Vijay Prashad
This
crime was committed under the shadow of the State Assembly in Hyderabad (Andhra
Pradesh, India). For three quarters of an hour the guns of the police tore
through the thousands of people, hundreds fell, two never to rise again. The
streets could not hide the wounded and dead. Images of the slaughter flew across
the airwaves into cables, and to the television sets of distant audiences.
Nobody hid this crime. This crime was committed in the middle of the day.
And
the US papers said nothing. Nor did Bill Clinton, friend of the man whose troops
neglected every rule that regulates their actions, Chandrababu Naidu, Chief
Minister of Andhra Pradesh, also known as Naidu.Com, King of the Indo-Internet
of High-Tech Hyderabad.
For
three months this state in India has been engulfed with struggles led by a vast,
and novel coalition of the Left. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) joined
with their Left Front partners the Communist Party of India, and both in turn
made common cause with two Maoist (or Naxalite) outfits, Communist Party of
India (Marxist-Leninist) and the CPIML (New Democracy). To top it off this Left
ensemble allied with the Congress Party (that tired and tattered former monolith
whose path down the right was well-crafted by the IMF in the early 1990s). The
Left demanded a roll-back in the rates for power (electricity), which had been
raised through the roof by the ruling Telugu Desam government (who are in a
rather tenuous alliance with the Hindu Right in New Delhi). The government was
obdurate. Too much is at stake, since the state government has vested its fate
in the hands of a kind of Cyber-Structural Adjustment: in 1996 the Andhra
Pradesh government signed an agreement with the World Bank called the Andhra
Pradesh Economic Restructuring Project. There is nothing special about Andhra
Pradesh in here, since it is the same old tonic, the same tired medicine from
the discredited quack. It asks for the government to withdraw services from the
water and power sector and to reduce government employees. The task was to
privatize electricity generation and distribution. In February 1999 the World
Bank and the Naidu government signed a five year agreement to get the state Rs.
40 billion ($880 million) in five installments in return for a 15% increase in
power rates per year. Since Naidu up for election, the World Bank agreed to
postpone the measures till after the vote (so much for free elections) and now
consumers are hit with at least a 100% hike in fees per unit of power. The
parallel is with the Indian state of Maharashtra, where the private power
company is that old US giant, Enron (I have written about this nexus in
<People’s Democracy,> and the article is available at the Corporate
Watch website).
On
24 March 2000, Big Bill met Naidu.Com and told him that ‘the Andhra Pradesh CEO
was very much known in the US and very much admired.’ He praised Naidu.Com for
his reforms and said that ‘little wonder that Hyderabad is now known as
Cyberabad.’ During their mutual love fest, and after his very brief stay in the
city, Big Bill noted that ‘if you look at the example of this city and this
state, you will realize that good governance is also necessary,’ and ‘the Chief
Minister’s role in accomplishing this is evident.’ What must these people mean
by ‘good governance’? Yes, the Internet monopolies have flocked to Cyberabad,
but not with the same numbers as these have gone to nearby Bangalore (in the
state of Karnataka). But the social indicators in Andhra Pradesh are abhorrent
and the ‘reforms’ seem to only produce social misery for the people, many of
whom came out for the agitation led by the Left on August 28, 2000.
And
that’s when the police opened fire. No warning, no shots in the air, just half
an hour to forty five minutes of gunfire toward and around the protestors. This
is ‘good governance’? (By the way, the state authorities intervened with cable
operators to remove the segments on the police firing from television. More
‘good governance’?) The people marched toward the state assembly, with an
agreement to remain peaceful. Women’s organizations led the march, and in a
report from the All-India Democratic Women’s Association (www.aidwa.org), it
becomes clear that the police was ruthless. One woman, Mamta, noted that ‘the
male police pulled my kurta [shirt] right up and tore it. I was lifted by them
and thrown on the [barbed] wire [fence].’ Another, Devi, noted that ‘the
[police] men surrounded me and started pulling my clothes. I protested. They
used filthy language and said we will teach you to come to demonstrations and
tore my kurta and pulled my salwar [top-cloth].’ This is the state that brags
about the ’empowerment of women’; not in evidence on August 28th.
When
the police blocked them, the people began to court arrest. Things went awry. The
bullets started to fly, and two men lay dead. One of them, Vishnu Vardha Reddy,
was a CPM activist. I quote from the AIDWA report about him: ‘Vishnu Vardha
Reddy was targeted and killed by the police. He was 23 years old. This is what
his mother Durgamma said, "Vishnu was a gentle boy. He was working in a
factory called Aquapure earning about Rs. 1500 rupees a month. We come from
Tufran village of Medak district where we have a little land. We had to come to
Hyderabad to stay with Vishnu as my only other son Anji Reddy who was older than
Vishnu was killed in a traffic accident a month and a half ago. I do not know
whether it was an accident or whether he committed suicide. He was very
disturbed. He had taken a loan of a lakh [100,000] of rupees from the money
lender in the village to buy a pump. But the ground water level in our village
is very low. The richer people including our neighbour has a more powerful pump
at 225 feet which pulls all the water. My elder son had to dig twice to get the
water but the pump burned. He said he was ruined. One day he had gone out for
some work. Only his dead body came back. He left behind his wife and two little
children. We could not stay in the village because the money lender wanted the
money. So we came to Vishnu. He used to work very hard and then he used to do
work for the other workers. He used to tell me ‘we should do good work for the
people.’ On August 28th he went as usual. I did not know that he was going for a
demonstration. But later some people came to us and said amma [mother] come
quickly your son is hurt. But he was not hurt. He was dead. They killed him,
they killed my gentle son." Vishnu did not threaten anyone’s life. He did
not indulge in any violence. He was shot dead by the police during the
indiscriminate firing mentioned above. The Government has refused to give his
family, of which he was the only earning member, having lost his brother only a
month earlier, any compensation. This is an urgent issue which needs to be
addressed.’
Indeed,
it needs to be addressed, both in India (as it is by the Left) and in the US
(which emboldens people like Naidu against the wishes of the people). Is the US
content with the propagation of this kind of ‘democracy’? On the bridges to the
21st Century, lie the bodies of the people of Hyderabad. We are responsible for
this, as much as the oligarchy which now rules the state. And now in San Diego,
California, angered struggle against a 300% increase in power rates show us how
these fights are more than about solidarity. Private power (in both senses of
the term) is killing us. And nobody is hiding this crime.
If
you are interested in helping Vishnu’s family, contact AIDWA at All India
Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), 23, Vital Bhai Patel House, Rafi Marg,
New Delhi-110001, India, Phone : 3710476; Fax: 371-6515; Email: [email protected].