Moderator,
Kindly forward this to FEC. Of course after taking permission
On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 7:58 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 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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