Murder of the Maobadi – Mamata’s Fatal Flaw? (contd)
Many looked upon their lands as their savings bank account into which they accumulated their earnings and helped the asset grow in value and worth. Mamata fought on the side of the peasant to secure for them their only asset as social security. It was a fight for social security against the increasing uncertainty that global capital invariably brings with it. The CPIM was too ineffectual to be able to resist global capital and gave in to the Tatas and the Jindals, both rising players in the global arena of steel, power, raw materials, logistics, trade and real estate. Mamata took on their might.
Mamata’s indefatigable defence of local property in the face of global capital also brings her ideology very close to that of the Maoists. The Maoists are indigenous people who we call as adivasis; their asset is ecology consisting of forests, biodiversity, water tables and quality of soil. The adivasis have a very different organization of economics that rests very heavily on food security; much of the tribal isolation is also due to the peculiar nature of food security where food production must be withheld from the market forces; it must be bartered to the members of the community who in turn offer their labour much needed to diversify the tribal economy.
Markets are notorious for homogenization of crop production, lowering the fertility of soil, over exploiting ground water and reducing food value and finally bringing about food insecurity through squeezing margins at the producer’s end while raising the same at the retail end as the latter must cover the ever rising rentals in metropolises. Maoists resist the market and because of it, the society at large. Yet to say that the adivasis are especially attached their pristine ways of life is sheer ignorance. In my extensive travels in Jharkhand I have learnt that Adivasis pursue a way of life where high thinking especially the pursuit of scientific knowledge is at the very centre.
Little children want to be scientists, women want to be able to discover principles of microbiology to be able to defeat the monopolists selling them fertilizers and pesticides; men wish to be able to master mechanics and the science of materials to be able to procure basic materials for building homes, bunds, towers and roads. For all such pursuits one needs food security and this is done by preserving the ecology, something that market forces erode. The Maoists desire similar protection for their assets as the farmers need for theirs. When Mamata defended such local assets in Singur and Nandigram, the Maoists hailed her as their saviour too.
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