LOK SAMVAD

Action Programme for People's Economics andAllied Literacy

JUNE2011

EDITORIAL

As Governments Blunder, Corporates Plunder- Piyush Pant

Land has always been at the centre of political economy debate. So much so that if once it was at the genesis ofLeft's ascendance to power in West Bengal, today it has turned out to be its nemesis in the same state. It's acommon knowledge that it was Operation Barga, involving land reforms to bestow on sharecroppers the legalprotection against eviction by the landlords, and entitle them to the due share of the produce, which not onlybrought popularity to the Left-front government but also cemented its hold over Bengal's politics for decadestogether. Operation Barga was aimed to record the names of the sharecroppers (Bargadars), who formed amajor part of the agrarian population in West Bengal and to educate them about their cultivation rights. Itdepended heavily on collective action by the sharecroppers and was qualitatively different from the traditionalRevenue Court approach, which was biased in favour of the richer and more influential landowners. The enumerationand recording of Sharecroppers and educating them about their rights was an important step in raising theireconomic and social status. By giving these farmers more rights, and protecting them from exploitation by thelandowners, they were assured of a relatively stable livelihood, which would improve their living standards aswell, and give them an opportunity to become landowners themselves. Introduced in 1978, and given legalbacking in 1979 and 1980, Operation Barga became a popular measure for land reforms. It has been marked asone of the more successful land reforms programmes in India.In 2007 the same Left Front government implements the notorious Land Acquisition Act of 1894 to dislodge thefarmers from their legally held agriculture land to serve the interests of the corporates under the guise of creatingSpecial Economic Zones. Nandigram, Singur, and Lalgarh happened because the Left Front government whichhad projected itself as the messiah of the peasantry turned its back on them by snatching their land away andgiving it to corporate who wanted to roll out cars and chemicals. As a result the Left Front suffered a big defeatin the West Bengal Assembly elections in May 2011. It resulted into an end to its 34 years of continuous rule.Thus 'Land' was the epicentre of both the events having historical importance but they differed in consequences.While one resulted in the economic empowerment of the tillers of the land, the other depriving the farmers oftheir very source of economic sustenance. Where the Left erred is that it committed the mistake of following theagenda of neo-liberal capitalism being vigoursely pursued by UPA government at the centre and various right-wing governments in the states. Perhaps it got a wrong message from its landslide victory in 2006 Assemblyelections. It took it as middle class urban voters' go ahead for its proposed neo-liberal economic policies. Thoughit had fought the election on the plank of industrialization, the Left-front forgot that majority of Bengal's populationlives in villages and 78.71 per cent of the agricultural land is in the hands of the small and marginal farmers. Itwas these segments who primarily supported the Left Front so far for the benefits they had derived from landreforms but turned against it with the reversal of the process.Land is not only permanent source of livelihood to the Indianfarmers but is considered by them as their mother. TheIndian farmer's attachment with his land is so intense thathe cannot bear a separation from it, not the least a forcedone. Bengal's Left Front government learnt the lesson in abitter way.The acquisition of land by the State has always been therebut it used to be done for creating public assets. Now it isbeing brazenly used to quench the profit earning greed ofthe corporates. Land is being grabbed by the corporates formines, for highways and expressways, and for speculativeinvestment. The Indian state is increasingly playing the role

In This IssueIn This IssueIn This IssueIn This IssueIn This Issue

1. The Great Land Grab: India's War on Farmers2. Land Acquisition Debate: Some Issues for

Reflection3. Rationalising Dispossession: The Land

Acquisition and Resttlement Bills4. The Growth-Discrimination Nexus5. The Global Energy Crisis Deepens6. Corporate Profit Versus Life on Earth7. Global Capitalism and 21st Century Fascism8. Book Review: State Power and Democracy9. We Are Resisting

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of a facilitator. This commoditisation of land is beingdone at the behest of the World Bank under the guiseof neo-liberal reforms. In fact the World Bank hasworked for many years to commodify the land. TheIndian Government acting in tow enthusiasticallyadopted World Bank's structural adjustment programmein 1991and reversed the land reforms done in thecountry as well as deregulated mining, roads and ports.While reversing the laws, enacted in Independent India,allowing keeping the land in the hands of the tillers, theIndian government shamelessly left untouched thecolonial 1894 Land Acquisition Act. One of the mostsignificant changes in national policies after liberalisationof the economy in the early 1990s has been the shiftaway from land reform to that of the removal of thegovernment protection to agricultural land in order touse it for variety of industrial, commercial and real estatepurposes. The second tenure of UPA has seen rapidincrease in the process of land acquisition throughoutthe country with little regard for farmers' sentiments.The government virtually looks like a real-estate agentcatering to the greed of national/multinationalcorporates. The year 2006 saw the launch of massiveland grab resulting in transfer of huge quantity of bothagriculture and urban land to these corporations.In fact this unchecked privatisation of land withpecuniary motives is taking place in almost all big citiesin the country. These words of Michael Smith, headof Asian real estate investment banking at GoldmanSachs, are enough to understand the pace of land grabin India-"India is the most exciting real estate market inAsia. It is one of the last major countries in Asia withan improving market.". International propertyconsultants Jones Lang LaSalle's report had said thatIndian property market will be in an upswing from thelast quarter of 2009 and over the next 5 years and theindustry will attract up to US 12.11 billion dollarsinvestment. Similarly Merrill Lynch had made theforecast that Indian realty sector will grow from 12billion dollars in 2005 to 90 billion dollars by 2015.That's why major foreign companies are investingheavily in Indian construction companies. Accordingto the data released by the Department of IndustrialPolicy and Promotion (DIPP), which comes underMinistry of Commerce and Industry, housing and realestate sector including Cineplex, Multiplex, IntegratedTownships and Commercial Complexes etc., attracteda cumulative foreign direct investment (FDI) worth1,048 million US dollar during April-January 2010-11.Research firm Venture Intelligence says that duringJanuary-May 2011, the real estate sector witnessedvarious private equity (PE) and mergers andacquisitions (M&A) deals. It says that around 20 deals

worth US 1.3 billion dollars took place during the periodas compared to 22 deals worth US 48.3 million dollarslast year. Some of the major deals during the periodincluded Jeff Morgan Capital's investment of US 320million dollars in compact Disc India's film city project,Warberg Pincus' investment of 318 million US dollarsin Oceanus Real Estate and Ascendas India's investmentof 190 million US dollars in Phoenix infocity. Tata Realtyalso invested 86 million US dollars in Peepul TreeProperties along with around 65 million US dollarsflowing to Archean Group, Chennai from a PE investor.Earlier in 2005-2006, Morgan Stanely invested 86 milliondollars in Mantri Developers, a midsized constructionfirm in Bangalore, and Merrill Lynch invested 50 milliondollars in Panchsheel Developers, a regional builder.Foreign companies have also poured money into fundsthat invest in Indian developers. Goldman Sachs andCalPERS, world's largest pension fund, are not alonelooking at opportunities in Indian real estate. There arevarious others as well. They include J P Morgan,Lehman Brothers, Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway,the Blackstone Group, Colony Capital, StarwoodCapital, GE Capital and HSBC. These companies' roadto investment in real estate in India has been made easierby changes brought about in Indian policy in February2005 that allow foreign investment of up to 100 % inconstruction development projects with fast-trackapprovals. And the real attraction for these foreigncompanies is the handsome return of 25% or more ontheir investment in Indian projects. That's why piggy-backing on Indian construction companies, they arecompelling the union and regional governments in Indiato misinterpret the provisions of Land Acquisition Act,flout the environment norms and bypass the publicinterests.The land grab scenario in India has been aptlysummarised by Analytical Monthly Review in itseditorial of September 2006 issue. It comments- 'Theuse of Land Acquisition Acts to seize agricultural landfor the profit of imperial capital is indeed the scandalof the first order. "Development" is here a case of fraud,pure and simple. The business press makes clear thatthe forces of globalization see the Indian real estatesector as a bonanza; land prices are by internationalstandards low, and now is the time to make sure thatthe future increase in prices will benefit global capital-not the residents. Using "development" as dress,compliant state governments are put to use, invokingcolonial statutes to seize vast properties juridically. Inthese obscene deals, for each lakh of Reliance or Tataor Goldman Sachs 'future real estate profits, a thousandor more of poor rural residents are driven from theirlands into the slums'.

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The Great Land Grab: India's War on FarmersBy: Vandana Shiva

Land is life. It is the basis of livelihoods for peasantsand indigenous people across the Third World and isalso becoming the most vital asset in the globaleconomy. As the resource demands of globalisationincrease, land has emerged as a key source of conflict.In India, 65 per cent of people are dependent on land.At the same time a global economy, driven byspeculative finance and limitless consumerism, wantsthe land for mining and for industry, for towns,highways, and biofuel plantations. The speculativeeconomy of global finance is hundreds of times largerthan the value of real goods and services produced inthe world.Financial capital is hungry for investments and returnson investments. It must commodify everything on theplanet - land and water, plants and genes, microbesand mammals. The commodification of land is fuellingthe corporate land grab in India, both through thecreation of Special Economic Zones and throughforeign direct investment in real estate.Land, for most people in the world, is Terra Madre,Mother Earth, Bhoomi, Dharti Ma. The land is people'sidentity; it is the ground of culture and economy. Thebond with the land is a bond with Bhoomi, our Earth;75 per cent of the people in the Third World live onthe land and are supported by the land. The Earth isthe biggest employer on the planet: 75 per cent of thewealth of the people of the global south is in land.Colonisation was based on the violent takeover ofland. And now, globalisation as recolonisation is leadingto a massive land grab in India, in Africa, in LatinAmerica. Land is being grabbed for speculativeinvestment, for speculative urban sprawl, for minesand factories, for highways and expressways. Landis being grabbed from farmers after trapping them indebt and pushing them to suicide.India's land issuesIn India, the land grab is facilitated by the toxic mixtureof the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894, thederegulation of investments and commerce throughneo-liberal policies - and with it the emergence ofthe rule of uncontrolled greed and exploitation. It isfacilitated by the creation of a police state and theuse of colonial sedition laws which define defence ofthe public interest and national interest as anti-national.The World Bank has worked for many years tocommodify land. The 1991 World Bank structuraladjustment programme reversed land reform,deregulated mining, roads and ports. While the lawsof independent India to keep land in the hands of thetiller were reversed, the 1894 Land Acquisition Act

was untouched.Thus the state could forcibly acquire the land fromthe peasants and tribal peoples and hand it over toprivate speculators, real estate corporations, miningcompanies and industry.Across the length and breadth of India, from Bhattain Uttar Pradesh (UP) to Jagatsinghpur in Orissa toJaitapur in Maharashtra, the government has declaredwar on our farmers, our annadatas, in order to grabtheir fertile farmland.Their instrument is the colonial Land Acquisition Act- used by foreign rulers against Indian citizens. Thegovernment is behaving as the foreign rulers did whenthe Act was first enforced in 1894, appropriating landthrough violence for the profit of corporations -JayPee Infratech in Uttar Pradesh for the Yamunaexpressway, POSCO in Orissa and AREVA inJaitapur - grabbing land for private profit and not, byany stretch of the imagination, for any public purpose.This is rampant in the country today.These land wars have serious consequences for ournation's democracy, our peace and our ecology, ourfood security and rural livelihoods. The land wars muststop if India is to survive ecologically anddemocratically.While the Orissa government prepares to take theland of people in Jagatsinghpur, people who have beeninvolved in a democratic struggle against landacquisition since 2005, Rahul Gandhi makes it knownthat he stands against forceful land acquisition in asimilar case in Bhatta in Uttar Pradesh. The Ministerfor the Environment, Mr Jairam Ramesh, admittedthat he gave the green signal to pass the POSCOproject - reportedly under great pressure. One mayask: "Pressure from whom?" This visible doublestandard when it comes to the question of land in thecountry must stop.Violation of the landIn Bhatta Parsual, Greater Noida (UP), about 6000acres of land is being acquired by infrastructurecompany Jaiprakash Associates to build luxurytownships and sports facilities - including a Formula1 racetrack - in the guise of building the YamunaExpressway. In total, the land of 1225 villages is tobe acquired for the 165km Expressway. The farmershave been protesting this unjust land acquisition, andlast week, four people died - while many were injuredduring a clash between protesters and the police onMay 7, 2011. If the government continues its landwars in the heart of India's bread basket, there willbe no chance for peace.

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In any case, money cannot compensate for thealienation of land. As 80-year-old Parshuram, wholost his land to the Yamuna Expressway, said: "Youwill never understand how it feels to become landless."While land has been taken from farmers at Rs 300($6) per square metre by the government - using theLand Acquistion Act - it is sold by developers at Rs600,000 ($13,450) per square metre - a 200,000 percent increase in price - and hence profits. This landgrab and the profits contribute to poverty,dispossession and conflict.Similarly, on April 18, in Jaitapur, Maharashtra, policeopened fire on peaceful protesters demonstratingagainst the Nuclear Power Park proposed for a villageadjacent to the small port town. One person died andat least eight were seriously injured. The Jaitapurnuclear plant will be the biggest in the world and isbeing built by French company AREVA. After theFukushima disaster, the protest has intensified - ashas the government's stubbornness.Today, a similar situation is brewing in Jagatsinghpur,Orissa, where 20 battalions have been deployed toassist in the anti-constitutional land acquisition toprotect the stake of India's largest foreign directinvestment - the POSCO Steel project. Thegovernment has set the target of destroying 40 betelfarms a day to facilitate the land grab. The betel bringsthe farmers an annual earning of Rs 400,000 ($9,000)an acre. The Anti-POSCO movement, in its five yearsof peaceful protest, has faced state violence numeroustime and is now gearing up for another - perhapsfinal - non-violent and democratic resistance againsta state using violence to facilitate its undemocraticland grab for corporate profits, overlooking dueprocess and the constitutional rights of the people.

The largest democracy of the world is destroying itsdemocratic fabric through its land wars. While theconstitution recognises the rights of the people andthe panchayats [village councils] to democraticallydecide the issues of land and development, thegovernment is disregarding these democratic decisions- as is evident from the POSCO project where threepanchayats have refused to give up their land.

The use of violence and destruction of livelihoods thatthe current trend is reflecting is not only dangerousfor the future of Indian democracy, but for the survivalof the Indian nation state itself. Considering that todayIndia may claim to be a growing or booming economy- but yet is unable feed more than 40 per cent of itschildren is a matter of national shame.

Land is not about building concrete jungles as proofof growth and development; it is the progenitor offood and water, a basic for human survival. It is thusclear: what India needs today is not a land grab policythrough an amended colonial land acquisition act buta land conservation policy, which conserves our vitaleco-systems, such as the fertile Gangetic plain andcoastal regions, for their ecological functions andcontribution to food security.

Handing over fertile land to private corporations, whoare becoming the new zamindars [heriditaryaristocrats], cannot be defined as having a publicpurpose. Creating multiple privatised super highwaysand expressways does not qualify as necessaryinfrastructure. The real infrastructure India needs isthe ecological infrastructure for food security andwater security. Burying our fertile food-producing soilsunder concrete and factories is burying the country'sfuture.

UNCTAD: Financial Investors Pushing Commodity Prices Higher“An increase in financial investment in associated derivatives markets has had a significant impact on theprices of a wide range of commodities, and must be countered by regulatory action, including directinterventions in those markets, the UN said Sunday. In a new report, Price Formation in Financialized CommodityMarkets, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) came down firmly on the side of thosewho argue financial investment has affected prices, and needs to be controlled….” [Dow Jones]The Guardian adds that “… ‘The changing role of commodity markets, which are turning into financialmarkets, has enormous repercussions for the economy,’ said UNCTAD Division on Globalization andDevelopment Strategies Director Heiner Flassbeck. Investors are encouraged to behave like a herd, says thereport, with few incentives to arbitrage or bet against the tide of rising prices. Without checks and balancesin the system, investors create price bubbles that put many basic foodstuffs out of the reach of millions in thedeveloping world….” [The Guardian (UK)]Reuters writes that “…reforms suggested by the report included improving transparency on commodityexchanges and over-the-counter physical markets, better inventory data and action through the use ofgovernment reserves. ‘The possibility of allowing governments’ direct intervention in the physical and financialmarkets needs to be considered,’ the study concluded. ‘In financialized commodity markets, as in currencymarkets, intervention may even help market participants to better recognize the fundamentals.’…”

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Land Acquisition Debate: Some Issues for ReflectionBy Archana Prasad

IN its meeting of May 25, 2011, the National AdvisoryCouncil (NAC) led by Mrs Sonia Gandhi made somesuggestions to re-look and revise the Land Acquisitionand the Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bills. Itfloated a discussion paper and suggested that boththese bills should be combined into a single bill entitledthe National Development, Land Acquisition,Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act. The discussionpaper is a great advancement over the LandAcquisition Amendment Act 2007, but leaves manyquestions unanswered without whose resolution therecan be little effective control on corporate penetrationin resource rich areas. At the heart of the debate arealso the recent policies of the introduction of privatecapital in resource based industries like mining. It istherefore not surprising that most of the social unresthas been resulting from displacement anddispossession of land in resource rich tribal areas.Outside these areas, several farmers and fisherfolkhave protested against land acquisition and specialeconomic zones like the recent protests in UttarPradesh and many small local mobilisations in coastalareas of Gujarat.In this context there is a widespread desire bydemocratic and grassroots movements to turn theLand Acquisition Act into an instrument of controlover private land grabbing. If the NAC discussionpaper is analysed, we may find that there is someheadway in this direction, so far as building a politicalconsciousness is concerned. But it is clear that thestruggle to achieve this goal will be a hard and arduousone. This is reflected by the way state governmentshere have reached a near unanimity in all perspectiveson land acquisition that the Act of 1894 needs to beamended. But the direction of the amendment is underdebate, and the key questions that have emerged are:Who should acquire the land? What purpose shouldconstitute public purpose? What type of compensationshould be paid for the land?Who should acquire landThe amendment bill introduced in 2007 made certainfundamental changes in the original colonial law.However, many of these changes were not gearedtowards meeting the needs of the most vulnerablepeople. One of its major flaws was that the acquisitionof land by private companies was largely left out ofthe scope of the bill. The bill held that if a privateparty acquired 70 per cent of the land at market prices,then the state could acquire the remaining 30 per centof it under the “public purpose” provision. Theamendment raised the key issue about how acquisitionof land for private purposes was to be handled.

In one of the perspectives, it is being argued that stateshould acquire land for “public purposes” whichcomprises only developmental and infrastructuralwork to be done by the government. In this case,corporate buyers should buy land directly from thefarmers without any state intervention. The TrinamulCongress is one of the biggest votaries of this view,which will put the farmers at the mercy of theindustrialists. This view largely represents those whothink that the farmers will get the best price for landthrough the market. It further attempts to absolvethe state of any responsibility towards those impactedby the project.This is a politically convenient stand to take as itensures that any opposition to land acquisition is tobe dealt with by the corporates themselves, and thatany resistance is dealt with as a law and order problemonly. The instances of state repression in favour ofthe corporate landholders in resource rich areas haveincreased in the recent times, and many ongoingconflicts are being subjected to police repressionrather than being resolved by negotiation. In a variantof this view, the discussion paper prepared by theNAC has had some members advocating that aseparate regulatory mechanism should be worked outto regulate the land markets through the declarationof a minimum land price. Whether this is in itselfsufficient to control and regulate the malpractices ofthe private sector is open to doubt.Another argument being put forward is that the statemust be an active participant in the process ofacquisition. It is argued that all land acquisition shouldtake place through the state even if it is for privateplayers. The NAC discussion paper goes into thisissue in some length and elaborates it as the viewarticulated by one of its members. The argument madeis that the state can acquire land for both public andindustrial purposes. In its own press release, the NACstated that state should acquire land “for any otherpurpose useful to the general public includingcompanies if 70 per cent of the project affected peoplegive their written consent.” Proponents of thisargument contend that any direct acquisition byprivate parties will only lead to greater intrusion byland mafias in resource rich areas. Here theclassification of “public purpose” is not done on thebasis of the intent of the land use, but on the principlethat two thirds of the project affected people shouldagree to the land acquisition process. If this is thecase, it needs to be clarified that the written consentneeded for acquisition should not be only of thelandholders. It should also be of the people who

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depend on the land in terms of seasonal and non-farm occupation since the definition of projectaffected people also includes these people. Thoughthe NAC paper states this difference of opinion, itdoes not take any position as to which one of thesystems is better, and thus it reflects the dilemma ofthe current public debate.Separating public and commercial purposesIt is clear that if greater social control is to bemaintained over all the land acquisition processes,then the state has to play a central role in theacquisition, rehabilitation and resettlement process.Further, the intended uses of the acquired land mustfollow a land use plan that has been approved by theconcerned state’s legislative assembly. As stated bythe NAC, and demanded by democratic forces,projects requiring acquisition of land must prove thatless displacing technological and land use options arenot available to them. In addition, both the project aswell as the acquisition of land must have priorinformed consent of the project affected people. Inall cases, provisions must be made to ensure that theland is used only for the project for which it has beenacquired and is not resold or transferred for profitmaking purposes. Any new land use should alsorequire the assent of the Gram Sabha or any otherlocal self-government. But even here, the definitionof “public purpose” should not include activities thatcan yield commercial profits for the state as well asthe private sector. In both cases the conditionsspecified for acquisition and determination ofcompensation should be different.Both ownership and intent are important in thedefinition of “public purpose.” Public purpose canitself be classified into two broad categories. Firstare the state’s developmental projects of importanceto the local area development, which would bebringing direct socio-economic benefits to the localresidents. Here the local self-governments should beinvolved in the screening of the projects, and thelatter’s impact on the local societies should be partof the social impact assessment. Second, in case oflarger strategic and infrastructural public projects fornon-local benefits, the state and local self-governments should arrive at some agreement wherea percentage of the non-monetary benefits and

proceeds should be invested back into the local area.This may also mean altering the design of the project.Hence the compensation from these projects shouldinclude a plan for development of the local area, apartfrom rehabilitation and resettlement. In both thesecases, the projects should be largely state owned andthe land should be acquired at the base market pricedetermined and declared at the time of acquisition.This should be in addition to the other comprehensivemeasures (solatium, meeting of basic needs,employment etc) that have been suggested bymovements from time to time and also discussed inthe NAC paper.If the project is commercial in nature and theacquisition is being done by the state for privateindustry, then the conditions of purchase should bedifferent. The project should be screened, priorinformed consent for the project must be obtainedfrom the project affected people, and the social impactassessment should ensure that there is no adverseimpact on the economy of the region. Thecompensation and price of purchase should be higherthan the base market price (on which the land isacquired for public purposes) and should include theopportunity costs and the net present value ofresources (especially in case of extractive industries),among other things. Annuities should be paid in termsof the share of the profits, in addition to therequirements of the rehabilitation plans. Further, a fundshould be created to which the private sector shouldcontribute monetarily, and which should be includedin the cost of the project. The cost of any ecologicaland social damage to the area in which the project islocated, must also be estimated and included in theproject cost.Above all, adequate rehabilitation and resettlementoptions, discussed at some length by the NAC paper,should be available to all the project affected people.An integrated land use plan, which is made in aparticipatory manner and approved by democraticallyelected institutions, should form the bedrock of allacquisition processes. This will ensure a pathway fora more balanced and just developmental process thatdoes not compromise on food, livelihood and socialsecurity for the most vulnerable sections of the nation.

(Courtesy: Indiacurrentaffairs.org)

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Rationalising Dispossession: The LandAcquisition and Resttlement Bills

By: Michael Levien

As thousands of small wars against land acquisitionrage across the country, proposed amendments to theLand Acquisition Act (LAA) and a new Resettlementand Rehabilitation Bill await consideration byParliament. With endemic opposition to land grabsfor special economic zones (SEZs), mines, dams,power plants, highways, housing colonies and anynumber of “development” schemes across thecountry, reconsideration of India’s land acquisitionlaws could hardly be more timely or important. Yetwhile the bills were first introduced in the wake ofNandigram and Singur and are ostensibly intended toimprove resettlement and rehabilitation of thedisplaced, in their current form they would only makeit easier for the State to acquire land for privatecompanies. Moreover, they fail to provide an adequateframework for minimising displacement and forensuring that displaced peoples are left with viablelivelihoods. As India prepares to consider sweepingchanges to its legal framework of eminent domain –the power of a state to confiscate private land forpublic purpose – this article seeks to place the LandAcquisition (Amendment) Bill (2009) andResettlement and Rehabilitation Bill (2009) in theirpolitical economic context and examine their likelyconsequences.Political-Economic ContextTo understand the intent and probable effects of thelegal and policy changes embodied in these bills, it isnecessary to see them within the context of thepolitical-economy of land in neoliberal India. Thecentral government recognised early on thatliberalising the economy would require the intensifiedcommodification and acquisition of land. A 1994Rehabilitation Policy draft by the ministry of ruraldevelopment states that on account of liberalisation:It is expected that there will be large-scale investment,both on account of internal generation of capital andincreased inflow of foreign investment, therebycreating enhanced demand for land to be providedwithin a shorter time span in an increasinglycompetitive market-ruled economic structure (MRD1994: 1.1-2).It was thus astutely recognised that in a liberalisedeconomy, private capital would require more land morequickly than had been the case under the Nehruviandevelopment model.This prediction has proven to be accurate. Withliberalisation, increased demand for land has beendriven by at least four sources – industry, resource

extraction, infrastructure, and real estate – as privateinvestment has flowed into these sectors inunprecedented quantities. In practice, these sourcesof demand for land are rather tricky to separate asinfrastructure projects under the public--privatepartnership (PPP) model often contain real estatecomponents (the Taj Expressway being a goodexample) and industrial development is increasinglytaking place in SEZs that are justified oninfrastructural grounds but double as high-endresidential townships. But there is no doubt thatdemand for land has been increasing dramatically.To take infrastructure alone, the Indian governmenthas projected that the country’s industrial growth willrequire a corresponding infrastructural expansion ofmassive proportions. It anticipates that in order toavoid bottlenecks and inflation, India’s investment ininfrastructure – everything from roads, power plants,railways and ports, to airports, container depots,SEZs, and water provision – will have to reach 8%of GDP, or around $320 billion over the next five years(GoI 2007). However, in the neoliberal era,infrastructure development is not the publicundertaking of yesteryear. The Planning Commissionestimates that 75% of this investment will come fromthe private sector, largely in the form of PPPs(Rastogi 2008). The expansion of infrastructure,historically a public good provided by states, is thusbeing turned into a profit-making enterprise, andrendered a commodity that can be securitised andsold on international financial markets. SEZs aresimply one such form of privatised infrastructuraldevelopment that incentivises private companies todevelop land for industrial use by giving them surplusland that they can turn into residential colonies. Ofcourse, all of this private accumulation throughinfrastructure provision is pre-mised on access toland, most of which is in the hands of India’s small-holding peasantry. Consequently, infrastructure – nowoccupying an ambiguous space between public goodand private commodity – is becoming a gargantuanlever of “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey2003).It is only in this context of extraordinary demand forland for industry, infrastructure, natural resourceextraction, and real estate that we can understandthe proposed changes to India’s land acquisition lawsand the problem for capital that they are intended tosolve. The problem is the following: the rapidlyexpanding demand for land under India’s neoliberalregime has been confronted with a relatively inelastic

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supply. Farmers and other landholders have provenunwilling in many circumstances to relinquish theirmeans of production to capitalists. While some balkat the meagre prices being offered through the landacquisition process (usually based on past agriculturalvalue rather than present commercial value), othersrefuse to part with their land at any price. This hasled to a proliferation of pitched battles across Indiaagainst all kinds of land acquisition, most recentlydramatised by the controversies over SEZs and largeprivate mining projects in eastern India. Many of thesemovements have succeeded as shown by the factthat many of the largest proposed SEZs have beenscrapped, seriously stalled or face delayed clearances,from Reliance in Raigad to POSCO in Orissa. Therecent victory against Vedanta’s mining project inNiyamgiri is the latest in a string of victories by farmersand adivasis over capitalists. Aside from such high-profile clashes, endemic opposition to land acquisitionhas become a constant headache for privatecompanies, urban development authorities, andindustrial development corporations.All this has led to an overwhelming chorus amongbusiness, bureaucrats, politicians and the mainstreampress that India must do something to fix its landacquisition laws. While the government would mostlikely prefer to avoid the political cost of acquiringfarmers’ lands for large private corporations, it israther clear that it cannot entirely do so if it wishes tocontinue with its current model of neoliberaldevelopment. As one SEZ e-xecutive told me, a staterole in land acquisition is “absolutely necessary”.Outdated and inaccurate land records make it difficultfor private companies to purchase large amounts ofcontiguous land. While companies could acquire someportion of the land themselves, there will always beholdouts that will prevent contiguity and drive up theprice. Legal disputes over land sales can take adecade or more to resolve in court, indefinitelydelaying projects. For large investments, privatecompanies thus look to the State to acquire land forthem. But with land acquisition now under politicaland legal attack, this avenue has also become fraughtand many large projects have been stalled or scrapped.The elite consensus is clear: something must be doneif the availability of land is not to become a constrainton India’s neoliberal model of development.Ironically, it was the Nandigram resistance and theuproar that followed which provided the opportunityfor the reworking of the land acquisition frameworkrequired by capital. In a sort of political jujitsu, throughwhich an opponent’s momentum is used to your ownadvantage, the Indian state has proposed legal andpolicy changes that, while appearing to respond tothe critics of land d-ispossession, will in fact make it

easier for the government to acquire land for p-rivateaccumulation. Ignoring a draft resettlement andrehabilitation bill prepared by the United ProgressiveAlliances’ (UPA) National Advisory Council (NAC)in consultation with civil society groups, the currentlegislation will serve the interests of those acquiringland more than those being forced to surrender it. Inorder to understand why this is so requires a detailedlook at the legislation itself.The Land Acquisition (Amendment) BillIn liberal democratic states, the forcible acquisitionof private land by governments (eminent domain)typically requires that it serve a “public purpose”. TheLand Acquisition Act (1894), as amended in 1984,specifically mentions the development of village sites,town and rural planning, the provision of land for state-controlled corporations, providing land for residentialpurposes to the poor and landless, and other planneddevelopment undertaken with government funds. Oneof its main uses in early post-independent India waszamindari abolition and land reform (Merillat 1970;Ramanathan 2008). However, the use of eminentdomain to dispossess landlords and distribute land tothe poor was rather shortlived. Under the Nehruviandevelopment state, this more egalitarian use wasquickly supplanted by the exigencies of displacing thepoor for dams, mines, and other large-scaledevelopment projects. While the governmentnever bothered to keep track, the most reliableestimates suggest that at least 60 million Indiancitizens were displaced from over 25 millionhectares of land between 1947 and 2004, amongwhom at least 40% were adivasis and 20% dalits(Fernandes 2004).In practice, separating public purpose from privateprofit has always been tricky; government-undertaken development projects have always stoodto benefit certain classes at the expense of others.One can think, for example, of industries and largefarmers getting the majority of water from dams orprivate developers building middle class homes on theashes of demolished slums. Typically, the State’scentral role in these projects provided the demarcationline (justifiable or not) between public interest andprivate profit: if the State was undertaking the project,it was in the public interest. As the Narmada decisionshowed, the Supreme Court has been unwilling toquestion the government’s prerogative in settingdevelopment priorities and defining the public interest.However, under the form of neoliberal capitalism thatIndia has now embarked upon, using governmentinvolvement to differentiate public and private hasbecome inconvenient as the State’s role indevelopment now increasingly consists of catalysingprivate investment. Since the 1990s, states have

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increasingly taken on the role of acquiring land forprivate companies and courts have largely refused toentertain petitions questioning whether the promotionof private industry is a legi-timate public purpose(Ramanathan 2008). Instead of reining in this practiceby strengthening the notion of public purpose andmaking it justiciable, the proposed amendments to theLAA will only weaken it and thereby facilitate theState’s new role as land broker-in-chief.The manner in which the LAA Bill 2009 underminesthe distinction between public and private interests issubtle and is clothed within a seemingly liberalconcession to the opponents of land acquisition. Theamended public purpose clause, while eliminating theability of the State to acquire 100% of the land requiredfor a project by a private company, states thatwherever a private company has acquired 70% ofthe land necessary for a project deemed “useful tothe general public”, the government will acquire theremaining 30%. This so-called 70:30 clause, whileseemingly minimising the State’s controversial role inland acquisition will introduce several pathologies intothe land acquisition process and deserves seriousscrutiny.While the 70:30 clause will somewhat reduce theState’s politically polarising role in taking land fromfarmers for private companies, it nonetheless doesnot eliminate that role and, in the process, dilutes thepublic-private distinction that should be central to anyuse of eminent domain. Many of the specific instancesof public purpose mentioned in the original act areremoved, and in their place is left the ill-defined “anyother purpose useful to the general public”. It isnowhere specified how this determination will bemade and with what criteria. Thus if a private personor company wants to set up a hotel, a water park, orhigh-end housing on current farmland and acquires70% of the land they need, the State could acquirethe rest for them if they deem it useful for the generalpublic. Since neither “useful” nor “general public” isdefined, what is to stop state officials from arbitrarilydesignating a hotel or water park as “generally useful”enough to some section of society that building itshould override other people’s right to their land andlivelihoods? One fears that the increasing tendencyto equate the public good with GDP can justifyanything. The example of Gorai, Maharashtra wherethe State is trying to acquire a whole island fromfarmers and fisher people to give to the SL Group fora “special tourism zone” is illustrative. Such decadentcruelty is reminiscent of the 17th century Englishenclosures that turned peasant common lands intodeer parks for the idle entertainment for the nobility.Surely some more robust and specific set of criteriais required if a democratic state is to usurp land from

one set of individuals and give it to another. The notionof public purpose, already diluted in case law andbureaucratic practice (Ramanathan 2008), should beclarified and strengthened in a new LAA, not obscuredand weakened.It may be argued that if a company is able to acquire70% of the land required for a project, then thissuggests that a majority of people in the affected areasupport it. This is misleading. The law only requiresthat a majority of land be purchased, not that a majorityof land-holders agree to surrender their land. It neednot be said that in the context of unequallandownership these are entirely different things. Thiskind of “market democracy” is no democracy at all,especially when one factors in non-landholders livingand working on the land who would also have novoice. Moreover, the 70% criteria appears a lot lessdaunting for companies when one considers that anygovernment land they are given would count towardsthe 70% they need to possess before the state willtake the rest through eminent domain. Such transfersof state land (almost always used as commons bylocal communities) or land from land banks to privatecompanies is a regular occurrence, and is not evensubject to the procedural requirements of publiccomment required by the LAA. Theoretically then,the State could transfer 70% of the land required fora project from its own reserves and then require theremaining 30% from farmers. With no choice in thematter, communities could thus be robbed of theircommon and private land. A truly democratic processwould subject approval for land acquisition to grams-abhas, something proposed in the NAC draft butstrenuously avoided in the current legislation.Other questions concerning the 70:30 principal abound:will the threat of being in the 30% to have their landacquired by the State coerce people into selling toprivate parties lest they get a lower price? This isalready a regular occurrence in cases of landacquisition where people feel that they have no choicebut to sell to private companies or land brokersbecause they do not trust the State to give thema-dequate compensation. Since governments rarelyconsult with affected people nor provide themadequate information about projects, it is common forfarmers to thus sell their land cheaply out of fear.The 70:30 clause will undoubtedly increase thisindirect form of coercion, effectively displacing peoplewithout formal land acquisition. Those coerced andtricked off the land in this way will then not even beentitled to the compensation provisions (inadequateas they are) contained in the new R&R Bill.Easing the PathWhile seeming to limit the circumstances in which

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eminent domain is used for private companies, the70:30 will remove more hurdles for capitalists than itcreates. In interviews with SEZ developers,executives told me that they are fully in support ofthe 70:30 clause. While it may mean some more workin acquiring land on the market, it would eliminateone of their biggest worries, which is holdouts refusingto give land, thus driving up the cost and preventingthem from attaining contiguity. Moreover, it might helpto remove legal and political challenges to acquisition.As the lawyer for an industrial developmentcorporation told me, the new bill may clear asubstantial amount of litigation against land acquisitionout of the courts by reducing the (already narrow)scope for challenging it on the basis of public purpose.This would be very significant for industrialists, as itwould reduce the uncertainties and delays of litigation.The greater predictability provided by rationalised landacquisition laws would more than compensate for thehassle and cost of having to purchase 70% of land onthe market (especially give the loopholes mentionedabove, such as counting state land towards that total).But the bill also appears to leave open a verysignificant backdoor through which the Statecould still acquire 100% of the required landfor private companies. While removing the list ofspecific public purposes contained in the original Act,the new amendment provides only two: “strategicpurposes” and “the provision of land for infrastructureprojects of the appropriate government, where thebenefits accrue to the general public”. Infrastructureis subsequently defined to include power generationand transmission; construction of roads, highways,bridges, airports, ports, or rail systems; miningactivities, educational, sports, healthcare, tourism,transportation, space programme, and housing “forsuch income groups as may be specified from timeto time by the appropriate government”, and watersupply projects, irrigation projects, sanitation andsewerage systems. The inclusion of mining – theextraction of resources underlying peoples’lands by private companies – is egregious andhardly needs comment. The inclusion of realestate industries like tourism and housing (forunspeci-fied income groups) as public purposemakes a mockery of the concept. It also sohappens that every single one of these other“infrastructure” activities is now beingundertaken for profit by private companiesthrough the PPP model. Often they are allowed toundertake real estate development on excess landabutting the infrastructure. The LAA amendmentwould thus give clear legal sanction to taking landfrom farmers and giving it to private players for realestate profiteering. To take another example, many

SEZs (which are largely real estate projects) are beingbuilt through joint ventures between state industrialdevelopment corporations and private companies. Ifthe State is a partner – even with a minority stake –in such projects, does this mean that the use ofeminent domain is justified? In an era in which theprovision of public goods is being privatised and theState is increasingly a business partner with privatecapital, the amendments to the LAA would helpfullyjettison the i-nconvenient notion of public interest andlegally equate it with private accumulation. It wouldthus fully legitimise the State’s role as land broker forcapital.To make matters worse, the new legislation explicitlypermits “urgency” acquisitions for most of thepurposes defined in the Act as infrastructure. Underurgency acquisition, land can be acquired within 15days of notification without even hearing objectionsfrom the public. Urgency has nowhere been defined,and we have seen that urgency acquisition has beenmisused in many cases, such as the Anil Ambani SEZin Dadri, where land was acquired for a privatecompany with no plausible claim to urgency (exceptperhaps for its shareholders). Moreover, the Actallows the acquisition of land within 48 hours not onlyfor emergencies like sudden changes in navigablerivers, but wherever “the appropriate governmentconsiders it necessary…for the purpose of maintainingany structure or system pertain to irrigation, watersupply, drainage, road communication or electricity”.This definition is so expansive that it leavesample opportunity for governments to short--circuit the mandatory process of public hearing– not to mention social and environmental impactassessments – and uproot people from theirlands within an reasonably short amount of time.Perhaps just as important as the legal obstacles toland acquisition the LAA amendments would remove,is the political opposition that the bills seem aimed atshort-circuiting. Land acquisition has become apolitical problem for state governments who on theone hand want to attract capital to their state and onthe other would like to avoid the wrath of angryfarmers and not appear to be forcefully redistributingland from the poor to the rich. While one hears theopinion often among bureaucrats, corporations, andeconomists, there is little electoral support fortransferring land from farmers to multi-nationalcorporations because it is “the highest and best use”.Yet, doing so is integral to the neoliberal model ofdevelopment that state governments are almostunanimously committed to. The LAA Bill is above alla clever solution to the contradiction between thepolitical exigency of placating farmers and theeconomic interests of capital: it creates the appearance

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that the State is backing out of its role as chief landbroker while in fact strengthening and rationalisingits ability to provide land to business.In all likelihood, the Land Acquisition Act(Amendment) Bill will facilitate rather than hinderthe ability of the State to acquire land from farmersand other landholders for private purposes. It will likelyto increase the number of people displaced fromvarious kinds of development projects, reduce theirability to resist, and perhaps insulate the state fromresponsibility. As we will see, the accompanyingResettlement and Rehabilitation Bill also fails toguarantee adequate protection for those who will bedispossessed under this new land acquisition regime.The Resettlement and Rehabilitation BillOf the more than 60 million people displaced fordevelopment projects since i-ndependence, it isestimated that less than 18% were resettled, not tosay rehabilitated with alternative livelihoods(Fernandes 2008). This amounts to an expropriation– theft is not too strong a word – of enormousproportions, turning millions of independent producersinto propertyless labourers. The immiseration ofgenerations of people making their livelihoods fromthe land with no or poor compensation has constituteda huge effective subsidy of India’s developmentproject. It is only with the agitations of people’smovements in the past 30 years that any attentionhas started to be paid to those who havedisproportionately paid for India’s industrialdevelopment with their dispossession, and who arerather clinically referred to as “project affectedpersons”. For years, social movements of displacedpersons and other civil society groups have beencalling for national legislation on resettlement andrehabilitation to no avail. It was only after the violencein Nandigram and the huge controversies over landacquisition for SEZs that the centre finally introduceda bill to create a national resettlement rehabilitationlaw. Unfortunately, it is quite inadequate to the task.The Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill undoubtedlycontains some progressive measures for displacedpeople and will give these rights the status of lawrather than policy, which will help to strengthen theirenforcement. In a significant move, the bill recognisesthe rights of the landless and artisans to compensationrather than just landowners (although only if they canprove residence in the area for at least five years).The bill mandates that those having their land acquiredmust receive a house plot and money for construction,compensation for cattle sheds, moving costs, amonthly subsistence allowance at minimumagricultural wages, and a pension of Rs 500/month.These are not insignificant and represent improvement

over the paltry or often non-existent compensationthat most displaced peoples have received sinceindependence. But this is improvement only in relationto an abominable historical standard. In themselves,these measures are not capable of redressing thefundamental economic (not to mention social andcultural) losses that accompany displacement. Whileperhaps no compensation can, coming closer wouldrequire making significant and binding provisionsregarding not just cash handouts, but replacement land,employment, and profit-sharing – things which areleft suitably vague in the bill.The bill suggests that those whose agricultural landswill be acquired are compensated with replacementland “if government land is available in theresettlement area”. Project-affected people are tobe given preference in employment in the industriesfor which land is being acquired “subject to theavailability of vacancies and suitability of the affectedperson for the employment”. In lieu of employmentor agricultural land, oustees for land developmentprojects can receive developed land “subject to limitsas may be prescribed”. Rather than being guaranteedequity stakes in the projects they are providing theland for, the bill says that families shall be given theoption to have 50% of their cash grant in the form ofshares or debentures. Thus when it comes toeconomic fundamentals – land, employment, equity– the bill does nothing to guarantee that the long-term economic assets that people are beingdispossessed of will be replaced with equivalentsources of livelihood. The bill requires nothing beyondcash compensation, which has time and again provento be an ephemeral and inadequate substitute for land.Moreover, the bill lacks strict timelines for completingthe resettlement and rehabilitation of the dispossessed.It should be absolutely mandatory to complete all R&Rprior to displacement. There is no justification fordisplacing people from their homes and livelihoodsuntil alternative homes and livelihoods (and not justshacks in resettlement sites) are made available tothem. As the Narmada case and many other examplesmake abundantly clear, governments have littleincentive to rehabilitate farmers if they are allowedto proceed with a project regardless. This is relatedto another fundamental flaw of the R&R Bill in itscurrent form: there are no penalties for lack ofcompliance. Without timelines or penalties, the R&RBill is a p-aper dragon that may look liberal at firstglance but in fact has no teeth to enforce even theweak entitlements that it would make mandatory.The bill also contains a very strange and arbitraryclause which limits the R&R entitlements (as well associal and environmental impact assessments) toprojects displacing more than 400 families en masse

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in the plains or 200 in hills and scheduled areas. Thatpeople being displaced for a smaller project shouldnot be entitled to the same rights as those beingdisplaced by a larger project defies reason and anynotion of fairness. Moreover, if social andenvironmental impact assessments are not done forsmaller projects (which still might be quite large,especially when one considers that land acquisitionmight only be for 30% of the project), there is noway to evaluate whether the projects’ benefits meritthe costs and whether the least displacing alternativehas been chosen.The intention behind the changes to the definition of“public purpose” in the LAA (Amendment) Bill alsobecomes clearer when read alongside the authoritythat the new R&R Bill would give to a vastresettlement and rehabilitation bureaucracy. Forexample, the R&R Bill states that it will be in thehands of a National Development and Resettlementand Rehabilitation Commission to, among other things,assess “the validity of requests for public purpose”.An unaccountable bureaucrat will thus be investedwith the power to d-etermine the validity of projects.More-over, an ombudsman appointed by the stategovernment will have the power to “dispose of allpetitions relating to resettle-ment and rehabilitation”.It thus appears that these bills would seek to weakenavenues for challenging projects in court and limitopposition to the filing of individual administrativegrievances over compensation. By funnelling thewidespread resistance to land acquisition intoadministrative channels and diminishing legal avenuesfor opposition, the R&R Bill would help the LAA(Amendment) Bill in “rationa-lising” dispossession byensuring more secure and predictable corporateaccess to land.ConclusionsThe Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill and theResettlement and Rehabilitation Bill, as currentlydrafted, will strengthen the power of the State to, inwords of Karl Polanyi, “subject the surface of theplanet to the needs of an industrial society” (2001[1944]). The bills are attempts to overcome thecontradiction for capital generated by the increaseddemand for land driven by neoliberal policies and theinelastic supply rooted in farmers’ unwillingness tosell. This conjuncture has given rise to a land brokerstate, in which state industrial developmentcorporations and urban development authoritiescompete with each other to forcibly transfer privateland from the poor to private companies. This landbroker state is distinct from the old developmentalstate which expropriated vast amounts of land forstate-run dams, mines, and heavy industry in that itnow increasingly transfers land from one class to

another for unabashedly commercial purposes. Thisreverse land reform is justified by the “efficiency” oftaking land from “less productive” classes andredistributing it upwards to capitalists who can becounted on to commodify it.But the land broker state is facing major politicalblowback. The use of the State machinery toexpropriate resources from farmers and transfer themto large private companies for projects of dubiouspublic purpose has unleashed intense farmer resistanceacross the width and breadth of India. Given the bleaknon-farm opportunities available to most farmers inIndia’s current economy, and the unlikelihood that theywould benefit from much of what is being proposedas “development”, resistance to land acquisition isunder-standably endemic. High-profile clashesbetween farmers and the State (most notoriously inNandigram) have attracted national a-ttention andpoliticised land acquisition to an unprecedented degree.Essentially, there is a contradiction between ther-equirements for land generated by the neoliberaleconomic model and the exigencies of electoraldemocracy. While the state bureaucrats and theprivate sector see the need for a state role in landacquisition, they are facing political pressures tominimise that role. I have argued that the proposedLand Acquisition (Amendment) Bill and theResettlement and Rehabilitation Bill are their responseto this d-ilemma. They appear to minimise the State’srole in land acquisition and offer liberal concessionsto the displaced, while in fact strengthening the abilityof the State to acquire land for the private sector andoffering insufficient e-ntitlements to the dispossessed.They would rationalise dispossession in the doublesense of both justifying it and rendering it procedurallypredictable: they will project the false impression thatfarmers are getting a “fair deal” while in fact ensuringthat private capital gets timely access to land.Concrete ReformsWhile this analysis points to structural problems inIndia’s political economy, one should not refrain fromoffering concrete reforms to the existing bills. Firstand most fundamentally, states should not be acquiringland for private companies. Land acquisition shouldbe limited to those government projects thatdemonstrably serve a well-defined public purpose thatis not to be confused with the contributions of privateprofits to GDP. That public purpose should also bejusticiable in courts, giving potential oustees avenuesfor redress. Second, the bills should subject landacquisition to the prior and informed consent of gramsabhas. These two changes would in themselvesgreatly reduce the instances of land acquisition andthe number of people displaced. Finally, any acquiredland not used for the stated public purpose should be

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returned to its previous owner.A substantive R&R Bill – which could be mergedinto the LAA – should make binding commitments tocompensate all those affected by any project of anysize with some combination of land, employment, andequity shares. There is also no reason why farmers(instead of corporations) should not be made thelandlords of projects and be entitled to collect rent.The bottom line is that under no circumstances shouldpeople be compensated with cash alone as this cannotprovide long-term assets for an alternate livelihood.Any cash component, moreover, should be peggednot to the land’s past agricultural value (as is thecurrent practice) but to its commercial value factoringin the proposed development. This would requireamending the LAA. There is no logical or moralreason why farmers should be deprived of this sharein the land’s appreciation (which is now captured aswindfall by the private companies after buying itcheaply from the state). Otherwise, the governmentmust admit that private companies capturing this land

appreciation is the real “public” purpose of landacquisition. Finally, all commitments in the R&R Billshould have time frames for completion (beforeprojects begin) and contain stiff penalties for non-performing agencies and officials. Some – though notall – of these provisions are spelled out in the sidelinedNAC draft of the bill, which could replace the presentdrafts as a basis for discussion.The reopening of India’s land acquisition laws toamendment is a historic opportunity for the myriadstruggles against displacement across the country.These laws can either be amended to facilitate theforceful transfer of land from farmers to corporationsor they can be amended to give people greatersecurity in their land and resources and to ensurethat they get a fair deal in the few instances whentheir land is acquired for a truly public purpose. Ifthey are to solve a problem for people rather thancapital, the Land Acquisition Act (Amendment) Billand Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill must besubstantially altered from their current form.

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The Growth-Discrimination NexusBy: Jayati Ghosh

Many people, especially in India, tend to believe thatthe process of economic growth is likely to be mostlyliberating for those oppressed by various forms ofsocial discrimination and exclusion. The argument isthat market forces break open age-old social norms,especially those of caste and gender, that have for solong denied opportunities and restricted options forso many.Unfortunately, the current Indian reality is morecomplex than that. The strength of Indian largecapital, which is leading the current economic boom,derives at least partly from the persistence and evenexpansion of a wide range of workers engaged inprecarious and low-productivity employment. Mostsignificantly from the point of view of the Indiancorporate sector, different degrees of outsourcinghave blurred the lines between formal and informalactivities, and the proliferation of such low-payingself-employment has become an important means ofreducing costs for the corporate sector as wellpassing on the risks of production to smaller unitsthat are essentially part of the working class.The extent to which all successful formal economicactivities in India rely on the implicit subsidies providedby cheap informal labour is largely unrecognised. Yetcorporate profitability in India hinges substantially onthe lowering of a wide range of fixed costs throughoutsourcing. Thus, for example, the success of the

much-lauded software industry in India is only partlybecause of cheaper skilled IT professionals comparedto their international counterparts. A significant partof the lower costs comes from the entire range ofsupport services: cleaning and maintenance of offices,transport, security, back office work, catering, and soon. These are usually outsourced to smaller companiesthat hire temporary workers with much lower wages,no job security, very long hours of work and hardlyany form of worker protection or other benefits.Without the cost advantages indirectly conferred bythese low paid workers, the domestic softwareindustry would find it much harder to competeinternationally. The same is true of a wide range ofcorporate activities across both manufacturing andthe newer services.These processes of direct and indirect underwritingof the costs of the corporate sector have been greatlyassisted by the ability of employers in India to utilisesocial characteristics to ensure lower wages to certaincategories of workers. Caste and other forms of socialdiscrimination have a long tradition in India, and theyhave interacted with capitalist accumulation togenerate peculiar forms of labour market segmentationthat are probably unique to Indian society. Numerousstudies have found that social categories are stronglycorrelated with the incidence of poverty and that bothoccupation and wages differ dramatically across

(Courtesy: Economic & Political Weekly)

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social categories. The National Sample Surveys revealthat the probability of being in a low wage occupationis significantly higher for STs, SCs, Muslims andOBCs (in that order) compared to the general ''casteHindu'' population. This is only partly because ofdifferences in education and level of skill, which arealso important and which in turn reflect the differentialprovision of education across social categories.Such caste-based discrimination has operated in bothurban and rural labour markets. For example, even ina major metropolitan area like Delhi which is one ofthe epicentres of economic expansion, there continuesto significant discrimination against Dalit workersoperating dominantly through the mechanism ofassignment to jobs, with Dalits largely entering poorly-paid ''dead-end'' jobs. These are actually essentialjobs in both production, such as sweepers, loaders,unskilled construction workers, and services, such asshop and sales assistants and security guards and thelike. Methods of recruitment based on contacts, whichare widely prevalent in such low-skilled occupations,cause past discrimination to carry over to the presentand thereby condemn lower caste groups to providingpoorly remunerated labour that is nonetheless essentialto income generation in the economy as a whole.Similarly, empirical studies of caste behaviour in ruralIndia have found that there are many ways in whichcaste practices operate to reduce the access of thelower castes to local resources as well as to incomeearning opportunities, thereby forcing them to providetheir labour at the cheapest possible rates toemployers. One study (Ghanshyam Shah, HarshMander, Sukhdeo Thorat, Satish Deshpande andAmita Baviskar, ''Untouchability in Rural India'', NewDelhi: Sage Publications, 2006) of various caste-basedpractices in rural areas of 11 states (Punjab, UttarPradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh includingChhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Orissa, AndhraPradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu) found,in addition to the well-known lack of assets, a largenumber of social practices that effectively restrictedthe economic activity of lower caste and Dalit groups,and forced them to supply very low wage labour inharsh and usually precarious conditions.In 73 per cent of the villages surveyed in this study,Dalits could not enter non-Dalit homes. In 70 per centof villages, Dalits could not eat with non-Dalits. In 64per cent of villages, Dalits could not enter commontemples. In 36 per cent of survey villages, Dalits couldnot enter village shops. In around one-third of thesurvey villages, Dalits were not accepted as tradersdealing with commonly used items of consumption orproduction. These practices in turn can be used tokeep wages of Dalit workers (who are extremelyconstrained in their choice of occupation) low, even

in period of otherwise rising wages. And thesepractices persist even during the period of the Indianeconomy's much-vaunted dynamic growth.But the important point to note here is not simply thatsuch practices continue to exist, but that they havebecome the base on which the economic accumulationprocess rests. In other words, capitalism in India,especially in its most recent globally integrated variant,has used past and current modes of socialdiscrimination and exclusion to its own benefit, tofacilitate the extraction of surplus and ensure greaterflexibility and bargaining to employers when dealingwith workers. So social categories are not''independent'' of the accumulation process – rather,they allow for more surplus extraction, because theyreinforce low employment generating (and thereforepersistently low wage) tendencies of growth.Similar tendencies are evident in patterns of genderdiscrimination as well. With respect to women's work,there have been four apparently contradictory trends:simultaneous increases in the incidence of paid labour,underpaid labour, unpaid labour, and the openunemployment of women. This is a paradox, since itis generally expected that when employmentincreases, then unemployment comes down; or whenpaid labour increases, then unpaid labour decreases.For urban women, the increase in regular work hasdominantly been in services, including most importantlythe relatively low-paid and less desirable activity ofdomestic service, along with some manufacturing. Inmanufacturing, there has been some recent growthof petty home-based activities of women, typicallywith very low remuneration, performing outsourcedas part of a larger production chain. But explicitlyexport-oriented employment, even in special zonesset up for the purpose, still accounts for only a tinyfraction of women's paid work in urban India.Meanwhile, in rural India self-employment has cometo dominate women's activities even in non-agricultural occupations, largely because of the evidentdifficulty of finding paid work.In this period of economic boom, average real wagesof women workers increased relatively little over theten year period 1993-94 to 2004-05 despite rapidincreases in national income over this period, and forsome categories of women workers (rural graduatesand urban illiterate females) real wages actuallydeclined. What is more, there were fairly sharpincreases in gender gaps in wages, are now amongthe highest in the world.Even public services rely heavily on the underpaidlabour of women. While a privileged minority ofwomen in government employment continue to accessthe benefits of the government behaving as a ''model

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employer'', new employment for the purpose ofproviding essential public services has beenconcentrated in low-remuneration activities withuncertain contracts and hardly any benefits. This istrue of school education (with the employment ofpara-teachers) as well as health and nutrition (withreliance on anganwadi workers and ASHAs).The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural EmploymentGuarantee Scheme is the only public intervention tomake some difference in this, with evidence of gendergaps in rural wage work coming as a result of theimplementation of the scheme.Conditions of self-employment among women showmany of the disturbing tendencies of wageemployment. Women's self-employment in non-agriculture is largely characterised by both lowexpectations regarding incomes and remunerationand substantial non-fulfilment of even these lowexpectations. Despite some increase in high-remuneration self-employment among professionalsand micro-entrepreneurs, in general the expansion ofself-employment seems to be a distress-drivenprocess, determined by the lack of availability ofsufficient paid work on acceptable terms. Case studies

and evidence from large surveys of the NSS bothsuggest that payment for home-based work, which istypically on piece rates and accounts for increasingproportions of the economic activity of women, havebeen declining not only in real but even in nominalterms in many urban centres, despite the economicdynamism of the areas in general.

Similarly, unpaid labour of women is likely to havebeen increasing because of public policies such asreduced social expenditure that place a larger burdenof care on women, or privatised or degraded commonproperty resources or inadequate infrastructurefacilities that increase time spent on provisioningessential goods for the household, or simply becauseeven well-meaning policies (such as for afforestation)are often gender-blind.

Once again, the relevant point here is not simply thatsuch gender differences exist, but that they – andtherefore the particular forms that patriarchy takesin India - are closely intertwined with processes ofcapitalist accumulation. So the recent growth has notbroken existing pattern of social discrimination, insteadit has relied on them to take forward the growth story.

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The Global Energy Crisis DeepensBy: Michael T. Klare

Here’s the good news about energy: thanks to risingoil prices and deteriorating economic conditionsworldwide, the International Energy Agency (IEA)reports that global oil demand will not grow this yearas much as once assumed, which may provide sometemporary price relief at the gas pump. In its MayOil Market Report, the IEA reduced its 2011 estimatefor global oil consumption by 190,000 barrels per day,pegging it at 89.2 million barrels daily. As a result,retail prices may not reach the stratospheric levelspredicted earlier this year, though they willundoubtedly remain higher than at any time since thepeak months of 2008, just before the global economicmeltdown. Keep in mind that this is the good news.As for the bad news: the world faces an array ofintractable energy problems that, if anything, haveonly worsened in recent weeks. These problems aremultiplying on either side of energy’s key geologicaldivide: below ground, once-abundant reserves ofeasy-to-get “conventional” oil, natural gas, and coalare drying up; above ground, human miscalculationand geopolitics are limiting the production andavailability of specific energy supplies. With troublesmounting in both arenas, our energy prospects are

only growing dimmer.Here’s one simple fact without which our deepeningenergy crisis makes no sense: the world economy isstructured in such a way that standing still in energyproduction is not an option. In order to satisfy thestaggering needs of older industrial powers like theUnited States along with the voracious thirst of risingpowers like China, global energy must growsubstantially every year. According to the projectionsof the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), worldenergy output, based on 2007 levels, must rise 29%to 640 quadrillion British thermal units by 2025 to meetanticipated demand. Even if usage grows somewhatmore slowly than projected, any failure to satisfy theworld’s requirements produces a perception ofscarcity, which also means rising fuel prices. Theseare precisely the conditions we see today and shouldexpect for the indefinite future.It is against this backdrop that three crucialdevelopments of 2011 are changing the way we arelikely to live on this planet for the foreseeable future.Tough-Oil RebelsThe first and still most momentous of the year’s energy

(Courtesy: MacroScan)

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shocks was the series of events precipitated by theTunisian and Egyptian rebellions and the ensuing“Arab Spring” in the greater Middle East. NeitherTunisia nor Egypt was, in fact, a major oil producer,but the political shockwaves these insurrectionsunleashed has spread to other countries in the regionthat are, including Libya, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.At this point, the Saudi and Omani leaderships appearto be keeping a tight lid on protests, but Libyanproduction, normally averaging approximately 1.7million barrels per day, has fallen to near zero.When it comes to the future availability of oil, it isimpossible to overstate the importance of this spring’sevents in the Middle East, which continue tothoroughly rattle the energy markets. According toall projections of global petroleum output, Saudi Arabiaand the other Persian Gulf states are slated to supplyan ever-increasing share of the world’s total oil supplyas production in key regions elsewhere declines.Achieving this production increase is essential, but itwill not happen unless the rulers of those countriesinvest colossal sums in the development of newpetroleum reserves -- especially the heavy, “toughoil” variety that requires far more costly infrastructurethan existing “easy oil” deposits.In a front-page story entitled “Facing Up to the Endof ‘Easy Oil,’” the Wall Street Journal noted that anyhope of meeting future world oil requirements restson a Saudi willingness to sink hundreds of billions ofdollars into their remaining heavy-oil deposits. Butright now, faced with a ballooning population and theprospects of an Egyptian-style youth revolt, the Saudileadership seems intent on using its staggering wealthon employment-generating public-works programsand vast arrays of weaponry, not new tough-oilfacilities; the same is largely true of the othermonarchical oil states of the Persian Gulf.Whether such efforts will prove effective is unknown.If a youthful Saudi population faced with promises ofjobs and money, as well as the fierce repression ofdissidence, has seemed less confrontational than theirTunisian, Egyptian, and Syrian counterparts, thatdoesn’t mean that the status quo will remain forever.“Saudi Arabia is a time bomb,” commented Jaafar AlTaie, managing director of Manaar Energy Consulting(which advises foreign oil firms operating in theregion). “I don’t think that what the King is doingnow is sufficient to prevent an uprising,” he added,even though the Saudi royals had just announced a$36-billion plan to raise the minimum wage, increaseunemployment benefits, and build affordable housing.At present, the world can accommodate a prolongedloss of Libyan oil. Saudi Arabia and a few otherproducers possess sufficient excess capacity to make

up the difference. Should Saudi Arabia ever explode,however, all bets are off. “If something happens inSaudi Arabia, [oil] will go to $200 to $300 [per barrel],”said Sheikh Zaki Yamani, the kingdom’s former oilminister, on April 5th. “I don’t expect this for the timebeing, but who would have expected Tunisia?”Nuclear Power on the Downward SlopeIn terms of the energy markets, the second majordevelopment of 2011 occurred on March 11th whenan unexpectedly powerful earthquake and tsunamistruck Japan. As a start, nature’s two-fisted attackdamaged or destroyed a significant proportion ofnorthern Japan’s energy infrastructure, includingrefineries, port facilities, pipelines, power plants, andtransmission lines. In addition, of course, it devastatedfour nuclear plants at Fukushima, resulting, accordingto the U.S. Department of Energy, in the permanentloss of 6,800 megawatts of electric generatingcapacity.This, in turn, has forced Japan to increase its importsof oil, coal, and natural gas, adding to the pressure onglobal supplies. With Fukushima and other nuclearplants off line, industry analysts calculate thatJapanese oil imports could rise by as much as 238,000barrels per day, and imports of natural gas by 1.2billion cubic feet per day (mostly in the form ofliquefied natural gas, or LNG).This is one major short-term effect of the tsunami.What about the longer-term effects? The Japanesegovernment now claims it is scrapping plans to buildas many as 14 new nuclear reactors over the nexttwo decades. On May 10th, Prime Minister NaotoKan announced that the government would have to“start from scratch” in devising a new energy policyfor the country. Though he speaks of replacing thecancelled reactors with renewable energy systemslike wind and solar, the sad reality is that a significantpart of any future energy expansion will inevitablycome from more imported oil, coal, and LNG.The disaster at Fukushima -- and ensuing revelationsof design flaws and maintenance failures at the plant-- has had a domino effect, causing energy officialsin other countries to cancel plans to build new nuclearplants or extend the life of existing ones. The first todo so was Germany: on March 14th, ChancellorAngela Merkel closed two older plants and suspendedplans to extend the life of 15 others. On May 30th,her government made the suspension permanent. Inthe wake of mass antinuclear rallies and an electionsetback, she promised to shut all existing nuclearplants by 2022, which, experts believe, will result inan increase in fossil-fuel use.China also acted swiftly, announcing on March 16ththat it would stop awarding permits for the

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construction of new reactors pending a review ofsafety procedures, though it did not rule out suchinvestments altogether. Other countries, includingIndia and the United States, similarly undertookreviews of reactor safety procedures, puttingambitious nuclear plans at risk. Then, on May 25th,the Swiss government announced that it wouldabandon plans to build three new nuclear powerplants, phase out nuclear power, and close the last ofits plants by 2034, joining the list of countries thatappear to have abandoned nuclear power for good.How Drought Strangles EnergyThe third major energy development of 2011, lessobviously energy-connected than the other two, hasbeen a series of persistent, often record, droughtsgripping many areas of the planet. Typically, the mostimmediate and dramatic effect of prolonged droughtis a reduction in grain production, leading to ever-higher food prices and ever more social turmoil.Intense drought over the past year in Australia, China,Russia, and parts of the Middle East, South America,the United States, and most recently northern Europehas contributed to the current record-breaking priceof food -- and this, in turn, has been a key factor inthe political unrest now sweeping North Africa, EastAfrica, and the Middle East. But drought has anenergy effect as well. It can reduce the flow of majorriver systems, leading to a decline in the output ofhydroelectric power plants, as is now happening inseveral drought-stricken regions.By far the greatest threat to electricity generationexists in China, which is suffering from one of itsworst droughts ever. Rainfall levels from January toApril in the drainage basin of the Yangtze, China'slongest and most economically important river, havebeen 40% lower than the average of the past 50 years,according to China Daily. This has resulted in asignificant decline in hydropower and severeelectricity shortages throughout much of centralChina.The Chinese are burning more coal to generateelectricity, but domestic mines no longer satisfy thecountry’s needs and so China has become a majorcoal importer. Rising demand combined withinadequate supply has led to a spike in coal prices,and with no comparable spurt in electricity rates (setby the government), many Chinese utilities arerationing power rather than buy more expensive coaland operate at a loss. In response, industries areupping their reliance on diesel-powered backupgenerators, which in turn increases China’s demandfor imported oil, putting yet more pressure on globalfuel prices.Wrecking the Planet

So now we enter June with continuing unrest in theMiddle East, a grim outlook for nuclear power, and asevere electricity shortage in China (and possiblyelsewhere). What else do we see on the global energyhorizon?Despite the IEA’s forecast of diminished future oilconsumption, global energy demand continues tooutpace increases in supply. From all indications, thisimbalance will persist.Take oil. A growing number of energy analysts nowagree that the era of “easy oil” has ended and thatthe world must increasingly rely on hard-to-get “toughoil.” It is widely assumed, moreover, that the planetharbors a lot of this stuff -- deep underground, faroffshore, in problematic geological formations likeCanada’s tar sands, and in the melting Arctic.However, extracting and processing tough oil willprove ever more costly and involve great human, andeven greater environmental, risk. Think: BP’sDeepwater Horizon disaster of April 2010 in the Gulfof Mexico.Such is the world’s thirst for oil that a growing amountof this stuff will nonetheless be extracted, even ifnot, in all likelihood, at a pace and on a scale necessaryto replace the disappearance of yesterday’s andtoday’s easy oil. Along with continued instability inthe Middle East, this tough-oil landscape seems tounderlie expectations that the price of oil will onlyrise in the coming years. In a poll of global energycompany executives conducted this April by theKPMG Global Energy Institute, 64% of thosesurveyed predicted that crude oil prices will crossthe $120 per barrel barrier before the end of 2011.Approximately one-third of them predicted that theprice would go even higher, with 17% believing itwould reach $131-$140 per barrel; 9%, $141-$150per barrel; and 6%, above the $150 mark.The price of coal, too, has soared in recent months,thanks to mounting worldwide demand as supplies ofenergy from nuclear power and hydroelectricity havecontracted. Many countries have launched significantefforts to spur the development of renewable energy,but these are not advancing fast enough or on a largeenough scale to replace older technologies quickly.The only bright spot, experts say, is the growingextraction of natural gas from shale rock in the UnitedStates through the use of hydraulic fracturing (“hydro-fracking”).Proponents of shale gas claim it can provide a largeshare of America’s energy needs in the years ahead,while actually reducing harm to the environment whencompared to coal and oil (as gas emits less carbondioxide per unit of energy released); however, anexpanding chorus of opponents are warning of the

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threat to municipal water supplies posed by the useof toxic chemicals in the fracking process. Thesewarnings have proven convincing enough to leadlawmakers in a growing number of states to beginplacing restrictions on the practice, throwing intodoubt the future contribution of shale gas to thenation’s energy supply. Also, on May 12th, the FrenchNational Assembly (the powerful lower house ofparliament) voted 287 to 146 to ban hydro-frackingin France, becoming the first nation to do so.The environmental problems of shale gas are hardlyunique. The fact is that all of the strategies now beingconsidered to extend the life-spans of oil, coal, andnatural gas involve severe economic andenvironmental risks and costs -- as, of course, doesthe very use of fossil fuels of any sort at a momentwhen the first IEA numbers for 2010 indicate that itwas an unexpectedly record-breaking year forhumanity when it came to dumping greenhouse gasesinto the atmosphere.With the easily accessible mammoth oil fields of Texas,Venezuela, and the Middle East either used up or soonto be significantly depleted, the future of oil rests onthird-rate stuff like tar sands, shale oil, and extra-heavy crude that require a lot of energy to extract,processes that emit added greenhouse gases, and aswith those tar sands, tend to play havoc with theenvironment.Shale gas is typical. Though plentiful, it can only be

pried loose from underground shale formations throughthe use of explosives and highly pressurized watermixed with toxic chemicals. In addition, to obtain thenecessary quantities of shale oil, many tens ofthousands of wells will have to be sunk across theAmerican landscape, any of one of which could proveto be an environmental disaster.Likewise, the future of coal will rest on increasinglyinvasive and hazardous techniques, such as theexplosive removal of mountaintops and the dispersalof excess rock and toxic wastes in the valleys below.Any increase in the use of coal will also enhanceclimate change, since coal emits more carbon dioxidethan do oil and natural gas.Here’s the bottom line: Any expectations that ever-increasing supplies of energy will meet demand inthe coming years are destined to be disappointed.Instead, recurring shortages, rising prices, andmounting discontent are likely to be the thematicdrumbeat of the globe’s energy future.If we don’t abandon a belief that unrestricted growthis our inalienable birthright and embrace the genuinepromise of renewable energy (with the necessaryeffort and investment that would make such acommitment meaningful), the future is likely to provegrim indeed. Then, the history of energy, as taught insome late twenty-first-century university, will belabeled: How to Wreck the Planet 101.

US Trade Body Hails India's $4 Billion Boeing OrderWASHINGTON: The US-India Business Council (USIBC), a business advocacy group representingsome 400 top US companies, has hailed India's decision to purchase 10 Boeing C-17 aircraft, valued atmore than $4.1 billion."This is testament to India's appreciation of US technology and confidence in the United States as a long-term defence sales partner," said USIBC President Ron Somers noting that the purchase would make theIndian Air Force the owner and operator of the largest fleet of C-17s outside of the US."This largest-ever Indian purchase of US defence technology we hope will be just the beginning of muchmore to come," he said."US defense sales to India began only a decade ago, at a value of less than $200 million for radar equipment.We have come a long way since then," Somers said noting "US-India defense sales today have nowcrossed the $9 billion mark and continue to grow.""US industry wishes to provide India with a host of cutting-edge products and solutions to meet its emergingdefence, security, and counterterrorism needs," he said."Overall, we see the United States and India, the world's largest free-market democracies, forging a deepand lasting strategic partnership, shaping the destiny of the 21st Century," Somers said.Boeing C-17 is used for rapid strategic airlift of troops and cargo to main operating bases, and forward-operating bases, throughout the world. It can also perform tactical airlifts, medical evacuation, and airdropmissions. The C-17 can transport large payloads and land on short, rough runways.According to Boeing each plane supports 650 suppliers across 44 states in the US, and that this order willsupport Boeing's C-17 production facility in Long Beach, California for an entire year.

(Courtesy: Counter Currents.org)

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Corporate Profit Versus Life on EarthBy: Rand Clifford

The last year has been especially catastrophic for lifeon Earth, while at the same time, corporate profits havejumped a staggering 36.8%, setting all-time records.Is this a coincidence, or are the long-term implicationsas sinister as they might seem?How many disasters like the massive poisoning of theGulf of Mexico, or gushing of radiation from multiplereactor-core meltdowns in Japan can the biospheretake? Or, perhaps a more apropos question is: Howmuch more profit will the biosphere survive?Two things the catastrophes in the Gulf and atFukushima have in common is that both were at thehands of corporations, and both involved extensivedisinformation, misinformation, and severe suppressionof information. Just like governments, which arevirtually all corporate “assets”, corporations themselvesshun the light of day.Dangerous creatures, corporations, obviously one ofthe deadliest things ever sprouted from hell. Of coursethey are not creatures in any biological sense, but thanksto corporate chicanery beginning in 1886 especially,they have more rights than you do.You might be rather dismayed if you challenge acorporation in our for-wealth court system; if thecorporation is big enough, and the case goes highenough, it is conceivable that the ultimate verdict willorbit the concept that by eating, breathing, drinking...byall the things you must do to stay alive, you areendangering corporate profit. Sound far-fetched? Well,check out exactly how corporations became “artificialpeople”. (1) Also, please consider last year's SupremeCourt of the United States (SCOTUS) ruling that handedabsolute control of elections to corporations. SCOTUSruled that any restriction on the amount of moneycorporations may spend to influence elections is aviolation of their right to free speech under the FirstAmendment. Should the Book of Revelation be amendedto read: In the beginning of the end, God createdcorporations?Some say money is the root of all evil; it could also besaid that corporations are the root of the most malignantmoney; vicious and biocidal entities more powerful withevery tick of the (doomsday) clock, and all that mattersto them is profit. Corporations represent the perfectmeans for the wealthy to grow ever wealthier bydestroying the biosphere and not being held accountable;isn't that a decent definition of “malignant money”?Einstein warned us by saying that unleashing the powerof the atom changed everything except our modes ofthinking...which carry us toward unparalleledcatastrophe. And now, unparalleled catastrophe is ours,made in Japan; notice how it has mostly disappearedfrom the news ? Forget Three Mile Island, forget

Chernobyl—which has killed a million people, so far,and has touched the entire northernhemisphere...Fukushima is worse by far, and still outof control. The multiple meltdowns in Japan have thepotential to render much of the northern hemisphereuninhabitable, and mangle the gene pool of countlessspecies, including humans. We're talking effectivelyforever. But apparently an even more important reasonfor severe suppression of information, suppression oftruth: vast corporate profits are at stake.Nuclear energy corporations are wealthy enough toafford extensive political influence. In fact, whenFukushima became a volcano of radioactivity, presidentObama was (he still is!) pushing heavily for $36 billionin taxpayer “loans” for the construction of morereactors. Insurance companies and financiers treatnuclear reactors like the red-hot radioactive potatoesthey are, so the nuke good ol' boys need help from thepoor to increasingly threaten life on Earth. The lastthing they want is people to be aware of, well, reality.Also, imagine the hit to profits of Tokyo Electric PowerCompany if they didn't have the Pacific ocean to pourtheir radionuclide lava into. “Hey,” they might say, “it'sa big ocean.” Well, it's a small planet in terms of theamount radioactivity gushing from Fukushima.We can thank energy corporations for irradiating halfthe planet already (there is no “safe” dose of internalradiation—and radiation is not “good for you” as certainhardright “pundits” trumpet). We can thank energycorporations for poisoning the Gulf with oil and toxicdispersants; but above all, for so diligently suppressingalternative energies all these years. Eight energy giantsare among the world's top eleven corporations on thepower of filthy biocidal energies...monster fossil-energycorporations with a virtual monopoly on enormousfossil profits. And they like to kill the competition. Interms of life on Earth, their ultimate protection ofprofits—potentially their all-time greatest crime againsthumanity—came in 1943, the year they murdered Tesla.Nikola Tesla's was among the most brilliant minds everyto bless humanity. He once wrote: “Science is but aperversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal thebetterment of humanity....”In 1988, at the International Tesla Symposium inColorado Springs, astrophysicist Adam Trombly notedthat if society had followed up on the inventions Teslaenvisioned at the turn of the century, “...we wouldn'thave a fossil fuel economy today. And J.P. Morgan,Rockefeller and a number of others wouldn't haveamassed extraordinary fortunes on the basis of the fossilfuel economy.”The sheer scope of Tesla's genius seems unfathomableto normal people. Gifted with uncanny memory and

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powers of visualization, he was able to fully construct,develop and perfect inventions in his mind beforecommitting anything to paper. In his own words:"When I have gone so far as to embody in the inventionevery possible improvement I can think of and see nofault anywhere, I put into concrete form this finalproduct of my brain. Invariably my device works as Iconceived that it should, and the experiment comesout exactly as I planned it. In twenty years there hasnot been a single exception."Tesla's inventions include radio (recognized by theSCOTUS eight months after Tesla died), X-rays (threeyears before Roentgen), the Tesla coil, fluorescent light,lasers, bladeless turbines, vertical take-off aircraft,wireless transmission of electricity, the particle beam("death", or "peace" ray), the whole system of AC thatpowers the world.... At the time of his death he heldover 700 patents. And the fields Tesla greatly contributedto, such as computer science, robotics, remote control,radar, ballistics, nuclear physics...a comprehensive listwould be astonishing.One invention Tesla was elusive about, sometimesoffering teasers but no specifics, had the potential toeclipse all of his and anyone else's breakthroughs—perhaps even cost him his life, and is behind theperpetual drive to minimize public awareness of Tesla.He had long prophesied that mankind would somedayhook their machinery up to the energy of vacuumspace—to "the very wheelworks of nature". Thetheoretical basis for energy from the vacuum has nowbeen part of "mainstream" physics literature for overfifty years. But as Tesla long intimated, any kind of"free energy" device would never be allowed to reachthe market.In 1943, Tesla had an appointment to discuss with FDRthat it was possible for us to get all the energy we needsimply by tapping the space we're in. But he nevermade it to the meeting with FDR; Tesla was found in

his apartment, dead of "natural causes". Officially, itwas a heart attack. But information leaked byinvestigators indicates that for reasons of "nationalsecurity" the coroner's report was to be kept secretbecause it revealed that Tesla died of arsenic poisoning.Take that, competition! Take that, life on Earth. Freeenergy available to everyone would devastate corporateprofits—almost to the extent that our global fossil fueleconomy has devastated the biosphere. Tesla gavehumanity so much, promised so much more, andcorporations not only murdered him, they have evenall but lifted him clear out of mainstream history...triedtheir best to make him an unperson . They have proven,and always will, that nothing is more dangerous thanthreatening corporate profits.How does that bode for life on Earth? The mostdangerous of advanced human endeavors aredevelopment of alternatives to entrenched modes ofenergy that are powering the biosphere straight tohell...sure sounds like a nightmare. Acceleratingdestruction of Earth's ability to sustain life, brought toyou by corporations. A living planet dominated by“artificial people” that care only about profit, nothingbut, profit.Imagine waking up to find there never was a fossil fueleconomy, that all the war, pollution, climate disruption,murder, cancer, slavery, impoverishment, obsceneconcentration of wealth—all the lethal threats to life onEarth stayed in the nightmare because half a centuryago, thanks to Tesla, we plugged in to “the verywheelworks of nature”, and became an advancingcivilization.Chernobyl and Fukushima never happened....Imagine life on Earth being more important thancorporate profit.If only we could wake up.

Developing Countries Urged to Tighten Fiscal Policy“Developing countries have fully bounced back from the financial crisis, and should move forcefully totighten fiscal and monetary policy in order to reduce their vulnerability to an inflationary shock, according tothe World Bank. In contrast to wealthier nations that are still struggling to shake off the impact of the globalrecession, ‘the majority of developing countries have, or are close to having regained full capacity levels,’ theBank said in its biannual Global Economic Prospects report on Tuesday….” [Financial Times]AFP writes that “…the World Bank said global growth will only be 3.2 percent in 2011, a tenth point lowerthan its January estimate and sharply off the 3.8 percent pace of 2010. High-income countries were stillstruggling to recover. Growth would slow from 2.7 percent in 2010 to 2.2 percent in 2011, slower than theprevious 2.4 percent estimate. As developing countries neared full capacity, collective GDP growth wasprojected to slow from 7.3 percent in 2010 to about a 6.3 percent pace each year from 2011 to 2013….”[Agence France Presse]Dow Jones adds that “…the Bank said biggest risks to the global outlook are the potential for a continuing risein food prices, another run of oil price spikes and lingering problems of fiscal deficit and sovereign debt woesin rich nations. Political turmoil in the Middle East and Japan's natural disaster have weighed modestly onworld growth despite the major impacts on the countries themselves, the Bank said….”

(Courtesy: Counter Currents.org)

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C40 and World Bank form Groundbreaking Climate Change Action PartnershipSao Paulo, Brazil – (June 1, 2011) Today the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40), a group of 40 large citiestackling climate change, and the World Bank formed a groundbreaking partnership that will help cities acceleratecurrent actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become more resilient to climate change. C40 Chair New YorkCity Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick signed the agreement duringthe C40 Cities Mayors Summit in Sao Paulo, Brazil.“The leaders of C40 Cities - the world’s megacities -- hold the future in their hands,” said C40 Chair, New York CityMayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “This unique partnership with the World Bank will help solve many of the problemsthat cities face in obtaining financing for climate-related projects, both from the World Bank and other lenders. It willalso make it easier for C40 cities to access the resources of the World Bank.”C40 cities account for 8 percent of the global population, 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and 21percent of global GDP. C40 cities are already taking major steps to address the challenges of a changing climate, butmore can be done.“The World Bank has a long history of working in urban areas to promote economic development to overcomepoverty and more recently to address climate change,” said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick. “Thisagreement will help us work with C40 cities to integrate growth planning with climate change adaptation and mitigation,with special attention to the vulnerabilities of the urban poor.”Since 2006, when the C40 partnered with the Clinton Climate Initiative to tackle climate change in cities, their programshave reduced carbon emissions significantly.“Cities are growing at a faster rate than ever before and producing the majority of carbon emissions; we are alreadyfacing rising sea levels and more extreme hurricanes, droughts, and cyclones,” said President Clinton. “Our partnershipwith the World Bank will provide essential tools to help cities become more sustainable, grow their economies, createjobs, promote energy independence, and ensure a stable future for generations to come.”About the partnershipThe key objective of this new partnership is to enable megacities to expand mitigation and adaptation actions and atthe same time, strengthen and protect economies, reduce poverty and protect vulnerable populations. It addressesstructural issues that make it difficult for cities to finance climate actions that have been identified by both C40 Citiesand the World Bank Group.As part of the mutual agreement, the C40 and the World Bank will establish:Ø A consistent approach to climate action plans and strategies in large cities to enable stronger partnerships betweencities on shared climate goals, and to permit potential investors to identify opportunities across cities. The lack of astandard approach or process – such as exists for national government action plans – has made it difficult forinvestors and grantors to assess city action plans and thus has made them reluctant to fund projects.Ø A common approach to measuring and reporting on city greenhouse gas emissions to allow verifiable and consistentmonitoring of emissions reductions, identify actions that result in the greatest emission reductions, and facilitateaccess to carbon finance. This is necessary because carbon finance requires quantitative assessments of impacts,but currently no single standard for reporting citywide carbon emissions exists; the Carbon Disclosure Project’sMeasurement for Management report identified several different protocols in use by C40 cities, with no singleprotocol used by a majority.“The City of São Paulo is very pleased with the announcement of the new partnership between the World Bank andthe C40,” said Sao Paulo Mayor Gilberto Kassab. “This partnership shows the growing importance of local governmentsin addressing climate change-related issues and the importance of financing local-level projects.”The World Bank will also establish -- by December 1, 2011 – a single, dedicated entry point for C40 cities to accessWorld Bank climate change-related capacity building and technical assistance programs, and climate finance initiatives.This will assist city governments – who often do not have the familiarity with World Bank programs that their nationalgovernment counterparts have – to know what World Bank resources exist and how to tap them.In addition, the C40 will identify and work with national governments who are interested in funding climate changeprojects, and identify private sector partners to provide project financing in C40 cities. In turn, the World Bank willidentify opportunities from among sources of concessional finance, carbon finance, and innovative market and riskmanagement instruments as well as the private sector through the International Finance Corporation. These may beaccessed by project developers supporting climate action in cities.Both the C40 and the World Bank will direct resources expressly to this partnership to ensure its implementation,sustainability and long-term success.The C40 and the World Bank Institute, the World Bank’s capacity development arm, already work together throughthe C40 Carbon Finance Capacity Building program, with support from the Government of Switzerland and the City ofBasel. Established in 2008, this program is a pilot to build the capacity of a small number of developing cities todirectly access the Clean Development Mechanism.

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Global Capitalism and 21st Century FascismBy: William I. Robinson

The crisis of global capitalism is unprecedented, givenits magnitude, its global reach, the extent of ecologicaldegradation and social deterioration, and the scale ofthe means of violence. We truly face a crisis ofhumanity. The stakes have never been higher; our verysurvival is at risk. We have entered into a period ofgreat upheavals and uncertainties, of momentouschanges, fraught with dangers - if also opportunities.I want to discuss here the crisis of global capitalismand the notion of distinct political responses to the crisis,with a focus on the far-right response and the dangerof what I refer to as 21st century fascism, particularlyin the United States.Facing the crisis calls for an analysis of the capitalistsystem, which has undergone restructuring andtransformation in recent decades. The current momentinvolves a qualitatively new transnational or global phaseof world capitalism that can be traced back to the 1970s,and is characterised by the rise of truly transnationalcapital and a transnational capitalist class, or TCC.Transnational capital has been able to break free ofnation-state constraints to accumulation beyond theprevious epoch, and with it, to shift the correlation ofclass and social forces worldwide sharply in its favour- and to undercut the strength of popular and workingclass movements around the world, in the wake of theglobal rebellions of the 1960s and the 1970s.Emergent transnational capital underwent a majorexpansion in the 1980s and 1990s, involving hyper-accumulation through new technologies such ascomputers and informatics, through neo-liberal policies,and through new modalities of mobilising and exploitingthe global labour force - including a massive new roundof primitive accumulation, uprooting, and displacinghundreds of millions of people - especially in the thirdworld countryside, who have become internal andtransnational migrants.We face a system that is now much more integrated,and dominant groups that have accumulated anextraordinary amount of transnational power and controlover global resources and institutions.Militarised accumulation, financial speculation -and the sacking of public budgetsBy the late 1990s, the system entered into chroniccrisis. Sharp social polarisation and escalating inequalityhelped generate a deep crisis of over-accumulation. Theextreme concentration of the planet's wealth in thehands of the few and the accelerated impoverishment,and dispossession of the majority, even forcedparticipants in the 2011 World Economic Forum'sannual meeting in Davos to acknowledge that the gapbetween the rich and the poor worldwide is "the mostserious challenge in the world" and is "raising the

spectre of worldwide instability and civil wars."Global inequalities and the impoverishment of broadmajorities mean that transnational capitals cannot findproductive outlets to unload the enormous amounts ofsurplus it has accumulated. By the 21st century, theTCC turned to several mechanisms to sustain globalaccumulation, or profit making, in the face of this crisis.One is militarised accumulation; waging wars andinterventions that unleash cycles of destruction andreconstruction and generate enormous profits for anever-expanding military-prison-industrial-security-financial complex. We are now living in a global wareconomy that goes well beyond such "hot wars" inIraq or Afghanistan.For instance, the war on immigrants in the United Statesand elsewhere, and more generally, repression of socialmovements and vulnerable populations, is anaccumulation strategy independent of any politicalobjectives. This war on immigrants is extremelyprofitable for transnational corporations. In the UnitedStates, the private immigrant prison-industrial complexis a boom industry. Undocumented immigrantsconstitute the fastest growing sector of the US prisonpopulation and are detained in private detention centresand deported by private companies contracted out bythe US state.It is no surprise that William Andrews, the CEO of theCorrections Corporation of America, or CCA - thelargest private US contractor for immigrant detentioncentres - declared in 2008 that: "The demand for ourfacilities and services could be adversely affected bythe relaxation of enforcement efforts … or throughdecriminalisation [of immigrants]." Nor is it any surprisethat CCA and other corporations have financed the spateof neo-fascist anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona andother US states.A second mechanism is the raiding and sacking of publicbudgets. Transnational capital uses its financial powerto take control of state finances and to impose furtherausterity on the working majority, resulting in evergreater social inequality and hardship. The TCC hasused its structural power to accelerate the dismantlingof what remains of the social wage and welfare states.And a third is frenzied worldwide financial speculation- turning the global economy into a giant casino. TheTCC has unloaded billions of dollars into speculation inthe housing market, the food, energy and other globalcommodities markets, in bond markets worldwide (thatis, public budgets and state finances), and into everyimaginable "derivative", ranging from hedge funds toswaps, futures markets, collateralised debt obligations,asset pyramiding, and ponzi schemes. The 2008collapse of the global financial system was merely the

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straw that broke the camel's back.This is not a cyclical but a structural crisis - arestructuring crisis, such as we had in the 1970s, andbefore that, in the 1930s - that has the potential tobecome a systemic crisis, depending on how socialagents respond to the crisis and on a host of unknowncontingencies. A restructuring crisis means that the onlyway out of crisis is to restructure the system, whereasa systemic crisis is one in which only a change in thesystem itself will resolve the crisis. Times of crisis aretimes of rapid social change, when collective agencyand contingency come into play more than in times ofequilibrium in a system.Responses to the crisis and Obama's Weimarrepublic in the United StatesIn the face of crisis there appear to be distinct responsesfrom states and social and political forces. Three standout: global reformism; resurgent of popular and leftiststruggles from below; far-right and 21st centuryfascism. There appears to be, above all, a politicalpolarisation worldwide between the left and the right,both of which are insurgent forces.A neo-fascist insurgency is quite apparent in the UnitedStates. This insurgency can be traced back severaldecades, to the far-right mobilisation that began in thewake of the crisis of hegemony brought about by themass struggles of the 1960s and the 1970s, especiallythe Black and Chicano liberation struggles and othermilitant movements by third world people, counter-cultural currents, and militant working class struggles.Neo-fascist forces re-organised during the years of theGeorge W Bush government. But my story here startswith Obama's election.The Obama project from the start was an effort bydominant groups to re-establish hegemony in the wakeof its deterioration during the Bush years (which alsoinvolved the rise of a mass immigrant rightsmovement). Obama's election was a challenge to thesystem at the cultural and ideological level, and hasshaken up the racial/ethnic foundations upon whichthe US republic has always rested. However, the Obamaproject was never intended to challenge the socio-economic order; to the contrary; it sought to preserveand strengthen that order by reconstituting hegemony,conducting a passive revolution against mass discontentand spreading popular resistance that began to percolatein the final years of the Bush presidency.The Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci developed theconcept of passive revolution to refer to efforts bydominant groups to bring about mild change from abovein order to undercut mobilisation from below for morefar-reaching transformation. Integral to passiverevolution is the co-option of leadership from below;its integration into the dominant project. Dominantforces in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere in the MiddleEast and North America are attempting to carry outsuch a passive revolution. With regard to the immigrant

rights movement in the United States - one of the mostvibrant social movements in that country -moderate/mainstream Latino establishment leaders were broughtinto the Obama and Democratic Party fold – a classiccase of passive revolution - while the mass immigrantbase suffers intensified state repression.Obama's campaign tapped into and helped expand massmobilisation and popular aspirations for change not seenin many years in the United States. The Obama projectco-opted that brewing storm from below, channelled itinto the electoral campaign, and then betrayed thoseaspirations, as the Democratic Party effectivelydemobilised the insurgency from below with morepassive revolution.In this sense, the Obama project weakened the popularand left response from below to the crisis, which openedspace for the right-wing response to the crisis - for aproject of 21st century fascism - to become insurgent.Obama's administration appears in this way as a Weimarrepublic. Although the social democrats were in powerduring the Weimar republic of Germany in the 1920sand early 1930s, they did not pursue a leftist responseto the crisis, but rather side-lined the militant tradeunions, communists and socialists, and progressivelypandered to capital and the right before turning overpower to the Nazis in 1933.21st century fascism in the United StatesI don't use the term fascism lightly. There are somekey features of a 21st century fascism I identify here:1.The fusion of transnational capital with reactionarypolitical powerThis fusion had been developing during the Bush yearsand would likely have deepened under a McCain-PalinWhite House. In the meantime, such neo-fascistmovements as the Tea Party as well as neo-fascistlegislation such as Arizona's anti-immigrant law,SB1070, have been broadly financed by corporatecapital. Three sectors of transnational capital inparticular stand out as prone to seek fascist politicalarrangements to facilitate accumulation: speculativefinancial capital, the military-industrial-securitycomplex, and the extractive and energy (particularlypetroleum) sector.2.Militarisation and extreme masculinisationAs militarised accumulation has intensified the Pentagonbudget, increasing 91 per cent in real terms in the past12 years, the top military brass has become increasinglypoliticised and involved in policy making.3.A scapegoat which serves to displace and redirectsocial tensions and contradictionsIn this case, immigrants and Muslims in particular. TheSouthern Poverty Law Centre recently reported that"three strands of the radical right - hate groups, nativistextremist groups, and patriot organisations - increasedfrom 1,753 groups in 2009 to 2,145 in 2010, a 22 percent rise, that followed a 2008-9 increase of 40 per

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cent."A 2010 Department of Homeland Security reportobserved that "right wing extremists may be gainingnew recruits by playing on the fears about severalemergency issues. The economic downturn and theelection of the first African American president presentunique drivers for right wing radicalisation andrecruitment." The report concluded: "Over the past fiveyears, various right wing extremists, including militiaand white supremacists, have adopted the immigrationissue as a call to action, rallying point, and recruitmenttool."4.A mass social baseIn this case, such a social base is being organisedamong sectors of the white working class thathistorically enjoyed racial caste privilege and that havebeen experiencing displacement and experiencing rapiddownward mobility as neo-liberalism comes to the US- while they are losing the security and stability theyenjoyed in the previous Fordist-Keynesian epoch ofnational capitalism.5.A fanatical millennial ideology involving race/culturesupremacy embracing an idealised and mythical past,and a racist mobilisation against scapegoatsThe ideology of 21st century fascism often rests onirrationality - a promise to deliver security and restorestability is emotive, not rational. 21st century fascismis a project that does not - and need not - distinguishbetween the truth and the lie.6.A charismatic leadershipSuch a leadership has so far been largely missing in theUnited States, although figures such as Sarah Palin andGlenn Beck appear as archetypes.The mortal circuit of accumulation-exploitation-exclusionOne new structural dimension of 21st century globalcapitalism is the dramatic expansion of the globalsuperfluous population - that portion marginalised andlocked out of productive participation in the capitalisteconomy and constituting some 1/3rd of humanity. Theneed to assure the social control of this mass ofhumanity living in a planet of slums gives a powerfulimpetus to neo-fascist projects and facilitates thetransition from social welfare to social control -otherwise known as "police states". This systembecomes ever more violent.Theoretically stated - under the conditions of capitalistglobalisation - the state's contradictory functions ofaccumulation and legitimation cannot both be met. Theeconomic crisis intensifies the problem of legitimationfor dominant groups so that accumulation crises, suchas the present one, generate social conflicts and appearas spiralling political crises. In essence, the state's abilityto function as a "factor of cohesion" within the social

order breaks down to the extent that capitalistglobalisation and the logic of accumulation orcommodification penetrates every aspect of life, so that"cohesion" requires more and more social control.Displacement and exclusion has accelerated since 2008.The system has abandoned broad sectors of humanity,who are caught in a deadly circuit of accumulation-exploitation-exclusion. The system does not evenattempt to incorporate this surplus population, butrather tries to isolate and neutralise its real or potentialrebellion, criminalising the poor and the dispossessed,with tendencies towards genocide in some cases.As the state abandons efforts to secure legitimacyamong broad swathes of the population that have beenrelegated to surplus - or super-exploited - labour, itresorts to a host of mechanisms of coercive exclusion:mass incarceration and prison-industrial complexes,pervasive policing, manipulation of space in new ways,highly repressive anti-immigrant legislation, andideological campaigns aimed at seduction and passivitythrough petty consumption and fantasy.A 21st fascism would not look like 20th centuryfascism. Among other things, the ability of dominantgroups to control and manipulate space and to exercisean unprecedented control over the mass media, themeans of communication and the production ofsymbolic images and messages, means that repressioncan be more selective (as we see in Mexico or Colombia,for example), and also organised juridically so that mass"legal" incarceration takes the place of concentrationcamps. Moreover, the ability of economic power todetermine electoral outcomes allows for 21st centuryfascism to emerge without a necessary rupture inelectoral cycles and a constitutional order.The United States cannot be characterised at this timeas fascist. Nonetheless, all of the conditions and theprocesses are present and percolating, and the socialand political forces behind such a project are mobilisingrapidly. More generally, images in recent years of whatsuch a political project would involve spanned the Israeliinvasion of Gaza and ethnic cleansing of thePalestinians, to the scapegoating and criminalisation ofimmigrant workers and the Tea Party movement in theUnited States, genocide in the Congo, the US/UnitedNations occupation of Haiti, the spread of neo-Nazisand skinheads in Europe, and the intensified Indianrepression in occupied Kashmir.The counterweight to 21st century fascism must be acoordinated fight-back by the global working class.The only real solution to the crisis of global capitalismis a massive redistribution of wealth and power -downward towards the poor majority of humanity. Andthe only way such redistribution can come about isthrough mass transnational struggle from below.

(William I. Robinson is a professor of sociology and global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.)

(Courtesy: Al Jazeera.net)

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Book Review: Andrew Kolin: State Power and Democracy - Before and During the Presidency of George W.Bush, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

State Power and DemocracyBy: Paresh Chandra

It is not hard to find texts that defy the lies of thestate by presenting facts that contradict them. Thismethod of 'uncovering' the status quo, which can becalled Chomskyan (the political Chomsky, not thelinguistic one), works by trying to shock its readerout of their ideological slumber. Unfortunately, thevast array of ugly facts that these texts bring outusually remains ungrounded in a unified, alternativeperception of reality. The attempt is to falsify particularclaims of the state, by producing facts to the contrary,without trying to understand the 'deep structure' thatgives birth to this state of affairs. The reader, notdrawn out into a critique of present-day life in itsentirety, is able to go back to that life, as if what thesebooks uncover is simply another aspect of reality thats/he need not be concerned with.The first noticeable merit of Andrew Kolin's book isthat it is able to avoid this Chomskyan pitfall. Themain thesis - that the American police state that cameto full bloom during the Bush regime was theculmination of a history of suppression of democracy- is buttressed by a very detailed account of stepsthat successive governments took in this direction. Adiachronic account invariably suggests causalrelations, and the writer in question does not feel theneed to shy away from these suggestions. Kolin'sanalysis shows that the move toward a police statewas a possibility immanent within the Americansystem, and if it did not become a solid, unquestionedpresence till now, it was only because of successivepeople's movements that broke its advance. Theemergence of the 'military-industrial complex' duringand after World War II on the one hand, and theinstitution of intelligence bodies like the FBI and CIAon the other, were major steps in the making of apolice state. Kolin demonstrates how these bodiesworked together, repeatedly sidelining the Congress,to hinder the rights of citizens and foreigners (insideand outside the American border). Even as they playeda crucial role in militaristic/expansionistic drives, theyalso ensured that opposition within the borders of thenation, to the state's foreign policy, is minimised.The American state has managed to ensure apermanent state of emergency, declared orundeclared, within its borders. This emergency isbased, customarily, on the fear of external threats(till a point communism and later on terrorism). Thestate of emergency implies that the President hasunquestioned primacy over the Congress, that theIntelligence has a free hand, and that democratic rights

of citizens are effectively and indefinitely suspended.Any person or organisation that dared to questionforeign policy was arbitrarily connected to foreignthreats (present or absent) and was hence liable tobe prosecuted. Laws like the Patriot Act ensured that'suspicion' was good enough ground to 'neutralise' aperson.From the beginning of the 20th century, and especiallyafter WW-II, the US has been the single-mostpowerful imperialist entity in world politics. "Empiresare incompatible with democracy, which has beenseen throughout human history. To maintain andexpand power, an empire must limit dissent, rollingback democracy; only mass democracy couldchallenge the authoritarian polices of the USgovernment." (131) To defend its power and policiesthe US has had to stay on an offensive not only interritories it has 'conquered', but also inside its ownborders, where dissent has emerged time and again.Sometimes the combination of aggression abroad anddefence within its borders has proved too much, andthe outcome has often been visible. For instance, onepractical implication of continuous war in Vietnamwas that the state was not in a position to control,properly, rising discontent inside its borders. Moregenerally, however, a logical continuum can be traced,on the one hand between the aggression that isperpetrated outside and inside the nation's border, andon the other the resistance that it has to face on both'fronts'.The foregrounding of this two-faced 'continuum' hasbeen, to my mind, the single-most importantachievement of Kolin's book. He has been able todemonstrate, through an analysis of (sensational)realpolitik, as well as more prosaic politico-economicfacts, that imperialist aggression, destruction ofdemocracy inside the imperialist nation, resistance,both inside and abroad, and policy at large (both 'pro-' and 'anti-people') are inextricable entwined. In away then, this book is an allegory of politics in a worlddominated by the capitalist mode of production.This final point about policy, or more precisely, thepart about 'pro-people' policy needs to be explained abit more. Kolin shows that the meeting of demandsraised by protestors does not necessarily (in fact,never) means a systemic improvement - cooption isthe word. When the tendency toward militarisationbecomes excessive, the chances of an implosionincrease (this becomes visible, primarily in peoples'discontent), and to 'manage' this state of affairs the

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state seems to give in to demands; everythingsuddenly becomes more democratic. But thisimprovement is always temporary, and in a way buystime for the capitalist state to reorganise itself for afresh assault. Obama, for instance, seems to be buyingtime in precisely this manner - making cosmeticchanges, making promises that he does not keep, andso on. The fact is, and this too Kolin brings out, thatthe state tries its best to destroy movements. When itfails to do that, it meets those demands that do notneed a fundamental reorganisation of the socialstructure. 'Affirmative action' was one such demand,which allowed the state to control the furore of theCivil Rights Movement without hurting hegemonicinterests too much.This much said, two more bases are left to be covered,by this essay and by the book. All radical theoristsinvariably run into a persistent problem in the processof explicating the workings of the system. One doesnot want to overplay the aspect of agency, norcelebrate the 'victories' of movements, withoutappending a warning about the system's ability to cooptstruggles. If we do this, we risk the pitfall of reformismand the cause of revolutionary transformation maysuffer. On the other hand, if we focus upon the systemand its 'largeness', its 'perfections', its capacity tosurvive and rejuvenate itself, our work may have apessimistic, anaesthetic effect on the reader, onceagain defeating our cause. And this is the problemthat Kolin's book runs into. The vast intricacies ofthe functioning of the state impart to it a sublimitythat seems beyond comprehension; and what wecannot comprehend, we surely cannot fight. On topof this, the ability of this state (of affairs) to perpetuateitself by coopting all attempts to subvert it.But this is where another aspect of the text becomes

important: the periodically stated, if somewhatinadequately developed (within the text) centrality of'class'.Usually, the text mentions class when it tries todistinguish between struggles whose demands areeasier for the state to meet, because they do notquestion its foundations, and others, which do just thatand are invariably forcefully suppressed. Admittedlythe text does not explain why "class-based" strugglesare somehow harder to coopt. The detour throughpolitical economy that this would entail would havedone away with any possibility that may exist, of thereader being too overwhelmed with surface structuresto grasp the deep structures that generate them. Iwould argue that any attempt at 'cognitive mapping'(to use Fredric Jameson's phrase), any attempt, inother words, to get a handle on the state-of-affairswill need to begin with an understanding of classstruggle, understood not as a one-on-one battlebetween two groups, but as a struggle of tendenciesthat become visible to us in synchronic force-fieldsof identity assertions. Though, as has been said, thetext does not elaborate upon the process of classstruggle, it does manage to give the reader a sensethat each synchronic fact that it describes isoverdetermined by a complex underlying process thatunites it to other such facts. In its detailed descriptionof the pendulum-like movement of the state betweengreater and lesser democracy, and the relation of thismovement to struggles of peoples, it is able to presentan image of history as the complex dialectic betweenautonomy constituted in, as and by the momentarycontingencies of a necessarily continuous critique andits equally inevitable and continuous structuraldetermination.

(Courtesy: Radical Notes)

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We Are Resisting

IndiaUttar Pradesh - A Major Victory for the Agitating Workers inGorakhpur (By: Citizen's Front in Support ofGorakhpur Worker's Movement)New Delhi, June 2. Workers in Gorakhpur achieveda major victory in their struggle when the factoryowners agreed to start the two locked out mills fromJune 3 and take back the dismissed workers. 12 ofthe 18 workers will join work immediately and theremaining 6 will be taken back after a domesticenquiry. The workers also forced the owners to acceptthat no one from the management will be in theenquiry committee; it will have two members fromthe office staff and one workers’ nominee.The decision was taken at negotiations held till latenight at the district magistrate’s residence. The twoowners of the VN Dyers and Processors yarn milland textile mill, the district magistrate and deputylabour commissioner and seven workers’representatives were present at the meeting.These two mills in the Bargadwa area of Gorakhpurwere illegally locked out since April 10. Around 500workers work in both of these mills owned by theAjitsaria family having an annual turnover of morethan 150 crores. 18 workers of these two mills weredismissed by the owners. The workers were agitatingfor reinstatement of their colleagues and restartingthe factories.Their movement took a new turn when around 1500workers from several factories in Bargadwa andGIDA industrial areas went to take part in a MayDay rally called by the Workers’ Charter Movementin Delhi. Almost all the local industrialists were tryingto prevent the workers from joining this rally and eventhe divisional commissioner threatened the workers’leaders that they will not be spared if they continueto “instigate” the workers.Eighteen of the leading workers in another yarn millAnkur Udyog Ltd were dismissed when they returnedto join work on the morning of May 3. There areabout 900 workers in this mill. When the workersprotested against this action, they were shot at bycriminals hired by the factory owner Ashok Jalan. 19workers sustained injuries. One of them got a bulletin his stomach which went through to hit his spine.He is still in a serious condition.The workers launched a Workers Satyagraha andfaced severe repression from the police andadministration who openly sided with the owners. Theywere lathi-charged repeatedly and were not allowedto hold even peaceful demonstrations. None of the

main accused of the firing was arrested and falsecases were slapped against many workers. However,their resolute struggle and widespread support fromall over the country and abroad forced theadministration on the back-foot and all the 18 sackedworkers in Ankur Udyog Ltd were taken back andthe mill restarted on May 11.However, the owners of VN Dyers were adamanton taking back the workers and breaking their agitationat any cost. The workers launched the second phaseof their Satyagraha movement from May 16 bystarting a ‘fast-unto-death’ at the gates of the VNDyers yarn mill. The workers were demanding thereinstatement of dismissed workers, opening of thelocked out mills, arrest of accused in the firing case,compensation to the injured workers and a high levelenquiry into the firing and repression on workers.On May 20, on the fifth day of the hunger strike,when the workers were going to meet the districtmagistrate, they were severely beaten, badly injuringmore than 25 workers, and 73 workers were arrested.Most of the workers were released late in the nightbut 14 of their leaders including two women activistswere sent to jail on trumped up charges. They werefinally released on bail after a week. The workersgained another moral victory when the Station HouseOfficer of the Chiluatal police station was transferredfor his role in the brutal repression of the workers.The owners, the labour department and the localadministration were trying to tire out the workers orbreak their unity, but failed. They even held “talks”without the workers and announced the opening ofthe mills without the 18 workers whom they declaredas “retired from service”. For several days, theowners tried to start the mills but the workers refusedto go back to work unless their dismissed co-workerswere taken back. The owners were also threateningto start the mill by taking in new workers.On May 30, the workers entered the yarn mill andoccupied it to prevent the management from doinganything of this sort and to press for their demands.They forced their way into the yarn mill and occupiedall its shops. They did not budge from their positionsdespite threats and intimidation by the police and PAC(provincial armed constabulary). A large number ofworkers kept constant vigil outside the factory andsupplied food to the workers inside.The administration was forced to call the owners andthe workers for talks on Wednesday night and adecision to end the standoff was taken after 3 hoursof negotiations. Apart from the DM and DLC, thetwo owners and four workers from the yarn mill and

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three from the textile mill were present in the meeting.The Joint Front for Struggle on Workers’ Rights haswelcomed the decision and said that this victory isthe result of the resolute struggle of all the workersof Bargadwa who stood united against the might ofthe capitalists and the state. However, it cautionedthe workers against complacency as the administrationand management have gone back on their wordseveral times in the past. Besides, the struggle forjustice in the case of the firing on workers willcontinue. False cases against workers have yet notbeen revoked.The front thanked all those who have supported theirstruggle in various ways. It also asked all theintellectuals, social activists, jurists, media persons andtrade unions to continue their campaign to demandhigh level enquiries in the firing incident as well asthe rampant violation of labour laws in almost all theindustries in Gorakhpur.

Latin AmericaMexico: Indigenous Group Protests MiningConcessionsSome 500 people marched in Guadalajara, capital ofthe western Mexican state of Jalisco, on May 20 todemand that the federal and state governments honortheir commitments to protect land that is sacred tothe Wixárika (Huichol) indigenous group. Theprotesters' main focus was the 22 concessions thatthe federal Economy Secretariat has given to FirstMajestic Silver Corp (FMS), a Canadian miningcompany, to extract gold and silver in some 6,000hectares around Real de Catorce in the north centralstate of San Luis Potosí. They say this was done

without the consent of affected indigenous groups.The Wixárika now live in an area that includes partsof Durango, Jalisco, Nayarit and Zacatecas, but theysay their ancestral homeland was in San Luis Potosí,and every year some Wixárika walk 500 km to theWirikuta area in Real de Catorce to gather the peyotethat they use in religious ceremonies. The San LuisPotosí government declared the Wirikuta a protectedarea in 1994, and on April 28, 2008, Mexican presidentFelipe Calderón Hinojosa and the governors ofDurango, Jalisco, Nayarit, San Luis Potosí andZacatecas signed the Pact of Hauxa Manaka'a, inwhich they agreed to respect the area's ecologicalintegrity.The Wirikuta's environment was damaged by silvermining in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the Wixárikaprotesters in Guadalajara expressed fears that evenmore damage would result from new methods ofextraction that FMS is expected to use. ActivistAntonio Hayanueme García Mijárez said theconcessions were sold to FMS and its Mexicansubsidiary, Minera Real de Bonanza, S.A. de C.V.,for just $3 million, "less than was paid for Chicharito"—the Guadalajara born soccer star Javier Hernández,who plays with the English soccer club ManchesterUnited.There were also solidarity actions in Mexico City,New York and Vancouver. (La Jornada, Mexico, April9, May 21,2011)The Vancouver action was part of Mining JusticeWeek, a series of events in the week of May 16 tocall Canadians' attention to the role of Canadianmining companies in Latin America.