Dear Dr Aravindan
Thanks for your response to my post on kafila.
As you say, 'abuse is cheap, solutions are difficult'. That's
precisely the problem. I'm so used to being abused by old friends as a
"well-heeled revolutionary" -- in fact in a world where the ill-heeled
revolutionaries are hounded as maoists and criminals. In any case I
regard renunciation as a strategy of power -- the renouncer gains such
moral power over everyone else that they keep shut. So no, I'm
unapologetic about being "well-heeled" (whatever that means!) and
indeed will not keep my mouth shut. And yes, I haven't been a PPC
activist. But that doesn't mean that I can't study it. If that is the
case, we all better keep our mouths shut about deprivation. Only the
deprived should speak of deprivation. I try to listen to the deprived.
I don't try not to sit on judgement about their words.
I who find the trade unions' blockade (please don't say that the CITU
is the least of these)appaling, am not arguing for one-shot solutions
to landlessness at Chengara or elsewhere. Certainly, the question of
finding land, of deciding who deserves and who doesn't, of planning a
strategy for farming the land, all these are complex and need to be
thought out in detail, by all concerned including the government and
the political parties. But is that happening? This struggle has been
on since one year. Why has the process of deliberation not started
yet?
More importantly, why are we the middle class so bothered when poor
people demand to have a say in how land should be utilised? Why can't
have someone have an opinion different from the progressive middle-
class consensus on SEZs? Of course we are delighted with our SEZs
(that's where our kids, raised on Eureka and Sastragati,to go and
work, ultimately, like good "well-heeled" middle class kids). So the
rise of the middle-class isn't something happening out there --it is
happening through us. The difference is between middle-class who think
that the poor have a right to advance demands and fight for them in
their own right and under their own name in a democracy, and the
middle-class which is suspicious of the poor.
If the CPM claims to be leftist, it should do better than call the
people at Chengara criminals; it should certainly do better than turn
workers on them (well, please don't say that the CITU is just a minor
presence among the workers!). What would have AKG done in this
context, I'm forced to think? Certainly he wouldn't have threatened
the people at Chengara with "police armed with horns and thorns" (VS
to Laha Gopalan). Again, I'm not at all opposed in toto to liberal
welfarism and Kerala's 'third-way' . I think small capitalism is much
better than the neoliberal ugliness we have to now confront, and that
it could finally free people from being governmental categories
eternally subject to state welfare. But that does not mean that we can
let the left forget that the 'first' land reform agenda remains
incomplete -- and the very incompleteness does show that caste is very
much alive in Kerala,in secularised form. By all means, let us
integrate citizens into the market on terms favourable to them -- but
that is no answer to the question of caste injustice. And minimum
entitlements to house plots or housing don't resolve that.
Irrespective of whether the second land reform is to come or not, the
first should be completed.
"Honest efforts to empower the poor should not be scoffed at" -- true
indeed. But I beg to differ about the meaning of 'empowerment'. If the
poor were integrated into the market advantageously, as the PPC
promised, I'd say that this was a step towards empowerment towards
full citizenship. But better scholars than I -- and indeed the
government itself -- reveal how the local bodies in Kerala have
focused not on furthering production but on welfare handouts. That
helps survival -- poverty management -- but not necessarily
citizenship. That is, unfortunately, the World Bank's interpretation
of Amartya Sen's ethical individualism. And indeed, a strategy that
preserves the wealth of the middle-class elite, and indeed, the moral
superiority of the ("medium-heeled"?)development activist. Chengara
troubles the leftist middle class not because it is against the left
agenda -- it seeks its completion. It troubles the leftist middle-
class intelligensia because those who are expected to be silent are
talking. What could be worse?
Devika
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