Indian bourgeoisie experienced its first deep crisis in the middle of the 1960s, just after the death of Nehru. It was produced by a combination of food shortages and growing discontent born of the frustrated hopes of the post-independence period, the persistence of massive unemployment, underemployment, impoverishment, and indebtedness of the village poor. The spectacular setbacks suffered in the conflicts with the Peoples Republic of China and Pakistan intensified the political malaise. The Congress party was suffering a resounding crisis of leadership. The workers parties seemed poised for a leap forward, especially in the two main centers of popular agitation, West Bengal and Kerala. Five years later, the situation seemed to have changed from top to bottom. The bankruptcy of the coalition governments with the bourgeoisie in West 24 tinians and all the workers of the Arab region. The only progressive and durable solution to the ArabIsraeli conflict is the destruction of the Zionist state and the development of an anti-imperialist and anticapitalist struggle by all the workers of the
Arab region. The only solution to the crisis racking
Zionist society is a clear break by the Israeli working class with Zionism, with its practice, its parties, and its ideology. It is for this reason that the role of the Israeli revolutionary Marxists, in spite of their numerical weakness, is crucial in the unfolding of the present crisis. O FROM CRISIS Bengal and Kerala had thrown the workers parties, which lacked a clear perspective, into disarray. The main leaders of the Congress party seemed to be gaining new prestige after cleverly separating themselves from the most discredited right wing of the party. Their "socialist" demagogy appeared credible, particularly in view of the support extended to them by the pro-Moscow Communist party of India (PCI), led by Dange. The so-called Green Revolution seemed to promise a considerable increase in food production. Industrialization seemed assured. In the 1971 parliamentary elections Indira Gandhi's Congress party won two-thirds of the seats. But it was especially on the international field that the Indian bourgeoisie was gaining ground. Like Nehru, Indira Gandhi used international success above all as a means of diverting attention from
INDIA unresolved internal problems. The 1971 crisis in what was then East Pakistan provided her an opportunity to take revenge for. the Indo-Pakistani war of 1966. This time the Pakistani army was crushed. The Indian army entered East Bengal clothed in the garb of a "liberating" army. The recent successful atomic-bomb test conducted by Indian scientists further strengthened the impression of total Indian hegemony on the subcontinent. Sikkim was incorporated into the Indian union. New Delhi threatened to impose its tutelage over Nepal, and even over Burma and Sri Lanka, which provoked sometimes tumultuous reactions, even in India itself (among the Nagas, for example). Relations with imperialism, which had deteriorated during the Bangladesh war, were straightened out, with the Indian bourgeoisie continuing its clever balancing act between Washington and Moscow. Moves were undertaken with a view to normalizing relations with Peking. In the Western press, as in the press of the Far East, Indira Gandhi began to be called "the empress of India." But before long, everything changed. Neocolonial Indian society was far from having found any durable stability. All the features of the crisis of the mid1960s rose to the surface again, some of them with increased explosive force. The food crisis is more serious than ever. The failure of the Green Revolution is patent. After a few years of good harvests, Indian agriculture is stagnating or declining. In 1974 it is likely that only 100 million tons of grain and vegetable pods will be harvested compared to 107 million in 1971, 104 million in 1972, and 100 million in 1973, and this with a population that increases by millions a year. The government's plan had called for a harvest of 118 million tons in 1974. Per capita disposable grain production, which had reached 439 grams per day in 1965, was down to 425 gr. in 1972 and has been declining ever since. About ten states, among them the "rich" ones of western India, have been stricken by drought. Losses in the summer harvest (the kharif) are estimated at 30% in Punjab and 85% in Rajastan. Virtual famine conditions prevail in entire zones of Gujarat, Orissa, Rajastan, Madya Pradesh, and Bihar. But West Bengal has been hit worst of all. The state government there admits that 15 million people are either without food or eat less than one meal a day on the average. In the northern part of Bihar floods have caused a famine as severe as the one caused by drought in the southern part of the state. Already in 1973 there was a severe food shortage; some 200 million Indians were underfed. But the gap between rich and poor was more striking than ever in "socialist" India. Christmas dinners offered in the big hotels cost 150-350 rupees apiece about US$17.50-35)! At the same time, 40 percent of the population lives on less than half a rupee per day, that is, less than 12 US cents! The increase in the world market price of oil has been a terrible blow to the Indian economy, which suffers from a lack of independent energy resources. The balance of payments deficit for this year threatens to hit $1.5-2 thousand million, more than the net amount of "aid" received from abroad. This deficit is compounded by an already exorbitant weight of foreign debt: 25 percent of annual export product is marked for servicing of previously accumulated foreign debts. This was followed by a forced restriction of raw materials imports, which has combined with the food shortage to create a general atmosphere of shortage throughout the country. It is no longer simply food that is scarce (even in the big cities); oil, fuel oil, matches, and even wood and paper are also lacking. The venerable Times of India, which is printed on paper so yellow that it is virtually illegible, was pleased to note in a recent editorial that the life of a housewife (of the middle class and up, understand) had acquired a new dimension. She now "lives dangerously, " for "going shopping" has become a "daily adventure that involves new surprises every day." Indian industry has been hit very hard by the shortage of raw materials and the effects of the international economic recession. Industry now works at a fraction of its productive capacity. After having stagnated in 1972, it may even decline in 1974. Several major industrial branches have been hit by partial unemployment and layoffs. A number of investment projects, such as a new steel factory in Salem (in the state of Tamil Nadu), have had to be halted. The 'new congress discredited It is no longer necessary to expose as illusory all the promises of the "renovated" Congress party made by the Indira Gandhi group after it got rid of the right wing, the well-known "syndicate." In reality, the administration of the "New Congress" has turned out to be just as venal and corrupt as that of the "syndicate, " which was universally rejected with contempt only a few short years ago. In several statés -- particularly Gujarat, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh -- accusations of corruption raised against the local chiefs of the Congress party were so clear and well-founded that vast popular
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INDIA mobilizations broke out against the state governments, which were deeply shaken. In Gujarat the regional parliament was even forced to resign. To get out of its jam, Gandhi's central government had to launch a huge operation against smugglers, gangsters, and black marketeers. The persons arrested under charges of being the chiefs of a real Indian mafia had been well known for a long time -- as the financial backers of all the bourgeois parties, beginning with the New Congress of Indira Gandhi herself. But there is an essential difference between the crisis of leadership the Indian bourgeoisie is going through today and the one it suffered in the middle of the 1960s. At that time, the opposition workers parties, especially the most powerful of them, the Communist party (Marxist), had the wind in their sails. A not inconsiderable section of the peasant masses, not to mention the majority of the working class, considered them an alternative political solution to the rule of the Congress party, worn down by a quarter of a century of exercise of power. Today this is no longer true. The Communist party (Marxist), weakened by the departure of its Maoist wing (the Naxalites), has been profound ly discredited by its participation in coalition governments with the bourgeoisie in West Bengal and Kerala, by the way it protected the interests of private property during these experiences, and by the demoralizing and massive use of violence within the left movement, for which the CP(M) bears the major responsibility. The use of such violence has now rebounded against the CP(M). Dange's Communist party of India (CPI), which "stuck with the New Congress and handed out the latter's "socialist" demagogy like small change, has emerged as Gandhi's closest ally and suffers intense ly from the discredit heaped on the ruling group. As for the Naxalites, their aberrant strategy, which combined a "people's war" waged through assassination of individual landed proprietors or kulaks in the villages with dogmatic maintenance of a line of "revolution by stages" and "bloc of four classes, " resulted in their ranks being decimated by a ferocious repression. They were unable to root themselves among the poorest layers of the rural and urban populations. Under these conditions, the political vacuum created by the crisis of the ruling party and the lack of credibility of the parties of the left and the far left threatens to be filled by the right, or at least by politically confused operations that the right can take advantage of. The various mass mobilizations against corruption and the black market, touched off by student ex26 plosions, are now being led by Jai Prakesh Nahrain. This old leader of the left wing of the Congress party during the time of Mahatma Gandhi was the founder and principal spokesman of the Socialist Congress party, which later became the Socialist party. He is known in India primarily as an organizer of nonviolent movements, either civil disobediance or charitable distribution of land to the untouchables and the other disinherited. The mass movements he is organizing today along the lines of nonviolent civil disobediance have had an incontestable impact on the masses. This is true to such an extent that the pro- Moscow CP has been forced to join in the demonstrations initiated by Jai Prakesh even in the areas where it supports the state governments of the Congress. But the platforms of cist Jan Sangh -- to support them as well. Since the right is much better organized and more solidly implanted than are the left parties that participate in these new types of "coalitions, " the threat is that the right will be the chief beneficiary of the increased prestige of Jai Prakesh Nahrain, whom certain bourgeois forces would like to "push" to become a "typically Indian" alternative to Indira Gandhi. Disarray in the workers movement There is no better expression of the disarray of the Indian workers movement than the fact that in the midst of a severe economic and political crisis the Indian bourgeoisie has been able to afford the luxury of unleashing a great offensive against the working class without courting any big risks, at least in the short term. INPRECOR (No. 4, July 18) reported on the big spring strike of railway workers, which reflected both the combativity of the Indian workers and the impotence and betrayal of their traditional leaders, who led this magnificent struggle to defeat. The consequences of this defeat were not long in coming. In July 1974 the government proclaimed a freeze on wages in order to "struggle against inflation, " which is now running at an annual rate of 30 percent. (The essential cause of the inflation is the steadily mounting budget deficit: 2.6 thousand million rupees in 1968, 3 thousand million in 1969, 3 thousand million in 1970, 4.3 thousand million in 1971, 6.4 thousand million in 1972, and 8.1 thousand million in 1973.) A system of forced savings was enacted; the cost-of-living bonuses the workers were scheduled to receive were halted; instead the funds were frozen in savings banks. The leaders of the central trade unions and the opportun-
ist workers parties reacted very mildly to this clear attack on the buying power of the workers. They accepted the principle of an incomes policy, confining themselves to the demand that it be applied "less unjustly, " that measures be taken to impose "control over prices and profits. " It is scarcely necessary to add that this "demand" produced only vague promises and contemptuous reactions from the government. One fact illustrates the degree of opportunism into which the "official" Indian workers movement is plunging today. In an increasingly explosive social situation marked by intolerable mass misery, Tridhib Chaudhury, leader of the only so-called far-left party represented in the central parliament, the Revolutionary Socialist party (RSP), a man who not so long ago proudly paraded his "Trotskyist sympathies, " not only agreed to become the "sole candidate of the left" for the post of president of the republic, but even agreed to be put forward as the sole candidate of the left and right opposition (far right included) and solemnly declared his desire to respect and apply the Indian constitution, which would involve protecting private property and safeguarding the repressive apparatus. While there is a small "Trotskyistic" opposition in the RSP that is indignant about this ultraopportunism, for the mass of militants of this party, not to mention the mass of cadres of the big workers organizations, Chaudhury's action is only one more variant of the "Indian road to socialism. Inevitable mass explosions Nevertheless, the situation remains rich in revolutionary potential. The impatience and despair of the most impoverished masses is growing ceaselessly. Already, as in West Bengal ten years ago, there have been many incidents of the hungry masses assaulting trains loaded with food, trying to seize stocks of food hoarded by speculators, forcing big merchants or industrial enterprises to distribute their products at the official prices or even free. There have been rural and urban riots. Centers of rebellion have broken out against the rule of the large proprietors, the big peasants usurers, and the big merchants. In various villages poor peasants, sharecroppers, farmers, and agricultural workers have refused to hand over the shares of their harvests that the owning classes usually appropriate. All this confirms that the Indian crisis is a product neither of blind fate nor of a population explosion; it has its roots in the social structure of the coun try . Vast movements of striking agricultural workers can link up with these movements of revolt; there can be strike movements that important sectors of the urban working class support, as was the case this year in Bombay. An upturn and radicalization is underway in the factories as well. Trade-union division, which benefits the employers and the bourgeois state, is tending to be spontaneously challenged or overcome by a movement toward the election of delegates and sometimes even unitary rank-and-file committees. Further, the failure of the Naxalites has touched off a broad theoretical debate among the politicized vanguard, a debate that for the first time in such a broad sector is starting to challenge the classical Stalino- Maoist schema of "revolution by stages. " The idea of the inevitably socialist outcome of the Indian revolution, and even the conception of the permanent revolution as opposed to that of revolution by stages, is being discussed today by various groups and subgroups of the far left, which are emerging everywhere as a product of the disintegration of the Naxalites. The multiplication of these vanguard groups -- which in general do not at all limit themselves to theoretical discussion but rather seek local and regional links with the mass movement of the workers and peasants -- undoubtedly shows that conditions are ripening for an important strengthening of the revolutionary Marxists in India. But it also shows that no existing organization in the country is yet capable of functioning as a pole of attraction, even in a modest manner, for all these critical elements. From all evidence, such a role requires not only constant theoretical and political participation in the debate, in defense of the programmatic theses of the Fourth International, but also initiatives in action and a practical activity that make the organization attractive to those seeking an alternative to reformism, Stalinism, Maoism, and centrism, all of which have failed in India. The Indian Trotskyists will have to orient toward accomplishing these two categories of tasks if they want to seize the present opportunity to build a serious revolutionary organization in their country. O
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