*Let me first quote from J. Devika's response to Dr.KP.Aravindan's criticism
*
*the left's achievements after this did not touch upon redistribution of
productive resources to the agricultural working classes. Indeed, we have
seen the expansion of mass welfare — mass housing, fixing minimum wages,
making available welfare pensions through welfare funds for unorganised
sector workers, and so on.We have also seen the welfare system's indirect
acknowledgement of the rise of the consumer-citizen in Kerala — for
instance, in the state-run Maveli stores.....*
*The PPC introduced the liberal promise by which the poor were to be
integrated into the market as small entreprenuers with plenty of state
support through the new institutions of local self-government– in training,
credit, subsidies, infrastructure, and markets.This was to be matched with
an expansion of 'minimum entitlements' — especially housing and water
supply............*
*whether the demand for productive land is the same as the presently
available sure-fire medicine for poverty alleviation, the minimum
entitlement, or whether productive land should be made into the new minimum
entitlement.......*
*from Ambedkar to Amartya Sen dragged in*
*I think a significantly valid critique of the developmental agenda of the
mainstream Left entrenched in the quagmire of neoliberalism and bygone
conservativism of Trade unionism is enabled by Devika. Amartya Sen's
"entitlement and capability" approach still governs minimalist welfarisit
developmental pursuit of the Left towards the poor and the landless
counter-weighed on the another side with pursuits of neo-liberal capital
accumulation.
Left consistently has promoted discussion of development evacuating the
politics in several ways like
1. As sure shot pragmatic poverty allievation projects and empowerment
including Kudumabsree. 2. NGOization of pressing developmental concerns
through the methods of empirical classification and designing of polices 3.
Any politicization of the poverty issue is encountered with scathing
reference that such politicizations are the handiwork of people with "no
responibilites" .
In this circumstance, let me here at length quote Kalyan Sanyal from his
work "Rethinking Capitalist Development: Primitive accumulation,
Governmentality and Post-colonial capitalism" (routledge, 2007). This work
is very significant in many dimensions as it interrogates the very subject
of Development Economics. This work is discussed at length by Partha
Chaterjee in his new epw article. Leaving aside the other major as well as
core concern of the work, I intend to focus on the Sanyal's critique of Sen
model. This is quite significant to the policy initiatives of previous and
present periods of LDF govt.
" The limitation of development economics was that its exclusive focus on
the question of growth had turned the means to end in itself, keeping the
real ends out of sight....
Sen presents two crucial concepts, "entitlements and capability" that
provide a new space of development he defines....What entitlement refers to
the commodity bundle a person can command, capability refers to what the
person can do... development now means the expansion of the set of
capabilities and entitlements of target group. .,...task of the development
practitioners is to "design efficient" policies that will produce well-being
of the poor at the minimum cost in terms of resources.....
Thus is Sen's analysis, development as the space of governmentality is
further crystallized and consolidated; it is space where target groups are
to be identfied and addressed in terms of the technolgies of goverenance.
The point that needs to be stressed here is that the poor posited by the
discourse as the target of the policy is an empirical category identifiable
in terms of empirically observable characteristics. S/he is one without
access to an arbitrarily and exogenously consumption basket as in the basic
needs approach; or one who does not have the capabilities necessary for
functioning in society, as in the capability approach. Thus the
developmental target is first set and then the poor is indentified and
marked as the member of the population group in terms of his/her
empirically observable deficiencies. This poor as a target of policy is very
different from the one who inhabited the space of underdevelopment in the
earlier conceptualization of the dual economy in terms of the traditional
modern division. There the traditional economy was depicted in terms of an
inner logic of its own, a logic that constituted its inner essence and the
inhabitants of that economy were described in terms of that essence. But
Governmentality dispenses with the necessity of theoretically defining the
poor; it constitutes him as an empirical category on which the techniques of
governance can be applied"....
And Kalayan Sanyal critiquing this approach demonstrates how ..."the
(welfarist) discourse once again distances development from the world of
politics by ridding the question of poverty of its political dimension. It
posits the realm of poverty as distinct and separate from the realm of
accumulation, and claims that improving the conditions of the population
groups inhabiting the former realm is only a matter of designing appropriate
public policies."
....
Thus the discourse subverts the possibility of locating poverty in a
politically contested terrain by displacing the entire question onto the the
"politically neutral" terrain of governmentality..."
(page 176-180) *
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Rajeeve Chelanat <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Devika said it right. The keralite middle class(and the indian as
> well)has become suspicious of these landless people who fight for
> their survival and for CPM and all other parties, it is more
> profitable to align with the middle class than with the landless poor
> folks.
>
> The recent statements of Pinarayi on the so called 'second land
> reforms' and on land and its utility, clearly state that land is for
> the real estate people and SEZ protagonists and never for those who
> fight for that. Even the chief advocate of this second land reform,
> the fiery VS. What did he do in Moolambally and now in Chengara? What
> did he do with those lands which he cunningly sold to those smart city
> boys? And now, on whose behalf he talks? Never for the landless dalits
> and backward downtrodden people.
>
> But one thing too is much more important. The chances of being such
> struggles being hijacked, as is slowly showing in Nandigram, where,
> people like mamta, who have much higher ambitions about land and
> estates, had taken over the charge of the struggle. And now, all set
> to sit and talk with the great budha of our times. Both know each
> other well. Both are brokers. Real and virtual.
>
> Meanwhile, all those people who fight for justice and land for
> survival, and the marginalized political fronts labelled as maoists
> and terrorists and naxalites are more and more sidelined. For media,
> bureaucracy and all others, including the left, these naxalites and
> maoists are mere terrorists.
>
> But fortunately, even some of the middle class segement are now being
> slowly affected by the land grab of the government. In fact it is not
> the government who is doing the plundering, but the benevolent
> corporates and consortiums, all in the name of development.
>
> Fight for the landless, fight against these revisionist lefties, and
> fight againt the imperialist and neo-liberal corporates and their
> brokers.
>
> Regards
>
> On 20 Aug, 18:31, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > Dear Dr Aravindan
> >
> > Thanks for your response to my post on kafila.
> >
> > As you say, 'abuse is cheap, solutions are difficult'. That's
> > precisely the problem. I'm so used to being abused by old friends as a
> > "well-heeled revolutionary" -- in fact in a world where the ill-heeled
> > revolutionaries are hounded as maoists and criminals. In any case I
> > regard renunciation as a strategy of power -- the renouncer gains such
> > moral power over everyone else that they keep shut. So no, I'm
> > unapologetic about being "well-heeled" (whatever that means!) and
> > indeed will not keep my mouth shut. And yes, I haven't been a PPC
> > activist. But that doesn't mean that I can't study it. If that is the
> > case, we all better keep our mouths shut about deprivation. Only the
> > deprived should speak of deprivation. I try to listen to the deprived.
> > I don't try not to sit on judgement about their words.
> >
> > I who find the trade unions' blockade (please don't say that the CITU
> > is the least of these)appaling, am not arguing for one-shot solutions
> > to landlessness at Chengara or elsewhere. Certainly, the question of
> > finding land, of deciding who deserves and who doesn't, of planning a
> > strategy for farming the land, all these are complex and need to be
> > thought out in detail, by all concerned including the government and
> > the political parties. But is that happening? This struggle has been
> > on since one year. Why has the process of deliberation not started
> > yet?
> >
> > More importantly, why are we the middle class so bothered when poor
> > people demand to have a say in how land should be utilised? Why can't
> > have someone have an opinion different from the progressive middle-
> > class consensus on SEZs? Of course we are delighted with our SEZs
> > (that's where our kids, raised on Eureka and Sastragati,to go and
> > work, ultimately, like good "well-heeled" middle class kids). So the
> > rise of the middle-class isn't something happening out there --it is
> > happening through us. The difference is between middle-class who think
> > that the poor have a right to advance demands and fight for them in
> > their own right and under their own name in a democracy, and the
> > middle-class which is suspicious of the poor.
> >
> > If the CPM claims to be leftist, it should do better than call the
> > people at Chengara criminals; it should certainly do better than turn
> > workers on them (well, please don't say that the CITU is just a minor
> > presence among the workers!). What would have AKG done in this
> > context, I'm forced to think? Certainly he wouldn't have threatened
> > the people at Chengara with "police armed with horns and thorns" (VS
> > to Laha Gopalan). Again, I'm not at all opposed in toto to liberal
> > welfarism and Kerala's 'third-way' . I think small capitalism is much
> > better than the neoliberal ugliness we have to now confront, and that
> > it could finally free people from being governmental categories
> > eternally subject to state welfare. But that does not mean that we can
> > let the left forget that the 'first' land reform agenda remains
> > incomplete -- and the very incompleteness does show that caste is very
> > much alive in Kerala,in secularised form. By all means, let us
> > integrate citizens into the market on terms favourable to them -- but
> > that is no answer to the question of caste injustice. And minimum
> > entitlements to house plots or housing don't resolve that.
> > Irrespective of whether the second land reform is to come or not, the
> > first should be completed.
> >
> > "Honest efforts to empower the poor should not be scoffed at" -- true
> > indeed. But I beg to differ about the meaning of 'empowerment'. If the
> > poor were integrated into the market advantageously, as the PPC
> > promised, I'd say that this was a step towards empowerment towards
> > full citizenship. But better scholars than I -- and indeed the
> > government itself -- reveal how the local bodies in Kerala have
> > focused not on furthering production but on welfare handouts. That
> > helps survival -- poverty management -- but not necessarily
> > citizenship. That is, unfortunately, the World Bank's interpretation
> > of Amartya Sen's ethical individualism. And indeed, a strategy that
> > preserves the wealth of the middle-class elite, and indeed, the moral
> > superiority of the ("medium-heeled"?)development activist. Chengara
> > troubles the leftist middle class not because it is against the left
> > agenda -- it seeks its completion. It troubles the leftist middle-
> > class intelligensia because those who are expected to be silent are
> > talking. What could be worse?
> >
> > Devika
> >
>
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