Unfair emissions

An editorial in People’s Democracy reiterates Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s stand on global warming...

An editorial in People’s Democracy reiterates Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s stand on global warming and emission at the recent G-8 summit in the context of the latest Human Development Index report. It says that “unlike this HDI report, which prescribes solutions on the basis of total global emissions, the Indian prime minister at the recent G-8 summit in Germany proposed that per capita emissions must be the basis for a solution.”

It says that India’s emissions are 17 times lesser than the Unites States’, and therefore the threat to the planet caused by the advanced countries is “now to be met by the victims of this pattern of development — the developing countries — by bearing a burden three times greater. This imperialist logic of ‘equality’ and ‘justice’ cannot be accepted. India must insist that the criteria of per capita emissions must be the basis for a solution.”

Learn from China

Sitaram Yechury writes an article in People’s Democracy, where he stresses that India needs to “learn from China”, which has had, in his opinion, a “stable democracy for more than a decade”: “China has a foreign exchange reserve of over $1.43 trillion, many times larger than our $260 billion. The Indian government must seriously consider a similar mechanism to prevent such a sharp appreciation of the rupee. However, if this is done, then, the superprofit bonanza for the privileged few would suffer. After all, in the final analysis, ‘Shining India’ is the class base of the Indian ruling classes which can only further fatten itself by intensifying exploitation of ‘suffering India’.” Capitalism, at its cruellest best, he calls it.

Forest politics

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Brinda Karat believes that “the attempts of self-proclaimed guardians of the forests to dislodge the original inhabitants of forests, instead of being rejected outright, have found a sympathetic ear in high political circles”, and writes an article supporting the notification of the Forest Bill, ‘Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act’.

The Act is not a land distribution act, she explains, but aims to legally recognise land already held by tribals, subject to an upper limit of 4 hectares. This involves less than two per cent of forest land. “In contrast to the objections to even this small amount of land being recognised as belonging to tribals, over five lakh hectares of forest land were given to mining companies as also used for non-conservation purposes between 2001 and 2004 alone,” she writes.

Petty compensation

The CPM is offended by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s statement that the compensation given for the land in Nalanda by the Bihar government is the best in India. “We would like to point out that while 12 lakhs rupees per acre were paid in Singur to the peasants, 6 lakhs per acre was paid to share-croppers, apart from sincere efforts towards rehabilitation and jobs to those who were displaced. It is for everyone to see that the Bihar government has dispossessed the peasants for a petty sum everywhere including Nalanda, the home town of Nitish Kumar,” it says in an article in People’s Democracy.