We the students are the Union!

Let us build up a militant students’ movement
to challenge the authoritarian administration,
to isolate the compromising pseudo-left,
and to defeat the communal fascists!

Destruction, destitution, displacement and death today are called ‘Development’. It is a time when imperialism coupled with fascism is destroying lives, livelihood and dignity of millions of people, to safeguard the interests of a handful. It is a time when the dream of an exploitation-free and just society is called a utopia! Yet hundreds and thousands of the most oppressed of the society have been fighting for that. Because in that ’utopia’ alone lies the belief for life, the hope for the future. In the present social system, the odds are heavily against the oppressed sections that constitute a vast majority of the population. The need therefore is to demolish this system that benefits a few at the cost of the many, and to build a new society in its place through a radical social transformation. And this struggle must be fought from wherever we are located. In this context of constant attack from all the powers-that-be, let us look at our own campus!

JNU is not an island. The JNU administration represents the ruling class in the campus! We all know that this casteist-communal-patriarchal administration is up for selling JNU to the market forces. They have internalized the language and politics of World Bank, IMF etc. as well as the Tata-Birlas. According to them, JNU is being converted to a ‘world class university’. And naturally for ‘resource generation purposes’ they need to levy user charges for electricity, hike the price of prospectus, rent out PSR for commercial use! And with the ‘resources’ which is nothing but tax-payer’s money, we have the plasma TVs, the manicured flower pots, pointless signboards and hideous hoardings. ‘World Class’ therefore entails nothing but an external glitter, but with gradually privatized education and commercialized basic facilities, denial of minimum wages and basic legal rights to the mazdoors on campus. And the decisions for all these have been taken arbitrarily, bypassing all concerned bodies of students, teachers and karamcharis. Such anti-student policies, going by the World Bank model again, has to be necessarily implemented in such an undemocratic manner, more in consultation with the market than with the representatives of university community. After all, when the ruling classes ask the people whether they want to get displaced to make way for an SEZ or not!

The World Bank and its cronies have rightly identified students’ movement as the ‘biggest impediment to privatization of education’. And hence Lyngdoh came knocking! The Lyngdoh committee report is intrinsically linked to the larger designs of depoliticisation, facilitating a complete privatization of basic and higher education. It is designed to crush consciously articulated political dissent and opposition. The Committee states that students must be ‘integrationist’ and ‘nationalists’ at heart, and student politics should be aimed at inculcating values of social and economic ‘development’. But imposition of Lyngdoh Recommendations is a thinly veiled instrument for crushing the countrywide students’ movement that raises the genuine issues of the masses and also challenges the status quo. With clauses which will have far reaching consequences, it aims to ensure administration’s hold on the election process, confine student politics within the boundary of the institution, cutting it off from the larger political processes in the name of ‘unnecessary politicization of student bodies’. The Supreme Court Stay on the JNU election process, which is free of money and muscle power and known for its democratic credentials, prove beyond doubt that Lyngdoh is not meant to eliminate the drawbacks of student politics; rather it is here to facilitate state’s control and repression. In this, Lyngdoh is no different in nature from a vast range of draconian laws imposed by the state on the people from above, be it MISA, TADA, POTA, MCOCA, UAPA, AFSPA, NSA, etc to name a few. The only difference is that while these draconian laws target and suppress the struggling masses, Lyngdoh aims to clamp down on the students and the youth.

And when feudalism and the market ties a knot, social justice becomes a prime target. Measures like Lyngdoh are resorted to by the state to quell the simmering discontent among the large majority of students today, who is facing injustice, discrimination and exclusion at every step. Can we expect social justice from a state whose very fabric historically has been woven with brahminical ideology? The recent legislation of 27% OBC reservation was not a ‘gift’ from Manmohan and Co. It is an outcome if long battles that thousands of people for several decades have fought and even given their lives for. It was a movement that forced the state to recognize a right which the casteist society denied for centuries. However, just the passing of legislations don’t really mean their implementation. The casteist authorities always seek to take away with one hand what they were forced to grant with the other. JNU again provides a perfect example of this! Last year in April, JNU administration assured JNUSU that 27% reservations for OBC student would be implemented at one go. However it unilaterally decided later that OBC reservation will be implemented in a phased process. The excuse was infrastructural inadequacy. Making OBC reservation conditional on seat-increase signified reserving the seats for upper caste students. Even the stipulated 12% reserved seats for the first year of implementation was not fulfilled. While around 22% OBC students joined the campus without reservation, with implementation of reservation in phased manner, a meager 9.95% OBC students joined last year. Thus, the administration defeated the reservation policy even after it was made into a law. Same happened with PH reservations as well. Moreover, the administration took a unilateral decision of doing away with progressive ‘offer-system’ and initiated a ‘waiting-list’ system for admissions. It was clear that the waiting-list system is not a conducive system in a university like JNU where students apply from different parts of India. With a short notice in the waiting list, it is virtually impossible for non-Delhi students to come and take admission. And it makes it much more difficult for students coming from deprived socio-economic backgrounds take admissions, or worse, to wait till the next list comes. But it was a conscious policy of this casteist, communal administration to scuttle reservation, to make it an exclusive privilege of the metropolitan-‘meritorious’, upper caste students. After students’ agitation, the administration constituted yet another committee to look into the deficit in reserved seats and to review the wait-list system. It will be a time-bound committee, they promised! But as expected, we are yet to hear from that committee, while admissions for the coming session is just three months away! This year too, the administration has not yet come out with a clear roadmap as to how it will fulfill the mandated reservation quotas along with last year’s deficit! The administration with its actions has time and again made clear that it is against any step towards a just, democratic and inclusive education in JNU, and is an agent of all the regressive and anti-student forces.

The rising incidents of communal hooliganism are a product of this: Like imperialism is fuelling and feeding the fascist forces, JNU administration also shields and nurtures the communal lumpens. The sanghi perpetrators were left scot-free even after they vandalized and scuttled the presidential debate in 2007. The administration ignored the mass deposition of over thousand students, the video proofs that clearly identified the perpetrators and even the Shankar Basu Committee Report that categorically recommended strictest punishment for the sanghi goons. The same handful of sanghis had beaten up a student once more in Chandrbhaga hostel night in the following semester and the administration conveniently hushed it up. The goons, emboldened, dared to attack yet another minority student in Lohit hostel just few days back, spreading a sense of terror. These lumpens are pets of the administration, like they are for any ruling class. They help to keep students diverted from real issues like privatization of education, commercialization of basic facilities. Like their sanghi masters are doing outside, by diverting people from genuine issues!


The pseudo-left student organizations have failed to stop either the administration or the communal fascists. The parliamentary mother parties of SFI and AISA have failed to go beyond tokenism and phrase-mongering, to challenge imperialism or fascism in their immediate manifestations. Rather, they ally with these forces and compromise on the struggle at every step. Thus one can’t expect them to wage any genuine struggle against these forces, their rhetoric notwithstanding. Both these organisations have engaged in petty mudslinging and alleging each other for ‘failures’ while claiming ‘victories’ to themselves. They are the two sides of the same coin. They have sat on hunger strikes (in last year only there were four) whenever they wanted to score mileage over each other, while failing in all the major struggles. Non-implementation of reservation and seat-cut was one of the major struggles last year. The AISA-led JNUSU remained completely silent on the change to ‘wait-list’ system and continuously defended the administration’s position that there had been no seat-cut. SFI initially argued that there was seat-cut and even requisitioned a UGBM, but after their resolution was defeated made a complete u-turn. Both started an opportunist hunger strike after that, and withdrew after administration gifted them one more committee! They took out a victory march and forgot about the committee which despite being time bound, is yet to come out with concrete positions.

The betrayal of the fight against privatization by AISA-SFI is another glorious addition to their politics of opportunism! When the crucial fight against fee hike, electric meter and commercialization of campus spaces started, students responded in an unprecedented manner. There were more than thousand students who joined the long march called by JNUSU. When the administration refused to yield an inch on the major demands of removal of electric meters and reduction of prospectus price, the students debated in the UGBM and decided on a concrete course of action of blockading the ad-block after two days of strike. The students extensively boycotted classes for many days, participated in all the protest actions of JNUSU in large numbers. Yet the leadership betrayed the spirit of the movement as well as the UGBM mandate, by not going into the blockading. 722 students through an open letter asked the JNUSU leadership to respect the mandate, without any response. The AISA led JNUSU with their new allies SFI decided to stop the sell of prospectus in ad-block, a proposal that was defeated by the UGBM (AISA itself had debated and voted against it in the UGBM!). With barely forty students they went for this adventurist action, and the administration took disciplinary action against five of them (something they said will happen, only if we go for the blockading). They championed yet another defeated resolution of the UGBM to go for indefinite hunger strike (something SFI had debated and voted against in the UGBM!). One by one SFI and AISA withdrew from the hunger strike, as arbitrarily as they started it. The result is that the all the prospectus had been sold at the hiked price. The electric meters are still in place in Koyena! And to top it, now we have come to know, that the president had expressed his ‘remorse for the unfortunate protest’! This is the tradition of opportunist, bankrupt and anti-democratic politics of so-called ‘left’ AISA and SFI.

We the students are the union! All the struggles in JNU that have been won (in real terms) were because of collective, organized and principled students’ struggles despite the repeated compromises and betrayals by JNUSU leadership. The pseudo-left has compromised, failed and betrayed the movements to challenge the casteist-communal-patriarchal administration and its communal stooges. Let us radicalize the campus politics. And reclaim our historical legacy of militant students’ struggles! Fight to secure our future, with equality and social justice in education!

Strongest and Historical Ally of Imperialism is Fascism: We have to Defeat Both!

The recent crisis of imperialist economy is acute, but not new. It has several historical precedents. And history is witness to the simultaneous rise of fascism forces, whenever imperialism is either too strong or weak. Fascism and imperialism are historical allies. They feed into each other.

The practice of whipping up of communal sentiments to cover up the lack of development in every aspect of social lives had been an old and regular tactics of the ruling class. The right wing parties, be it the congress or BJP and their various allies have always used the communal card to misdirect the real grievances of the people regarding their deplorable material conditions. Just like the Nazis did with the Jews in Germany, Hindutva brigade picks up the Muslim and off late the Christian community, as the scape-goat for all the problems, real or imaginary. One Azamgrah becomes the roots of all problems in India. And then we have the masjid demolitions. The post-Ayodhya riots. The Gujarat genocide. The Batla house encounter. The Kandhmal killings. No, the Gujarat killings did not help the retrenched ‘hindu’ mill workers in Ahmedabad, the riots did not bring irrigation water to the destitute ‘hindu’ farmer in middle India, it did not create jobs for the millions of unemployed ‘hindu’ youths or liberate the ‘hindu’ women from the shackles of patriarchy. Rather it only reinforced the discriminations, not only against muslims, but against dalits and women, workers and peasants.

The Sangh-giroh does not represent people of any religion. They represent the landlords, the casteist semi-feudal authorities and the comprador big bourgeoisie, whose interest today are directly tied to American imperialism and global finance capital. Their love for George W. Bush, the poster boy of the regressive Christian rights and values is evident. But poor dalit-christians of Orissa had been at the receiving end of their brutal violence. What happened in Kandhamal is not an isolated event, although it is an outcome of a sustained effort of the Sangh Parivar to spread the poison of communal hatred in Orrisa. The violence in Orissa is not exclusively a religious violence. It must be seen as part of the evolving social economical and political conditions in the country in general and in Orissa particular. Orissa has a share of 6.6% of total value of the mineral resources but constitutes only 1.6% of the national industrial production. These huge mineral resources make Orissa a lucrative destination for the world’s biggest MNCs and private capital. The Orissa government has ruthlessly pursued land acquisition for mining companies and for exploitation of other natural resources through brute force in Kashipur, Kalinganagar, Jagatsinghpur and Hirakud to make way for foreign and indigenous capital at the cost of people and their livelihood. On the other hand there is the rising people’s resistance to these neo-liberal economic policies and economic plunder by imperialists too. The ruling classes, being aware of this reality, are finding ways to contain mass opposition. The sangh parivar is working precisely for the feudal and imperialist forces through its divisive politics of communal hatred and pitting the most marginalized groups against each other; in this case the adivasis against dalits, majority of whom happen to be Christians. When they want to safeguard the ‘Hindu order’ against other religions through their policies and values, they also have to perpetuate its own internal hierarchies of caste and gender. And here too application of brute forces becomes a systemic necessity. And thus the gruesome massacre of Khairlanji. Mass murders and rapes by the private armies of the feudal forces or the state like Ranvir Sena and Salwa Judum. The growing atrocities on dalits, adivasis and women are perpetrated by the feudal forces with the help of imperialism.

The targets of both fascism and imperialism include women too: In the current financial crisis, the women are worst hit. Lakhs are being thrown out of jobs and the horrors of unemployment are forcing women to prostitution and other demeaning jobs just in order to survive. Women employment is in sizable numbers in the financial sector, garments, handicrafts, service and entertainment sector, etc. Massive layoffs have already begun in the financial sector, about 5 lakhs are expected to loose their jobs in the textile sector, and handicrafts are in the doldrums due to the drop in exports. Besides, the acute agrarian crisis are affecting women the most as their drop in living standards has increased the household drudgery enormously. And when the ruling class unleashes the fascist forces to cover up the real problems of underdevelopment and exploitation, women become fresh targets. In all communal riots or state repression, rape and sexual assault are one of the main weapons of these patriarchal forces. We have seen it in Gujarat, in Kandhmal and in Nandigram too. And there are the moral policing on women like we have seen in Mangalore. From the reactionary right to the pseudo ‘left’, have reduced the condition of women to the most deplorable state through their policies and repression.

The whole point of communal fascism is to prevent the people from correctly identifying the forces that keep them in their deplorable condition. To project an illusory enemy in order to shield the real. To keep the people divided, and make the ruling classes and their parties more secure in their seats of power. Thus while the communal frenzy and riots can change governments, it never ever changes the anti-people economic policies of the Indian state. Be it NDA or UPA, Narendra Modi or Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the IMF World Bank dictated new policies continue at both the center and state level. The major share of economy in this country is still in agriculture and the horrors of agrarian crisis are spiralling every year. No change in the governments in center and state levels could stop or control the crisis. Since 2000 agriculture in this country has been virtually stagnating. Farmers' indebtedness is rooted in such stagnation, increasing risk in production and marketing and lack of institutional support. And this has resulted into massive suicide by farmers. The number of suicide by farmers between 1997-2007 had been 182,936! And this also genocide, a cold blooded mass murder by the state and imperialist policies!

Therefore the fight against fascism has to be necessarily the fight against imperialism, and vice versa: The fight against the communal fascism therefore has to be a fight against the economic and social policies that dispossess people of their land and livelihood, subsidize the rich with the tax-payer’s money, which compels mass suicide of farmers, ruins small traders by redesigning the retail sector according to MNC diktats. It is underdevelopment and economic crisis that feeds the fire of communal fascism. The fight against communal fascism is not just ideological, but is a struggle against the whole social structure, on which the Indian state is based. And from Gowalkar to Gandhi the very fabric of Indian state is woven with brahminical ideology. And ALL the political parties, rhetorical difference notwithstanding, carry forward that legacy. This also matches with the undiluted support for all the governments to implement the policies of imperialism in their soil. And therefore, even the ‘left’ front government does not hesitate for a moment to give a communal colour to the anti-land grab movement in Nandigram by citing the presence of a large number of muslim peasants and few muslim organizations in the struggle! The parliamentary ‘left’ has chosen not to see the communal specter being materially rooted. This willful blindness is understandable because they uphold the same system that breeds the fascists! And therefore for all the parliamentary parties, muslims and other religious minorities have only two identities. They are either vote-bank or ‘terrorists’!

The hollowness of the opposition to the communal fascist by the parliamentary ‘left’ is also reflected in their electoral opportunism. All parties including the parliamentary ‘left’ frequently ally with former or future ally of BJP making a mockery of the ‘struggle against communalism’. In 1989, parliamentary ‘left’ supported the National Front government in which BJP was an important constituent! And now just take a look at the newly formed media hyped ‘third front’ led by CPI(M) . Jayalalitha’s AIADMK, a most reactionary party and former ally of NDA has taken too many communal steps in Tamil Nadu to expose its real color! Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP, another former ally of NDA has adapted most pro-imperialist and anti-people policies so far. But both these parties are star cast in the third front! Even more shockingly, the same ‘left’ front is also trying to woo the support of Navin Patnaik’s BJD! The same BJD whose active support as NDA ally to RSS and Praveen Togadia in igniting violent communal riots in Kandhmal and rest of Orissa just last year is fresh in public memory! Even the more radical-than-thou CPI(ML)-Liberation (the parent party of AISA) who has already courted alliance with CPI(M) in Bihar, has in the past tied knots with Nitish Kumar who went to join the BJP. Its ally in the last Bihar assembly election, Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP is a former ally of BJP. Such is the magic of parliamentary politics! Such is the genuineness of their struggle against communalism!

But is it just a sordid tale of unilateral oppression by the imperialist, feudal and fascist forces? NO! It has never been so. And the hope for life, dignity and justice rests solely on the valiant anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggles fought by the most oppressed masses. And when the state and the imperialist forces oppress with variant forms of violence, killing with bullets and hunger, one can not expect the resistance against it to be fought only through the ‘peaceful means’. The ongoing revolutionary armed people’s movement with the participation of dalits, adivasis, women, peasants and workers across the country is today the only fitting challenge to the imperialist forces. The naxalite movement, no wonder, in the eyes of the state is therefore the ‘biggest internal security threat’ or ‘the major law and order problem’. Because it is in this movement alone they see their downfall! And naturally in Bihar, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand the communal fascist forces are the direct adversaries of the people’s movement. It is the direct clash of the oppressor and the oppressed. It is the people’s movement which fought for land and dignity against the landed upper caste and their private armies in Bihar. It is the people’s movement which is waging a valiant war against the imperialist intruders and their army of Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh. It is the people’s movement that is fighting to secure the natural and mineral resources in Orissa and Jharkhand. It is the same movement which is fighting against extreme caste oppression in Haryana and Maharashtra. It was the people and their heroic struggle which made the state roll back its proposed SEZ in Nandigram, made the Tatas leave Singur. It is the people who are fighting to safeguard their rights and dignity in entire western belt of West Bengal.

And our inspiration to fight comes from these unabated fighters and their uncompromising, courageous struggles against the morbid forces of imperialism, feudalism and the comprador bourgeoisie. Because we believe in life and people. And this fight must go on. As Marx says, ‘Let life be dead. But death must not be allowed to live’.

When imperialism strikes, strike back!

The entire capitalist/imperialist system is in the midst of a worst ever crisis since the times of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Never before, in these past 80 years has the crisis in the system been so deep and all encompassing. Already the US, European, Japan and Russian economies have gone into recession. Industries are now also being affected and even giants like the car monoliths General Motors, Ford, Chrysler (all of the US) are on the verge of bankruptcy. The ILO estimates that by end of 2009, 20 million people will be rendered jobless. Over 13 lakh people in the US have already lost their houses because they have not been able to pay back the mortgages. This crisis has hit the working people the worst, who had already been pushed to the brink due to the offensive of capital. In this age of so-called globalization, impoverishment, unemployment, wage cuts and contractualization of labour have been growing enormously, while a handful make fortunes on a gigantic scale. The market became the new god that determines everything. It was portrayed as 'the end of history', as though the 'golden' capitalist era’ is here for ever. Even ‘welfare’ was privatized with a massive mushrooming of NGOs funded by the imperialist agencies and the state. But the fantasy of the neo-liberal consumer ridden economy had banged down on the hard reality. It is exposing the hollow myths of ‘growth and development’ and is going to drag down millions of already exploited and deprived masses with it. The imperialist especially US economy is basically dependent on the speculation in share markets, real estate business, zooming service sector and on production and sale of war weapons. The financial explosion which was supposed to be a remedy for the declining productive sector, has now delivered deadly blows to the US economy. Further the financial collapse in the US greatly impacted the European financial system as well which had invested heavily in the US mortgage market. In a domino effect, first the housing bubble burst leading to the collapse of banks that invested in mortgages; then the collapse of financial institutions that heavily invested in the mortgage related financial instruments; then with the collapse of the credit market and liquidity and a resulting drop in people's purchasing power the beginning of the collapse of the 'real' (manufacturing) economy. The financial downturn became acute in September 2008 with the collapse of the largest investment banks and insurance companies of US -- Lehman Brothers, a pillar of the US Financial establishment; followed by the collapse of Bears Stains; Merrill Lynch; Morgan Stanley; Goldman Sachs; Washington Mutual, bankruptcy of biggest US insurance company American International Group. Till September 2008, 81 corporations in the US filed for bankruptcy!

A report on “Global Systematic Crisis Alert” which toured the world in February 2006, says, “Our researchers insisted on that many times in the last two years: any comparison with the previous crises of our modern economy would be fallacious. It is neither a remake of the 1929 crisis, nor a repetition of the 1970s oil crises nor 1987 stock market crisis. It is truly a global systematic crisis, that is to say a crisis affecting the entire planet and questioning the very foundations of the international system upon which the world was organized in the last decades.”The imperialist governments world over have pumped in gigantic amounts of funds to prop up the crumbling financial system. This is nothing but the appropriation of tax-payer's money to rescue big business. It entails nothing but privatization of profits and nationalization of losses!

After the great depression of 1929, the US economy had gone for a militarization programme to overcome the crisis. Now also, sales of arms to many countries help the US economy simultaneously with maintaining the US hegemony and sustaining markets. In recent times the world has been witness to brutal aggression on two of the most long-enduring and valiant struggles for independence: that of the Palestinian and the Eelam Tamil people. The recent attacks in the name of war against terror and against the Palestinian peoples’ defensive war are all products of the same imperial war machine. It was the US which helped the formation of Israeli state for ensuring its own survival, and since then the Israel has been the bridgehead of the US imperialism in West Asia and a safe base for its reactionary maneuvers all across the world. Both the US as well as Israel has closely integrated war-economies, selling weapons and waging wars to sustain itself. While Gaza was being raged by the fascist Israel state in an attempt to sniff out the liberation movement of the Palestinian people the Sri Lankan state was no less ruthless in its genocidal war on the Tamils fighting for their free Eelam, which continues till date with the support of Indian state and US imperialism. The occupation of Killinochi and Mullaithivu regions brought the historic Tamil nation in Sri Lanka’s north-east under Sri Lankan military rule, reminding us that the Israeli assault on Gaza is not the only ‘final solution’ pursued by the imperialism and its regional allies across the world. The major suppliers of arms for Sri Lankan government are the US, Israel and India. Although this might sound like a brazen conspiracy theory but according to the LUGANO Report, a secret research document on ‘the future of the global economy and the free-market system’, commissioned by the major global power and written by an anonymous ‘working group’, the only way to save ‘Western Civilization’ from the upcoming crisis, is by a drastic reduction of the population – in other words, mass extermination and genocide! The desperate attempt of the US to infuriate the old enmity between India and Pakistan also fits into the designs of the desperate attempts of US to open up its war market to bail out the crisis. The recent arms deal to the tune of 2.1 billion signed by US with India has to been in this backdrop. It is therefore likely that deaths due to war, hunger disease, etc. will reach an unprecedented level.

Backward countries like India are the worst sufferers in the crisis: The bourgeois establishments could offer no solution to this ongoing crisis. But this is a global crisis which will not leave any part of the world unaffected. The countries linked to US economy, like India will be worse hit. Imperialists will seek to push the burden of the ravages of crisis on the backward countries. Backward countries like India have been dependent fully on foreign capital, for not only marketing but also production. Therefore the sudden withdrawal of foreign capital has not only affected stock exchange but also the credit availability. It is visible in the frequent crashes in stock exchange that is flashing on the TV screens; drop in foreign exchange reserves; weakening of the currency, drop in export orders and resulting unemployment. The financial minister has already declared a range of measures that increases enormously the concessions given to foreign capital. India has now seen a drastic devaluation of its currency, to the extent of about 25% between January 2008 and October 2008. On the other hand, as a consequence of selling the US dollar between March 2008 and the first week of October 2008, the foreign reserves have drastically come down in the first week of October. In Asia, 43% of GDP and vast sectors of economy are involved in outsourcing products, parts and services for the TNCs. The crisis has affected the backward countries in terms of capital, production and marketing for which these countries are heavily dependent on imperialist economy.

The economic crisis is taking a huge toll on jobs across India. There had been massive retrenchments lately, unavailability of fresh posts and reduction of existing salaries. ASSOCHAM a top association of the business houses has said in a report in October, 2008, that Indian companies will have to slash 25% of their work force to ‘sustain operation’. It further said that lay-offs will take place majorly in the seven key industrial segment – steel, cement, IT enabled services/BPOs, financial and brokerage services, construction, real estate and aviation. The fall out of the current economic crisis will throw as many a 10 lakh working people from jobs in India. Larger chunk of the people retrenched consists of women. According to a sample survey conduced by Labour Bureau covering eight sectors (mining, textile & textile garments, metals & metal products, automobile, gems & jewellery, construction, transport and the information technology/business process outsourcing industry) the total employment has declined from 16.2 million during September 2008 to 15.7 million during December 2008, implying a job loss of about half a million. The textile industry, one of the largest employers in the country is under great threat – recent example being the 128 years old textile industry of Tamilnadu where in the knitwear industries in Tirpur about 20,000 are to loose jobs due to sinking exports. Tata has recently shown the door to 700 casual laborers in Telco. Investment bank Goldman Sachs, American Express, Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse, drastically cut salary. Goldman Sachs has cut nearly 10% of its 2,300-strong work force in India that is in the bank’s BPO, KPO and investment banking business. The intense financial crisis has impacted the giant American Express so much that it has reduced its expenditure in India and retrenched 10% of its Indian staffs. This amounts to a huge number of 7,000 heads. Jet Airways and Kingfisher announced laying off altogether 1,900 employees in October 08 but withdrew the sack order under pressure but are paying the staffs less than half their earlier pay. Air India is reported to offer 15,000 non operational staff leave without pay for three to five years. Until January ‘08, job creation was running at about 2.3%, leaving 1-2 million unemployed every year. It is now only about 1.3%, a study says. Alarmingly, the export sector has job losses as high as 30 lakh, engineering 1 lakh, and IT companies like Satyam has trimmed 1,500, Wipro 1,000, TCS 500. Others like Patni Corp., Kingfisher, Virtusa and Quark are also retrenching steadily. This is the depressing scenario everywhere in the organized sector but the massive lay offs in the unorganized sector employing scores of millions cannot be estimated so early. India will face a worse fate with its declining growth rate and if it stands at 7% there will be as many as two million fewer jobs. Already there is a deceleration in employment growth to 1.925 per year from 1993-94 to 2006-07 from 2.61% between 1983-1993-94 due to a sharp drop in job-creation in agriculture.

Banking and industrial sector in India are also facing major impacts. Stocks in sectors like real estate, power, metal, banks, etc, had lost a whopping 70 to 90% from January to October’08. The progressive lack of demand as a fallout of recession has severely hit the automobile market in India with all the six giants like Maruti Suzuki, Honda Seil Cars India, Tata Motors, Hero Honda, TVS Motor, Bajaj Auto seeing tumbling sales of their products. The hardest is the IT sector for its exposure to foreign banking and financial services (40% of industry’s exports). The UPA government has now been in a trouble. It cannot check the inflow of FII and various financial instruments to keep the crashing speculative markets afloat but it is also forced to go for some regulations on the line of the US or European countries. But such a country like India with the stable dependency on FII, FDI, World Bank, MNCs will only sink further. The norganized sector being the worst hit, the downtrodden sections of Indian society, the dalits, women, adivasis, and religious minorities will suffer the most. Understandably the recent regeneration of the hindu fascist forces are also a systemic necessity of the policies of imperialism to sustain itself. Fascism after all has been the historic ally of imperialism.

The present crisis which is reminiscent of the Great depression is a systemic problem of the capitalist mode of production itself. The roots of the crisis lie in the imperialist system itself for which there is no solution within it. The solution is also not in Keynesianism, which the CPM brand intellectuals will like us to believe. They go on to the extend saying that ‘global Keynesianism’ would bring back the economy to the order. Keynesianism at best talks about the irrationality of capitalism. Let us remind them the endemic crisis arises not only from the irrationality but the class nature of it. And also the euphoria of ‘welfare state ’,’golden period of capitalism’ characterized by the Keynesian policies evaporated very long back. Thus no amount of patch work like Keynesianism can save the economy. The only real solution to revive the economy is through the very overthrow of the system and its replacement with the socialist alternative. It is only by challenging and fighting the imperialist forces tooth nail that we can end this supreme inequality, deprivation and exploitation and secure equality, dignity and justice.

The battle has been lost, but the fight must go on!

The month-long struggle against privatisation of the campus has finally ended in a sorry defeat, with the JNUSU withdrawing its hunger strike yesterday, despite an overwhelming and active participation of the student community in its initial days. But unlike many retreats and compromises of the JNUSU in the past, this defeat is going to be a historic one, with far-reaching consequences. It is an inexcusable surrender of the leadership to the forces which are trying to weaken the students’ movement for our rights and social justice, apart from clearing the way for privatisation of education and basic facilities in JNU. This struggle moved inevitably towards a fruitless culmination ever since the AISA-led JNUSU compromised on the major demands raised by the student community. Moreover, it demonstrated scant respect for democratic decisions of the students, the leadership trying their best to demobilise the student movement from the path of a militant confrontation with the administration. The JNUSU leadership finally decided to retreat from the site of struggle apparently respecting an appeal by JNUTA. But the real reason behind this surrender was the lack of support from the mass of students, and the predictable treachery of their ‘most reliable’ comrades the SFI. They withdrew from this highly unpopular hunger strike as soon as it was ensured that the rustication orders on the JNUSU leadership will be revoked through JNUTA’s intervention. But it meant that none of the core demands of the struggle is going to be clinched, and we may soon hear about formation of committees to ‘look into’ the demands. Thus, all that this month-long movement has achieved is to stop the commercialisation of PSR, a demand conceded by the administration on 3rd Feb itself. There has been a calculated silence from both AISA and SFI on the demand of removing electric meters, which means that the JNUSU leadership has bought the administration’s lie that the meters will remain merely for some ‘scientific survey’. The demand to roll-back the hiked prospectus price has been thoroughly compromised, and the administration did not budge an inch from its stance except coming up with the dangerous ‘charitable exemption’ for BPL students. This move can very well be the prelude to a differential fee structure in the coming days. We only hope that the JNUSU leadership will at least refrain from claiming this as an ‘achievement’ of the ongoing struggle!

It is by now clear to all that the AISA-led JNUSU was interested in resisting the privatisation moves of the administration only in rhetoric and not in practice. This is similar to the anti-imperialist cries of the parliamentary left who are enthusiastically implementing the same imperialist policies wherever they are in power. By compromising and surrendering on every count, the present JNUSU leadership has conceded not only this movement but also the movements in the coming days which will be fought, if at all, against this very administration! The credibility of the JNUSU is at a historic low, and the responsibility squarely lies on the JNUSU leadership who has repeatedly betrayed the trust and responsibility placed on them by the students of the campus. What was common between the administration and the present JNUSU leadership in the course of the struggle however was the bypassing of democratic bodies and ignoring the aspirations of the student community. The administration had taken the decisions on meter, fee-hike, PSR, ‘beautification’ etc. unilaterally bypassing all the concerned bodies like CDC or IHA and without involving representatives form students and teachers. Similarly, the JNUSU decided on the course of struggle unilaterally, by undermining the UGBM mandate, implementing courses of action which were defeated by the UGBM, bypassing the debates generated in the All-Organisation meetings and undercutting the larger students’ aspiration to confront this authoritarian administration with more assertive forms of protest.

JNUSU leadership and its alliance of opportunism: the AISA-led JNUSU vested its complete faith in their new-found ally SFI, and vehemently attacked voices of dissent and criticism, conveniently forgetting SFI’s commendable history of ‘disassociation’, betrayal and opportunism. It is the same SFI which started with the demand of paralyzing the ad-block in the initial period of the movement, and then took a sly u-turn on the eve of the UGBM. They mouthed the demand of blockade after the UGBM passed it, again to slip away on the eve of the blockade. The AISA-led JNUSU chose to forget all this in the hope that by sticking together they will be able to revoke the rustications. But by running away from the struggle, the SFI has once again assured us that it is an honest and true opportunist, even though it meant leaving AISA high and dry. The other ‘natural ally’ of the JNUSU in the course of this struggle was JNUTA, to the extent that its mere appeals had more weight and importance for the JNUSU leadership than the commands of the students passed through UGBMS. Members of JNUTA came uninvited at midnight and addressed the rally on the eve of the blockade, dissuading the students from going for this confrontation. This was readily agreed to by the JNUSU leadership. Again the JNUTA ‘appealed’ to the JNUSU to withdraw the indefinite hunger strike even before the negotiations began on any of our demands. Such a unilateral withdrawal at the behest of JNUTA has been unprecedented in a JNUSU-led struggle. JNUTA from the beginning has made no commitment in supporting our demands other than expressing its mild protest against rustications. It is not hidden from anyone that the teaching community, with a few honourable exceptions, is whole-heartedly backing the administration’s present privatisation drive. The deplorable role played by the JNUTA a few years back during the struggle to hike MCM amount is still fresh in our memory, when it insisted that the struggle be called-off with a compromise. The struggle rejected such offer and went ahead without the support of the JNUTA, finally winning it with the sole strength of the students. Knowing full well this history, how can JNUSU allow the JNUTA to dictate terms of the students’ movement and be influenced by it, when the TA’s role can at best be advisory? JNUTA is not a neutral body. It has remained closer to the administration than the students. JNUSU leadership’s capitulation to the pressure-tactics of JNUTA and the administration has converted a possible victory to a near-certain defeat, for which it is answerable to the students.

The JNUSU leadership vested their trust on everybody except the students. So pathetic and bankrupt has been AISA-led JNUSU’s politics that it forgot the political nature of the struggle, and tried to evoke a non-existent ‘humanism’ and ‘sympathy’ of the administration through a indefinite hunger strike! The students who came for the long march, boycotted classes for a long time, participated in all other protest actions called by JNUSU, has been left betrayed and angered. But the responsibility of this historic defeat of the ongoing movement will have to be borne by the opportunistic JNUSU leadership, and not by the student community. As Brecht has put it, The defeats and victories of the fellows at the top are not always the defeats and victories of the fellows at the bottom. This is a defeat of the leadership, and its high time that the students of the campus prepare for a fresh round of collective struggle against privatisation

The authoritarian administration must be confronted!

The ongoing struggle against the recent wave of privatization in the campus which began with a spirited mass demonstration at the ad-block on 3rd Feb. has entered its second month today. Whereas this struggle had been unparalleled in terms of unprecedented student participation, it has also experienced vacillation and opportunism of the JNUSU leadership in taking the struggle forward for a decisive victory as mandated by the students through the UGBM. It is therefore not surprising that the administration has so far conceded nothing to our demands except scrapping the plan to commercialise PSR. The aggressive and hostile stance of the anti-student and authoritarian administration again came to light yesterday when it came up with yet another circular to justify its moves of privatization as well as its disciplinary action on the protesting students! It vilified the ongoing movement against privatization by claiming that it is based on mere rumors! As if the electricity meters, the hiked fees, the commercialized PSR, the mushrooming constructions and installations are all figments of imagination! As if thousands of protesting students are engaged in a bitter struggle with the administration for ‘baseless issues’!

On the demand of removing electric meters from Koyena Hostel, the administration reiterated its ‘decision’ of not levying ‘user charges’. But they have also mentioned that electricity consumption is rising and they need to carry out ‘scientific survey’ to measure that! The questions remain, what is the point of installing meters in individual rooms to know the amount of net electricity consumption? The Presidents of two other hostels were also told about the installations of meters in their hostels. What is the extent of their ‘scientific survey’? And what if after doing a round of survey, the administration scientifically decides to levy user charges from the students? Moreover, the administration initially planned to charge students for consumption of electricity beyond a certain level, but this plan was quickly shelved as a result of the mass discontent and anger the meters have generated among the students. The protest against installation of electricity meters was strongly registered right from the start, because the students vest NO trust on this administration which is giving the argument that ‘JNU students are prosperous’ in every possible public forum, thereby exposing their real intention behind installing meters in hostels. And why does the administration want to do a survey of the cost of electricity consumed by the students, whereas their enormous unaccounted extravagant expenditure remains unmonitored? This is nothing but the first step towards charging students for electricity in the coming days.

For fee hike of prospectus even the administration admits that the issue remains unaddressed. It claimed that the fee hike was recommended by a committee ‘duly constituted comprising some members of the Standing Committee on admissions’! This particular committee that the administration is referring to was however formed unilaterally by the administration; its formation was not discussed in any democratic platforms. More dangerously, the minutes of its meetings revealed that they had recommended the increase of the amount of entrance examination fees along with increasing the fee of the prospectus! The administration for this year chose to stick to only one of the several reactionary and anti-student recommendations it had made! That the administration, as an extension of the anti-people and autocratic state apparatus, is going on implementing pro-market policies in the campus one after another, is no surprise. This administration headed by the VC is an assembly of crooks that profess neo-liberal economic policies, and for whom the students of JNU, its past and the present hardly matter. Their agenda is to shape the future of JNU and its students in a particular mould. Unless they are kicked out of their positions of power, the misdeeds of the thieves in the Pink Palace will lead JNU to a socially alienated, privatized and corporate-friendly enclave, where only the privileged will have a right to entry! The students know the gravity of this challenge to defend the present and future of JNU; its time that the JNUSU leadership lives up to the occasion.

A few old questions and fresh reminders to the JNUSU leadership: When the desperation and high-handedness of the administration is becoming more and more evident posing ever new threats, is this struggle led towards the right direction? The struggle started with unprecedented students’ participation and very pointed demands against privatization. Despite the massive students’ support and UGBM mandate the leadership refrained from going into more assertive forms of struggle like paralyzing the ad-block by blockading its entrances. It chose not to go into any concrete protest actions when students were with them, even after the negotiations failed! Rather they championed a course of action which was defeated in the UGBM and with a handful 30-40 students tried to stop the sell of prospectus at a late stage of the struggle. Right after which, they championed another defeated resolution by going for indefinite hunger strike, which still continues.

Was the JNUSU leadership trying to avoid ‘coercive tactics’ and ‘disciplinary action’ from the administration by not going for a blockade? Administration however did take action even when they were merely trying to stop the sell of prospectus, proving that the administration has outsmarted JNUSU leadership in strategy. And now in yesterday’s circular the administration is calling even the hunger strike a ‘coercive tactic’! The point is, the administration will deem any course of action which genuinely challenges privatization as ‘coercive’ and will repress! De-escalation of the spirit and participation of students by JNUSU leadership apprehending reactions from the administration has diluted this crucial fight, not only in the mass participation but also in its aims and objectives, resulting in frustration and desperation among the common students, a reflection of which was witnessed today when a student threatened to jump from the 8th floor of library if our demands were not met. The JNUSU leadership has already retreated from demanding removal of electric meters, and now with more prospectuses getting sold each day and its closing date coming nearer, any possibility of JNUSU forcing the administration to roll-back fee-hike seems grim! The only issue to the current phase of the ongoing struggle emerges to be the revocation of rustications. Fighting the disciplinary action undoubtedly is extremely crucial, but if the entire struggle gets reduced to it, giving up on all other crucial demands, it will open up floodgates for privatization in the future, and will irreparably damage the credibility of JNUSU and the progressive student movement of JNU! The administration is determined to sell-off JNU. Only a principled, militant and collective struggle of the students can stop it!