| The
Indian State that came into being after independence
bore the stamp of the anti-colonial struggle. It aimed
to promote egalitarian development, later re-christened
as the building of a "socialistic pattern of society",
and negate the hegemony of imperialism, old and new.
The development of the public sector as a bulwark against
metropolitan capital, and for promoting self-reliance
which was considered essential for this purpose, the
pursuit of a policy of non-alignment, and the implementation
of land reforms were the specific avowed policies of
the State. Whatever one may think of the actual achievements
of this dirigiste State, this perspective which
it had, which was a legacy of the freedom struggle,
and so different from the perspective of the conventional
metropolitan bourgeois State, must not be lost sight
of.
Michael Kalecki, the renowned economist, noted this
difference but explained it inadequately. He called
the post-colonial State in India and several other third
world countries an "intermediate regime" which
derived its specific character from the fact that it
was led not by the bourgeoisie but by the petty-bourgeoisie.
Implicit in his perception was the belief that the bourgeoisie
would always prefer integration with imperialism and
a rolling back of the public sector. What he missed
was that the bourgeoisie itself, having been hemmed
in by the colonial regime, wanted, upon decolonization,
to pursue a trajectory of development that was relatively
autonomous of metropolitan capital and to use the State
for that purpose. The State's having the perspective
noted above, though not in every aspect to the bourgeoisie's
liking, was therefore perfectly compatible with its
being a bourgeois State. In short, the post-colonial
State, despite being a bourgeois State and promoting
capitalist development, nonetheless had a specificity
bequeathed to it by the anti-colonial struggle whose
product it was.
With the bourgeoisie abandoning its relatively autonomous
trajectory of development in favour of neo-liberalism,
it has become essential for it to alter the nature of
the Indian State. To an extent of course the same State
can be made to pursue a different policy, but the full
unleashing of the policy requires a change in the perspective
and orientation of the bourgeois State, from being a
dirigiste one, informed by egalitarian objectives
(no matter how elusive) and marked by a distance from
imperialism, to being one committed to the interests
of international finance capital with which the Indian
high bourgeoisie is enmeshed, and integrated with imperialism.
In short the switch to neo-liberalism calls, from the
bourgeoisie's point of view, for a change in the character
of the Indian bourgeois State.
This has actually been happening gradually, but within
the integument of the old State. Almost everything the
government has been doing, not just with regard to the
major issues of economic policy, but even such apparently
innocuous proposals like having Indian bureaucrats trained
in metropolitan universities, or setting up "world
class" universities with the help of metropolitan
institutions like Harvard and Oxford, amounts to essaying
such a change in the nature of the Indian State. Nonetheless
the integument of the old State, the perspective which
still remains the "official" perspective of
the State, acts as a fetter. The Indian high bourgeoisie
would like to break out of that integument, or as journalese
would have it, "complete the reform process".
But this is far from easy, since apart from the high
bourgeoisie, its foreign backers, its captive media,
and a segment of the urban upper middle class that for
the time being has done well out of the "reforms",
there are not too many takers for "neo-liberalism".
The agrarian crisis, the acute unemployment, the attack
on the conditions and rights of the workers, and all
of it capped now by a raging inflation that squeezes
the real incomes of the vast majority of the people,
implies that the political constituency for "reforms",
always narrow, has shrunk to a minuscule size, and is
unlikely to increase in the foreseeable future (especially
in view also of the looming world capitalist crisis).
The transformation of the Indian State so that it can
be captured by this minority which can then press on
to "complete the reform process" to further
its own interests, appears a remote possibility in the
normal course of democratic politics. The only way it
can be done is through a coup d' etat, that
brings about a certain change which for all future governments
becomes a fait accompli that they can overturn
only at extraordinary cost.
The Indo-US deal is a part of that change; and what
happened on July 22 was such a coup d'etat.
The fact that the parliament was subdued not with tanks
but with cash-for-votes does not make it any less a
coup d'etat; nor does the fact that it was
carried out not by a bunch of generals but by a bunch
of bureaucrats or ex-buraeucrats (which includes the
Prime Minister), and by persons whose life in politics,
such as it is, has never included any contact with ordinary
people. A small coterie of persons seized power that
day through dubious and illegitimate means, in order
to bring about a transformation in the nature of the
State. This is the definition of a coup d'etat
and this is precisely what happened. The transformation
being attempted, to recapitulate, is from a Nehruvian
State (if one can use that short-hand expression) to
a neo-liberal State integrated with imperialism.
True, the fact that the coup was effected though
the parliament itself has given it an apparent legitimacy,
so much so that the phenomenon itself has been missed
by many. And it has been submerged in a debate over
India's energy needs, and the supposedly urgent requirement
for nuclear energy, which has been a red herring. No
cost-benefit analysis has ever been made to justify
reliance upon nuclear energy. There has been no official
document outlining the future energy scenario of the
country and making out a case for nuclear energy. Nuclear
energy gets no more than only passing mention in the
Approach Paper to the Eleventh Five Year Plan prepared
by the government's highest planning body. And in any
case, even the official defence of the Indo-US nuclear
deal admits that no more than 8 percent of our total
energy requirements in twenty years' time will be met
from nuclear energy. So, the "milk-and-honey-and-energy-in
every home" scenario conjured up by the government
is just a red herring to deflect attention for the coup
d' etat.
Indeed the herring is even redder than this. The issues
at the centre of the debate have concerned not just
energy requirements of the country but the specific
provisions of the Indo-US nuclear deal. The esotericism
of this debate has made people so obsessed with minutiae,
with identifying as it were the individual trees, that
they have missed the wood for the trees. The point at
issue is not the terms of a particular agreement but
the emerging closeness of the relationship with imperialism.
If the country signs thirty-five agreements with the
US, even if each taken by itself is unexceptionable,
what still remains of significance is the signing of
thirty-five agreements, which taken together constitute
a new relationship. The Indo-US nuclear deal therefore
has to be seen not in isolation but together with the
Hyde Act, the defence agreement signed earlier, the
joint military exercises with the US, the vote on Iran
referring its case to the Security Council, the foot-dragging
over the Indo-Iran gas pipeline, the new-found closeness
with Israel and such other developments. Discussions
on the specific terms of the deal, though important
in themselves, deflect attention, if carried beyond
a point, from this context, and hence constitute an
even redder herring. The deal in short is the denouement
of a process, and not a lone issue to be looked
at in isolation. By focusing on the lone issue, the
coup d' etat could be carried out silently
and effectively.
It is significant that the US administration played
a major role in pushing the deal and hence effecting
this denouement which constitutes an attempt
at a decisive transformation of the Indian State. Numerous
official spokesmen from the US administration, and "academics",
not to mention hoary old Henry Kissinger, came to tell
us how good the Indo-US nuclear deal was. They were
not doing it as a diverting pastime; they were sent
directly or indirectly by the US administration, which
in turn was doing so not out of altruism or a sudden
overriding concern over India's energy needs, but to
facilitate a "strategic relationship", which
is nothing else but a closer integration of the Indian
State with US imperialism through a transformation in
its nature.
But all these imperialist pressures would not have worked
without a prior process of destruction of politics which
neo-liberalism has unleashed. The fact that so many
members of parliament could succumb to such sordid blandishments
is symptomatic of the fact that politics is no longer
about issues, that political differences over issues
have receded to the background. This has been deliberately
inculcated; appeals have been made to sink political
differences for the sake of "development".
In a curious dialectic, appeals to "rise above
politics" for the sake of "development",
only end up making the political class "sink below
politics". For if both A and B have so "risen
above politics" that differences between them have
disappeared, that ideology for them has become a dirty
word, that they can be substituted for one another without
any noticeable effect, and that, for this very reason,
they will be substituted, come the next election, by
a suffering electorate, then the temptation for them
to amass a fortune and then "cut and run"
is powerful. Such a process of destruction of politics,
of the banishment of ideology from the political arena
as being "anti-development", has been going
on for some time in India, as an inevitable accompaniment
of neo-liberalism (for then the neo-liberal agenda,
pushed by a coterie of bureaucrats and ex-bureaucrats,
can survive changes in government). The ground for the
coup d' etat has been prepared by this process
of "destruction of politics".
But even the process of destruction of politics is not
enough. To take advantage of it, the coterie pushing
for the "completion of the reform process"
must use the instrument of a political party. In the
present instance that political party was the Congress
Party. How India's largest and oldest political party
could allow itself to be used by a coterie that at best
only nominally belongs to it, to push through an agenda
of transforming the Indian State into one that is integrated
with U.S. imperialism, when both Jawaharlal Nehru and
Indira Gandhi were famously chary of its machinations,
is a matter for future research. But the change in the
attitude of the Congress has been of decisive importance.
The coterie of bureaucrats and ex-bureaucrats behind
the coup, while owing the seats of power it
occupies to the support of the Left, has been hostile
to the Left from the very beginning of the UPA-Left
arrangement. In fact it might have attempted its coup
d' etat much earlier, using pretty much the same
methods as it has done now to "complete the reform
agenda". But it was deterred by the fact that the
Congress Party was not with it. The change in the stance
of the Congress is what has ultimately tilted the scale.
For this very reason, however, friends and well-wishers
of the Left who are critical of the Left's withdrawal
of support from the UPA government on the grounds that
by doing so it has left the field open for the neo-liberals,
are way off the mark. The clear shift in the stance
of the Congress, ostensibly on the nuclear deal but
in fact over the issue of strategic relationship with
US imperialism (since one cannot accuse the Congress
leadership of missing the wood for the trees) left the
Left with little choice. Any continuation of support
by it to the UPA after this change of stance would have
amounted to capitulation. The Left would then have lost
the capacity to fight "the completion of reforms"
both inside the governing arrangement as well as outside
on the streets.
Now it not only retains the latter weapon but can use
it all the more effectively because its credibility
stands enhanced owing to its lack of ideological compromise.
Many, including the perpetrators of the coup d'
etat, fondly believe that henceforth, with the
Left out of the way, they can push through the "reform"
agenda with ease. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Gone are the days when hegemony could be acquired
through a coup d' etat. To believe that the
Indian State can be integrated with imperialism against
the wishes of the people, to serve the interests of
classes which, no matter how powerful, constitute a
tiny minority of the population, and that this arrangement
can be sustained (as it has to be) through a suitable
abrogation of democracy, is the typical illusion of
the putschists. |
