[Review] Politico-Economic landscape of Andhra : K. Balagopal
Prasad Chodavarapu (chprasad@hotmail.com)
Thu, 28 Aug 1997 08:27:01 PDT
50th anniversary of independence gave all of us an opportunity to mull
over what went awfully wrong in the way we rule our country. Half a
century of self rule did not exactly transform our motherland into
that dreamland of Tagore "where the head is held high...". Why? Where
did we go wrong? Important questions for which there is no one answer.
Or so, i thought until i came across Sri K. Balagopal's essay on
politico-economic life in Andhra. Good analysis is always simple but
rigorous, based on facts, tallies with our experiences but more than
all that, shows us the way forward. This essay does exactly that when
it discusses the political economy of andhra in the larger context of
class struggle through centuries of india's past. The reader would just
not be able to resist saying "aha!" in agreement as the author discusses
how the policies of each and every indian administration, from moghuls,
to the british, to today's rulers, protected and perpetuated the hold of
rural rich classes on the economy and lives of the lower classes; how
"development" always resulted in the accumulation of wealth by these
classes and pushed the lower
classes into a deeper abyss; how the lower and middle classes were
sought to be silenced by offering subsidies and when not possible,
draconian suppression was unleashed; how the congress party, that ruled
india for over 40 years was nothing but a coalition of upper classes
trying to keep the forces of lower classes at bay; how real grassroot
public movements against this centuries old power structure petered out
one by one due to a lack of vision and co-ordination; how economic
policies based on capitalistic principles do not result in any extended
capital reproduction in India; how none of the
agricultural "development" programmes are made for the betterment of the
small farmer and only result in public money funding non-taxable wealth
generation for the rural rich and how "funnily" the ruling classes now
think that they lost their share of the plunder to bad
economic policies and unleash more suffering on people with their
so-called policy of liberalisation.
For all this and much more, to know about the heart of india's problems,
and to understand how the simple thread of domination by ruling classes
is running like a PMM(perpertual motion machine) through centuries, read
Sri Balagopal's essay on the politico-economic landscape of Andhra.
[A copy of Sri Balagopal's essay was published in the souvenir of the
recently concluded TANA conference at LosAngeles, CA]
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