Re: [Marxism] The 2009 Indian Elections

[Bhaskar Sunkara <bhaskar.sunkara@xxxxxxxxx>]

A. Absolutely.

B.  Can't comment, though personally I'm not as high on the CPI-ML
(Liberation) as other comrades are.

C. The CPI-Marxist has always counted in the support of the intelligensia in
West Bengal, and elsewhere.
They had rural support from sweeping land reforms done decades ago and other
policies, and the party also
did a really commendable job in Kerala, which is very well documented.  That
being said the intelligensia has stopped
supporting the CPI-M and the Bengali intelligensia; poets, writers, artists,
are a force in India culturally.  I would imagine
that the erosion of support by this group may have happened concurrently
with a drop in support in urban Bengal for the CPI-M.

That being said they still picked up 15 seats, so they still have lingering
support.

D. It is a mandate, or as much as a mandate as India has seen for decades.
 I can't speculate on the future of the worker's movement
in India, I'm too detached, but likely its future depends a lot on India's
development itself.  If India is able to create some sort of manufacturing
base,
and create employment for its urban dwellers, a lot of the people being
displaced by capitalist expansion, a lot of the former peasants will be
proletarians
and not members of the underclass.  From there I would assume that unions
and other organs of working class power will develop, including a genuine
party of the working class.  India's development of course has thus far been
very uneven and they have struggled to develop the same sort of
manufacturing
base that China has.  A few million IT jobs won't captuput India into the
21st century.

So in other words I see this as a longterm project. Agricultural workers and
peasants will obviously be organizing largely outside of the CPI-M.  The
Naxalite
guerrilla movement will obviously continue to entice a lot of dispossessed
peasants, but I don't see a real worker's movement and worker's party
happening in
India for quite some time.  Congress' message of "inclusive growth" and
various social democratic reform packages seems to have the support of the
Indian worker for now,
and given the alternatives for good reason.
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