The Way Ahead...

I don’t want to act like a Yankee scholar, who goes around the world telling people what to do and what not to. I am someone who believes that such acts are based on false ideas about the superiority of one civilization over another and thus goes against the basic principles of humanism. However as a great admirer of the Nepalese revolution and as a seventy six years who has seen the defeat of Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the fall of Soviet Union and the ideological dilution of the African National Congress, I present before you what I consider should be the list of priorities of the Maoist government in Nepal:

• Nepalese Society is highly stratified. Not only is the distribution of wealth highly skewed, the influence of Brahminical Hinduism has led to the stratification of Nepalese Society on the basis of Caste. Dalits (Backward Castes) have for long suffered at the hands of Upper Caste Hindus. Upper Caste Hindus control an overwhelming majority of agrarian land. The dominance in salaried employment is easily visible.

  The revolutionary government should take radical steps to redress such inequities. Land is the main source of economic power in any agrarian society. Excess land should be confiscated from large landowners (with or without compensation) and distributed to tiller. Nepal will do well to emulate the steps taken by the Indian state of West Bengal and Kerala in this regard.

  Economic Empowerment does not lead to automatic decimation of social discrimination. The government should adopt a policy of affirmative action in favour of dalits and Muslims to neutralize effects of current and past discrimination.

• The government should dogmatic while framing it’s economic policies. State owned enterprises have proved to a failure around the world. There are serious incentive/information problems which cannot be tackled in a “state controls all” environment. Private enterprises should be allowed to flourish under the watchful eye of the state. The government should step in to tackle problems of market failures. Even in the agrarian sector failed experiments of agrarian cooperatives should not be repeated just for ideological reasons. The unique features of the Nepalese society and economy should be studies in detail before deciding on policies. Policy prescriptions exported by Indians, Yankees and multilateral agencies like IMF should always be studied in detail before any thought of applying them are entertained.

• Nepal should not follow the path of Stalinist USSR in dealing with individual rights. While needs of the society are supreme, individual rights shouldn’t be trampled upon in the name of social justice. Dissidence should be respected and debates encouraged.

• While needs of the society are supreme, individual rights shouldn’t be trampled upon in the name of social justice. Dissidence should be respected and debates encouraged.

• While Nepal’s march towards secularism is indeed laudable, Nepal should not follow Kemal Attaturk’s policies towards religion. Religion is something very private, and the state should not interfere as long as an individual tries to flaunt it in public. At the same time, it should keep a watch on the activities of the Hindu right and crush all communal elements with an iron hand.

• Nepal should write a new chapter with regard to it’s relation with it’s neighbor. It should cease to be a vassal state of India and demand an immediate scrapping of the Indo-Nepal friendship treaty, which goes against the interests of the Nepalese people. At the same time it should try to maintain friendly relation with its neighbors.

I hope the Nepalese revolution will emerge victorious. I wish them all the best in their onward march towards prosperity..

Distribution of Climate Change Victims

Why should the Left in Less Developed World take Climate Change seriously?
The Answer lies above.

The Tale of Anti-Green Comrades

There is a proposal to raise petrol prices by about ten rupees and once again the left is up in arms against the proposal. It is unfortunate to know that people who claim to speak for the interests of the downtrodden can be so naive when taking a stand on a issue as important as the issue of fuel pricing.When leftists around the world are urging policy makers to take steps towards reducing global carbon emissions, the Indian left is supporting policies of fuel subsidization- a policy that would encourage fuel consumption and lead to a worsening of the emission scenario.
Climate Change is one of the biggest problems that mankind faces today. The fourth IPCC report concludes that the adverse impact of human activities on global climate has been established beyond doubt.Global temperatures have risen by about o.3-o.6 degree C in the last hundred years. If things continue in the way they are temperatures will rise by more than 2 degress in the next century or so and this might lead to catastrophes like melting of the antarctic and change in the direction of ocean currents.What is interesting is that people who enjoy the fruits of fuel run economy are not the ones who will be effected by any such catastrophes. If sea levels rise , the Bangaladeshi farmer living in the Gangetic delta will be homeless. The South Delhi executive driving his Santro on subsidized fuel will hardly be effected. Even if affected marginally,he will have the resources to adapt. The Buddhadev Bhattacharya supporter who drives Nano will have the resources to migrate to Purulia or Darjeeling in case Calcutta gets submerged due to rise n the sea level. Under such circumstances the Left (all shades of red) response to fuel price hike is myopic to say the least.
Not only do the poor bear the burden of climate change, they don't even enjoy the benefits of fuel subsidy which is often justified on the grounds that they help the poor.An analysis of the 61st round National Sample Survey reveals that any subsidy on transport fuels is highly regressive. The Budget share of transport fuels is high for the rich compared to the poor.More than eighty percent of Indian households don't even consume a single liter of transport fuel in a year. Only the top 20 percent of India consumes subsidized transport fuel. Some may argue that fuel is an input in the production of various goods and that a removal of subsidies might raise their price. While such a claim is true, a careful input output study will show that a increase in the price of fuel input doesn't raise the price of necessities like food items. In other words, goods used by the Indian poor are not very sensitive to fuel prices. In fact a Input Output study by a graduate student of the Indian Statistical Institute reveals that a subsidy on transport fuel is regressive even when one includes all such indirect effects.
Under such circumstances any left opposition to fuel price hike can mean only one thing: the official Indian left is busy protecting the interests of the middle classes at the cost of the poor. The incidents of Singur and Nandigram had given birth to such a suspicion, the current left position on fuel pricing is strengthening it.