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Economic and Political Weekly February 17, 2007552

AMIT BHADURI

It has become a clich, even a politi-cally correct clich these days, to saythat there are two Indias: the India that

shines with its fancy apartments and housesin rich neighbourhoods, corporate houses

of breathtaking size, glittering shoppingmalls, and hi-tech flyovers over whichflows a procession of new model cars.These are the images from a globalisedIndia on the verge of entering the firstworld. And then there is the other India.The India of helpless peasants committingsuicides, dalits lynched regularly in not-so-distant villages, tribals dispossessedof their forest land and livelihood, andchildren too small to walk properly, yetbegging on the streets of shining cities.Something stalks the air. The rage of the

poor from this other India is palpable; ithas engulfed some 120-160 out of 607districts of this country in the so-calledextremist Naxalite movements.

The India of glitter and privilege, itseems, is bent on turning its back, andseceding fast from the other India ofdespair, rage and inhuman poverty. Thisis not just a matter of growing relativeinequality between the two Indias. Amore brutal process is at work, withthe connivance of governments at thecentral and at the state levels which is

not only widening this divide betweenthe two Indias, it is deepening consciouslythe absolute poverty and misery ofpoor India.

Obsession with Growth

The unprecedented high economicgrowth on which privileged India pridesitself is a measure of the high speed atwhich the India of privilege is distancingitself from the India of crushing poverty.The higher the rate of economic growth

along this pattern becomes, the greaterwould be the underdevelopment of India.We first need to understand this paradoxwhich counter-poses growth against deve-lopment, and challenge this dangerousobsession with growth.

Globalisation is the context in which

growth is taking place. The accompanyingprocesses of economic liberalisation andprivatisation are tilting the balance infavour of the market against the nationstate. However, the game is no longer whatit used to be. Nineteenth century capitalismdeveloped through a complex process ofconflict and cooperation between the stateand the market. The state furthered theinterest of the market, but at times alsoregulated it. For instance, it regulated thehours of work, abolished child labour orlegalised trade unionism at different points

in time. Karl Polyani, the perceptivecommentator on 19th century capitalismdescribed this as a process of great trans-formation driven by the double move-ment of the market and the state, a pro-cess in which the rules for the market wereset mostly by the state. When the state failsto play this role, the result is not a freermarket and more freedom but growingdesperate rage of the poor, which mustengulf all sooner or later.

It is a badly kept secret of economictheory that it cannot explain how the

market gets organised and rules get set.The reason is the free market metaphor,which avoids assigning the state an ex-plicit economic role. For instance, econo-mists talk of prices rising or falling inresponse to excess of demand or supplyin the market, but are at a loss to explainwho sets the price in a market of manyplayers, if no one has the power to dictateprice? Like Voltaires god they then in-vent the auctioneer, the metaphor of theinvisible hand of the price mechanism andother tales, trying to pretend that the market

operates in isolation like a self-regulatingsystem. High theory verges on idiocy byrejecting history. What is left unsaid is thatthe situation is far worse when the rulesof the market are set by the state on behalfof the large corporations. This indeed iswhat is being carried out underglobalisation, also in India. The conven-tional Left is willingly or unwillingly as

much a party to it as the neo-liberal Right.Increasingly rhetoric and not substancedivides them. We are living in barrentimes. The Left is left without any senseof economic direction, any ideas, andends up following the Right which isnot right. As a result, a many prongedmerciless onslaught has been let loose onthe poor of India in the name of fastereconomic growth.

Land Grab

A massive land grab by large corpora-tions is going on in various guises, aidedand abetted by the land acquisition poli-cies of both the federal and state govern-ments. Destruction of livelihoods and dis-placement of the poor in the name ofindustrialisation, big dams for powergeneration and irrigation, corporatisationof agriculture despite farmers suicides,and modernisation and beautification ofour cities by demolishing slums are show-ing everyday how development can turnperverse.

Until September 2006, the board ofapprovals committee of the ministry ofcommerce had approved 267 special eco-nomic zones (SEZ) projects all over India.Land area for each of these projectsdeemed foreign territories ranges from1,000 to 14,000 hectares. So far, for only67 multiproduct SEZs 1,34,000 hectareshave been acquired mostly by state indus-trial development corporations. Similarly,mining rights are being granted to thecorporations mostly over tribal lands. Stategovernments, aided and emboldened by

central government policies, are acquiringland to give away to corporations.

The Panchayat Extension to ScheduledAreas or PESA Act of 1996 requires gramsabhas to be consulted for land acquisition.And yet, in Jharkhand and Orissa this haseither been ignored systematically or, asa recent field report documents, the policesurrounds threateningly the ordinarymembers in the gram sabha meetings,forcing them to agree to the proposals ofgiving up their lands at throw away prices(Down to Earth, October 31, 2006).

Development orDevelopmental Terrorism?

A strategy under which the state allies with corporations todispossess people of their livelihoods is nothing butdevelopmental terrorism, irrespective of the political label of the

political parties in office. We must chart out an alternative path ofdevelopment; such possibilities, although limited, exist even in the

present situation.

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Land acquisition in Singur in WestBengal for the Tatas, or for Anil Ambaniin Dadri in UP repeats a pattern that isbecoming menacingly familiar. We aretold trade secrets about land use cannotbe revealed to the public under the Rightto Information Act. Yet a local TV channelreported, uncontested so far by the govern-ment, that West Bengal government gave

Rs 140 crore in compensation, while theTatas will give, according to the deal, onlyRs 20 crore after five years for the land,without payment of stamp duty and withprovision of free water. The fact that publicmoney worth Rs 120 crore or more ishanded over to a corporation must indeedremain a trade secret. Another report claimsthat on May 31, 2006 the West Bengal statecabinet gave the nod for the acquisition of36,325 acres of land for various similarnational and multinational corporate ledprojects.

Left and Corporations

What we are witnessing is deliberateconnivance on the part of the conventionalLeft in West Bengal with the interests oflarge corporations against the poor,perhaps in the hope that the corporationswill bring about a miraculous transforma-tion of the state, which they are incapableof doing with state power. It is an abjectsurrender to the conventional wisdom ofour time that There Is No Alternative

to corporate-led capitalism, and the typeof globalisation it signifies, in shortthe TINA syndrome in the developmentdiscourse.

This TINA syndrome maintains that thecorporations will deliver us from povertyby raising the rate of economic growth.The IMF, the World Bank, and the AsianDevelopment Bank propagate tirelessly thisideology in various guises. Now we havea group of Marxist politicians propagatingthe same. And yet, this model of devel-opment that is so widely agreed upon, is

fatally flawed. The model has already beenrejected in the last general election in 2004,especially in Andhra. Even earlier eco-nomic reforms won neither the CongressParty nor its chief architect ManmohanSingh personally a favourable verdict inthe election in 1996. There is no reasonto believe that this corporate-led growthideology will not be rejected again by ourdemocratic polity either in west Bengal orelsewhere.

There are two variants of this ideologyrelevant for India. In the first variant,

massive commercial borrowing frominternational banks is done by our willingnational government for development,encouraged and coordinated by the IMFand the World Bank by engaging multi-national corporations leading to variousexpensive, ambitious giant projects espe-cially in the area of infrastructure. Typi-cally, rules of consultancy and contract are

fixed by the World Bank. Almost inevi-tably the country subsequently gets caughtin a debt trap. Most countries of centraland south America were examples of thisvariant of the development model untilrecently. Now country after country in arising wave, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia,Ecuador and Venezuela, have rejected thispath of debt-dependent (non-) develop-ment. Does our Left have nothing to learnfrom them?

An Alternative Strategy

The other variant is characterised by astrong presence of the state. State-led orstate-sponsored corporations are created andnurtured to compete with multinationalsunder active government support especiallyin the world market, while the governmenttries also to attract direct foreign invest-ment especially in areas where, for somereason, the government corporations arenot the preferred option. Nevertheless, thegovernment becomes a ruthless promoterof the corporate entities in search of higher

growth, irrespective of how it affects theinterests of the ordinary people. This is acase of state-led corporatism, and todaysChina seems to fit reasonably well thisdescription, while South Korea, despitethe obvious differences in the politicaland geo-political situations and debtdependence at an earlier stage might havetraversed a similar path. Not only ourone-time China hater Rightists, but ourMarxists, who not so long ago ridiculedthe slogan Chinas path is our path, seemto have turned the full circle in admiration

of the Chinese way of corporate-led deve-lopment. The case of China is particularlymisleading in this respect in two ways.First, because the nature and extent ofsupport the Chinese government can giveto its state-sponsored corporations or toparticular foreign investors, and differen-tiate among them, if necessary even interms of a malleable legal system, is notpossible for a government, particularlywhen it intends following the path ofborrowing heavily under IMF World Banksupervision. They have to comply largely

with the interests of those agencies. Sec-ond, the single-minded ruthlessness withwhich the Chinese system can follow itsobjective of corporate-led growth, at timesby changing laws or suppressing the rightsof the ordinary people, is fortunately notyet possible in our system.

However, what China or any othercountry does is no justification. The reli-

ance on developmental terrorism by thestate on behalf of the corporations againstthe poor is unacceptable anywhere, nomatter what political label is attached. TheIndian case could have been restrained bythe political compulsions of coalitiongovernments in the centre as well as inseveral states. However, this has not hap-pened because of a remarkable degree ofpolitical convergence on the model ofdevelopment between the Right and theLeft. The challenge facing us is two-fold.We must oppose high growth that justifies

developmental terrorism by the state onbehalf of the corporations. This is thesignificance of Narmada Bachao Andolanled by Medha Patkar. At the same time wemust chart out an alternative path of deve-lopment. Although limited, possibilitiesexist even in the present situation, and wemust exploit them fully. The potentials ofthe National Rural Employment Guaran-tee Act, the strengthening of panchayatsthrough their financial autonomy for imple-menting it, and full control by gram sabhasof the use of their land, and transparency

and accountability in governance at alllevels through the right to informationneed to be pushed as far as possible. Pro-people growth in India has to be employ-ment-driven, and energised by a genuinelydecentralised structure of governance. Withthat vision of development, it is time wejudge the actions of political parties andgovernments in power by this criterion,and not by their fiery rhetoric.

Email: abhaduri40@hotmail.com

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