Taste of their own medicine



In Kerala, on the Kochi-Aluva highway, you can see a dilapidated Apollo Tyres factory. The legend has it that the factory was the first tyre unit in Kerala opened 15 years ago, and within a couple of years, it was closed down due to an agitation by the worker’s union. Till date apparently no resolution had been brought on and – try to believe this – the workers are being paid part-salaries till today.

That is the way of communism working in India. If you had an opportunity to live in Kerala in the early 90s, you would have witnessed union rallies every week, which meant some or other business establishment was facing the brunt of the strike. Fearing this, many establishments kept out of Kerala. Today’s it is different they say and there are a lot of reasons to believe this. Even West Bengal must be different today considering the way Chief Minister Bhattacharya is so obsequiously pleading the Tatas to stay in Singur.

One of Jawaharlal Nehru’s dreams was to create powerful heavy industries in India. Today communism wants a private industry and Trinamool Congress does not. Weird are the ways of Indian polity.

However, the issue is not as straightforward. Singur agitation is not an entire manifestation of Mamta Banerjee’s vengeance. All over India, Special Economic Zones have faced massive agitations from the people because our governments have been brazenly ignorant about the plight of the rural populace. The governments have behaved like the feudal lords of yesteryears and have not hesitated to use force in evacuating the semi-literate, peasants out of their own lands. They have offered pittance to farmers for their land to be handed to the conglomerates and multi-nationals who would be making millions in future. This is not capitalism. This is tyranny and despotism.

Special Economic Zones are an aberration of our democracy and help only the ultra-rich and also our wily and stupidly arrogant politicians. That does not mean that industries shouldn’t flourish. They should but it should happen on its own efforts. For nearly forty years, politicians have tried to curb businesses and destroyed our economy. Today, politicians are trying to help business and destroying our societies. If business and society were to flourish they must keep their dirty selfish hands off the businesses.

For years, the communists have worked to stoke worker and farmer agitations. Karl Marx predicted that bourgeoisie capitalism will soon end and give way to proletariat self-rule. Today Marxism is recoiling by curbing the farmer’s agitation and helping a capitalist bourgeois.

Tata may stay in Singur or leave. Whatever they do, their financial loss is something that they can absorb. But the farmer’s who have lost their lands and livelihood can’t. And this is not communism. This is humanism.

Image sourced from: www.indiamike.com