On 4/16/07, Anthony D'Costa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The rural folks in India want electricity, water, roads, and schools. Without these they continue to suffer at the hands of landlords.
Could it be the other way around? It's (much of) the Indian Left's historical decision not to attack the rural class/caste structures head on that makes electricity, water, roads, and schools still unavailable for many rural folks. That's what Roy, Indian Maoists, and Hamza Alavi among others would say: <http://www.zmag.org/roy.htm> Power Politics The reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin Arundhati Roy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Planners in India boast that India consumes 20 times more electricity today than it did 50 years ago. They use it as an index of progress. They omit to mention that 70 per cent of rural households still have no electricity. In the poorest states, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan, over 85 per cent of the poorest people, mostly Dalit and Adivasi households, have no electricity. What a shameful, shocking record for the world's biggest democracy. Unless this crisis is acknowledged and honestly addressed, generating "lots and lots of power" (as Mr Welch put it) will only mean that it will be siphoned off by the rich with their endless appetites. It will require a very imaginative, very radical form of 'structural adjustment' to right this. -- Yoshie
