After months of slumber a section of India’s media has started looking at developments in Punjab Kashmir and Assam in the context of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the turmoil in Europe. Vast sections of makers of public opinion in the country still remain blissfully immune from any such effect broadly. Two district sets of views are emerging. One section feels that the disintegration of the Soviet Union will have direct impact on the course of events in India. According to this view India’s problems have arisen mainly on account of over centralization of its polity. To arrest the rot it recommend that India undertake sweeping political reforms to grant a heavy measure of autonomy  the federating states and that this autonomy should be made to percolate to the grassroots level. The other view is that the problems the country faces in Punjab Kashmir and Assam are not indigenous in nature and that these have been imposed by hostile neighbors mainly Pakistan and that there is no need per so to undertake any major reforms along the lines of granting greater autonomy and that what is required is to strengthen security environment and to manage statecraft in a more efficient manner.

The two viewpoints are clearly firmly rooted in India’s socioeconomic political system Pseudo socialism practiced by successive regimes for half a century had its own impact on the system and classes. The beneficiaries have been certain big business houses close to India’s establishment the ruling politicians the bureaucrat’s technocrat’s contractor’s middle man traders. This in tum has led to concentration of industry and trade in a few metropolitan and chosen centers. The other class of beneficiaries comprises industrial workers and executives and professional elements such as doctors engineers architects etc. A vast populace comprising junior partners of bureaucracy namely those employed in the government and public sectors of industry and services t00 have a vested interest in the continuance of the present system. At the other side of the spectrum are peasants the semi employed in hard and lowly jobs and the vast population of the unemployed. The developing crisis in India’s political economy was sought to be overcome and controlled by attacking the so called regional imbalances and at the political level by engineering splits in the advanced segments of the society such as Sikhs of Punjab and Muslims of Kashmir. Punjab has been the main victim of a policy of leveling up of “regional disparities” and in the process the state has become a virtual colony of India. The situation inevitably threw upon the political stage men like Sant Jamail Singh Bhindranwale who led the Sikh resistance against the imperial Delhi. Shortsighted analysts instead of finding fault with India’s policy of exploitation and suppression are blaming Sant Bhindranwale for the crisis.

India’s ruling class tried to grapple with the acute economic problems by inviting the M.F. and multinational capital and as a step towards creating a congenial climate brought about certain cosmetic liberalization changes. But as WSN forewarned in the wake of these changes no amount of economic liberalization will help unless the country’s polity is genuinely. This implies resolution of problems politically and scaling down of the heavily militarized state. But as noted above a vast body of vested interests stand in the way of political liberalization and demilitarization. It is content to blame Sant Bhindranwale or Pakistan for India’s ills. This suicidal policy finds reflection for instance in Punjab with incorrigible Delhi instead of learning lessons from the past experience trying to install in fake power corrupt Akali gangs and through them to continue its policy of looting Punjab and its natural and manmade wealth. Its unwilling to do as little as to transfer a small Punjabi speaking town as Chandigarh to Punjab. For this

Delhi wants heavy price water worth a thousand times the net worth of public buildings in Chandigarh to appease the Hindu Haryana and Rajasthan. The corrupt Akalis are willing to pay the price provided they are allowed to swindle whatever is left of the states exchequer.

While the growing realization of the need for political reforms and for strengthening democracy among a section of democrats mainly nonparty intelligentsia is a welcome development the WSN is pessimistic about the power and effectiveness of this small section Of India’s population. The other segment represented by Hindu fundamentalist organizations such as Congress(I) BJ.P.C.P.(M) CPI and their fellow travelling groups as well as India’s steel frame the Indian Administrative service the Indian Police Service and the like supported by the Brahminical Press in general the judiciary and the executive India will break rather than reform. There will be a lot of bloodshed in the process. The casualty will be democracy and civil by: These will triumph only after India disintegrates and not before.

Article extracted from this publication >> January 24, 1992