Nandigram Genocide and Gestapo

Nandigram Genocide and Gestapo

Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and Time - sIXTY SEVEN

Palash Biswas

http://indianholocaustmyfatherslifeandtime.blogspot.com/


Nandigram has been on the boil since January over the proposed land acquisition for SEZ.
People`s resistance against indisriminate land aquisition for a butcher from Indonesia, Salem, is retaliated at last !


The TMC chief Mamata Banerjee meanwhile has asked the Centre to impose Article 356 - President's rule - in the state, is demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya over the recent killings in the Nandigram issue, and has also called for a 12-hour bandh in West Bengal.
Grand alignment of Brahminical allaince in the Centre is not going to oblige.

The joke of the day is: Cong also seeks President's Rule in West Bengal!

CPIM is now the great Indian Brahminical zionist Nazi GESTAPO which was spared as The Marichjhapi Massacre could not be highlighted and comrade Jyoti Basu and his Gang Ruled Bengal enslaving Muslims and Dalits, BC, OBC and Tribals. Now Budhadev is usiong the party cadrebase as Hitler Used Gastapo. The leftist Gestapo in Bengal, supported by WorldBank slaves in power in New Delhi and the unipolar imperialist United states of america is engaged in shameless liquidation of underclasses to consolidate the Brahmanical system, Sensex, Promoter Raj, growth rate replacing Agro based Rural India and its indegineous production system with merciless annihilation of underclasses.

Until 1945, Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and large tracts of east Asia were ruled from Europe. Now all the old colonies situated in different geopolitics destined one way and ruled by US, the Zionist regime. Hindutva Culture combined with zionism plays havoc and nadigram clippings tell the story in the best possible way.

That Is India!
Haa Hoo India!
Come On India!

MARLON SAMUELS hit a pulsating half-century and Dwayne Smith produced an inspirational allround performance yesterday as the West Indies beat Pakistan by 54 runs in the opening match of the 2007 Cricket World Cup.

The Nation waits for March 17th, an encounter with Srilanka!
But Bengal is witnessing an infinite encounter of another kind and the Nation bleeds!

FRIENDS , IF YOU CAN READ HINDI PL READ MY ARTICLE, `BANGAAL MEIN PONGAPANTH’ ON THE DEHUMANISATION OF DALITS AND MINORITIES IN BENGAL PUBLISHED IN MAINSTREAM HINDI MAG HANS MONTHLY, MARCH, 2007 ISSUE.

http://www.hansmonthly.com/details.asp?id=3583&title=caxky+esa+iksaxkiaFk&sec=chp+cgl+esa&wr=iyk%27k+fo%27okl

More Info on Dalits
www.dalitchild.com
www.ahrchk.net
www.combatlaw.org
www.intermonoxfam.org
www.hrw.org
www.karuna.org

Quote Fom a Reuters report: At least 11 people were killed in West Bengal on Wednesday after police fired on opponents of a planned industrial park in the worst day of unrest yet over a key government economic reform.All the dead were villagers, senior police officer Raj Kanojia said, and several died in hospital from injuries received when a crude bomb they had prepared exploded prematurely.Twenty people had been arrested, he said.

Earlier police said farmers and political activists, many armed with sickles, attacked officers as they tried to enter an area earmarked for the hub, forcing police to open fire.

It was the worst violence so far over controversial government plans to acquire farm land for a low-tax industrial development area, or Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at Nandigram, 150 km south of Kolkata.

In Nandigram, thousands of farmers sang religious songs and many Muslims - the majority religious community in the area - read verses from the Koran to protest at the police shooting.

"We will fight till the last drop of our blood but not give up an inch of land to the government," Abdus Samad, a local Muslim leader, told Reuters by phone from Nandigram.

Hundreds of villagers gathered in front of two hospitals trying to find relatives injured or missing.

Dozens of women dressed in black blocked roads in the area. Another 40 people were injured, including several policemen.



Opposition walkout in LS over Nandigram issue . West Bengal Assembelly also witness the same
Opposition members led by the BJP today walked out of the Lok Sabha in protest against the police firing in West Bengal's Nandigram.The Opposition staged a walkout after a brief statement by Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, who said that six people have died in police firing and 20 injured and the situation was under control now.

Patil said that he had spoken to State Chief Minister Buddhabdeb Bhattacharjee and the Home Secretary, V K Duggal, had spoken to the state Chief Secretary. He said the Centre was awaiting a written statement from the state government.

Meanwhile, the Speaker of the state legislature Hasim Abdul Halim adjourned the House for about half an hour during the second half as no senior ministers were present at the House.

Congress Legislative Party (CLP) leader Manas Bhunia drew the attention of the speaker towards the fact that no senior minister was present at the House when it met on Tuesday. On being informed, Mr Halim adjourned the House for 30 minutes and warned to adjourn the Assembly sine die if such a situation prevailed again.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was informed about the incident and he along with some senior ministers went to the Assembly when it met again after the adjournment. Minister for parliamentary affairs Sailen Sarkar also expressed displeasure over the absenteeism by senior ministers.

What sense it makes?

Do the political parties represent thye masses?

Why buddhadev is targeted only?

In this Loksabha, so many bills were passed without any oposition to annihilate Ruarl India and Indegineous production system.

This democratic institutins have becom the tools of the Ruling Classes. Even the budget dictated by World bank and WTO is passed without any protest.India tilts to the west as the world's new poles emerge.Despite public hostility, the country's elite is convinced that its interests are best served by alliance with the US.One force driving this realignment is India's desire to break out of the international isolation that followed its nuclear tests in 1998. The Nuclear Suppliers Group - the club for countries with nuclear power industries - imposed sanctions on India. This hurt: India lacks sufficient nuclear fuel for its power stations. So last July the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, struck a deal with the Bush administration. India promised to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities, and to put the former under international inspection. In return the US would pass legislation to ease the export of sensitive technologies to India, and urge the group to lift the sanctions.

HOW DO WE RESIST A FULL TEAM OF BUSH SEATED IN DELHI AND ALL STATE CAPITALS INCLUDING KOLKATA?

Manmohan Singh supports and praises Buddha line in the house and the Nation was silent.
Why?
All ruling parties and its Chief Ministers are following Buddha line of capitalist development.

All these political agitations are nonsense as the Left protest against Imperialism and globalisation turns to A Singur, A Nandigram, A Haripur and so on.

Arundhati Roy, mahashweta devi, Medha and hundreds of writers, journalist are just wasting tonnes of paper in protestand the Nation is drugged with Cricket Hype and still asleep.

I feel ashamed as a part of this nationality!
Copmplains the partners of an ABSOLUTE state power, Before resorting to such "brutal" police action, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had not discussed it in the Left Front, nor in the Cabinet or in the Ministerial core commitee.

If the other left parties are so shocked why don`t they come out of the antipeople capitalist Left Front which has no Ideological Base ate present.
No, they may not. They are only worried to defend their pet Vote bank which has to be effected adversely considering the Muslim dalit dominated demography Of Nandigram.
All this HUE and Cry is not going to help the bleeding masses.
They protest Imperialism and they are on pay roll!

Left Front partners slam police action at Nandigram. The violence at Nandigram today was strongly criticised by major constituents of the 30-year-old ruling Left Front in West Bengal, which condemned the police action and accused the CPI(M) of ignoring other partners. The Front partners demanded immediate convening of an emergency LF meeting tomorrow to discuss the issue.

Dubbing the police action as "unprecendented and barbaric", CPI state secretary Manju Kumar Majumder said, "we have no language to condemn this."

Senior RSP leader and PWD minister Kshiti Goswami said, the way the police action had taken place gave rise to the question whether "democracy exists" in the State.

The RSP leader sounded more aggressive on the issue and hinted at drastic action. "If the party's voice was ignored in the Left Front, we also have the right to think in our own way."



Sitaram Yechury, politburo member of Communist Party of India-Marxist, accused the Trinamool Congress for the Nandigram clashes on Wednesday and did not rule out the involvement of the Congress party for providing tacit support to the rival party. He was addressing a press conference in Parliament house complex.Earlier, the incident was mentioned in Rajya Sabha during the zero hour, when the House wanted to know from Home Minister Shivraj Patel, who was present in the House, as to what action the Central govenment plans to take in this matter.

Yechury ruled out the resignation of the West Bengal government on the issue. "No, if an incident of this nature had taken place in any other state, we would not have asked for the resignation of that government but asked the local administration to bring the situation under control as was done in this case. First, there was lathicharge, then tear gas shells were fired. While the police was trying to bring the situation under control, the armed miscreants fired at them. The police returned fire. This is an unfortunate incident and it should not have taken place," he said.

South Asia is run by world bank, IMF, ADB, WTO and NGOs without any resistance.
And what is the result?
But Nandigram has proved a lightning rod for protests with farmers unwilling to give up their land for cash.

Previous clashes over the proposed SEZ since January have left at least seven dead, including one policeman, and more than 100 wounded.

Opposition parties in West Bengal walked out of the state assembly in protest at Wednesday's killings.

Roads were also blocked in Kolkata, causing traffic chaos. Protesters set fire to a state-owned bus after evacuating passengers, police said.

Trinamul Congress, the main opposition party in West Bengal, called a strike on Friday to protest the killings.

Local television showed the bodies of three women lying on the ground near a hospital.

The unrest has proved a serious challenge for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, under pressure to tone down economic reforms amid signs of voter discontent with the ruling Congress party.

Most of the more than 230 SEZ proposals have already been put on hold following earlier violence in West Bengal this year.

"It remains to be seen whether Manmohan Singh reads the political signal and puts on hold the entire SEZ policy or he remains a technocrat and continues with his SEZ policy, which will cost the Congress party dear in political power," said Arun Kumar, an economist at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

US has taken over the polity, economy, frredom and sovereignity!

US backs Buddha model , a Financial express story published on 14 th March, 2007
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=157724


ECONOMY BUREAU
Posted online: Wednesday, March 14, 2007 at 0028 hours IST

KOLKATA, MAR 13 : The CPI(M) hardliners may disagree, but industry prefers to call the comrades in Bengal as 'social democrats'. And US, much criticised by the Left Front, puts up a question-- whether Bengal is shifting from communism to capitalism.
While describing the state's political situation, Henry v Jardine, US consul general in Calcutta, raised a question in a slide of his Powerpoint presentation—"West Bengal -- from communism to capitalism?"

According to Jardine, the CPI(M) has dominated the scene since the Seventies. The Party machinery is able to maintain tight control at the grassroots, activism and local support.

He was addressing a group of students and faculty from the University of Nebraska, Omaha (UNO) in US, at a meeting organised by the American Chamber of Commerce.

Ambarish Dasgupta, head of technology advisory services in PriceWaterhouseCoopers India, came out in defence of the CPI(M) in Bengal. "They are not hardliner communists…I would rather call them social democrats," Dasgupta said.

Trying to project an investment-friendly image of the state, Dasgupta said the state has "an increasing cosmopolitan culture coupled with low rate of terrorism and religious strife".

Jardine, lauding the land reform process in the state, noted that the state is being challenged over land acquisition. While he refused to comment specifically on recent developments regarding the land acquisition in West Bengal, his statement was along the official lines of the CPI(M) government.

"Generally the transition from agriculture to industry has to happen. So many people are engaged in agriculture while the production is limited. This problem needs to be addressed," Jardine said.

Students and faculty were curious to know more about the state, being run by the communists for the last three decades. One student asked, "Does education look different in West Bengal as it is a communist state?"


What is bangla nationality for which Buddhadev is projected as the best ICON?

In the other part of Bengal named Bangladesh, At least 50 people died in different actions by security forces who also arrested nearly 96,000 people during the first 60 days of the state of emergency in Bangladesh, a rights group said on Wednesday.Human rights organisation Odhikar said in a report that 95,825 people were arrested by the joint forces during the period between January 12 and March 12.Of the 50 people who died, 26 died in action by the elite crime fighters Rapid Action Battalion, 12 by the police, six by the army, five by the joint forces and one by the navy.

And the world is watching with horor and shock how the marxist capitalist industrial results in rivers flooded with peasant blood.

Bangla Nationality bleeds, friends.
Nationality India bleeds.

Just be awake and aside from the world cup cricket hype, open your eyes and see, Humanity raped and dead bodies scattered all over the jungles of CEMENT and SENSEX.

Undeclared censorship is the word fro go. Only CPIM sponsored TV channels were permitted to shoot in the Bagdad of Bengal. George Bush cladded in Dhoti and Kurta has managed it so well that the Gestapo has freedom to murder, to rape anywhere anytime without any interruption. Telecast is also monitored to stop airing unexpected information.

Thus, the jouranalists are being targetted.
Journalists covering the Nandigram violence were not spared by ruling CPI(M) cadres who beat up the PTI correspondent and prevented him from filing his report.Remember,the Gestapo (contraction of Geheime Staatspolizei; "Secret State Police") was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Under the overall administration of the SS, it was administered by the RSHA and was considered a dual organization of the Sicherheitsdienst and also a suboffice of the Sicherheitspolizei.

Gouranga Deb Hazra, the East Midnapore district correspondent of PTI, could only communicate to the agency's Kolkata office over his mobile telephone that he was surrounded by CPI(M) activists near Bhangabera area. He was beaten up and threatened not to talk, he said.

The threats were even heard over the mobile phone. "Chup kore thakun... Eto katha balar darkar ki (Keep your mouth shut. Why you are talking so much?)," asked a woman's voice.

Remember:Laws passed in 1936 effectively gave the Gestapo carte blanche to operate without judicial oversight. A further law passed in the same year declared the Gestapo to be responsible for the set-up and administration of concentration camps. Also in 1936, Reinhard Heydrich became head of the Gestapo and Heinrich Müller chief of operations (although Müller assumed overall command after Heydrich's assassination in 1942). Adolf Eichmann was Müller's direct subordinate and head of department IV, section B4, which dealt with Jews.

During World War II, the Gestapo was expanded to around 45,000 members.

By February and March 1942, student protests were calling for an end to the Nazi regime. These protests included non-violent resistance of Hans and Sophie Scholl, two of the leaders of the White Rose student group. Despite the significant popular support for the removal of Hitler[citation needed], resistance groups and those who were in moral or political opposition to the Nazis were stalled into inaction by the fear of reprisals from the Gestapo. In fact, reprisals did come in response to the protests. Fearful of an internal overthrow, the forces of Himmler and the Gestapo were unleashed on the opposition. The first five months of 1943 witnessed thousands of arrests and executions as the Gestapo exercised a severity hitherto unseen by the German public. Student leaders were executed in late February, and a major opposition organization, the Oster Circle, was destroyed in April 1943.

The German opposition was in an unenviable position by the late spring and early summer of 1943. On one hand, it was next to impossible for them to overthrow Hitler and the party. On the other hand, because of the Allied demand of unconditional surrender, and therefore no opportunity for a compromise peace, there seemed to be no other option than continuing the military struggle.


"Mere bhut baniye debo.... Mobileta bandha korun (We will beat you black and blue. Switch off your mobile)," shouted a male voice and the connection was snapped abruptly.
The Gestapo was established on April 26, 1933 in Prussia, from the existing organization of the Prussian Secret Police. The Gestapo was first simply a branch of the Prussian Police, known as "Department 1A of the Prussian State Police".

Its first commander was Rudolf Diels who recruited members from professional police departments and ran the Gestapo as a federal police agency, comparable to several modern examples such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the USA. The Gestapo's role as a political police force was only established after Hermann Göring was appointed to succeed Diels as the Gestapo Commander, in 1934. It was Göring who invented the term "Gestapo" (at first called Gestapa), which came from the suggestion of an obscure postal employee who suggested it be called the "Geheime Staatspolizei;" or "Secret State Police." Hence, GESTAPO. Göring urged the Nazi government to expand Gestapo power out of Prussia to encompass all of Germany. To this, Göring was mostly successful except in Bavaria, where Heinrich Himmler (head of the SS), served as the Bavarian Police President and used local SS units as a political police force.

In April of 1934, Göring and Himmler agreed to put aside all differences (due in large part to a combined hatred of the Sturmabteilung) and Göring handed over full command of the Gestapo to the authority of the SS. At that point, the Gestapo was combined into the Sicherheitspolizei and considered a sister organization to the Sicherheitsdienst or SD.

The role of the Gestapo was to investigate and combat "all tendencies dangerous to the State." It had the authority to investigate treason, espionage and sabotage cases, and cases of criminal attacks on the Nazi Party and on Germany.

The law had been changed in such a way that the Gestapo's actions were not subject to judicial review. Nazi jurist Dr. Werner Best stated, "As long as the [Gestapo] ... carries out the will of the leadership, it is acting legally." The Gestapo was specifically exempted from responsibility to administrative courts, where citizens normally could sue the state to conform to laws.

The power of the Gestapo most open to misuse was "Schutzhaft" or "protective custody" — a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings, typically in concentration camps. The person imprisoned even had to sign his or her own Schutzhaftbefehl, the document declaring that the person desired to be imprisoned. Normally this signature was forced by beatings and torture.

Reminiscent Marichjhapi Massacre

On the January 31, 1979 the police opened fire killing 36 persons. The media started to underscore the plight of the refugees of Morichjhanpi and wrote in positive terms about the progress they were making in their rehabilitation efforts. Photographs were published in the Amrita Bazar Patrika of the February 8, 1979 and the opposition members in the state assembly staged a walkout in protest of the government’s methods of treating them. The Sundarbans had in the '70s seen a bloody confrontation between refugees who had "settled" the uninhabited island of Marichjhapi and the government, which sought to evict them from "reservation land.

Research papers, particularly on by Jalius, Reporting by Sunil Gangopadhyay, a novel by amitav Ghosh` Hungry Tides’ and another book ` Marichjhapi’ by Jagadish chandra Mandal may help you to understand the stance of the ruling Coomunists against refugees and underclasses.
After the failure of the economic blockade (announced on January 26 – an ironical twist to Republic Day!) in May the same year, the government started forcible evacuation. Thirty police launches encircled the island thereby depriving the settlers of food and water; they were also tear-gassed, their huts razed, their boats sunk, their fisheries and tube-wells destroyed, and those who tried to cross the river were shot at. To fetch water, the settlers had now to venture after dark and deep into the forested portion of the island and forced to eat wild grass. Several hundred men, women and children were believed to have died during that time and their bodies thrown in the river.

The Calcutta High Court ordered a two-week lifting of the ban but this was not properly implemented. Based on Sikar (1982) and Biswas’ (1982) pieces, Ross Mallick estimates that in all 4,128 families who had come from Dandakaranya to find a place in West Bengal perished of cholera, starvation, disease, exhaustion, in transit while sent back to their camps, by drowning when their boats were scuttled by the police or shot to death in Kashipur, Kumirmari, and Morichjhanpi by police firings.
In January 1979 thousands of Untouchables squatting in a Government forest reserve at Marichjhapi in West Bengal were blockaded by the state's Left Front government and a few months later, when hundreds had already perished from starvation and killings, were set upon by police supported by hired gangs of thugs. In the ensuing massacre over 200 more men, women and children were slaughtered.

Refugees and Bengali Identity All through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s Bengali Hindus from what had become East Pakistan and subsequently Bangladesh entered West Bengal in the hope of settling down. They were however sent to various inhospitable areas outside West Bengal with the assurance that they would eventually be relocated in West Bengal. The brutality and rhetoric with which the refugees had been chased away, coupled with measures for safeguarding tigers which the government initiated soon after the events of Morichhapi, had, explained the villagers, gradually made tigers ‘self-important’. With this increased conviction of their self-worth, tigers had grown to see poorer people as ‘tiger-food’.

Soon after the Left Front came to power, in 1978 they found their refugee supporters return; amongst them, about 30,000 managed to sail to Morichjhanpi – one of the northern-most forested islands of the Sundarbans – from where they were brutally evicted for violating the Forest Acts. In all, 1,50,000 refugees arrived from Dandakaranya16 expecting the government to honour its word.17 Fearing that an influx of refugees might jeopardise the prospects of the state’s economic recovery, the government started to forcibly send them back.

It was thought to be possible to settle 16,000 families there, another 30,000 refugees in nearby Dattapasur,10 and in other Sundarbans places that had ‘cultivable waste land’.11 However, in their repeated attempts to settle there they were brutally evicted from the various train stations where they congregated on their way to West Bengal, were starved of water and food whilst in Morichjhanpi, and finally were even shot at before being brutally evicted from there.12 The growing polarisation of West Bengal and East Bengal as separate ‘homelands’ for Hindus and Muslims respectively, affected most the lower caste, poor, rural population, especially of lower Bengal who were not divided so much along religious lines as along the cultural and economic divide of bhadralok/nimnoborner or ‘nimnoborger lok’.

The economic booms that fail to reach the rural poor, a goudian article qoted

`Violence and suicide are the flipside to India and China's development - something their leaders have at last recognised .The issue is rousing political tensions, as it is in China, where the Communist party has just launched a new policy to redirect budget resources to the countryside. It is no accident that the governments of Asia's two most populous countries are beginning to take note of the downside of their economic boom. Donor governments and the international financial institutions are also alive to the problem, with the World Bank and Britain's Department for International Development steering much of their new money towards agricultural projects. Asia 2015, a conference in London last week, brought ministers from several countries to discuss the urbanrural divide, among other issues.

In China, where urban dwellers earn three times as much as people in the countryside, millions of peasants vote with their feet by moving to the cities to seek work. Those who stay behind often vote with their fists. Anger at corrupt or land-grabbing officials in China's villages is becoming increasingly violent. India has also seen clashes, though many farmers turn the violence on themselves. The Hindu newspaper recently reported a wave of suicides by debtridden farmers in Maharashtra - not the first state where this has happened. The home minister responded with a crackdown on village moneylenders, but the Hindu said that the main fault lay with a new kind of city-based dealer who supplies farmers at exorbitant interest rates. The paper's findings highlighted the issue of class - a point that the big donors need to take on board. In The Argumentative Indian, his latest collection of essays, India's Nobel-winning economist Amartya Sen points out that despite recurring famines, "Africa still manages to ensure a higher level of regular nourishment than does India". And a larger proportion of India's children are undernourished than in Africa. In suggesting possible solutions, Sen borrows the metaphor "friendly fire": efforts to alleviate rural poverty, if not well aimed, may benefit rich farmers and leave the poorest worse, or at least no better, off.

The American columnist Tom Friedman has argued, in his book The World Is Flat, that the globalisation of technological progress has had a levelling effect, particularly in Asia. But in India the peaks of the Himalayas are a better symbol of recent development - uneven, slippery, and dangerous.’

Meanwhile, a team of Trinamool Congress women’s delegation was attacked at Chandipur near Nandigram when it tired to reach Nandigram on Tuesday. The leader of the women delegation, Smita Bakshi alleged that a group of 10 armed CPIM cadres manhandled them on their way to Nandigram. “We were not allowed to file an FIR with the police,” she alleged.


Industry condemns Nandigram firing, asks govt to take balance view

Kolkata, March 14: The fresh eruption of violence at Nandigram on Wednesday drew a sharp response from industry bodies. "Though the government should continue the industrialisation process, industry cannot go against the people. Government should take a balanced view as we are not in favour of violence of any sort," CII vice-chairman (East) Biswadip Gupta said.

“The government should look for an alternate spot for locating industry, if people continued to resist,” he said.

Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BNCCI) president Shanta Ghosh said such incidents sent a negative signal to investors both domestic and international.

Bardhan condemns police action in Nandigram
Kolkata, March 14. (PTI): CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan today condemned the police action at Nandigram in West Bengal's East Midnapore district which, he said, was "unheard of" in the 29 years of Left Front rule. "The kind of police action at Nandigram is unheard of in Left rule, which I condemn severely," Bardhan told State Secretary Manju Kumar Majumder here.







We have to speed up industrialisation: Buddhadeb

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Underscoring the importance of industrialisation, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Tuesday its pace would have to be increased to match the flow of investment, both from domestic and foreign ones."Things are happening and more will happen," he said indicating new industrial projects.
"We have to shun old systems and practices to move at par with the global standards. Otherwise we will be left behind," Bhattacharjee told the employees of West Bengal Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (WBIIDC) while inaugurating its new office.
Bhattacharjee, also inaugurated the new webiste of WBIIDC, which will receive land applications online for industrial purposes.
The new premises of WBIIDC is in the same building as West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) and this will help in better coordination between both the departments for industrial development, he said.


Marx's reserve army of labour is about to go global


The eruption of the Indian and Chinese economies could shift the balance of power sharply in favour of capital in the rich world

Andrew Glyn
Wednesday April 5, 2006
The Guardian


Apiece of conventional wisdom about the world dear to economists is that the share of national income going to workers stays pretty stable. Karl Marx disagreed; he argued that labour-saving capital investment would limit demand for labour, while also bankrupting small-scale producers, in agriculture for example. They would swell the labour supply, creating a permanent "reserve army of labour" that would prevent real wages growing as fast as labour productivity. Workers would thus spend an increasing proportion of working time producing profits for capitalists - a falling share for labour or a rising rate of exploitation, in Marx's terminology.

Labour's share of national income was indeed declining in Britain in the decades before the publication of Marx's Capital in the 1860s. However, labour's share lurched up during the two world wars, and this is often interpreted as reflecting a more even balance of power between capital and labour brought about by the growth of trade unions.
The later 60s and 70s saw a profits squeeze in many European economies, including the UK, reflecting a further decline in the power of private ownership. Subsequently, labour's advances were beaten back through unemployment and the reassertion of "shareholder value". Workers' share of national income has fallen in much of Europe to more "normal" levels. As yet this is not the systematic downward trend predicted by Marx. But could that be about to change?

The Communist Manifesto proclaimed the inevitable spread of capitalism across the globe. This process was halted and even reversed during much of the 20th century by the isolation of the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and China from the world economy and the very slow pace of economic development in poor countries such as India.