India: workers shot as economy staggers. The Road to Revolution

SIX months before the fourth Indian general election, the political and economic crisis of Mrs. Gandhi's government threatens to flare up into violent class struggles.

As the desperate food shortage leads to riots into which the army has to be called, the possibilities of a military coup is openly talked about.

Parliamentary fisticuffs only represent a pale reflection of the ever-rising violence based on hunger, now seen in several areas.

In Assam, for example, police shot several workers last week during an attempt to break into a rice store, as well as in a strike at the Durgapur steel plant. In Bihar opposition party leaders have been arrested, as a general strike against soaring prices was called.

It is still two months before the rice harvest and no one knows how supplies can be maintained during September, even on present famine levels.

A question mark hangs over Mrs. Gandhi's regime. Can she hold Congress together?

As the economic crisis deepens, can this precarious alliance of conflicting layers and national groups of capitalists maintain its hold over the masses?

The party president, Kamaraj, is well-known to be entirely opposed to the government's economic policy.

Problems

June's devaluation of the rupee highlights all the problems of this policy, and its interaction with the world problems of imperialism.

A devaluation is supposed to solve balance of payments difficulties, by reducing imports and making exports more competitive.

But Indian imports had already been cut to the bone by physical controls imposed in previous crises. Moreover, exporters are now going to face a completely different world market from the period of post-war expansion.

The gap used to be filled by foreign aid. But, despite appeasement of Johnson, for example, in relation to Vietnam, US aid is severely restricted by the problems of the dollar itself.

What follows now is mass starvation, enforced by international finance capital.

The 1947 partition, from which the Congress regime emerged, was a compromise between Indian capitalism and British imperialism. The object of the deal on both sides was to halt or divert the Asian revolutionary tide.

Not resolved

In the post-war boom conditions of the world market, and with the aid of imperialist subsidies, expansion of the Indian economy could stagger forward. But nothing was resolved, nor could it be under the rule of capital, tied to world imperialism.

Neither national nor agrarian problems could be tackled by the various Congress administrations.

The consequent stagnation of agriculture inevitably held back and distorted industrial development, despite all the 'plans'.

Only drastic land re-distribution and nationalization and workers' control of industry can lay the basis for economic advance and the elimination of hunger.

Hitherto, Stalinism has held back and misled the powerful Indian working class from the political action necessary for such a solution.

The building of a section of the Fourth International, linking the Indian workers' revolution with the metropolitan struggles against world capitalism, is now the most vital task in the Indian sub-continent.