It says the issue of imparting militant training to Hindus in India has a long history and quotes B.D. Savarkar’s slogan of the 1930s “Hinduise all politics and militarise Hindudom” to back its argument. “Inspired by this (Savarkar’s slogan), Dr B.S. Moonje, mentor of RSS founder Dr Hegdewar, travelled to Italy to meet fascist dictator, Mussolini in 1931. His personal diary notes of March 20 reveal his fascination and admiration of the manner in which Italian fascism was training its youth (read storm-troopers) militarily,” says the editorial.

“ Golwalkar, in 1939, exults Hitler’s purging of the Jews under Nazi fascism and says that it is “a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by”, it adds.

More recently, it says “the RSS tentacles, VHP and Bajrang Dal, had publicly prided themselves at the training imparted to ‘kar sevaks’”, following the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The article also contests L.K. Advani’s statement comparing Sadhvi Pragya with Nathuram Godse to claim that RSS cannot be held responsible for her action she was not a present member.

“ The point has to do with the venomous ideological indoctrination that the RSS and its affiliates undertake which nurtures and promotes such violent militancy,” it notes. It says the RSS always talks about Islamic terrorism and its pleas not to use the term Hindu militancy or terrorism has only brought out the double standards adopted by it.

Get the government to fork out

The issue carries the presentation made by Professor Prabhat Patnaik at the UN on October 30, 2008 as a member of the task force on the present global financial crisis. Patnaik argues that the need of the hour is not just the injection of liquidity into the world economy but also in addition the injection of demand. “This can occur only through direct fiscal action by governments across the world. For activating governments for this, control over cross-border capital flows is essential, for otherwise governments will continue to remain prisoners to the caprices of globally-mobile speculative finance capital,” he says.

Noting that the sectors where government spending will go up will of course vary from country to country, he says the general objective of such spending must be the reversal of the squeeze on the living standards of the ordinary people everywhere in the world that has been a feature of the world economy in the last several years. “In India, China and other third world countries, in addition to welfare state measures, larger government expenditure has to be oriented towards a substantial increase in agricultural, especially foodgrains, output,” he advocates.

The new paradigm, he says, must entail a foodgrain-led growth strategy (on the basis of peasant agriculture), sustained through larger government spending towards this end, which simultaneously rids the world of both depression and financial and food crises.

Bailing out big business

An article by Rajya Sabha MP and CITU leader Tapan Sen questions the wisdom burdening the public exchequer to bail out private corporates in whose functions and business decisions it does not have any say.

“When such business decisions bring profit, everything goes to the owner. When they result in losses, why should the public exchequer shoulder that burden?” he asks in the context of the government’s decision to help loss-making private airlines.”The policy of bailing out speculators with funds from public exchequers has been adopted by the US administration....When the public sector companies face a loss, they are termed inefficient. When the private corporates of the minister’s choice face a loss, then it is conceived as the result of crisis and a bail out is being pleaded for. Novel indeed!” he says.

“The real game is to allow privatisation of profit and nationalisation of losses for the private corporates in the name of so called “bail out”! When there is profit, private corporates will own the same, when there are losses, the burden will be passed on to the workers through lay-off and retrenchment and also to the public exchequer through so called bail-out package and concessions. This is the real and ugly face of neoliberalism,” he adds.