Opinion Guarding the strong
The lead editorial in CPI (ML) weekly ML Update,talks about the recent gangrape of a teenaged Dalit girl in Punjabs Mansa district...
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The lead editorial in CPI (ML) weekly ML Update,talks about the recent gangrape of a teenaged Dalit girl in Punjabs Mansa district in which a police havaldar and some local influential people are accused. It focuses on the issue of atrocities against women and the oppressed communities. In the same area,years ago,Dalit activist,Bant Singh had his limbs chopped off for urging his daughter to pursue a rape case. What is happening in Punjab is also not very different from what is being seen in rest of India where scamsters,rioters and rapists roam free while activists like Binayak Sen are jailed. Just recently in Uttar Pradesh,a 17-year-old OBC girl who accused a ruling BSP MLA of rape was jailed on charges of theft, it says. The recent instances in Punjab and UP are a reminder of the sorry state of affairs in India when it comes to justice in cases of violence against women in general and women from oppressed communities in particular… And if this is the state of affairs in rape cases where politically powerful people are not implicated,what of the cases where police and army forces are implicated in rape and violence against women, it adds.
Capital loss
The CPIs New Age identifies the challenges for the working class in the new year. While it points out that India escaped the severity of the economic recession due to the presence of a very strong public sector,the country is impacted by the economic crisis of capitalism.
Inflation,growing unemployment and increase in quantum and spread of corruption are all by-products of the economic neo-liberalism,the policies of so-called globalisation,privatisation and liberalism,the policies shamelessly championed by both the Congress-led UPA-II and BJP-led NDA, it says. All the features of the world economic crisis are vesting us too. With pursuance of economic neo-liberalism,we cannot escape from the fallouts of world wide economic crisis, it claims. On foreign policy,it talks about the pro-US drift,the latest being the near-shutdown of the payment route for Iran oil imports. Pointing that struggles against price rise,corruption and unemployment have to be linked with the fundamental struggle for change of the socio-economic system,it says all these evils are inevitable outcome of the capitalist order.
Exclusive growth
An article in the CPI(M)s Peoples Democracy talks about Indias growth trajectory in the past decade and focuses on those who are left out in the growth story. The article,by C. P. Chandrasekhar,says: As has been repeatedly noted but inadequately stressed,the fact is that India is a country still plagued by hunger with the highest rates of malnutrition in the world. Deprivation in other forms such as lack of access to clean drinking water,sanitation,basic health facilities and school education still afflict a large proportion of the population… Clearly then,the benefits of high growth for the best part of a decade must be accruing to a small minority,resulting in increased inequality… Since it is the richer sections that have incomes that are substantially in excess of their consumption needs which can be saved,this sharp rise in the savings rate points to an increase in incomes among the richer classes, it says.
It also argues that there has been a shift in the source of savings in the economy from the household to the corporate sector. The share of corporate sector in gross domestic savings rose from 20.4 per cent in 2004-05 to 24 per cent in 2007-08,while that of the household sector fell from 72.3 to 62.2 per cent. Another is a turnaround in the tax-to-GDP ratio: the aggregate tax to GDP ratio of the centre and the states rose from 13.8 to 19.1 per cent between 2001-02 and 2008-09,with the contribution of corporate taxes rising. At the same time,it notes that the high growth trajectory has not resulted in high employment growth.
Compiled by Manoj C.G.
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