[Marxism] ML International Newsletter: September-October 2006 (text)

["CPI \(ML\) Intl Liaison Office" <cpiml_elo@xxxxxxxxx>]

ML International Newsletter
September-October 2006

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An update on news and ideas from the revolutionary
left in India. 
Produced by: Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) Liberation international team 
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Website: www.cpiml.org
Email: cpimllib@xxxxxxxxxx and cpiml_elo@xxxxxxxxx

Table of Contents

1)      Lebanese Resistance Shocks and Awes US-Israel!
2)      Indo-US Nuclear Deal
3)      Let the Working Class Rally Against The SEZ
Subterfuge
4)      CPI (ML) Condemns UPA Government?s Move to Remove
the Cap on SEZs
5)      Special Economic Zones (SEZs): The Paradise of
Capitalism
6)      Janadhikar Campaign Culminates in First National
Public Hearing on NREGA
7)      Tribute: Ustad Bismillah Khan

Anti-Imperialism 

Lebanese Resistance Shocks and Awes US-Israel!

- Liberation, September, 2006.

George Bush has proclaimed an Israeli ?victory? over
the Hizbollah. Indeed, ?t?was a famous victory?? that
has few takers even in Israel itself. Israeli Prime
Minister (PM) Ehud Olmert is facing furious
recriminations from his own army, which accuses him of
having pushed them into the war ill-prepared and ?too
early?. It is all too clear that one of the world?s
most advanced armies, powered by US military muscle,
has been unable to inflict decisive defeat on the
guerrilla forces of the Hizbollah, despite over a
month of war. With the prolonged wrangles in the UN
Security Council, its members obviously intended to
buy time for Israel, in the hope of an Israeli
victory. But this ploy was thwarted by the staying
power of the Hizbollah. 

As one observer put it, if a light-weight boxer takes
on a heavy weight champion and, in the 12th round, is
still standing, he must be declared the winner,
whatever the count of points! In fact, Israel?s only
victory has been the over 1000 civilian casualties and
the massive destruction of civilian infrastructure. On
her visit to Lebanon, US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice declared that the massacre and
carnage in Lebanon as the ?birth pangs of a new Middle
East?. Indeed, the unprecedented and sustained
resistance by the Hizbollah seems to be inspiring a
new sense of solidarity and hope amongst the Arab
people (for the first time since the first Intifada) ?
and what the birth pangs are bringing forth does not
seem to be the same baby that was conceived by the US!
A US Government consultant with close ties to Israel
is reported to have said that the Israelis had
promised a ?cheap war with many benefits?, which the
US felt would be a salutary curtain raiser, a ?demo
for Iran?. Instead, the assault is evoking unpleasant
reminders of the war on Iraq and an older one on
Vietnam. Evidence is now trickling in to show that far
from the war being provoked by the Hizbollah, Israel
and the US had planned the aggression at least a year
ago ? as a move to eliminate the Hizbollah prior to
launching an assault on Iran. 

The current ceasefire seems in fact to be a new phase
of the war ? with Israel repeatedly violating the
ceasefire to push into Lebanon; and its troops facing
ambushes and meeting with spirited resistance, not
just from the Hizbollah but from ordinary Lebanese
people. Meanwhile, a high-ranking Israeli army
official has told the New York Times that ?Israel
intends to do its best to kill (Hizbollah leader)
Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.? One remembers the furore when
a fatwa was pronounced against the Danish cartoonist;
this death sentence pronounced by Israel against a
political opponent during a ceasefire has been met
with silence from the self-proclaimed custodians of
?democracy?.

Bush and Rice spoke of the need to address the ?root
cause? of the war. According to the US and Israel, of
course, the ?root cause? is the very existence
(totally inexplicable and frustrating to them) of
Palestine and Lebanon as centres of resistance to
racist colonisation and occupation in West Asia, and
major hurdles in the path of US hegemonic designs in
that region. 

The belated UN Security Council resolution,
expectedly, failed to speak a word against Israel?s
horrific war crimes and its deliberate assaults on
Lebanese civilians. Now, Bush has demanded another
resolution calling for the disarming of Hizbollah. For
us in India too, it is a matter of shame that the UPA
Government and the Indian parliament, far from
breaking military ties with Israel, have failed even
to raise their voice against the Israeli aggression on
Lebanon. In sharp contrast is the gesture made by
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, withdrawing his
envoy from Tel Aviv. Hizbollah chief Nasrallah, in an
interview, has appreciated the solidarity from
socialists, Chavez in particular, contrasting it with
the lack of support from most West Asian regimes. He
also pointed to the fact that in the streets of
Beirut, posters of Che and Chavez could be seen side
by side with those who are seen as resistance fighters
of Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. 

As the heroic resistance of the Lebanese people goes
on, and as the apartheid regime in Palestine is
challenged daily from within, a fresh racist upsurge
can be seen worldwide, in the wake of the news of a
bomb plot in British airways being thwarted. Racial
profiling, a phenomenon that had raised its head post
9/11 but had waned since, is once again raising its
ugly head. While standing in solidarity with the
struggling people of Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon, we
must intensify the resistance to imperialism and
racism. The ongoing struggle in Lebanon, whatever its
final outcome, will have far-reaching consequences for
US and Israel?s imperial and arrogant ambitions in
West Asia, and will hold out hope for
anti-imperialists all over the world.

Indo-US Nuclear Deal

CPI (M) Joins Congress to Script a Spurious "Sense of
the House"

- Editorial, Liberation, September, 2006.

On August 15, 2006 India 'celebrated' the fifty-ninth
anniversary of her independence from British colonial
rule in the shadow of a terror alert issued by the US.
Britain had just claimed to have foiled a major terror
plot and only last month Mumbai had experienced the
real trauma of serial blasts that killed more than 200
passengers and maimed many others. Panic and paranoia
therefore reigned supreme and everybody seemed to
heave a sigh of relief when the day finally ended
without any major untoward incident reported from any
corner. What an irony of history! Much of the
terrorism that India and the whole world today have to
live with is an offshoot of US strategy and policy of
global domination. Indeed, most terrorist outfits have
historically benefited from American funding, training
and strategic patronage. And now we are seeing terror
alerts issued by the US throwing countries out of gear
in sheer panic! 

There was another alert issued on the eve of this
year's Independence Day. This one came from eight of
India's eminent nuclear scientists and administrators,
including several formal chairmen of Atomic Energy
Commission. In an open appeal to Members of
Parliament, these scientists observed that "the
Indo-US deal, in the form approved by the US House of
Representatives, infringes on our independence for
carrying out indigenous research and development in
nuclear science and technology." Asserting that
"Research and technology development are the sovereign
rights of any nation" and that "this is especially
true when they concern strategic national defence and
energy self-sufficiency", they appealed to the
Parliamentarians "to discuss this deal and ... ensure
that decisions taken today do not inhibit our future
ability to develop and pursue nuclear technologies for
the benefit of the nation." 

The concerns expressed by the nuclear scientists only
reflected some of the apprehensions and objections
already raised by informed democratic opinion since
the Indo-US nuclear deal was first mentioned in the
course of Manmohan Singh's US visit in July 2005 and
the joint statement of 18 July 2005. George Bush's
visit to India in March obviously refuelled these
apprehensions, and more recently, the stringent
additional clauses recommended by the US House of
Representatives while endorsing the deal
understandably caused serious ripples of public debate
and resentment in India. Concerns were expressed about
the US shifting the goalpost and demands were raised
for a parliamentary debate and for adoption of a
resolution that would adequately convey the "sense of
the House". On August 18, Manmohan Singh just
delivered an emotionally charged 80-minute speech at
the Rajya Sabha and we are now told by our friends in
the Left that the assurances given by the PM have been
as good as any resolution reflecting the "sense of the
House". Really? How wonderful!

What did Manmohan Singh really have to say? He drew a
parallel between the economic reforms he had initiated
as Finance Minister in 1991 and the paradigm shift in
strategic thinking that is currently taking place
under his stewardship as Prime Minister. Quoting from
The Prince, the famous work of Machiavelli on the
principles of politics and governance, he said he had
"enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and
only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit
from the new order." Recalling the 'epithets' he
attracted when he initiated economic reforms, he said
he stood vindicated by subsequent experience and said
he shuddered to think how India would have faced the
East Asian currency crisis of the mid 1990s without
those reforms! Those who go on describing Manmohan
Singh as a weak politician should really rethink - in
the name of allaying the country's "nuclear fears" he
claims vindication for his economic record with the
entire Left brigade led by Comrade Sitaram Yechury
nodding in silent approval! 

Well, the truth is if India managed to escape the heat
of the East Asian financial meltdown it was because
India had not completed the process of financial
liberalisation and still exercised some restrictions
vis-a-vis the world of speculative finance. In other
words, India managed to survive in spite of Singh's
economic reforms and not because of them! And now he
expects the country to trust him in the matter of the
Indo-US nuclear deal and strategic partnership on the
basis of his 'credentials' as the initiator of India's
economic reforms! And what 'assurances' did he really
give regarding the nuclear deal except insisting that
India's foreign policy "will not change as long as I
am Prime Minister" and that "we will not accept any
conditions that go beyond the parameters of the July
18, 2005 Joint Statement and the March 2, 2006
Separation Plan, agreed to between India and the
United States" (emphasis ours)? So, within the
parameters of the July 18 statement and March 2 plan,
further conditions could always be considered and
accepted in India's "enlightened national interest"!

The essential criticism against the Indo-US nuclear
deal, not just in its current form as proposed by the
US House of Representatives but from day one, has
emanated from four basic concerns which can be
formulated in the following words: (1) The deal will
seriously compromise India's strategic autonomy; (2)
it will promote nuclear weaponisation and trigger a
thoroughly dangerous and disastrous nuclear arms race
between India and Pakistan; (3) it will jeopardise
India's energy independence and security strengthened
by tightening American stranglehold over India's
energy economy; and (4) it will push India deeper into
an unequal strategic partnership with the US with
serious all-round implications for India's foreign
policy as well as internal policies. Since July 18,
2005, these concerns have only become more acute for
more and more people. Manmohan Singh was surely not
expected to address any of these basic concerns, he
could only reiterate the 'spirit' of the July 18, 2005
statement and he did exactly that. But how come for
the CPI (M) the parameters of the July 18 statement
have now become synonymous with the "sense of the
House"!

Before we conclude, let us draw our readers' attention
to the following excerpts from an article published
not so long ago: "India has become a strategic ally of
the United States. ... Embedded in this strategic
alliance is the US nuclear cooperation deal which was
first mooted in the July 18 statement. .. The UPA
government has by this strategic alliance with the
United States eroded India?s independent foreign
policy and severely restricted its strategic autonomy.
This is evident from the nature of the strategic
compact arrived at which has political, economic,
military and strategic elements involved. ... Starting
from the July 2005 joint statement, the CPI (M) and
the Left have come out against the strategic alliance
with the United States. It has conducted a countrywide
campaign against the UPA government?s reversal on the
Iran nuclear issue. The whole country has witnessed a
powerful protest movement against the visit of
President Bush. The CPI (M) will work more
determinedly to fight back the growing US influence on
the country, mobilise the people for an independent
foreign policy and resist the conversion of India into
a ?reliable ally? of the United States. (emphasis in
the original)" This was Prakash Karat writing in the
People's Democracy (March 12, 2006) just after the
Bush visit. 

So in March 2006, the July 2005 statement symbolised a
strategic alliance which eroded India's independent
foreign policy and severely restricted India's
strategic autonomy. And in August 2006, the PM
reflects the "sense of the House" - in which the CPI
(M) has its biggest ever presence till date - by just
upholding the same July 2005 statement! Does not the
"sense of the House" have anything to do with the
sense of the people you are supposedly mobilising for
an independent foreign policy and against the Indo-US
strategic alliance? Or are you now going to mobilise
the people with this new-found "sense of the House"?
Who are really shifting the goalpost, comrade?

Workers? Struggles

Let the Working Class Rally Against The SEZ Subterfuge

- ML Update, 29 August ? 4 September, 2006.

When Kamal Nath walked out of the sixth ministerial
conference of World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Hong
Kong a few months back creating a lot of media hype,
we saw in it nothing but cheap theatrics. The
individual as well as the class and the power
structure he represented were absolutely subservient
to the global rich and powerful, we pointed out, and
the walkout was only an exercise in making the best of
a lost bargaining. The UPA government?s recent
decision to lift the cap on the permissible number of
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the country, a
decision attributed largely to vigorous lobbying by
the commerce minister, vindicates our position.

The meeting of the empowered group of ministers
(EGoM), which actually took the decision on behalf of
the government, was marked by intense debates between
the finance minister and the commerce minister. P
Chidambaram circulated a note quantifying the revenue
losses arising out of the tax giveaways for SEZs ? a
staggering Rs 70,000 ? 100,000 crore (1 crore = 10
million).  The finance ministry felt that big malls,
golf courses and entertainment zones will be set up in
these areas as crafty developers would take unfair
advantage of the SEZ rules to make a quick buck from
the real estate by using duty free raw material. Kamal
Nath on the contrary opined that the zones would
instead lead to revenue gains of around Rs 44,000
crore over the next 5-10 years, besides creating lakhs
of jobs. He was strongly supported by communications
and IT minister Dayanidhi Maran, agriculture minister
Sharad Pawar and defence minister Pranab Mukherjee.
The liberalisation fanatics naturally won the day. It
was declared that any review of the rules will only
take place after 75 SEZs are operational, or in six
months from now, whichever was earlier. Even the
impact on government?s revenue will only be gauged
after these SEZs are functional.

The finance minister?s loan opposition is
understandable. Not that he is having second thoughts
on liberalisation. He has to present the budget every
year, and the reduced revenues will further tie up his
hands. Moreover, his ministry cannot fully disregard
the responsibility of maintaining a minimum balance
among the different sectors of the economy. On the
other hand, ministers, bureaucrats and politicians who
have developed a direct vested interest in further
opening up of the economy are dying for the SEZs. The
latter group, being in the dominance not only in the
EGoM but also in the corridors of power as a whole,
won as a matter of course.

The decision to go on a mad overdrive for the SEZs,
considered to be a major pillar of the Chinese
economic success, comes at a time when the Chinese
themselves are finding it necessary to make a fresh
cost-benefit analysis and readjust their policies. 
Moreover, what may be at least partially beneficial
for the Chinese economy with its strong fundamentals,
independent base and firm social security system, may
well be suicidal for a crisis-ridden economy like
ours, which is already over-dependent on foreign
capital.  Incidentally, of the 150 zones approved
since the SEZ Act came into effect this February, not
one has become fully operational till date. Chances
are that more than drawing fresh investments, these
tax heavens will in the main attract existing units
from other parts of the country.  There will be hardly
any net addition in terms of production and
employment, but the national exchequer will suffer
badly.

Curiously enough, on this issue the self-styled Left
watchdog failed even to bark properly.  Referring to
the feeble demand of the parliamentary Left for a
review of the SEZ scheme, Kamal Nath reported that the
West Bengal chief minister had written to the Centre
complementing the government on SEZs. Whether the
commerce minister was speaking the truth or not (he
was not contradicted), Shri Bhattacharya?s love for 
SEZs has been made amply clear in numerous televised
statements.  Of course, he never forgets to add a
rider: no anti-labour practices will be allowed in
these zones in West Bengal.  But this sugar-coating
intended for the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU)
lobby and the party?s shifting worker base will not
make the pill less bitter for those in the know. Under
the SEZ Act, every such zone is considered a public
utility service where strikes are practically
forbidden. This makes hire and fire and suchlike
practices a matter of routine. Moreover, the writ of
the state labour commissioner does not run in these
zones, all relevant powers being vested in the
specially appointed development commissioner. In fact,
a labour force robbed of the rights achieved through
more than a century of struggle and sacrifice ? this
constitutes probably the foremost special attraction
of these zones to the lords of capital, Indian and
foreign.

And this, therefore, also constitutes a special
challenge to the representatives of labour, organised
and unorganised. For the former the threat is that
many of their workplaces will be relocated to the
upcoming SEZs and they will forfeit the rights and
benefits they currently enjoy. And many of the
unorganised/part-time/casual workers, who at the
moment eke out a precarious existence, will find a
worse hell awaiting them in these enclaves.  These are
very real threats.  To launch a ?pre-emptive strike?
against these has become an urgent political task of
the trade unions (TUs) in India. And once they take
the lead in this regard, there will be no dearth of
support from other sections of the working people,
whose interests are going to be severely jeopardised
by massive curtailment in social sector spending
consequent upon reduced revenue of the state. 

Workers? Struggle

CPI (ML) Condemns UPA Government?s Move to Remove the
Cap on SEZs and Demands Immediate Moratorium

- ML Update, 29 August ? 4 September, 2006.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) [CPI
(ML)] strongly opposes the United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) government?s decision to uncap the number of
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in utter disregard of
the serious public debate over the issue. Super
Exemption Zones for the corporate sector, SEZs have
turned into Super Eviction Zones for adivasis and
other sections of the agricultural population. In view
of the massive resultant loss of revenue for the
government treasury and that of land and livelihood
for the rural poor, there has been a growing demand
for a moratorium on the construction of any more SEZs
pending a resolution of all contentious issues.

Instead of showing any sensitivity to this public
debate and protests by adivasis and farmers to save
their land, governments have only sought to bulldoze
the people with lathis and bullets as witnessed so
glaringly in Kalingnagar in Orissa and Dadri in Uttar
Pradesh. The UPA government?s move to uncap the number
of SEZs and raise it beyond an already absurd level of
150 smacks of the same kind of autocratic arrogance
and disdain for public opinion and people?s
livelihood. The CPI (ML) condemns such attitude of the
UPA government with the contempt it deserves.

It is instructive to note that while the government
has decided to go ahead with any number of SEZs,
thereby giving a permanently green signal to eviction
of more and more people from their land and
livelihood, it continues to put the long awaited and
much promised tribal land rights bill into cold
storage.

We call upon the government to put an immediate halt
to its disastrous policy of indiscriminately
increasing the number of SEZs and impose a moratorium
on the construction of  SEZs and instead address and
resolve the issues raised by the ongoing land
acquisition drive. We also demand enactment of the
tribal land rights bill without any further delay.
[Issued: 24 August, 2006.]

Workers? Struggle

Special Economic Zones (SEZs): The Paradise of
Capitalism

- Sundaram.

Though SEZs have become a buzzword among advocates of
India's economic liberalization in recent years, they
are not entirely a new concept and are basically
modelled on the Export Processing Zones (EPZ) that
came up nearly five decades ago.

The original idea behind the creation of EPZs was to
allow employers to import materials to be worked on
and then re-exported without having to pay duty. It
was seen as a cheap way of creating jobs without
spending scarce taxpayers' money and avoiding a
bureaucratic system of reimbursing import taxes on
goods intended for export. However, from the
beginning, this seductive idea had a major drawback.
It requires the sealing off of the zone or of
designated factories, often behind high fences, to
prevent untaxed goods being smuggled into the rest of
the economy.

The first EPZ was established in 1959 in Ireland but
it was in East and South East Asia that the idea found
most enthusiastic support. Countries like Taiwan,
Singapore, Malaysia and the British colony of Hong
Kong embraced the concept that economic growth can be
promoted best through encouraging exports rather than
through import substitution.

Thus setting up exclusive, privileged zones with a
liberal tax and labour regime would attract investors
from developed countries interested in taking
advantage of cheaper costs and fewer regulations to
set up manufacturing units that would send back
products for sale to richer markets. Importantly,
these zones were used as a ?test base' for
liberalisation of trade, tax and other policies that
were then gradually applied to the rest of the
economy. More on this later.

In the sixties there were just 10 such zones around
the world, which by the mid-eighties had increased to
176 zones across 47 countries. In 2003, the number of
zones increased to over 3000 across 116 countries.

As the EPZ concept spread around the world,
governments found that they had to add more and more
incentives to attract footloose investors to their
enclave; subsidised factory buildings,
telecommunication links, energy supplies and most
worrying of all, guarantees that the labour force
would stay cheap and uncomplaining.

Keeping the intense global competition for attracting
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in mind the Chinese
government in the eighties pioneered the concept of
Special Economic Zones that offered much greater
incentives than the EPZs had done till then.

The one-time fishing village of Shenzhen, singled out
by late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, was the first of
the Special Economic Zones of China . In the past two
decades, more than US$ 30 billion has been invested by
outsiders in Shenzhen, which has become the showcase
of capitalist reforms in China.

EPZs and SEZs in India
In India, the first zone was set up in Kandla as early
as 1965. It was followed by the Santacruz export
processing zone which came into operation in 1973. The
government set up five more zones during the late
1980s. These were at Noida (Uttar Pradesh), Falta
(West Bengal) Cochin (Kerala), Chennai (Tamil Nadu)
and Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh). The EPZ in Surat
became operational in 1998.

The idea of the so-called Special Economic Zones
(SEZs) was first mooted by the Ministry of Commerce's
Export-Import Policy 2000, in an obvious attempt to
copy the model evolved in China. In 2005 the SEZ Act
was passed by the Indian parliament and came into
force from February 10, 2006.

According to the Indian Ministry of Commerce's
website, the SEZ is a specifically delineated duty
free enclave and shall be deemed to be foreign
territory for the purpose of trade operations, duties
and tariffs.

Under the new Act SEZs are permitted to be set up in
the public, private, joint sector or by the State
Governments with a minimum size of not less than 1000
hectares. The SEZ is supposed to be an almost
self-contained area with high-class infrastructure for
commercial as well as residential inhabitation. The
SEZs will have their own security, operation and
maintenance rules and all environmental and labour
clearances vested with the Development Commissioner of
that SEZ.

Following this policy the existing EPZs were all
converted into SEZs, and at present there are eight
functional Special Economic Zones located at Santa
Cruz (Maharashtra), Cochin (Kerala), Kandla and Surat
(Gujarat), Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Visakhapatnam (Andhra
Pradesh), Falta (West Bengal) and Noida (Uttar
Pradesh) in India. A SEZ at Indore (Madhya Pradesh) is
also now ready for operation.

In addition 18 approvals have been given for setting
up of SEZs at Positra (Gujarat), Navi Mumbai and
Kopata (Maharashtra), Nanguneri (Tamil Nadu), Kulpi
and Salt Lake (West Bengal), Paradeep and Gopalpur
(Orissa), Bhadohi, Kanpur, Moradabad and Greater Noida
(Uttar Pradesh), Vishakhapatnam and Kakinada (Andhra
Pradesh), Vallarpadam/Puthuvypeen (Kerala), Hassan
(Karnataka), Jaipur and Jodhpur (Rajasthan), on the
basis of proposals received from the State
Governments.

Objectives of the EPZs and SEZs
In 1989, a report of the Comptroller and Auditor
General of India clarified that EPZs were meant for
earning foreign exchange, develop export oriented
industries, stimulate investment and generate
employment opportunities beside creating an
internationally competitive environment for export
production at low cost. The SEZ Act 2005 also
considers ?promotion of foreign trade in goods and
services' the most important objective of SEZs.

According to its advocates, a well-implemented and
designed SEZ can bring about many desired benefits for
a host-country: increases in employment, greater
foreign direct investment (FDI), general economic
growth, foreign exchange earnings, international
exposure, and the transfer of new technologies and
skills.

The Commerce and Industry Minister, Mr Kamal Nath, has
hopes of drawing Rs. 1,00,000 crore (1 crore = 10
million) worth of investments over the next three
years with an employment potential of over 500, 000,
besides indirect employment during the construction
period of the SEZs: investments in sectors such as
information technology, pharmaceuticals,
biotechnology, textiles, petro-chemicals and auto
parts.

The Incentives
As mentioned earlier the number of incentives offered
to investors for setting up and operating in SEZs are
far more liberal than was the case with the EPZs.
Among the non-fiscal incentives offered in Indian SEZs
for example, are:

? Exemption from industrial licensing for manufacture
of items reserved for Small Scale Industries (SSI)
? 100 per cent FDI investment through automatic route
to manufacturing SEZ units
? Facility to realize and repatriate export proceeds
within 12 months
? No cap on foreign investment for SSI reserved items
? ?Write-off? of unrealised export bills upto 5%
? Profits allowed to be repatriated freely without any
dividend balancing requirement
? Full freedom for subcontracting, including
subcontracting abroad

The main attraction of these zones lies however in the
fiscal incentives given, which are usually used to
manipulate accounts and to show profit/loss,
export/import figures that add to the company's
profits in ways that mere manufacturing and exports
never can. Some of the fiscal incentives provided to
investors in Indian SEZs are:

? 100% income tax exemption for a block of five years,
50% tax exemptions for two years and upto 50% of the
Profits ploughed back for next 3 years
? Supplies from Domestic Trade Area to SEZ to be
treated as exports
? Carrying forward of losses
? 100% Income-tax exemption for 3 years & 50% for 2
years for off-shore banking units.
? Exemption from Central Excise duty on procurement of
capital goods, raw materials, consumable spares etc.
from the domestic market.
? Reimbursement of Central Sales Tax paid on domestic
purchases.

As if all these were not already enough, this
capitalist dream list drawn up by the Indian
liberalisers goes on and on. According to the Ministry
of Commerce website, state governments supporting
private sector proposals or making one on their own
for setting up a SEZ need to give the following
commitments:

? That the area incorporated in the proposed Special
Economic Zone is free from environmental restrictions;
? That water, electricity and other services would be
provided as required;
? That the units would be given full exemption in
electricity duty and tax on sale of electricity for
self generated and purchased power;
? To allow generation, transmission and distribution
of power within the SEZ;
? To exempt from State sales tax, octroi, mandi tax,
turnover tax and any other duty/cess or levies on the
supply of goods from Domestic Tariff Area to SEZ
units;
? That for units inside the Zone, the powers under the
Industrial Disputes Act and other related labour Acts
would be delegated to the Development Commissioner and
that the units will be declared as a Public Utility
Service under Industrial Disputes Act.
? That single point clearances system and minimum
inspections requirement under State Laws/Rules would
be provided.

The Indian EPZ experience
EPZ exports increased in India from less than Rs.1
million in 1966 to over Rs. 97727 million in 2002.
Over the same period, total employment increased from
70 to around 89,000, net foreign exchange earnings
increased from Rs. 0.16 million to Rs. 43195 million
and value addition increased from 21% to 44%.

While these big figures seem impressive a closer look
at the details reveals several serious problems. First
of all the average annual growth rate of value
addition in the EPZs was as low as 2.9% which means
that the companies operating in these zones were
basically exporting out almost as much as they
imported without significant addition to the value of
goods produced. The EPZs thus contributed little to
improvement of skills or transfer of technical
know-how in the domestic market.

Again despite the overall growth of exports from EPZs
in absolute terms their actual share in total national
exports and manufactured exports increased from .07%
and .14% respectively in 1973 to just 4.3 % and 5.6%
respectively in 2001. This is in contrast to countries
like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, where EPZs contributed
to over 20 percent of overall exports by the year 2000
or to Mexico where they make up 40 percent of national
export figures. The Indian EPZs clearly failed to
induce dynamism in the overall export performance of
the national economy.

On the employment front too after an initial spurt in
numbers of people getting jobs in the EPZs there has
been a general decline and even stagnation. So for
example while employment in the EPZs grew at the rate
of over 50.2 percent between 1966 and 1970 it declined
to a mere 5.2 percent between 2000 and 2002.

Even assuming that the EPZ/SEZs do result in an
increase in exports and even hard currency earnings
their real performance can be measured only by taking
into account the amount of revenues foregone by the
government in the form of various incentives.
According to an internal assessment of the Union
Finance Ministry in 2005, the government had to forgo
about Rs. 90,000 crore in direct and indirect taxes
over a period of four years on account of the SEZs.

If one takes into account the money spent by the
government on actual construction and maintenance of
these EPZ/SEZs the situation is even worse. The 1998
Comptroller and Auditor-General Report on EPZs, stated
that "customs duty amounting to Rs.7, 500 crore was
forgone for achieving net foreign exchange earnings of
Rs. 4, 700 crore and the government does not seem to
have made any cost benefit analysis."

The Worker's Nightmare
Globally EPZs and SEZs have become notorious for many
things in particular violation of environmental norms,
tax evasion and for exploitation of labour. As a
report brought out in the mid-nineties by the
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
(ICFTU) puts it aptly "in these 'free' trade zones, it
is the employers who run free - like a fox in a
henhouse".

The report points out that enterprises in the zones
gain their comparative advantage really through worker
exploitation and anti-union repression. Most of these
enterprises are out to break their competitors in the
price war, and they don't mind breaking the backs of
their workers, and the union, to achieve that, it
says.

"Behind the concentration camp style fences in many
countries, unscrupulous employers are abusing the
basic rights of a predominantly young female
workforce. In some countries basic labour legislation
and core workers' rights are set aside in the zones.
In others the zone managers simply use a system of
pass controls to exclude union organisers and workers
who try to join a union. Many of the worst of these
so-called 'free zones' allow employers the freedom to
exploit without restraint but restrict basic workers'
rights to freedom of association."

In the Indian context the EPZs of old were supposed to
comply with local labour laws and there was no
relaxation of these laws allowed as such. With the new
SEZ Act, 2005 the zones have been declared a ?public
utility service' a categorization that imposes
restrictions on workers going on strike. Moreover the
delegation of the powers of the state labour
commissioner to the specially appointed Development
Commissioners is expected to make industrial relations
more ?flexible'.

Despite all these measures, most employers with units
in the EPZ/SEZs surveyed by research organizations
have demanded even greater freedom to ?hire and fire'
and claimed the current labour regulations are ?too
stringent'.

Challenge to National Sovereignty
On one hand, EPZs and SEZs are but a manifestation of
the phenomenon known as ?globalization' which at its
core involves capital seeking easier and easier ways
of making high returns on its investment irrespective
of the price paid by those it ?invests in'. With
manufacturing in many industries neatly divided up so
as to parcel out different parts of the process to
different parts of the world that offer greatest
comparative advantage, such zones have become popular
with multinational firms all over.

As the ICFTU report puts it, "The zones are seductive
to investors precisely because they are an enclave, in
other words because they are physically, economically
and socially separate from the rest of the country.
This ?apartheid' explains why the advantages offered
to foreign investors - freed from the burden of
bureaucracy, taxation, lack of infrastructure and the
application of the labour code - do not necessarily
translate into corresponding benefits for the host
country."

In a sense, these zones are really small fiefdoms
controlled by global corporations that are carved out
from within countries which in the long run can only
result in the weakening of the basic tenets of the
nation state itself, including its sovereignty. In
many ways this is not very different from the kind of
special, privileged enclaves that western powers
established in the early colonial period to facilitate
their ?trading activities' which, as we know, finally
resulted in their gobbling up entire continents. (It
has been pointed out by some observers that the
special economic zones in China "are often located
where concessions had been obtained in the Chinese
Empire by the great powers using gunboat diplomacy in
the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.")

The Trojan Horse of Liberalisation
Irrespective of their actual performance in specific
contexts the idea of the EPZs and SEZs has found great
support among proponents of neo-liberal economic
policy because they see these zones clearly as a way
to prise open so called ?protected economies'.

As one paper on the subject puts it, "SEZs should be
viewed as a vehicle for introducing policy and
institutional reform that are difficult to introduce
more generally but could be feasible in these limited
areas". According to proponents of this view, "SEZs
function as test-cases for liberalizing reforms, the
development of best-practices" and conditions which
apply within these zones should gradually become the
norm everywhere.

Race to the Bottom
However, instead of achieving this grandiose objective
of making entire countries into EPZs (like in small
city states like Singapore or Hong Kong), what has
happened world over is that these zones have become a
sort of black hole taking in as many incentives as it
is possible for any state to give. While the
proponents of EPZs have argued that after a few years
the incentives could be done away with and the enclave
reintegrated into the rest of the country, but as the
incentive packages got bigger and more zones were
created in other countries it has become harder to
wean investors off their special advantages.

Instead pressure has increased to constantly improve
the attractions to stop companies relocating to other
still cheaper locations. While these zones certainly
do boost the profits of the companies involved, this
is at the expense of other businesses and employment
outside the zones or in other countries.

Even in conventional capitalist economic terms EPZs
are essentially a distortion in the global market
place which encourages a "slash and burn" pattern of
development rather than sound long term investment and
the transfer of technology. At best, the country gets
a few years worth of low wage low productivity jobs
before the export processors move on to another
country. At worst, the country and its workers become
trapped at the wrong end of a long international chain
of production, dependent on some of the world's most
vicious employers competing in a cut-throat business
for the bottom end of the global market.

Dens of Speculation
One of the intriguing aspects of the new SEZ Act is
its insistence that the new zones have at least 1000
acres or more of land at its disposal. This is all the
more strange because the experience of the much
smaller EPZs in India so far shows that most of them
are still under utilized and have not attracted as
many industrial/export processing units as they can
accommodate.

The Santacruz EPZ (now SEZ), near Mumbai, for example,
with an area of 93 acres had 197 units in 2002- the
most among all zones in the country. The number of
units in other zones around the country, which were
much larger than Santacruz was even smaller. In fact
the number of units has actually declined in many
zones in recent years. So why should the new SEZs have
over 1000 acres when much smaller ones are yet to be
filled up properly?

One of the obvious reasons for allocating such large
portions of land to the new SEZs is that they are in
fact meant for setting up real estate projects which
today have much larger returns on investment than
manufacturing. In other words SEZs will be hubs for
speculative investment in real estate and not for
exports as such. While initially these residential
units will be aimed at overseas investors there is no
doubt that gradually the rules will be relaxed to sell
them to domestic buyers too.

This explains why for example the two Ambani brothers
- Anil and Mukesh - whose companies ostensibly plan to
set up power plants and SEZs in Uttar Pradesh and
Haryana ? have both chosen sites that are close to the
national capital New Delhi. With real estate prices
soaring in Delhi the acquisition of large tracts of
land nearby under any pretext makes commercial sense
for the Ambanis though this has nothing to do with the
lofty pretexts with which the Indian state has forced
farmers to give away their lands to them.

What Next?
In the past decade and a half of so called
Liberalisation, Privatisation, Globalisation the
Indian ruling class has created its own ?shining'
special zones divorced from the fate and future of the
rest of the country. Already steeped in the apartheid
hierarchy of the Indian caste system, and with
complete contempt for the working masses the idea of
SEZs - special zones that cater to the already rich
and privileged - obviously fits neatly into the
worldview of the Indian elites.

And it is precisely for this reason that opposing the
formation of SEZs is an important part of the larger
struggle to tear down the high security castles the
rich are building on the backs of the India 's poor
and underprivileged. Allowing them to flourish will be
the first step towards the destruction of whatever
little democracy there is left in this country and a
defeat of the very ideas of equality and justice.

National Campaign

Janadhikar Campaign Culminates in
First National Public Hearing on NREGA

- Srilata Swaminathan, Radhika Menon and Sanjay
Sharma.

AIALA (All India Agricultural Labour Association) gave
a call to hold a public hearing on National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) on 17th. August while
the monsoon session of the Lok Sabha was in full
swing. AIALA is working in over 20 states of India and
presently has a membership of over 2 million members.
Although this is the leanest period of the year and
there are all sorts of travel difficulties due to the
rains, over 10,000 poor agri-labour from 18 states and
110 districts, responded to the call. Jantar Mantar
(the venue in Delhi) witnessed thousands of labouring
men and women from some of the poorest, remotest and
backward districts of India, marching into Delhi, head
held high, shouting their demands, carrying placards
and banners and with determination to get justice.
These activists braved attacks by police who beat and
threatened them, tried to forcibly remove them from
the trains they were travelling in and somehow stop
them from reaching Delhi. Undeterred, they came in
large numbers to fill the whole area with their warm
and enthusiastic presence and full-throated slogans.

The public hearing (Jan Sunvai) became an urgent
necessity as it became obvious that the NREGA had
failed to arrest starvation deaths and even scratch
the surface of the twin evils of poverty and
unemployment in the countryside. Not only is the Act
flawed, vague and partial, its implementation (or the
non-implementation in many cases) is ridden with
wholesale violations and irregularities. Yet in his
Independence Day address, Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh shamelessly crowed from the ramparts of the Lal
Qila regarding the miracle effects of great
achievements on the front of rural employment
guarantee. 

The record therefore needed to be put straight. This
was done by the thousands of men and women at the
public hearing who exposed the realities at ground
level. Speaker after speaker uncovered the true state
of affairs ? no job-cards, no work, corruption and
bribery everywhere, poor women and children dying from
hunger, terrible rural distress, meagre payments,
delayed payments, impossibly high tasks, indifference
and insensitivity of the governments and the callous
discriminations of major political parties in their
games of one-upmanship. People recounted the
heart-rending tales of women like Sarupiya Devi and
her daughter-in-law Sagunia Devi of Darbhanga district
(Bihar), who did hard manual labour for 40 days, and
yet Sarupiya, and her grandchild born of Sagunia, died
of hunger and lack of medicines, waiting in vain for
the wages that came too little too late. People from
Rohtas district in Bihar recounted how four people who
had been issued job cards, died of hunger since they
were denied jobs. Representatives from Karbi Anglong
district (Assam) told of how over 1.5 lakh (10 lakh =
1 million) applicants from remote tribal areas of
Assam have not been issued job cards for 3 months,
since they are being asked to produce recommendation
letters from local Congress leaders. Political
discrimination by Gram Pradhans in UP and Mukhiyas in
Bihar, as well as communal discrimination against
Muslims in Gujarat and Rajasthan were also reported.
Routine denial of minimum wages and unreasonably heavy
criteria of manual labour as a basis for wages were
common complaints. The decision to remove the
food-grain component of wages under NREG Scheme was
condemned, given the rampant hunger and rising prices
of essential commodities. The gathering demanded
immediate restoration of the food-grain component of
wages under NREG Scheme 

Addressing the Jansunwai, CPI (ML) General Secretary
Dipankar Bhattacharya commented that the PM in his
Independence Day address from the ramparts of the Red
Fort, hailed the NREGA as a historic piece of
legislation. But in the courts of the rural poor and
concerned citizens of India, Governments stand
convicted of subverting the very idea of employment
guarantee. Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, UP, and
Bengal are emerging as a zone of starvation and hunger
deaths, while the dismantling of the public
distribution system (PDS) continues unabated. He said,
?The poor who fight for their rights are often accused
of taking the law in their hands. The NREGA experience
has clearly shown how necessary it is for organised
agricultural labourers to take the Act in their own
hands, else the Act will only be condemned to be
violated, abused and then dumped at a suitable moment.
This is the lesson of all rights and Acts and welfare
measures starting from the right to vote and land
reforms to the NREGA and RTI.? He said that be it the
thousands of agrarian workers who have come to Delhi
to attend the first-ever People's Tribunal on the
NREGA, or the farmers who have come today to Dadri to
protest against displacement by corporate SEZs,
popular agrarian struggles everywhere are having to
face State repression. In Chhattisgarh, the State
repression is being disguised as a 'peace campaign' in
the name of the Salwa Judum ? but it is inflicting
suffering and displacement on the tribals. Dipankar
said that the NREGA and the Right to Information Act
(RTI) were the much-touted showpieces of the common
minimum program (CMP) and the United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) Government. Now, even as reports of
rampant corruption in NREGA are coming to light, the
UPA Government is busy trying to subvert the RTI Act
in order to protect corrupt bureaucrats and
politicians. He called upon agricultural labourers to
thwart this attempt and forge a fighting unity with
small and middle peasants to punish the UPA government
for inflicting starvation and suicides on the rural
poor.

At the Public Hearing, almost all states reported that
the gradual dismantling of the PDS was sharpening
rural distress. One of the demands that was echoed
almost by everybody was that of a revamped and
extended PDS to make at least 50 kg of essential food
grains (rice and wheat) available to every rural poor
household at the subsidised rate of Rs. 2 per kg.
Blackmarketeers of subsidised food-grains should be
severely penalised.

The reports from the various states were heard in
which Ravi Kumar Phangcho spoke of the suffering of
labourers in Karbi Anglong and North Kachar Hills;
Parmeshwar Mahto spoke of the anti-people attitude of
the Jharkhand Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government;
Kamta Prasad Singh exposed the Bihar government?s
corruption and duplicity; Bablu Bannerjee reported on
West Bengal government?s double-speak; Narottam Sharma
and Nilanjan Bhattacharya detailed the plight of
tribals in Chhattisgarh and Orissa respectively;
Rakesh laid bare Mulayam?s shenanigans in UP; while
Kailash Pandey uncovered the plight of the hill people
in Uttarakhand; Shabana Khatoon moved the audience
with her stories of the plight and resistance of women
in Bihar; Comrade Bhagwant Samaon from Punjab and
Srilata from Rajasthan made scathing attacks on their
respective state governments. All the speakers were
unanimous in exposing the farce that the state
governments were enacting in the name of NREGA
whether, Congress/UPA, BJP/NDA, SP or even the CPI-M;
they were also unanimous in articulating the anger and
resentment of the labouring poor and in voicing the
shared resolve to expand the unity and intensify the
struggles of agricultural labourers against this
injustice.

The gathering also included Aruna Roy, Sandip Pandey,
Nikhil Dey, and human rights lawyer Prem Kishen
Sharma. Peasant leader Subhash Lomte and many others
who joined their voices with those of the distressed
rural poor, and expressed solidarity with their
struggle against the callousness of Governments.
AIALA's National President Rameshwar Prasad, Vice
Presidents Swadesh Bhattacharya and Krishna Adhikari,
General Secretary Dhirendra Jha, Secretaries Janardan
Prasad, Sanjay Sharma and Satyadev Ram were present in
the Public Hearing. AIALA National Executive member
Vidyanand Vikal conducted the proceedings. 

The Jury of the Public Hearing was comprised of noted
economists Amit Bhaduri and Jean Dreze, Prof.
Manoranjan Mohanti, Journalist Anil Chamaria, General
Secretary of AICCTU Swapan Mukherjee, CPI (ML) Central
Committee members Rajaram and Srilata Swaminathan,
veteran tarde union leader from Punjab Comrade Tarsem
Jodha, AIALA Vice President Pawan Sharma and Ex-MLA
from Jharkhand Bahadur Oraon. The Jury concluded in
its judgement that "after listening to the experiences
of agricultural labourers who had come from all
corners of the country, this Jury feels that it is not
only a matter of grave concern for all of us but also
of great shame that the central and state governments
and their administrative machinery are putting up the
biggest obstacles in the implementation of the
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act which was
passed by Parliament. The most distressing fact is
that political parties of different hues which are in
power in different states as well as in the centre,
have shown the same attitude of indifference to the
needs of employment of agricultural labourers. This
Jury feels that the poor and downtrodden of this
country and the entire segment of the working class
has no choice but to wage a concerted struggle for the
guarantee of their right to work. This Jury also feels
that any form of struggle, undertaken by the
agricultural labourers, challenging the government,
its administrative machinery and their nexus with the
rich and the powerful would be entirely justified.
This Jury expresses its faith in the struggling
capacity of the rural poor and agricultural labourers
and feels that once they return to their own regions
they would continue their battle for the guarantee of
their rights. This is the mandate of democracy. The
Jury also expresses hope in the tradition of
resistance that the working class of the country has
always upheld and says that such efforts alone would
strengthen as well as keep alive the spirit of
democracy." 

Concluding the Jansunwai, AIALA National President
Comrade Rameshwar Prasad issued a rousing call to
spread the movement for implementation of the NREGA to
every corner of the country, and to make the struggle
more popular and militant than ever. It was with this
resolve and confidence that the participants ended the
Public Hearing.

Culture

Tribute: Ustad Bismillah Khan

- Liberation, September, 2006.

Legendary shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan, the
doyen of India?s composite culture (Ganga-Jamni
tehzeeb) and a foremost ambassador of the spirit of
popular harmony and the great musical heritage of
India, passed away on 21 August 2006. 

Born on 21 March 1916 in a family of shehnai-players
in the princely state of Dumraon in Bihar, Bismillah
shifted to Benaras at the age of six to live with his
uncle Allah Baksh ?Vilayati? who was attached as a
shehnai-player to the Kashi Vishwanath temple on the
bank of the Ganga. At an early age of 14 he played
shehnai at Allahabad and Lucknow in music conferences
and shot into prominence in 1937 at the age of 21 when
he played shehnai at All-India Music Festival held in
Calcutta. His most memorable performance, in his own
words, was ?playing (Raag Kafi) on the ramparts of Red
Fort on 15th August 1947 with Pandit Nehru and host of
dignitaries listening?.

He was anguished over the way decline in the classical
music has set in in our country. He said given the way
things had been moving, the time would not be far away
when for listening to our classical music we might
have to go abroad. 

Bismillah Khan had profound emotional attachment to
the soil of Benaras. Once when he was offered all
amenities and even citizenship during a concert in
Europe, he refused all of that and instead asked his
admirer ?can you get me ?Gangaji?, the river which
flows near my home in Benaras?? Recipient of many
awards and honours including the highest in the
country, Bismillah Khan?s exceptional quality lay not
only in the fact that he was the pioneer who elevated
shehnai to its present position in classical music,
but that with his shehnai he symbolised the composite
culture (Ganga-Jamni tehzeeb) of our country. This is
the reason that Shehnai became synonymous with Ustad
Bismillah Khan. He gave classical music a whole new
dimension by assimilating many folk tunes. 

Ustad Bismillah Khan was firm in his belief that music
could never be confined to the limits of any specific
religion. According to him, music has a humanizing
effect, and it cannot be divided into a Hindu humanity
and a Muslim humanity. A devout Shia, Bismillah Khan
used to say: ?the seven shuddh and five komal surs are
my namaaz.? He would also say, ?I have worshipped
music at the temple of Shiva? and I hold Saraswati as
my Goddess of Music?.

Bismillah Khan used to say that Music makes man a
?fakeer?, who endeavours for the well-being of all and
for the creation of a better world. Commenting on the
contemporary musical scene, he used to say that music
must be saved from going out of tune; it must be made
tuneful and melodious. Commenting on the Western
modern fast music in contrast to the classical he
said, ?proponents of Western music say that classical
music has been playing on the same ragas for hundreds
of years, whereas modern music generates newer tunes
everyday; so classical music would die down some day.
But I say: the fact is just the opposite. Today we do
not play the same Raag Basant that our forefathers
used to play. There is a sea of difference between the
two. Every great musician catches the tune, melody,
and ragas of his own times, and imparts a truly
humanizing quality to them ? However, I do listen to
Western music, modern fast music, to find out if
anything could be assimilated into the classical.?

Talking about the official attitude towards music and
musicians, Bismillah Khan would occasionally narrate
an episode when at a concert while he was playing
shehnai, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru had fallen asleep. ?I
thought, he must be very tired; it?s worth if I could
help him sleep with my music,? the shehnai maestro
would say. About awards and prizes he used to say that
in place of all this the government should just make
necessary arrangements for the artistes? livelihood.
At least, the government should provide them with
ample opportunities on All-India Radio and Doordarshan
and give them honorarium for that. Secondly, he held
that there must be something wrong with the way music
was being taught in our universities because they
never produced a musician of calibre, and it must be
rectified.

It is a matter of shame that after the death of the
shehnai maestro, the governments of UP and Bihar as
well as the government at the Centre are now busy
making all kinds of posthumous announcements to cash
in on the wave of popular respect for this great
musician, while Bismillah Khan lived in poverty
earning bread for his large joint family with his own
?breath?. How long would great talents continue to be
treated like this?




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