On Growth Two

34. Mohit Sen

Mohit Sen was born March 24, 1929, in Calcutta and studied history at Cambridge. As was the case with Tissa Wijeyeratne, the foreign

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secretary of Sri Lanka, Mohit Sen, during his stay in England, joined the Communist youth organization. (These men are friends, a fact which the author only discovered after interviewing them.) He has been active in the Communist Party of India (CPI) since 1953. He is editor in chief of New Age for both its weekly and monthly editions. In 1965 he became a member of the National Council of the CPI, in fact therefore of the Central Committee. In 1971 he entered the Politbureau of the CPI. In 1973 he became dean of the Central Party College of the CPI. Mohit Sen has written several books, including New Lines and Dogmatists, Communism and the New Left, The CPI and the Naxalites, and Indian Revolution - Review and Perspectives. This conversation took place in the modern twenty-story party headquarters in the center of New Delhi.

Most Western observers look upon the population problem as the most urgent for mankind. The world now adds some 75 million new lives a year. In India some 55,600 babies are born daily. Indonesia adds three million a year. But Madame Gandhi stressed to me that population control should be voluntary.

The Communist Party of India is certainly concerned over the rate of population growth in India. It would like this rate to slow down. But it does not agree that this is the most urgent question. The poverty, misery, and inequality in India is not due to the overproduction of human beings, but to the production and reproduction of capitalism in India. For more than a quarter of a century, the ruling Congress Party has placed our country on the capitalist path of development. It is this path which inevitably entails compromise with imperialism and landlordism and has led to the miserable state of affairs when the average per capita income in India comes to around 334 rupees annually, or one rupee per day, i.e., a little more than the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola! Further, it is futile to expect any breakthrough on the front of population control unless revolutionary transformations are effected in the socioeconomic structures. Apart from anything else, the proper ideological atmosphere for birth control cannot come into being without such transformations. The CPI comes out sharply against the efforts made by the government and the ruling class to avoid this central issue by raising the slogan of ‘a deluge of babies.’ It also comes out sharply against neocolonialist penetration in the form of various family planning schemes and projects. At the same time, wherever the CPI has influence among the

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masses, it does its best to persuade them to plan their families in a scientific manner.

Mahatma Gandhi called the Indian village the very heart of Asia. The peasant remains Asia's number one citizen. After a quarter of a century of independence for India, what is the present fate of the peasant in India? What is his future?

If India as a whole is poor, the poorest of the poor are to be found in our villages. No statistical computations can convey the wretchedness and squalor in which the overwhelming majority of our rural brothers and sisters are condemned to live. This poverty has scarely been lessened in the twenty-five years of freedom. Inequality in the ownership of the main means of production, i.e., the land, is tremendous - less than three percent of the rural population owning more than thirty acres per household own thirty percent of the total land, while close to seventy-five percent of the rural population owning up to five acres per household own a little over sixteen percent of the land. The majority of India's villages do not have even guaranteed drinking water. While India's illiterates make up seventy percent of her population, it goes up to as much as eighty-five to ninety percent in the vast majority of the villages.

It would be wrong, however, to imagine that nothing has changed in India's villages since Independence. There has been a change. Capitalism has penetrated the Indian village on an extensive and growing scale. Feudal landlordism has been substantially curbed and, to a considerable extent, transformed into a specific form of capitalist landlordism. A certain degree of differentiation has developed within the peasantry itself as a result of which some twenty-six percent of the total workers in India are made up of agricultural laborers, though these are not without many semifeudal characteristics which pull them in the direction of bonded labor. An intertwining of semifeudal and capitalist modes of appropriation of the agrarian surplus, with the latter as the leading economic form, characterize the state of production relations and of property ownership in our vast countryside. And it is this bloc that comes in the way of the development of the productive forces. It is the rock on which all technological breakthroughs like the Green Revolution have foundered. Indian experience has confirmed that radical agrarian reforms, while not a sufficient condition, are a necessary condition for an upsurge in agricultural production.

But even the findings of government committees reveal that agrarian reforms cannot be implemented so long as the existing power structure in the rural areas remains intact. The Indian state has very close links with the

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landlord class, while in most areas the leadership of the ruling party is based on this class.

Hence, if India's rural areas are to experience a genuine renovation, there is no bypassing an agrarian-peasant revolution. Only a mighty upheaval from below can toss into the air and into limbo the parasitic and paralyzing system. This upheaval can be facilitated by progressive forces being in control of certain lower such as state governments - the experience of Kerala, where a Communist Chief Minister leads a left and democratic coalition proves this. This massive peasant upheaval would need for its success the formation of a broad united front of agricultural laborers, poor peasants, and middle peasants, which could draw into its fold or at least neutralize the rich peasants. It would have to concentrate its attack upon the bloc of semifeudal and capitalist landlords.

The form of this upheaval cannot be precisely predicted. It would certainly be conditioned by the specific features of the Indian situation, including the existence of parliamentary democracy and the heterogeneous class character of the ruling party.

Nor would this upheaval take place in isolation. It would be an essential and even crucial part of the national democratic revolution on the brink of which India now stands and to the accomplishment of which the CPI is dedicated.

With the arrival in 1973 of the worldwide energy crisis, India is facing alarming problems. In 1973 you consumed 24.5 million tons of petroleum and petroleum products. Seventeen million tons were imported, mostly from Iraq and Iran, at a rate of 500 million dollars. Similar imports would cost, for 1974, 1.4 billion dollars or forty percent of your export earnings, according to the New York Times. Norman Borlaug stresses an ample petroleum supply as a key to fertilizer production. The world has already run short of much-needed fertilizer. The Arabs wanted to hurt the rich nations; it now turns out they are creating havoc in the developing lands.

It is true that the raising of the prices of petroleum products had an adverse impact on the Indian economy, contributed to the price rise, and hurt agricultural production both through fertilizer and diesel fuel shortage.

The CPI does not, however, believe in taking a short-term view of the matter.

In the first place, the so-called energy crisis is essentially a crisis of world imperialism's most strategic sector and opens up the possibility of sharply aggravating all its contradictions. And any weakening of imperialism is to the good of India and all developing nations.

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Second, the progressive oil-producing states - not confined to West Asia - are asserting their sovereign right and correcting a grievous imbalance in the international pricing system of world capitalism. Their example of unity, coordination, and courage could and should be emulated by India and other developing states in respect to other primary products.

Third, the action of the oil-producing states of the Third World has been wisely followed up by the initiative in calling a special session of the UN. At that session, the antiimperialist unity of the developing countries was once again demonstrated together with similarity of views with the Soviet Union. This opens up immense new possibilities.

Fourth, it is now clear that thanks to the blandishments and pressures of the imperialist states and the multinational corporations, the government of India opted for a wrong energy and fertilizer policy - relying too much and too soon on oil and neglecting the use of coal as the basic feedstock for some time to come. In addition, neglect of exploration for oil and incredible bungling in the generation and transmission of power have contributed to a serious power shortage and crisis in our country.

Thus, the way out lies in further developing unity and in rectifying the mistakes of the past. It is gratifying to note that the Soviet Union in the case of petroleum products and Iraq in the case of crude oil have come forward with generous offers that will considerably mitigate our difficulties.

The world's wheat reserves have never been so low as at present, I was told by Addeke H. Boerma of FAO. Unexpected hoarding by farmers, black marketeering, or flawed planning further undermine social discipline. Is it lack of will or leadership on the part of the Indian central government that further aggravates this critical situation?

The food crisis in India is due to two factors, both man-made and, let it be added, made in India! There is no doubt that the rate of growth of the production of food grains is thoroughly meager and unsatisfactory - around 2.7 to 3 percent per year over the past decade in aggregate, but considerably less if wheat is removed. The result is that the per capita daily availability of food grains has remained around 445 grams for fifteen years, but with sharp fluctuations when the weather turns adverse. Thanks to the outmoded production ownership structure in the countryside, India is still a marginal agrarian economy heavily dependent on the monsoons. The point has been made earlier that this is the result, as well as one of the causes, of the entire socioeconomic system in the country as well as the character of the state power.

The second factor is the grip of the bloc of landlords, moneylenders, and

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monopoly traders on the marketable surplus of food grains. It is to be noted that this bloc and their stranglehold over a vital artery of India's economic life is fully and enthusiastically supported by the top Indian industrial and commercial monopolists. It is this bloc and their enthusiastic supporters who have powerful representatives at all levels of the government and the bureaucratic apparatus. And this combination of economic and political power not only holds the nation to ransom but is desperately engaged in seeking to seize monopoly control of the state. It is this combination that sabotaged the limited measure of the state takeover of the wholesale trade in wheat in 1973 and compelled the government to abandon this altogether in 1974. And the result has been that the official wholesale price of food grains went up by over 30 percent in 1973 and has advanced another 10 to 12 percent in the first quarter of 1974.

An important element in the critical situation is the vast hoards of ‘black’ or unaccounted money. An official commission estimated some years ago that there was a capital stock of thirty-five million rupees of black money, with an annual increment of fourteen million. The Finance Minister of India, Mr. Y.B. Chavan, said in Parliament that this black money operated a parallel economy over which the government had no control. The point, of course, is that the black money economy exercises considerable control over the government!

Thus, it is not lack of will or leadership on the part of the government that is to blame. It is the character of that will and leadership reflecting the community of and cleavage in the ruling capitalist class and its party, the Indian National Congress. Without a change in the class character of the state, the general crisis of the postindependence system in India cannot be resolved.

Madame Gandhi said not long ago, ‘We shall evolve our own type of socialism.’ What does the CPI aim at: pure socialism or moderate leftism, able to cooperate with the New Congress Party?

The CPI's ultimate aim is the establishment of socialism and Communism. And socialism to it means the social ownership of all the main means of production and the political power of the working class, the working peasantry, and the intermediate urban strata led by the working class.

The CPI, however, is of the view that despite the winning of national freedom in 1947 and the advance along the capitalist path of development thereafter, the tasks of the national democratic revolution have not been completed in our country. We have yet to win economic independence, to

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completely abolish feudal and semifeudal modes of exploitation, and to eliminate monopoly capital structures. In other words, we have yet to traverse the stage of the revolution which prepares the transition for socialism. To put it in a nutshell, the three enemies - imperialism, landlordism, and monopoly capital - have to be defeated by the four friends: the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie, and the nonmonopoly strata of the bourgeoisie. While the working class has to play the role of initiator and builder of the alliance, it also has to break the exclusive leadership of the nation by the bourgeoisie, even though its own exclusive leadership might not yet be established. The nonmonopoly strata of the bourgeoisie is a class with a dual character. On the one hand, it has objective and growing differences with the imperialists, landlords, and monopolists, and has the potential of participating in the democratic revolution. Moreover, in India it has a large mass following which not only follows but exerts pressure! On the other hand, it is an exploiting class, fears the growth of the strength of the exploited masses, and is prone to compromise with imperialism, landlordism, and monopoly capital. Thus, toward this class a dual policy of unity as well as struggle has to be adopted with the aim of dislodging it from exclusive rule and leadership as well as drawing it into the national democratic front.

The Indian state is the state of the Indian capitalist class as a whole including monopoly and nonmonopoly strata. And this is also the character of the ruling Congress. An intense struggle has gone on and continues - indeed, aggravates - between the different strata of the capitalist class to gain exclusive leadership and control over the state. Sharp policy differences and conflicts constantly erupt, leading to dramatic splits, as in 1969. Simultaneously and supervening upon this struggle proceeds the growing discontent and action of the working class and other toiling masses for radical reforms, for advance toward national democracy, and against the capitalist path of development. It is the combination and coincidence of these two struggles that is the dialectics of the development of the Indian revolutionary process.

Taking full account of the specific complexity of this process, the CPI adopts an approach of unity as well as struggle vis-à-vis the ruling Congress Party. In that party are to be found the representatives of the monopoly bourgeoisie and the landlords as well as the representatives of the nonmonopoly bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. The enemies as well as the allies of the working class in the present national democratic stage of the revolution are both to be found in the Congress. The CPI takes into account two other factors. One is that since 1969 the representatives of the

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nonmonopoly bourgeoisie, i.e., the Centrists, have come to acquire the leading and dominant position in the party. The most powerful representative of this stratum and this trend is Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The second is that there are frequent ups and downs in the balance of forces within the ruling class and party. These oscillations are crucially influenced by the development of mass struggles and actions on the basis of a united front approach.

It is important to stress that the CPI attaches great importance to the fact that the Indian revolutionary process is an integral part of the world revolutionary process in which the Soviet Union and the world working-class movement play the leading role. The Indian revolutionary process develops in an epoch where the world antiimperialist forces are locked in decisive conflict with world imperialism and where the balance of forces has tilted in favor of the former. Hence, the CPI very positively appreciates and supports the antiimperialist nonaligned foreign policy of the government. Such a policy not only powerfully reinforces and forms a part of the world struggle against imperialism, but facilitates the advance of the national democratic revolutionary process in the country by pushing forward the unification of the national democratic forces. It is precisely on this account that the CPI comes out sharply against the pernicious ideas of the Maoists, which disrupt the antiimperialist democratic front both internationally and in India. The CPI has had bitter experience of the disastrous splitters' course of the Maoists, which has been of great help to the most reactionary forces in our country. On the other hand, the policy of peace and friendship pursued by the Soviet Union has been immensely beneficial not only to the nation as a whole but, above all, to the progressive and revolutionary forces in India.

The CPI has also devoted a great deal of attention to the problem of the form of the national democratic revolution. In its view there is a real possibility that the overthrow of the present capitalist state and the establishment of the national democratic state could be accomplished without armed struggle becoming the main form of struggle and without armed civil war becoming the climax of revolutionary struggle. It must be stressed that the CPI is further of the view that this is only a possibility and only one of the possibilities. It is equally possible that the working class and its allies would be unable to prevent the counterrevolutionary forces from putting the bayonet on the agenda and would have to pass from using the weapon of criticism to using the criticism of weapons. The national democratic forces would have to strive to make a reality of the possibility of peaceful transition while being ready for any sudden turn in the situation.

The possibility of peaceful transition to national democracy has arisen in

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India because of the new balance of class forces on a world scale, in which the export of counterrevolution has become more difficult; because of the existence of the parliamentary democratic system; because of the broad social alliance which can be formed with the aim of establishing national democratic power; because part of the present ruling class can and must be drawn into the national democratic front as a vacillating ally of the working class. The other possibility, i.e., of a nonpeaceful transition, is also equally present because of the undoubted strength of counterrevolution, especially in different levels and organs of the existing state power, but also as far as influence over the masses is concerned with the vast intelligentsia and other intermediate strata susceptible to social demagogy as well as the pull of feudal ideology. The power of subversion, even without direct physical intervention, of the imperialist countries also makes nonpeaceful transition a definite possibility with which the national democratic forces might have to reckon.

Finally, the CPI makes three other points regarding the form of revolution in India. One is that peaceful transition is a form of revolution and not a substitute for it. This means that peaceful transition entails the main emphasis being placed on mass revolutionary movements, actions, and struggles culminating in a nationwide general strike, and simulaneous mass peasant action for land combined with a general closure of shops, offices, and markets or, as we put it, a bharat bandh combined with peasant satyagraha for land occupation. Second, that in our conditions peaceful transition will not be all that peaceful. While armed civil war may be averted, and armed struggle might not become the main form of struggle, the CPI is under no illusions that armed clashes of different forms and of varying intensity can be avoided. These would be inevitable, and we are having dress rehearsals for this even now. Third, the CPI is of the view that striving for peaceful transition is simultaneously creating the most favorable conditions for success in armed civil-war should this become inevitable.

In my conversation with him, Ambassador Tissa Wijeyeratne of Sri Lanka sounded most critical about the so-called democratic political process in India. He spoke of corruption in buying votes. How do you see the immediate future? Would a military coup be possible?

It is not enough to have only a general understanding of the trends of development. One has to concretely assess the present stage of the crisis of India.

Here it will not be enough to point to corruption - this has assumed serious proportions, but in any event, it is an epiphenomenon and not the

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cause. It will not be sufficient to point to the shortage of vitamins, jobs, and seats in schools and colleges - these are the problems that have been most inadequately handled over the past quarter of a century and the real question is what is the impact of this failure on the political process.

As one sees it, what we are presently living through is a profound crisis of centrism, i.e., of bourgeois reformist or liberal democratic rule. The massive legislative majorities won by the Congress in 1971 and 1972 have failed to provide its rule or India with expected stability. And the reason is the complete failure of the Congress to implement its own electoral pledges whether in the matter of socioeconomic reforms or in the sphere of economic advance to self-reliance and stability. Remove Poverty was the Prime Minister's triumphal banner, but the years that followed have seen the accentuation of mass misery.

But one has to probe deeper and discover why the Congress failed to implement its own declared program. The explanation does not lie in cynicism or hypocrisy. It lies in the fact that the program to be implemented contained large elements of the program for national-democratic renewal, but the Congress leadership refused to rally the national democratic forces and sought to use that program to reestablish the lost hegemony of the national bourgeoisie and the unity of the capitalist class. The program and the instruments for its implementation were polar opposites. The centrists thought that a left program could be implemented by bringing the Right under its leadership and by curbing the Left.

On the other hand, the Left was not only sharply divided but because of the sectarian outlook of powerful segments was unable to project an alternative to the Center. It, too, failed to establish that unity between it and the Center which alone could implement a program containing many measures essential for national democratic renewal. It, too, failed to win hegemony by assuming the role of unifiers. It failed to move the Center Left and, therefore, failed to move India Left.

At the same time, enormously favorable opportunities for achieving this result were provided by the advantageous turn in international relations and the massive help offered by the Soviet Union as a result of the Brezhnev visit in October, 1973. Indo-Soviet friendship and cooperation has not only made a significant contribution to the struggle against imperialism on a global scale, but has offered unprecedented possibilities for uniting national democratic forces in the country and advancing toward economic independence. It is no accident that the most reactionary forces in our country, including those in the ruling party and the government, as well as in the administration, are sparing no effort to wreck, sabotage, and restrict the

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scope of these agreements. Nevertheless, this favorable factor objectively exists.

Another immensely encouraging factor is the radicalization of the masses on an extending scale, including the poorest strata of the rural areas. More particularly, after the 1969 split in the Congress and the tempestuous days of aid to the liberation struggle of Bangladesh, the vast toiling masses have definitely shifted to the Left in their consciousness. It is a noticeable feature of Indian political development that the working class is acting with greater unity, doggedness, and consciousness than at any time since Independence.

While taking note of these favorable factors and seeking to develop them, it is also essential not to overlook the very serious dangers to which our country is now exposed. Taking full advantage of the unprecedented mass discontent which is the natural and justified popular reaction to the crisis of the capitalist path of development, utilizing the zigzag course of the Centrists and their surrenders to reaction, the Right in India has launched a full-scale offensive to capture power. It adopts a policy of pressuring the Centrists to move Right. It seeks to create anarchy and chaos so as to destroy parliamentary democracy on the ruins of which a neocolonialist counterrevolutionary dictatorship can be installed masquerading as a so-called national government. The US imperialists and their agencies in the country are masterminding the entire operation so that they can turn India into an Indonesia or a Brazil or a Chile. The new feature of the activities of the Right reactionary forces in our country is their open turn to extraconstitutional and extraparliamentary forms of struggle. The very same people who used to accuse the Communists of preaching violence now openly declare that there is no way out except to take to the streets and bring down the Congress Government by violent means. The Right in India talks quite in the same tones as did the Nazis in Germany in the 1930's.

It is most unfortunate that many Left parties and forces in India grossly underestimate the danger of counterrevolution. The Maoists, who are now a fragmented and decimated force, proclaim that breakdown is to be welcome since in their view the present state itself is a neocolonialist and fascist state. The Communist Party (Marxist) follows a line of Left opportunism and believes that the present government, led and dominated by the Centrists, is the main enemy against whom a convergent plan of attack with the Right can be planned. The Socialist Party of India goes a step further and proposes that an open joint front should be formed with the Right to bring down the so-called Establishment. All these Left parties disagree with the view of the CPI not only on the question of the counterrevolutionary menace but also with its view that in the Congress itself influential Left forces exist and that

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the Congress masses have shifted to the Left, while retaining their loyalty to the Congress.

The CPI is of the view that in the present situation the main enemy to be fought is the Right. And to fight it a broad unification of all Left and democratic forces has to be brought into being, including those in the ruling Congress. It is also of the view that to defeat the Right it is essential to curb the zigzagging of the Centrists as well as its concessions to the Right and push them to the Left. It emphatically disagrees with the view that by defense of the status quo the Right can be defeated. It is only by moving Left that the Right can be defeated, just as only by combatting and pushing back the Right that one can move Left. Hence our slogan: Move Left to Defeat the Right; Defeat the Right to Move Left. By conceding and surrendering to the Right only its appetite is whetted and the masses disoriented. By not fighting the Right, the Left cannot paralyze the vacillations of the Center nor win that essential mass momentum without which a shift to the Left cannot be achieved.

The CPI is not without a slogan of power. In its view, the struggle to achieve a shift to the Left has within its scope the objective of securing a change in the composition of the government and the bureaucracy by securing the purge of the champions of imperialism and monopoly. A purge of the Right is on the agenda. And this itself would be a stage on the way to winning a government of Left and democratic unity at the Center.

Such is the line of the CPI at this critical historical conjuncture, when India stands poised between peril and promise.