[Reader-list] Fwd: Signals from Vijayawada and Lalgarh – and Challenges before Revolutionary Communists

Rakesh Iyer rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com
Sat Aug 14 11:34:11 IST 2010


Dear Venugopalan ji

I would just state two points:

i) The Left may have realized that it needed to work for the peasantry. But
the fact is that Bengal in itself has had partial land reforms with no
cooperatives formed to improve productivity using a combination of
traditional and modern methods which can also assure the labourers and the
farmers of good prices. The agricultural productivity of West Bengal has not
improved much post the 1990's.

ii) The Left has been mostly engaged in building a cadre base which acts as
the strongman at the village level, as many articles and studies tend to
show. This strongman clique has grown corrupt and the people had no choice
but to support it in the hope of getting the amenities they deserved as
rights, not as things offered as gifts by the Left. Isn't the Left also
responsible for the degeneration of politics in West Bengal to violence
where anybody who has to get him/her self heard has to resort to it?

iii) Does the Left really know what is secularism as such?

Rakesh


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