Re: [Marxism] Knowledge Society and Capitalism

[Marla Vijaya kumar <marlavk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Com Andy Pollack,
First I would like to clarify on the confusion about Indian names. In North India, the surname comes in the end somewhat like christian names. If I were to be a norh Indian, I have to call myself as Vijay Kumar Marla. In south india, the surname Marla comes first. After that adding father's name is optional. I am a male, 52 years and I design electrical generators for large power plants. There is a demand from the Communist Party that I should devote full time for party work. I am planning to resign my job shortly, once I complete some of the projects I am right now working on for my company. That is bseides the point.
Coming to the issue of outsourcing IT work to India, the Indian political leaders are simply aiming at foriegn exchange to pay for the country's mounting oil bills. But it is in the long term interest of India to deploy its vast resource of IT and tech manpower for meeting its local needs rather than offering cheap coolie jobs for the west.
In the case of call centres, we all know that low level call centre jobs are shifting to countries like India, but it is a short lived phenomenon. Call centres in India work in the night time and working there every night takes a toll on the physical and mental health of Indian youth. It is a matter of time before net-bots take over most of the sevices presently offered by offshore call centres. I wonder what will happen to all these young people who are presently earning a living working in call centres.
Deploying India's IT and tech manpower for its own needs will be against neo-liberal interests and that is why I argue that the Left in India should take up the slogan of a Socialist Knowledge Society, and project it an alternative to neo-liberalism. In India today, a lot of interest is being shown by the intellegentia on how to develop India, without the ills of liberalization and privatization. It is this sentiment that the Left Parties have to expolit to generate an anti-capitalist sentiment.
I fully appreciate your point that India is country of contrasts - extreme poverty and vast pool of talented manpower. Don't they make a deadly combination for progress if there is a will? More will follow in my subsequent mails.
But here I would appreciate very much if our friends can throw more light on the concept of Socialist Knowledge economy.
Namashkar.
Vijaya Kumar Marla

"andypollack@xxxxxxxx" <andypollack@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

A comment on just this part:
-- Marla Vijaya kumar wrote:
"One observation I would like to make here is that India with its 1 billion population ( about 14% of the world's population) gets very little attention in the international press. What happens in India, in my opinion will have a vital bearing on future world events. I suggest that marxmail should focus and initiate discussion on Indian developments, especially in the light of the growing importance of the Left Parties in Indian politics."

I couldn't agree more. The exception re: coverage in the press -- and an important one -- is that of India's software/call center/data processing and similar industries, covered primarily to pit Indian workers against those in the US. Which could of course be turned around...

And hopefully discussion on marxmail could interact with that on the foil (Friends of the Indian Left) list.

(Marla's latest reminds me: when I read her original post it made me wonder again whether a coming Indian revolution would provide in decades coming a unique example of uneven and combined development: i.e., a revolution resting on the one hand on a still-heavily peasant population, yet also on a massive, heavily-organized working class, both factory and office, and finally on an unparalleled concentration of tech workers (some of whom work in software companies which have developed the most advanced databases used by some of the biggest multinationals).

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