as full or even partial use of all modern information and communication technologies remains limited to those who know English, this primary goal cannot be achieved. Hence, it is imperative that efforts are made to provide information and communication facilities in the vernacular. It is in this context that it is important that we develop computing in Bengali and other Indian regional languages. Right thinking IT professionals must take the lead in this effort.

Posts in Bengali can help this effort. So, happy posting in Bengali! And, three cheers to Avro!

Stop being sensible, stop enduring injustice, go crazy to fight this crazy world!

Indiancitizen, a fellow blogger and a leading writer against the kind of blatant injustice that the Rizwanur murder case represents (see the blog rizwanur.com), has posted the following comment against one of my posts, Rizwanur & Nandigram: Minor Points That Can Bring About Major Change!

The comment is extremely significant because it brings to the fore the issue of structural and superstructural change very sharply indeed. I do not know his/her real identity but I take this opportunity to salute his/her activism and express my full support for the kind of role he/she has been playing as a blogger against the kind of rancid rot that the Rizwanur tragedy indicates.

Here is his comment:

Dear Arjun,

prediction 5:

“After all Riz is dead so why shouldn’t Rukbanur and others now engaged in a legal exercise seeking justice for Rizwanur accept money and ensure a better life for those surviving”

I dont know about others but I can tell with some authority about Rukbanur accepting or giving up the fight is highly possible..but not because of money. But because history has taught us that what cannot be fought has to be endured.

Rukbanur is a common man just like me perhaps like you. He would be scared too. Scared of Todi’s goons, scared of the police..Already he has gone too far from what is expected of a lower class Indian family with education but not much money and no political and police clout.

How many times have we walked past youths elbowing young girls and making cat calls pretending we did not see or hear anything? just because it is “sensible”

Rukbanur might too give up – for if the supreme authority in the country calls it suicide what does a common man do? One option is to be found on a railway track, the head smashed- another suicide perhaps.

His comment needs to be doubly highlighted because it is a telling comment not only on the state of affairs in India but on the human condition world-wide. Leaving aside all the intellectual debates and diatribes about Communism and Left politics, any democratic polity worth the name must be able to ensure at least the minimum human fundamental rights – the right to get protection against those who are blatantly violating the law simply because they are rich and powerful.

Rizwanur’s death is a blatant and obvious case of murder that even a child can realize. Yet, indiancitizen rightly points out that there is little that we, the common people, can do except to endure what cannot be fought. But my question is: should we then simply sit back and endure such injustice? Should we not raise our voice against such injustice and fight it?

The thrust of my post that attracted this comment was to call for a people’s movement against such injustice. I too realize that the common man can do little but endure such injustice. I too realize that none of the political parties who claim to represent the people’s interests will really do anything because as I have tried to painstakingly point out through my writing that all those who are in politics to gain political power can be nothing but paid agents of the rich and the powerful because wittingly or unwittingly, consciously or unconsciously, they simply cannot afford to be otherwise and that includes the so-called Leftist and Communist parties as well (those who are not trying to change structural conditions but are only operating in the realm of superstructure, that is only in the realm of politics, will have to perforce, willy nilly toe whatever line that their structural, economic masters dictate, that means they will have to do whatever the rich tell them to do).  To put it in Marxian terms – it is not the consciousness of men that determines their social relations but it is their social relations that determine their consciousness. So even if a so-called “communist” or a “communist party” becomes a part of the ruling class or the ruling class itself its consciousness will be that of the ruling class – it cannot remain communist or pro-people, pro-poor. To be pro-people, pro-poor or simply communist all have to become equal owners, all have to be part of the ruling class.

In other words, unless we can all get together and create people’s organizations that ensure political power for all and not just its leaders not much headway can be made. A people’s organization should try to ensure political power to all the people not by itself joining the fray to capture political power within the existing class-riven structural system and by doing so itself becoming the new ruling class with the consciousness of the ruling class (the leaders of the CPSU, the CPC and here in West Bengal the CPI(M) or for that matter any other communist party all displayed the same symptom after capturing political power whatever may be the extent of such power) but by working to bring about structural change so that all the people begin to enjoy economic power through collective ownership of resources and therefore, political power. Only then the power of the people united can be exercised against the power of the rich and powerful exercised by their paid political agents – the political parties – left, right or center. Such an organization must necessarily address structural issues and this is where my arguments regarding the transition from minor point to major change comes in.

While fully agreeing with indiancitizen, I at the same time exhort all my readers to think not just Rizwanur, not just Nandigram but think structurally – think of collectively owned people’s enterprises which are at the same time political units so that such political units are not dependent on the rich when it comes to exercising their political power but are themselves rich enough as they collectively own economic resources. I firmly believe that no truly people’s political movement is possible unless such a movement first concentrates on bringing as much economic resources as possible under the collective command of the people. The struggle must be first fought on the economic plane to create first the rudiments of a people’s economy (a new structure) which in turn can be the basis for the exercise of political power by the people (a new superstructure).

This is no doubt a very difficult task and made even more so because of the huge amount of mental, intellectual and psychological misleading factors that now weigh upon the people like a mountain. An already complex and difficult task has been made even more difficult by the theoretical bankruptcy of those claiming to lead people’s movements – the Leftists and Communists. Even now these Leftists and Communists will go on arguing about how people’s organizations must first try to capture political power and by that one single false argument again lead back the people to the domination of the economically rich.

Theoretically, however, the situation is actually very simple and already known to all and sundry – especially the poor who can see from their own daily experience that all power comes from economic power. If you are rich you are powerful, if you are poor you are not powerful and in that case even if you have done nothing illegal you will have to suffer and endure whatever illegality that the rich may indulge in. And if the problem is as simple and obvious as that then won’t the solution be equally obvious and simple – that the people must somehow begin to acquire economic power as that is the basis of all social and political power?

No doubt there is one small complexity that we have to take into account – the complexity of dialectics which is present in each and every aspect of life. Even the question of economic and political power cannot be answered in absolute terms. In the early days of capitalism when there was no universal suffrage, when workers were not allowed to unite and form political organizations (many people forget that when Marx and Engels were writing, workers did not have even the right to form trade unions), when basic democratic rights for all people including women had not been guaranteed by the state, that is when people did not enjoy basic political rights that we have now come to take for granted under conditions of parliamentary democracy and market capitalism, the question of political organization and seeking to capture political power through democratic means and through people’s movements were obviously at the forefront. If you did not have the basic rights to form political unions/organizations you could not possibly think of forming economic unions/organizations. This was the situation that prevailed at the time of the failure of the Paris Commune – workers had to use force to take over means of production and the state used force to “recapture” that means of production. So, it had seemed correct then to try and first capture political power because only then workers could possibly capture means of production. In reality, Leftists and Communists were then actually fighting feudal forces and in favor of the new bourgeoisie who through their new economy had created the new class, the working class, to do away with the last vestiges of feudalism and usher in the matured form of capitalism that we know today – parliamentary democracy and market capitalism. No wonder Leftists and Communists whenever they did capture political power only managed to break down feudalism, established state capitalism and prepared the ground for mature market capitalism – the histories of the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, India – everywhere – is the same – Leftist/Communist rule means break down of feudalism, some form of full or partial state capitalism and then full-blown market capitalism.

That situation has changed radically as capitalism has matured and today it is easy to think of people’s organizations that acquire and control means of production through united industrial action within existing privately owned enterprises and taking them over through economic warfare (which the capitalists do not know how to fight using the state machinery or through legal and administrative means) or by uniting the limited resources of individuals, collectivizing these resources and then by using the advanced economics of collectively owned people’s enterprises gradually capture more and more means of production from the hands of the individually organized (or should we say disorganized?) capitalists.

Leftists and Communists have failed to see this change in the social situation and are still guided by thinking that had some relevance and validity at the time of the Paris Commune but have become completely invalid today. Today, common people and the working class already enjoy all the democratic and political rights they need to begin to take over private enterprises through collective industrial action or to set up their own collectively owned people’s enterprises by uniting whatever little means of production (or economic resources) they may own individually although real political power still remains with the rich. The political rights that the rich have granted to the poor are the result of (a) people’s movements and the Leftists and Communists have no doubt played a very great role in this regard, and (b) the inherent contradictions of the class-riven system where the rich have been forced to devise ways to retain political power even after granting the poor a lot of political rights – something that fuelled the development of parliamentary democracy as a way of retaining political power by the rich even when the poor were merely being fooled into believing that they really exercise political power through elections when in reality all that they do is keep giving political sanction to the rich to continue with their exploitation. The key idea here is that as long as the structure remains privately owned all means of production and therefore, economic power will remain privately owned and in the hands of a few while the rest of the people even if they are enjoying universal suffrage and the power to vote are ultimately left with no choice but to vote one or the other party of the rich to power because the very system is wealth-intensive – you can’t have poor people’s political organizations and still go about winning elections. To win elections you need the financial support of the rich and to win wars against the rich you need even greater financial support of the rich (again it must be remembered that the global political situation has changed, the rich have ensured that their state machinery is today so powerful that no poor man’s red army can ever hope to actually win any revolutionary war unlike what happened in Russia, China or Vietnam. A little bit of scrutiny and investigation will show all Leftist and Communist armed revolutionary groups today are getting state support from some state or the other – most often it is the CIA itself which by supporting such armed groups only help to further the geopolitical interests of US imperialism as also keep up the market for arms and ammunition since they know very well that such so-called red armies can never actually capture state power anywhere unless such a situation is actually being supported by the rich of some other state to serve their own interests. Since the late 1970s I cannot think of even one instance where truly poor people and their armies have been actually able to capture state power and remain in power creating a socialist/communist state – that possibility is today simply ruled out and all those who are propagating such a path are simply trying to fool the people and are in one way or another serving the interests of the rich. Even when they are at all successful, to whatever extent, it is only in countries/areas which are still largely feudal in character – armed revolution in developed capitalism is nothing but a mad, unrealistic and thoroughly unscientific idea.)

It is only within collectively owned people’s enterprises that ordinary people, the common man like you and me can begin to enjoy any kind of political power. In contrast, in political parties, it is only the political leaders who enjoy any power and the rich simply use these leaders to exercise their own power. But if the common man has to exercise any political power he or she must be part of the collective group of owners who own some means of production. When ordinary people begin to become collective owners of the resources of the world – the system of the few ruling the rest can be finally broken down because only then a new class of owner-workers, the new class of collective owners will emerge on the historical proscenium that can take on and defeat the old class of private owners, the capitalists, the existing rich in just the same way that the new class of workers could take on and defeat the feudal lords.

The bourgeoisie could never defeat them alone without the help of the working  class and wherever there have been democratic revolutions as in France, England, rest of Europe, India, China – everywhere – - the bourgeoisie have managed to beat back feudalism only with the help of the working class. So, there is no reason to believe that this historical process of new classes emerging who can defeat old classes will not go on when it comes to defeat of the bourgeoisie. The working class by merely remaining working class will remain working class – ruled by the bourgeoisie. But only when the working class begins to organize itself not only politically but also economically to emerge as a new class of owner-workers will they acquire the ability to defeat the capitalists. These concepts are really simple and easy to understand but they have been made difficult by too much unscientific “Marxist” baggage where the basic science of society discovered by Marx has been forgotten and only his unscientific views have got prominence.

But having said all this  we should not ignore the issue of the structure of the family. If the family structure remains individualized among those wanting to exercise collective ownership, the system of collective ownership will simply break down and cannot be maintained. For collective owners to remain collective they have to collectivize their kitchens and the process of child rearing. It is only then that even sexual relationships can be freed from their existing private nature where men privately “own” women through monogamic marriage. When there is collective ownership of means of production thus ensuring equal economic power to both men and women and when both the kitchen and child rearing is collectivized (that is, done socially), then private monogamic marriage can be abolished and replaced with truly consensual sexual relationships where men and women decide entirely democratically whether they will have any sexual relationship or not and whether they will continue to have those relationships for any length of time – real sexual freedom that is quite unthinkable right now will become possible.

So called free love within conditions of private ownership of resources, private kitchens and private child rearing responsibilities will only lead to great anarchy and a complete break down of the family from a functional point of view – that is, from the point of view of rearing children and maintaining livable households. This is exactly what is happening now. As economies and societies become more matured capitalist the ratio of single parent households to double parent households increases . If you stop to think through these ideas the whole thing is quite obvious and simple but if you are a doubting Thomas it may take very detailed analysis to convince you that what is being said here is meaningful.

Ultimately, the point is, if the common man has to start fighting and stop enduring the kind of powerless existence where the rich can literally get away with daylight robbery, nay, even murder, then the fight must center around building up collectively owned people’s enterprises where the collective owners are themselves organized into collective households. There is no other alternative. Existing political parties cannot provide a solution. Creating a new political organization to carry on a people’s movement will also become just another political party like the existing ones that can and will be bought over and people like you, me and Rukbanur will have to simply continue enduring injustice and exploitation without being able to fight it!

I know my ideas seem crazy but when you live in a crazy world and have to fight to change a crazy world I guess you too have to become a little crazy to realize how the world can become a more sensible place! It’s now up to my readers to choose whether to go crazy like me or remain “sensible” and endure even greater craziness!

Confusion will not be my epitaph even as I crawl a cracked and broken path!

Dear Upal,

First, your views:

Dear Arjun,

Much as I enjoy reading your pieces, I cannot but help criticizing your rather Utopian views on a Post-capitalist economic/socal order.
You have muddled up between structure and superstructure. The State character is an example of a basic structure which supports the capitalist economic form. You have called this as the “superstructure”. Superstructure usually refers to art, culture, social forms including marriage, family structures etc.
You have put the cart before the horse.One has to capture power through elections as Hugo Chavez and other Latin American leaders have done or though a revolution. The superstructure and the economic forms cannot be changed overnight.Hence a transitory stage of “dictatorship of the proletariat” which definitely has elements of State Capitalism.
The trouble is that this transitory phase dragged on under Stalin. The transition to purer forms of Communism could not take place. However, to say tha the working classes were exploited under thid dispensation is not true. Workers and peasants enjoyed unprecedented standards of living and quality of life which is yet to be duplicated anywhere. Even Tagore noticed this. Yes Stalin was repressive, but did he have an option?
Mr. Sen, could a nation stand unitedly and defeat the Fascist force sif they were not motivated enough? Even now, the Communist Party gets maximum votes from the 80-plus population, who actually experienced Stalin’s rule.
Maybe Mao went a step further true his “cultural Revolution” where he tried to break the bureaucratic and Party monopoly over power. Again, he too made mistakes.
Communists learn through mistakes but let us find a solution to the problem of how to transform a State-Capitalist/Socialist State to a Communist one instead of floating “grand theories” by inverting structure and superstructure.
Lastly, do not lower your dignity by replying to “The Modern Mullah”. Fundamentalists such as him belong to the scum of society and they should be shunned like the plague. That is the best answer to obnoxious people like them.

Your comment deserves a full post because you have raised a very important issue about structure and superstructure.

Most Marxists like yourself are totally confused about structure and superstructure and that is the reason why Marxism, or historical materialism, the science of society, is in such a mess.

I need not re-quote Marx but if you revisit some of my earlier posts then I think I have already quoted Marx to show that politics and the state is part of superstructure while family is part of structure.

I have 52 volumes of collected works of Lenin and I have checked: not one volume, not one line has the word family, because like many Marxists he never considered family as part of structure. Now please read Engles’ Family, Private Property etc….. Please also read the preface to this great book. Please also read German Ideology which is something that Marx wrote when he was quite young (around 1842-48). The Russian communists never published German Ideology till as late as 1928 or 1930. Nobody bothered about historical materialism. The most unfortunate thing is Lenin never understood the science of society, historical materialism.

Rabindranath and others only saw the positive results of Fascism, yes the fascism of Stalin and dogmatic communism – something that said goodbye to historical materialism – and, something that cannot be defended anymore today – but historical materialism can be defended because this “grand theory” is scientific – and it is attacked as a “grand theory” because it is scientific – the bourgeoisie and their agents like you have to attack all systemic theories about history as “grand theories” because your first task is to prove that historical materialism and the kernel of Marxism is wrong, unscientific, etc – the more you try to do that, the more is it proved that historical materialism is scientific. I don’t feel like entering that old debate all over again.

But let me restate historical materialism once again – for the sake of science – for the sake of humanity – humans and human society as a whole has to reproduce itself in order to do anything including creating history – so, social scientists must first primarily answer the question how do humans go about species reproduction – a question that all human scientists ask about all other living species – so how do we, humans, go about species reproduction?

We do it by participating in two atomic teleological social organizations – the Firm and the Family.

So, the Firm – where we work and come into relations of production with our employers – these relations of production could be relations of slavery, feudalism (share cropping) or wage slavery – is one most important structural social organization – how we are positioned in the Firm of our lives is therefore, very crucial – structural – it determines how we exist. If we are unemplyed then again it tells us that we have no Firm of our lives – we almost do not exist. I will come to that issue later if necessary.

Then comes the family – how we reproduce our existence – how do we create children – the structure of the family is crucial to overall structure of society. It is another atomic social organization where we enter into relations of reproduction – the second aspect of our social structural relations.

I call them atomic social organizations – this Firm and Family – because if you take any human being, he or she, can be mapped onto at least one Firm or Family. There exists no human being anywhere in the world who is not attached to some Firm or some Family as long as Firm and Family are defined as teleological organizations that carry out production and reproduction of human existence.

Species reproduction or social reproduction is not a new idea because sociologists-economists in the erstwhile socialist countries such as East Germany used to bother about these questions quite in the same way that Marx thought about them. I am sure many other Marxists from very many different countries have bothered about this very basic aspect of historical materialism and there should be absolutely no confusion about what constitutes social structure and what constitutes social superstructure.

The Firm and the Family – that is relations of production and relations of reproduction are the structural social relations – that means if you want a social revolution, a qualitative change in relations of production and reproduction – then you have to change the structure of the existing Firms and Families. Existing Firms and Families are based on private ownership of means of production and reproduction – that means private ownership of all productive resources and private ownership of women. Social revolution will take place when this private ownership of resources and women is replaced by collective ownership of resources and women.

Dear Upal, I am not confused at all. Perhaps, Lenin was. Perhaps, Stalin was. Perhaps, You are. But I am not. Just as the young Marx and the old Engels was not. Because I am scientific. I am simply a biologist who studies human beings as another living species – so I simply apply the same science that humans apply when they study other living species. And when you do that – the Firm and the Family emerge as the structural atomic teleological social organizations that enable the existence and reproduction of the species.

Social engineering is possible when you begin to convert the thing-for-itself into the thing-for-us. That is, when you begin to convert the class-riven, exploitative, life-destroying privately owned, market driven Firms and Families into class-less non-exploitative, use-value driven collectively owned Firms and Families.

Social structural revolution can never take place overnight. It has nothing to do with superstructural change such as capturing state power. But it has everything to do with changing the relations of production and reproduction – that is having new Firms and Families. The conversion of privately owned Firms and Families into collectively owned “Peoples” Firms and Families will have to go on withing the womb of Capitalism – communism will grow within the womb of capitalism – structural change will begin to take place – and then when gradual quantitative changes, that is as more and more collectively-owned Firms and Families begin to appear in society, a time will come when there will take place a rapid qualitative change and most all privately owned Firms and Families will become collectively-owned Firms and Families. This is when structural change will take place.

State ownership is an aberration – a false view that may have seemed to be correct at the time of the failure of the Paris Commune but is clearly and totally invalid today by science – a foolish communist’s communism – and as long as the established Left, the so-called existing communists such as the Stalinists (CPI(M)), the Trotskyites and the Maoists keep on harping on state ownership, they will keep on misguiding people and, therefore, keep on being a weaker force than global capitalism – they cannot fight capitalism – they can only fall victim to the socio-politico-economic machinations of capitalism.

So, I am not confused at all. In fact, I know exactly how the present privately-owned capitalism will give way to collectively-owned communism. The problem is that the established Left – the Stalinists, the Trotskyites and the Maoists – are not aware of this scientific process simply because they have stopped following the science of historical materialism long time back – ever since the fall of the Paris Commune. They are simply talking crap. But communism is really collectively owned by people and so we have to keep voting for and supporting the largest communist party around – the CPI (M) – even if we know they are talking crap. We, the poor and the working classes, do not really have a choice except to keep trying to establish our collective ownership over as much means of production as we can – because ultimately that is how things will go.

I may appear lonely and ranting but I know that I am strengthened by science – what I write is based on the science of historical materialism – I know the predictions I have made about Rizwanur Rahman will come true because they are based on the science of historical materialism, I know that if we do not get destroyed as a species within the next few decades, then humanity will begin to agree to most of what I am writing now. I am neither lonely, because I know the large majority of the 6 billion people living on Earth are with me, they share my views, nor am I ranting, because what I am saying is scientific, is based on logic and facts.