Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Adivasis, Afghanistan, Armenian Genocide, Arundhati Roy, Authoritarian, Ayodhya, Babri Masjid, BJP, Capitalism, Chhattisgarh, Communalism, Dalits, Developing Countries, Fascism, Free Market, ganga, George Bush, Gujarat, Hindu, Hindutva, India, Jharkhand, Kashmir, L.K. Advani, liberal democracy, Mohammed Afzal, Mumbai Attacks, Muslim, Narendra Modi, Non-Aligned Movement, Orissa, P. CHidambaram, Pakistan, Ram Janmabhoomi, Soviet Union, Totalitarian, West Bengal
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3 July 2009
Source: Outlook India
While we’re still arguing about whether there’s life after death, can we add another question to the cart? Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be? By democracy I don’t mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.
So, is there life after democracy?
Attempts to answer this question often turn into a comparison of different systems of governance, and end with a somewhat prickly, combative defence of democracy. It’s flawed, we say. It isn’t perfect, but it’s better than everything else that’s on offer. Inevitably, someone in the room will say: ‘Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia…is that what you would prefer?’
Whether democracy should be the utopia that all ‘developing’ societies aspire to is a separate question altogether. (I think it should. The early, idealistic phase can be quite heady.) The question about life after democracy is addressed to those of us who already live in democracies, or in countries that pretend to be democracies. It isn’t meant to suggest that we lapse into older, discredited models of totalitarian or authoritarian governance. It’s meant to suggest that the system of representative democracy-too much representation, too little democracy-needs some structural adjustment.
The question here, really, is: what have we done to democracy? What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasised into something dangerous? What happens now that democracy and the Free Market have fused into a single predatory organism with a thin, constricted imagination that revolves almost entirely around the idea of (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Adivasi, CPI (M), CRPF, India, Lalgarh, Maoists, State Repression, West Bengal
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21 June 2009
Source: The Hindu
KOLKATA: Top ranking Maoist leader Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji, who is believed to have played a key role in the outfit’s activities in the troubled Lalgarh area of Paschim Medinipur district, said on Saturday the West Bengal government should halt security operations in the region and sit for talks with the local people to find a solution to their problems.
“If the Left Front government wants discussions with the people of Lalgarh, the operation by the police and the security forces against them should end by this afternoon,” Mr. Rao, a member of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) told a local television channel.
The Maoist leader, who claimed to be in the Lalgarh area, said Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee should go to Dalilpur Chak and talk to the people. The State government should not (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Adivasi, Bihar, Binpur, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Central Reserve Police Force, Chhattisgarh, Cobra Force, CPI (M), CPI-Maoist, India, Indian Home Minister, Indian Prime Minister, Inqilab Zindabad, Jharkhand, Lalgarh, Malida, Manmohan Singh, Maoism Zindabad, Maoist, Maoist Cadres, Nandigram, Operation Lalgarh, Orissa, P. CHidambaram, People's Committee Against Police Atrocities, Pirakata, Trinamool, West Bengal, West Midnapore
18 June 2009
Source: The Hindu
Lalgarh (West Bengal) (IANS): Advancing security forces lobbed tear gas shells and made a baton charge to break a ‘human wall’ put up by Maoist cadres, armed with bows and arrows and pickaxes, in this troubled zone as West Bengal’s Communist government launched a massive operation Thursday to free the region of left extremists.
Two rebels as well as a lensman accompanying the security forces were injured, eyewitnesses said. There was no police confirmation of the news.
A day after being prodded by the centre to reclaim this headquarters of Binpur 1 community development block in West Midnapore district, 200 km form state capital Kolkata, from the Maoists, the state police personnel, backed by the central forces, moved in from their base camp at nearby Pirakata for ‘Operation Lalgarh’.
However, soon after, the forces came up against a ‘human wall’ at Malida, as hundreds of tribals carrying traditional weapons like bows and arrows, shovels, pickaxes and canes blocked the way by felling big trees on the road as they shouted slogans like “Inqilab Zindabad” and “Maoism zindabad”.
Using (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Aben Murmu, Adivasi, Buddhadeb Patra, Communist Party of India - Marxist, CPI(M), Gautam Patra, Indigenous, Jindal Steel, Lalgarh, Maoist, Nandigram, Police Brutalities, Police harassment, SEZ, Special Economic Zone, State Oppression, Tribals, union steel and mines minister Ram Vilas Paswan, West Bengal, West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, West Midnapore District, West Midnapur District
Adivasi (Indigenous) Women protest state oppression and land theft in West Bengal, India.
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( Dated Piece – 13 November 2008 )
The events that have been happening during the last one week in the adivasi (tribal) belt of West Midnapur district in West Bengal are so unprecedented that the authorities do not know how to respond to them, and the media doesn’t understand their significance.
Even the political parties and civil society are at a loss trying to come to terms with what is happening. What had started off as protests against police brutalities in Lalgarh have turned into a full scale uprising against state oppression and dispossession. Nothing like this has been witnessed in West Bengal in living memory.
The entire chain of events started after (more…)
