====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
Here's to comrades in India enduring the violence of 'Operation Green Hunt' <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwPpRhb5jn0> Now here's why. The Jan 1 post on the India’s Forgotten War blog <http://naxalwar.wordpress.com/>, says it all. >Time Magazine has declared India’s Maoist insurgency >to be the 3rd most under-reported story of 2009. >I’m surprised that they even noticed. While media coverage >internationally and domestically has been sparse, this has >started to slowly change. For too long, the Naxalites could >be ignored by the urban-based Indian elite as a problem >which affected only small segments of the largely invisible >rural poor. While events such as the Mumbai terror attacks >in 2008 threatened the safety and security of the countries >chattering classes, what happened in the dusty forests of >rural Chhattisgarh could easily be ignored. This has started >to change. Perhaps, 2010 will bring increased coverage not >only to the insurgency, but also to the scandalous conditions >in which India’s rural poor exist. One can only hope. The issues involving the Naxalite movement in general, and the CPI-Maoist in particular, are complex and have been debated here in the past. What I think is the heart of this crisis is the undeniable exploitation of India’s poorest and most oppressed people. This crime is being committed by ruling class elites across the Indian political spectrum from the Hindu fascists of the BJP in Chhattisagarh to the popular front government of Congress and the CPM in West Bengal. One must ask, then, is the real problem the CPI-Maoist or the Indian state? The problems for the people because of the policies of that state are obvious. In Chhattisgarh the plans of government authorities to cash in on mineral resources at the expense of impoverished peasants are quite ambitious.. >Since the state was carved out of Bihar in 2000, the state >government has signed 44 MOUs with companies like Arcelor >Mittal, Tata and Jindal for mega industrial ventures >worth Rs 198,362.26 crore. >These prospective investors will acquire over 45,000 >hectares and eventually displace more than 1,000,000 >people. (The data is from Sudha Bharadwaj, a Chhattisagarh activist and columnist for the Sanhati website.) I suppose the rationalization for all this is that a lucky few will get a job in a strip mine but as Sanhati has so succinctly put it, in these conditions >‘'Development’ is the buzzword which the state has always >used to justify its actions on behalf of the ruling class. Before that happens the ruling class has to deal with the obstacle of mass resistance including a Maoist led insurgency. Hence we have ‘Operation Green Hunt,’ How long will it be before Obama’s ‘war on terror’ drones are buzzing overhead? ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
