India
Indian communists condemn Mumbai terror attack
By Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
November 27, 2008 -- The terror strike last night on Mumbai's most prominent landmark locations including luxury hotels and the biggest and busiest railway station in the city has already claimed more than 100 lives. Those killed in the terror strikes include as many as 16 policemen including ATS Chief Hemant Karkare who was heading the probe into Malegaon blasts and several foreign citizens. The CPI (ML) strongly condemns the attacks and offers deep condolences to the families of all those killed. We hope the hostages are rescued without any further loss.
CPI (ML) Liberation on `Obamania'
November 11, 2008 --The emphatic victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election has generated a great deal of interest and enthusias
Nuke deal a conduit to import US crisis into India
![](http://www.ploughshares.org/content/bush%20in%20india.jpg)
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with US President George Bush
India: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it explode?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
-- Langston Hughes, 1951
By Kavita Krishnan
India's Katrina: Bihar floods -- criminal negligence, not divine deluge (+ emergency appeal)
By Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
[See below for relief fund details.]
September 2, 2008 -- The regime of Nitish Kumar, which rules the Indian state of Bihar, boasts of ``Bihar Shining''. These claims are now submerged by the cries of ``Bihar Drowning''. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government's claims of ``good governance'' have proved a washout in the face of the floods, and now the Chief Minister Kumar is trying to paint the floods as a ``natural'' calamity or divine ``deluge'' (Pralay).
Nothing could be further from the truth. The flood devastation was highly preventable – and is a direct result of callous negligence of basic flood-prevention strategies by the Bihar and central Indian governments. Despite the fact that every year breaches in embankments cause floods in the state, maintenance and repair of embankments have been rampantly neglected.
Behind the communal flare-up in Jammu and Kashmir
By the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation
August 18, 2008 -- The communally and politically motivated May 26 decision of the Congress Party-People's Democratic Party (PDP) government of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir to transfer forest land [in Muslim-majority Kashmir] to the Hindu Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) [for use as a pilgrimage site near a sacred Hindu cave] is having costly repercussions, with the added danger that it may emerge as a communal [flashpoint] nationally.
The land transfer, taken in the context of irresponsible official remarks recommending changes in the demography and “culture” of the region as a “solution” to the Kashmir “problem”, was like a spark to the tinderbox of pent-up resentment in the Kashmir Valley. Lives were lost when police opened fire on protesters; the PDP tried to distance itself from its ministers’ decision in favour of the land transfer by pulling out of the government; and the government on July 1 was belatedly forced to roll back the land transfer decision.
India: US imperialism’s new cop on the South Asian beat
By Kavita Krishnan
Global food crisis: Capitalism, agribusiness and the food sovereignty alternative
By Ian Angus
[Second of two articles. Click here for part one.]
Adding insult to injury: Bush says starving India eats too much
By Kavita Krishnan
May 7, 2008 -- Karl Marx, born on 5 May, 1818, nearly two centuries ago, had in 1867 laid bare the ``intimate connection between the pangs of hunger of the most industrious layers of the working class, and the extravagant consumption, coarse or refined, of the rich, for which capitalist accumulation is the basis'' (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 25). In May 2008, nearly a century and a half later, as we hear Emperor Bush hold forth on global hunger, we are reminded that capitalism and global wealth remains just as intimately wedded to hunger.
For related Links articles, including a video by Hugo Chavez, click here
Nepal: Republican resurgence led by the red flag
By Lal Bahadur Singh, Liberation, magazine of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation)
Kathmandu -- ``Nepal Stuns World, Itself: Poll Peaceful, Turnout 60%'' -- that was the banner headline of the Kathmandu Post, the leading Nepal newspaper, on April 11, 2008, the morrow of the historic constituent assembly elections. It was stunning indeed that the constituent assembly elections in a Nepal torn by civil strife were held in a remarkably peaceful atmosphere, and with a huge participation of the people. However the real stunner was yet to come some hours later when by the midnight of April 11 it became clear that a Red Star was rising in full bloom over Sagarmatha, i.e. Everest, the highest peak in the world, in the erstwhile Himalayan Kingdom.
The CPI (M) and stages of revolution
March 25, 2008 -- This article attempts to throw some light on the following two questions: (1) How does the classical Marxist tradition conceptualise the relationship between the two stages of revolution: democratic and the socialist? (2) Does the democratic revolution lead to deepening and widening capitalism? Is capitalism necessary to develop the productive capacity of a society?
Cricket, excess and market mania
By Srinivasan Ramani
The Indian Premier League is seen as a bonanza for cricket viewers, players and corporate owners, but hidden behind the glitz is the fact that it represents a distorted form of commodity and consumer excess. The Indian Premier League (IPL), a corporate-driven tournament featuring a set of city teams playing Twenty20 cricket, has made news with a multimillion dollar player auction. Players from various cricket-playing nations were ``bought'' and ``sold'' through bids made by the corporate-owned teams (the franchisees).
Cricket in India has become the only sport that has captured widespread mass and media attention. The popularity of the sport has increased in leaps and bounds, and the way the sport has been managed and administered has reflected the dominant mode of economic transactions in the country.