India Anti-corruption Protests

There's a good interview of Arundhati Roy about anti-corruption campaigns and she's pointed out that abstract campaigns don't side with the hundreds of millions of extremely poor people in India nearly well enough.

Arundhati Roy blasts anti-corruption "saint" etc.

Roy has noted that Anna has completely ignored the whole issue of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF FARMER SUICIDES in his own state/province and is critical of the aggressive nationalism in which this campaign is cloaked.

Messianic Politics versus Mafia Capitalism

Prabir Purkayastha, Newsclick, 24-August-2011

The current confrontation on the Lok Pal Bill has eroded the middle ground between a corrupt UPA Government and the high decibel “Team Anna”.

Even those who would not like to identify with either side are being forced into positions that they may not want – do you support the constitution or do you want to fight corruption? Critical voices are subsumed into this mindless pro or anti camps -- either critical of Anna while supporting his campaign or critical of the Government while opposing Team Anna's methods and demands on the Parliament. 

This polarisation has effected various sections of opinion including the left. While the Left parties by and large have supported the anti-corruption campaign while voicing their differences with the Team Anna's Bill, other left voices have articulated their deep discomfort with the Anna phenomenon and the threat it may portend for the future. The kind of demands emanating from some in the Anna camp – accept us as the people and do all that we are saying along with rejection of all political parties does indeed pose serious issues. Nevertheless, we cannot look at all this without addressing the much deeper crisis that the Anna phenomenon has shown – the crisis of liberal democracy....

http://newsclick.in/international/messianic-politics-versus-mafia-capita...

Pankaj Mishra: The Dead End Of Globalization Looms Before Our Youth

September 2nd, 2011

The Guardian

By Pankaj Mishra

Even in the west there is little chance of stable jobs or affordable education. Across the world the rage will grow.

quote:

As Forbes magazine, that well-known socialist tool, describes it, protesters everywhere are driven by “the conviction that the power structure, corporate and government, work together to screw the broad middle class” (and the working class too, whose distress is not usually examined in Forbes).

Certainly, the strident promoters of globalisation – politicians, big businessmen, and journalists – will have to work much harder now to bamboozle their audiences.

For years now, the mantra of “economic growth” justified government interventions on behalf of big business and investors with generous tax breaks (and, in the west, the rescue of criminally reckless investors and speculators with massive bailouts at the taxpayer’s expense). The fact that a few people get very rich while a majority remains poor seemed of little importance as long as the GDP figures looked impressive....

quote:

Last month the Indian supreme court blamed increasing social violence in the country on the “false promises of ever-increasing spirals of consumption leading to economic growth that will lift everyone”. Obviously it is not the supreme court’s remit to define India’s economic policies. Nor should Anna Hazare be entrusted with establishing the office of an anti-corruption ombudsman, a moral rather than political mission that amounts to nothing in a country littered with compromised and impotent institutions.

Still, they respond, however incoherently, to a profound crisis of legitimacy afflicting their country’s highest institutions, and their supposed watchdog, the media. In India, for instance, a lot of public anger in recent months has focused on the country’s senior journalists who were recently caught making deals between corrupt politicians and businessmen....

The world’s biggest ever strike, India, 28th February 2012

On February 28th 2012 over 100,000,000 Indian workers will come out on strike. Workers from many unions and sectors are trying to gain improvements in areas such as, pay, pensions, and employment rights.

quote:

“Recent months have seen a mounting wave of militant worker struggles in India, strikes for union recognition in India’s expanding auto sector, including a two-day occupation of a Hyundai plant, a wildcat strike by Air India personnel, and walkouts by telecom workers and coal miners against the central government’s privatization plans.”...

http://libcom.org/blog/world%E2%80%99s-biggest-ever-strike-india-28th-fe...