Opinion Upstaging theories
One can sense a lot of creative tension within the Congress leadership over how to intellectually nuance the discussion over the growing Maoist threat in different parts of the country.
One can sense a lot of creative tension within the Congress leadership over how to intellectually nuance the discussion over the growing Maoist threat in different parts of the country. This debate seems to have gathered fresh momentum after the ambush of over 70 CRPF personnel by Maoists in Dantewada. Many agree that by ignoring development in the tribal areas of Chhattisgarh,Orissa,Jharkhand and West Bengal,the Indian state created conditions over the decades for the Maoists to take control. So there is a growing consensus developing within the Congress that much more redistributive intervention may be needed in the backward regions of the country to give a renewed boost to the development agenda,and consequently blunt the edge of ultra left-wing movements that have taken roots in a third of Indias districts.
In a way the growing Maoist presence appears to have further strengthened the section within the Congress which has always had a strong left-of-centre bias. Indeed,this section had very close relations with Left leaders and often acted as mediators between the Congress leadership and the CPM on critical issues during the UPAs first tenure. The left-of-centre group within the Congress would often fire from the CPMs shoulders,and vice versa,for greater socialist intervention.
Both Sonia Gandhi and the Nextgen Congress leadership led by Rahul Gandhi have a strong bias for redistributive intervention even while letting the government pursue its market-based economic reforms agenda. Now,there is bound to be creative tension between these two opposing ideological strains and that is part of a new dialectic that Indian politics is currently witnessing. Just note the manner in which the Planning Commission increased the population coverage for the proposed food security legislation. This was clearly done after pressure came from the left section of the Congress leadership! The revival of the National Advisory Council under Congress President Sonia Gandhi is clearly meant to institutionalise and give shape to this new dialectic of socialist intervention within the larger framework of capitalist growth agenda.
In a sense,this contradiction is most visible in the Maoist controlled areas of Jharkhand,Chhattisgarh and Orissa which are rich in iron ore and other minerals. Big companies want to pump in huge capital to exploit these resources in the midst of resistance from local communities. There cannot be a better social science laboratory to understand how the dialectic of capitalisms historical and unrelenting march will get finessed by socialist interventions. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi are as much students of this laboratory as are those companies which want to create massive steel projects in these regions.
However,dealing with this Marxian contradiction is easier said than done. This requires an intuitive understanding of how to take society to a new social and material equilibrium without upsetting the applecart. Of course,Marx believed that an enlightened bourgeoisie would manage to take society to higher stages of material condition even as the owners of capital appropriate surplus value from labour. The bourgeoisie would also create a welfare framework,such as minimum wages,better work conditions and adequate pension,as seen in the West,in order to ensure a smooth functioning of capitalism. The question is,how will Indias political class manage this fine balance as it comes under increasing pressure to move 60 per cent of its population from a feudal,pre-industrial condition of existence to a more modern capitalist framework. In some ways,the task for India is much harder as this transition process began in the West before democracy,with all its modern institutional attributes,was put in place. In India,this transition is occurring in the midst of a robust,often fractious,democratic political process.
Therefore,managing the contradiction between capitalisms march and simultaneous welfare interventions,both of which would appear necessary,will have to be thought through in a rigorous manner.
Off-the-cuff and random interventions,like the one made by Congress leader Digvijay Singh,will not necessarily help matters.
The Congresss dilemma is somewhat similar to that of the CPMs in West Bengal after it did badly in the Lok Sabha elections. The failure of the Left Front was analysed in a lucid article by Prabhat Patnaik,a professor of economics at Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University and a CPM ideologue,where he implied that the Left (read Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee) in West Bengal did not have enough theoretical clarity that socialist intervention must be a constant process,softening the inherently surplus-seeking tendency of capitalism. He also suggested that the Left perhaps got misled by the stage theory which implies socialist intervention is only possible after capitalism has somewhat matured and created enough surplus value that can be redistributed. Translated in plain terms,what Patnaik probably meant was Buddhadeb did not do enough in terms of assuring people of their long-term livelihood before launching the massive industrialisation programme in West Bengal.
This also seems to be the Congresss main dilemma today in the context of allowing massive capital infusion for exploiting Indias rich mineral resources in the tribal areas. It is under pressure to clear the forests of Maoists so that businesses can smoothly implement big steel projects. For that the state also has to put in place proper rehabilitation programmes for the local,tribal populations and ensure they have a long-term stake in these projects.
Though Patnaik rejects the stage theory,in advanced capitalist societies this seems to have worked quite well. For instance in America,substantial socialist interventions came after massive surplus value got created over the decades through the advance of capitalism. Take the case of just two icons of American capitalism,General Motors and Ford. In the 60s,the two companies committed substantial post-retirement pension benefits to their workers. This was subsequently derived from the surplus value created by the companies. At one stage,the cost of pension benefits amounted to nearly a fifth of the price of a car. This was the cause of GM and Fords near bankruptcy in 2008 when the US government intervened with a big bailout packages to sustain the pension benefits of workers. The lesson here is that more substantive state intervention can come after adequate surpluses are created by capital accumulation. It is to be seen whether this model works in a fractious polity such as Indias.
The writer is Managing Editor,The Financial Express
mk.venu@expressindia.com
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