India's rightward drift
* Pakistan/India weak, unstable and isolated. Surprisingly, this did not stop it from intensifying its conflict with the military hierarchy. What now?
The military takeover did not provoke any resistance from masses. There was a sense of confusion the population, and, to some extent, a sense of relief.
Most political parties have gone along with this popular sentiment. The Pakistan People's Party, the party of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, has backed the coup. Bhutto said that she is willing to give the military dictatorship six months to bring corrupt politicians and parties to account.
Cautious support also came from the Pakistan National Conference, an alliance of seven left and radical bourparties, Workers Party (NWP) - established on June 2 with the merger of the Pakistan Socialist Party, Awami Jamhuri Party and Pakistan National Party - and from the Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party (CMKP).
These left parties see the military as a non-corrupt alternative to the extremely corrupt bourgeois parties.
In contrast to the Stalinist left, the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) is the only party to take a firm position against the military dictatorship. The LPP has called for a workers and peasants commission to investigate the corruption of the politicians and bureaucracy. It has demanded an interim government of workers and peasants to hold impartial general elections for a new constitutional assembly.
On October 21 soldiers raided the offices of the LP weekly Mazdoor Jeddojuhd. They also seized copies of Prepare For Fight, a new book by Amjad Ayub, LPP overseas organiser.
The military have not yet developed their strategy. Unlike previous coups, the generals have not used religion as the main pretext for their action.
If the generals try to establish open military rule under martial law, they may face opposition from the IME, the World Bank and the US government. So it seems more likely that they will install a civilian puppet government— under full military control.
The main aim of this so-called civilian government will be the speedy implementation of the IMF agenda.
The military take over is yet another setback for the left and trade union movement in Pakistan. * Farooq Sulehria also contributed to this article. 10 International Viewpoint #316 November 1999
Elections in September confirmed the sharp rightward shift in Indian politics under a Hindufundamentalist government. Kunal Chattopadhyay Big business at home and abroad was enthusiastic about the comfortable (though not huge) majority of Atal Behari Vajpayee's coalition government. The stock market broke the symbolic 5000 mark, and the Indian rupee — never a strong currency -strengthened on currency markets.
Bolstered by this support, Vajpayee's caretaker government went on offensive. It increased prices of petrol and diesel drastically. Vajpayee warned that the nation would have to brace for tough decisions. The fat cats of the nation however remained unperturbed, showing they knew quite well on whom would fall the burden of the tough decisions. India's Standard and Poor rating rose slightly (meaning western bankers see the country as a less risky customer). Taking a risk with insurance
Vajpayee's next project is legislation to open the insurance sector to foreign multinationals. Insurance in India is far from ideal, with a corrupt bureaucratic machinery, and all kinds of "fine-print" limiting protection. But premiums are still affordable for workers in the organised sectors. True, this is a small minority of the population. But affordable insurance is still one of the gains obtained by Indian workers since independence in 1947.
Workers and employees in the nationalised insurance corporations have decided to agitate and strike against the "liberalisation of the insurance market." But such responses are fragmented, and often dispirited, because of the collapse of the left. wing parliaments. The National Democratic Alliance, a grouping of 24 parties led by Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has 297 of the 543 seats in the lower house. The far right is partcularly strong. The BJP has 182 seats, and smaller extreme groups like the Maharashtra-based Shiv Sena, have a further eight.
The BJP has the same number of seats as in the previous parliament. This time it will have 23 allies; in the last parliament it was part of a 16-party coalition. So the BJP is now a smaller part of a larger coalition.
The main opposition party is the Indian National Congress, with over I seats. Congress is the historic party ot the Indian bourgeoisie, and, since it was led by Rajiv Gandhi, it has been getting rid of all "socialist" rhetoric and populist policies. It was Congress, under the Prime Ministership of P.V. Narasimha Rao, and during the period when Manmohan Singh Finance Minister, that began the current project of inserting the Indian economy into "globalised" capitalism. Crushing labour
It is now clear that Indian capital wants the silencing of Indian labour. An indication of just how far they are willing to go comes from BJP ruled Gujarat, where the government has run a 10-month union-busting campaign against the Vadodara Kamdar Union, a Baroda-based "class struggle" trade union. The VKU had been growing at the expense of bourgeois and reformist dominated unions. It had spearheaded an important struggle to gain minimum wages for workers in the chemical industry. Unlike most Indian trade unions, the VKU also fought for peasants' rights, and against the eviction of people from the proposed Narmada dam area. The union also took up environmental and gender issues.
The BJP has also exposed its extreme antidemocratic politics in a campaign against Communalism Combat newspaper. The Home Ministry accused the magazine of breaking foreign exchange legislation after it published a series of advertisements protesting BJP policies (one of which was co-signed by some women's NGOs with foreign connections). Communalism Combat was subjected to a vilification campaign and forced to shift from Mumbai to Delhi. Problems for the left...
The two main left parties, the CPI and the CPIM) have spend 20 years trying to create a third front, equidistant from the Hindu right and the Congress. On two occasions, this left-democratic,
or left-secular unity appeared to be on the verge of maturing, first when Viswanath Pratap Singh became Prime Minister in 1989, and next in 1996, when first H. D. Devegowda and later I.K.Gujral headed United Front ministries including CPI leader Indrajit Gupta as Union Home Minister. But both these governments were unstable - divided internally and under heavy external pressure.
The left parties extended a degree of respectability and democratic credentials, but the main constituent of the front, the Janata Party, shifted to the right and collapsed. Most of the fragments are now allied to the BJP. Defence Minister George Fernandes controls 19 seats. (Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party has not joined the BJP block.) ...a shattered strategy
The collapse of their main partner meant that the left contested these elections alone, for the first time in 25 years.
The results were disastrous. The CPI(M) won 32 seats, including a few outside its strongholds in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala. The CPI—less fortunate, and less skilful at alliancebuilding, only won four seats, three in West Bengal.
The old strategy of the left now lies shattered. Meanwhile, the CPI(ML), which over-corrected its previous antiparliamentarism, and presented a huge number of candidates (trying to replace the CPI(M) as the centre of radical protests) did far less well than it had expected.
The left block won 42 seats, plus one won by the radical left CPI(ML) Liberation.
The weakened parliamentary situation of the left means it will be even less able to act as a pole of attraction for progressive forces, and resist rightward moving legislation, especially economic legislation. This was the only justification for the final days of "left and democratic" bloc making. Time to build resistance
All left currents now need to seriously rethink their political line and tactics. Parliamentarism coupled with local actions will not halt the BJP.
The early pronouncements of Vajpayee, of Finance Minister Sinha, and of the leading spokespersons of the Indian bourgeoisie, make it clear that tough, and if necessary violent attacks on the working class are being prepared.
Building country-wide resistance means encouraging and supporting struggles against price rises, social security, health and safety, unemployment, and democratic rights.
With every bourgeois party shifting rightward, every left alliance with them will not just mean calling a halt to workers's struggles-as in the pastbut actually helping them to stamp out the struggles.
Look at West Bengal, where the left has been in government for over two decades. The state government is trying to behave responsibly, i.e., to stop "unnecessary" strikes, to evict hawkers from city roads, to beautify Calcutta at the cost of the urban poor, and offering special incentives for capitalist investors. As a result, the bosses have been milking the factories dry. Innumerable small, medium and big factories are locked out, the workers retrenched, or their pay reduced workload increased.
Not surprisingly, all but one of the industrial seats of West Bengal have been won by bourgeois parties. The left block has 29 out of 42 seats, down from 33 in 1998 and 37 in 1996. The left's share of the vote remained constant, at around 47%, but the total vote cast declined, as many refused to vote. In many parts of the country, voters are tempted by tactical voting, in which the left could lose to bourgeois candidates.
The Indian left has learned nothing from the disastrous coalitions with "progressive" bourgois currents in Spain in the 1930s and Chile in the early 1970s. But the Hindu-nationalist version of fascism is to be fought, mobilisations have to be organised and battles have to be fought. Time is running short. * International Viewpoint #316 November 1999 11