Reservations and upper castes’ backlash

The Constitution of India had to accept reservation for the socio-economicallyunprivileged castes and tribes in India. In clauses 340, 341 and 342 of the Constitution the question of reservation was incorporated for the SCs, STc and OBCs. Even after half a century reservations have been ignored or half-heartedly accepted. Commissions after Commissions were set up but the net result was not impressive. In fact even for the dalit reservation quota (except for the Class IV sweeper category) are to quite an extent not filled up. Only when the Mandal Commission Report was tabled and a stormy wind passed throughout India in 1991 the question of caste-based deprivation,the question of 27% reservation in the central government services for the OBCs as well as upper caste frenzy against reservation on a wide scale brought forth the pertinent question of OBC reservation to centre stage. The current country wide debate and upper caste hideous move to banish reservation policy have come up in the wake of the Arjun Singh announcement to reserve 27% seats for the OBCs in all educational institution under the purview of the central government. It should be made clear here that the Constitutional

provisions of reservation are only a partial acknowledgement of the wide inequalities based on the caste system and its…….

read complete article on link- http://peoplesmarch.googlepages.com/Jun-Jul2006.pdf

Politics of Packages & the Packaging of Politics

Indian Prime Minister Faces the Dead Farmer Problem

By P. SAINATH

FARMERS ACROSS the land will doubtless be ecstatic on learning there is now one more committee — to look into debt relief. Gee, another committee. Just what we needed. Who knows, it might even do something, like form a sub-committee. But the joy might be hard to sustain. It’s all part of a `package.’ That too is not a new thing. Governments in this country have handled more packages than FedEx. My all-time favourite is the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput or KBK package, which has outlasted four Prime Ministers and seen more variations than Rubik’s Cube.

Every imaginable programme for which funds already exist has been merged or purged from the KBK development package at some point. A Rs.4,750 crore package swelled to Rs.6,500 crore over a decade. Of which only Rs.360 crore actually showed up till 2004. Even from that paltry sum, money was diverted for the total literacy program. [A crore in Indian numbering is ten million; a lakh is 100,000. $1 equals about 44 rupees. Eds.]

The ‘package’ declared at the end of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s trip to Vidharbha will have little or no impact on the crisis there. Neither in the short run nor in the long term. The visit’s political fallout is another matter. No one can now deny a major agrarian crisis exists. Dr. Singh’s journey thoroughly exposed the Maharashtra Government and the Union Agriculture Ministry. It also brought — if for a week — some media focus on the crisis. Well on the farm suicides, at least.

Yet the suicides are the effect, not the cause, of a much wider agrarian distress. The death count is not the story but a window to it. There are millions of farm households across the country that have not seen suicides but whose conditions are similar to those that have. They too are in deep trouble.

Yet the question will be asked — will farmers’ suicides in Vidharbha halt now that there’s a financial `package’ to bring it relief? The answer is no. The deaths do have seasonal highs and lows. But a relative decline now would have little to do with the measures announced at the end of the Prime Minister’s visit. The number of suicides in the 10-day run-up to his trip: 34. The number in 10 days after he left: 34.

It was no one’s case that farm suicides would end with the visit. But people wanted steps that would slow the bleeding and restore hope. That did not happen.

The first thing the Prime Minister could have done or made the State Government do, was to restore the `advance bonus’ of Rs.500 a quintal for cotton. The State withdrew this in May 2005. Appeals by growers — and even by the National Commission on Farmers (NCF) — were ignored. We knew all hell would break loose. It did. If suicide numbers were high when the price of cotton was Rs.2,250, how could things get better when it fell to Rs.1,700 a quintal? That too due to state policy? (There is also no mention in the new deal of a `price stabilisation fund’ called for by the NCF to protect farmers against the shock of plummeting prices.)

The final ‘package’ ignored this vital demand. Nor did it announce a debt waiver though many in power know there is no escape from such a measure. Some government of India will have to do this at some point. Sure, it would draw flak and cries of ‘fiscal imprudence’ from the ideologically devout. (Though, when tens of thousands of crores are written off for a handful of industrialists, that is barely reported. Unlike that pampered lot, farmers have landed where they are due to policies hostile to agriculture for over a decade.)

Had there been a waiver of debt of up to just Rs.25,000, more than 80 per cent of Vidharbha’s farmers would no longer have owed the banks money. People thought that waiver would come. It didn’t and the sense of being let down is great. This matters across the country, too. Indebtedness amongst farm households has almost doubled in the past decade.

The good aspect of the `package’ was, of course, the promise of crop loans to all farmers across the board. This could help many tide over the current season. But the interest waiver of Rs.712 crore mainly helps banks that have been hostile to farm lending. And some of the banks were anyway looted by the rich barons of the ruling elite, not by poor farmers. The move does not put a new rupee in the farmer’s pocket. Since the principal amount has not been waived, the debt crisis will renew itself rapidly. Besides, there is no help with seed or other inputs. Not even a promise of it.

The package gives Rs.2177 crore to 82 major and medium and 442 minor irrigation projects in the six districts it covers. Much of this simply revises book entries. That is, it draws money from existing programs. If all these schemes were completed tomorrow, they would not add three per cent of acreage to irrigated area. That, in a region where irrigated land adds up to just 11 per cent of the total. Sure, people want water. But all problems are not due to lack of irrigation. Distress suicides have occurred in irrigated parts of Punjab and Andhra Pradesh.

There was and is total silence on the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority Act, 2005. This regressive law puts irrigation beyond the reach of all except corporate farmers. It could raise irrigation costs by thousands of rupees per acre. It also allows an unelected authority to compel farmers to use drip or sprinkler irrigation. Those unable to pay the huge rate hikes in the offing could face fines of up to ten times the new charges. They could also face six months imprisonment. And yes, farmers with more than two children pay one and a half times those rates anyway.

The new package is silent on this. It has nothing for the 85 per cent non-irrigated farmers now shut out from even the chance of having that facility. Its gift of Rs.225 crore for horticulture and Rs.87 crore for drip irrigation will touch only those who already have access to water.

There is also not a whisper of incentives for food crops in the ‘package’. The rebirth of jowar [sorghum bicolor] would have helped farmer, soil, and food security. Suicides are far higher among cash crop farmers than among food crop growers here. It would also have seen the revival of livestock — jowar is where the fodder comes from. Instead, there is Rs.180 crore for “seed replacement.” This sounds like gifting big bucks to people pushing Bt and other exotic seed that would further ruin farmers here. The same sum could have been used for an incentive of Rs.1000 per acre for growing jowar. Instead, we got notions like gifting a thousand high yielding cows to farmers in each of six districts here. For those with no access to fodder and struggling to feed their families, these cows will eat them out of hearth and home.

Meanwhile, the Maharashtra Government has raised its own ‘relief package’ for Vidharbha farmers from Rs.1075 crore to over Rs.1300 crore. Since no one ever took this deal seriously, it matters little. The first commissioner in charge of this ‘package’ left after weeks, disbursing nothing. He was never given the money to do so. His replacement had barely unpacked his bags when he went off to do poll duty in Tamil Nadu. So months passed with nothing happening. Except, of course, the suicides. Those kept happening.

Meanwhile, the Union Agriculture Ministry, feeling left out, kept threatening its own ‘package’ for some months. Then it said it had drawn up one that the Prime Minister would announce in Vidharbha. Like the Prime Minister was its postman or PRO. Still, it meant there was one more ‘package’ in the running.

None of these has a word on the strengthening of cotton procurement by the state machinery. With big corporations now free to directly buy and sell in any quantities they wish, prices will be steadily pushed down by cartels. The media focus, of course, is on the initial ‘higher price’ they seem to offer. So it’s barely noticed that the price takes a dive very soon after.

Sadly, what might have been a useful short-term remedy was drowned in flawed national policy that remains anti-farmer. Dragged down by double standards on ‘fiscal imprudence.’ Never allowed to meet people’s real needs. The ‘Vidharbha package’ also ran aground on the rocky shores of State politics. Who would get the ‘credit’ for bringing relief? Who would land the blame for years of neglect? Not a single top leader of Maharashtra had entered a grieving household prior to the Prime Minister’s visit. So his doing so would be a real problem, disgracing them in the public eye. That saw a gang-up to undermine the tour and its agenda. Dr. Singh’s visit to a village like Koljhari in Yavatmal was scuttled for reasons plainly false.

Ultimately, though, you cannot have a ‘package’ going one way while policy moves in the reverse direction. Vidharbha’s farmers sought urgent relief. They find themselves left only with packaging.

P. Sainath is the rural affairs editor of The Hindu, where this piece originally ran. He is the author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought.Sainath can be reached at: psainath@vsnl.com.

Nepal–July2006

Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. Its July-August 2006 issue features the following editorial on the current situation in Nepal. — ED.

In the year since the last monsoon, nothing has held out more hope for humanity than events in Nepal.

Last summer Nepal was divided in two, and torn by civil war. The first (primarily urban) area was in the control of the autocratic monarchy and consisted of the valley of Nepal with the central government and communications centers in Kathmandu, the few other urban areas, army bases in and near district towns, and the motorable roads that connect them.

But the great majority of the population (more than eighty percent) lived in areas in which the central government had ceased to function, where people’s governments were emerging, under the revolutionary leadership of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

The monarchy was without popular support but was sustained by the Royal Nepal Army, equipped and advised by the United States and elements of the Indian security services with close ties to the BJP. In accordance with U.S. practice in Latin America (”Plan Colombia”), the Royal Nepal Army targeted civilians in liberated rural areas from armed helicopters and “disappeared” and tortured suspects. U.S. advisers urged the creation of death squad vigilantes in rural areas, and the first such squads were formed (notably in the Kapilvastu region in the Terai).

In the urban areas, divisions between the traditional parliamentary political leadership and the revolutionaries prevented effective opposition to the autocratic monarchy.

On August 7, 2005, the revolutionary People’s Liberation Army in a frontal assault destroyed the army base camp at Pili in Kalikot district, capturing many prisoners and a major cache of arms and ammunition. This victory proved a turning point.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in September 2005 gathered a plenary meeting of its Central Committee, successfully resolved an unhealthy internal struggle without splits or expulsions, and set out a plan of action that has led to a striking people’s victory. A unilateral three-month truce was declared on September 17, 2005, while negotiations went forward with the seven parliamentary parties (”SPA”) for a joint urban mobilization against the autocratic monarchy. The result was the “12 Point Agreement” set out in these pages in our December 2005 edition. Key was the agreement to call elections for a Constituent Assembly to decide the future of Nepal.

An attempt by the autocratic monarchy to hold elections for municipal offices in January 2006 failed in the face of a mass boycott. Candidates had to be given protection at army bases. In April 2006, urban demonstrations for the calling of a Constituent Assembly built one upon the next despite “shoot on sight” curfews. Finally, the commanders of the armed police force and army could no longer rely upon their troops to fire on the unarmed demonstrators. At this point the generals informed the palace that its time had come.

In a last desperate bid to split the revolutionaries from the parliamentary political parties, the palace called back into session the failed parliament elected in 1999. But the expired parliament could not defy the formidable mass movement. Resolutions were passed unanimously calling for elections to a Constituent Assembly, stripping the palace of its governmental role and command of the Nepal Army. A government of the SPA that had negotiated the 12 Point Agreement was formed (the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party chose to remain outside the government) to administer the urban areas that had been under the control of the monarchy.

On June 16, 2006, the political parties of this government of the urban areas and the leadership of the CPN(M), representing the governments of the rest of the nation, reached an “8 Point Agreement” setting out the conditions making possible immediate and fair elections to a Constituent Assembly as demanded by the popular movements. Its terms (in unofficial translation) are as follows:

1. Effectively and honestly implement the 12-point understanding reached between the SPA and Maoists in November last year and the 25-point Ceasefire Code of Conduct signed between the SPA government and CPN-Maoist on May 26 this year
2. Commitment to democratic norms and values including competitive multi-party system, civic liberties, fundamental rights, human rights, press freedom, and the concept of rule of law and carry out each other’s activities in a peaceful manner.
3. Request the United Nations to help in the monitoring and management of the armies and arms of both government and Maoist sides for a free and fair election to the Constituent Assembly.
4. Guarantee the democratic rights achieved through the 1990 Popular Movement and the recent historic People’s Movement; draft an interim constitution based on the 12-point understanding and the ceasefire Code of Conduct; form an interim government accordingly; announce the dates for constituent assembly elections; dissolve the House of Representatives through consensus after making alternative arrangement; dissolve the People’s Governments of CPN-Maoist.
5. Decide issues of national interests having long-term effects through consensus.
6. Guarantee the fundamental right of the Nepali people to participate in the constituent assembly elections without any fear, influence, threat and violence. Invite international observation and monitoring during the elections as per the need.
7. Bring about a forward-looking restructuring of the state so as to resolve the class-based, racial, regional and gender-based problems through constituent assembly elections. Transform the ceasefire between the Nepal Government and CPN-Maoist into permanent peace by focusing on democracy, peace, prosperity, forward-looking change and the country’s independence, sovereignty and pride, and express commitment to resolve the problem through talks
8. The government and Maoist talks teams have been directed to accomplish all tasks related to above-mentioned points without any delay.

The committee to draft an interim constitution based on the 12-point understanding and the ceasefire Code of Conduct has set to work, and its draft is expected in late July. The draft will form the basis on which the various existing governments in Nepal can be merged into a single government tasked with conducting the Constituent Assembly elections. The Nepal Army and the PLA will both be under the command of this new merged government. In short, a path to a peaceful and democratic future in Nepal has opened up as a result of exemplary revolutionary struggle. No such hopeful development has occurred anywhere in many years.

But the enemies of peace in Nepal, above all the United States, threaten these achievements. At the end of June, U.S. Ambassador Moriarty denounced the revolutionaries for not permitting the new government formed at the urban center to take control in the liberated rural areas. Moriarty attacked the agreement providing for equal treatment of the erstwhile Royal Nepal Army and the PLA in the period leading up to the Constituent Assembly elections. Moriarty demanded that the PLA disarm — but not the Nepal Army. In fact, a segment of the officer corps of the RNA remains the most significant U.S. “asset” in Nepal. This group of officers have been trained in the United States, have operated in the field torturing and killing on the “advice” of U.S. “anti-terror” specialists, and have U.S. visas and families in the United States. No peace and no democracy can be secure so long as units such as the infamous “Ranger Battalion” remain under, in effect, U.S. command.

The U.S. demand was accompanied by a threat that monetary “aid” would be withheld if, as required by the 8 Point Agreement, an interim government that includes revolutionaries is formed to conduct Constituent Assembly elections. We only wish this were true. Instead, we are certain that as the elections approach a flood of U.S. money (disguised in part as from NGO or even Nepali sources) shall be distributed in Nepal along the lines of the CIA operations in the Ukraine or Venezuela. All honest Nepalis must be on guard against these well-rehearsed forms of imperialist intervention.

This summer shall expose those who secretly wish to avoid elections for a Constituent Assembly and seek a renewed civil war. The key to identify such elements is to note those who sign on to the U.S. demands — no interim government including armed revolutionaries, no equal treatment of PLA and RNA.

This division extends to South Block. Anticipating the impending collapse of the monarchy under the mass upsurge of the Nepali people and under pressure from the Indian left parliamentary parties, the Ministry of External Affairs distanced itself from the palace. Limited assistance was permitted to the process that led to the 12 Point Agreement and peace. But elements linked to the United States and the BJP have significant influence, as shown by the U.S.-dictated Iran policy. On July 3, 2006, Pankaj Saran, joint secretary for Nepal and Bhutan, was quoted as concurring with the U.S. Ambassador Moriarty’s demand that the revolutionaries abandon their military before joining the interim government. When Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran was the BJP government’s Ambassador in Kathmandu, he boasted of (illegally!) extraditing CPN(M) leader Matrika Yadav to the tender mercies of the U.S.-advised torturers of the RNA. Today Matrika Yadav is the head of the people’s government of the Nepali Madhesi republic in the Terai. There is a lesson to be learned.

Indian communists have played a positive role in support of our Nepali comrades in this last year. The Manmohan Singh government swings between the influence of the U.S. global neoliberal imperium, to which its heart belongs, and the outraged protests of the Indian people, which it cannot ignore. We owe the brave and exemplary Nepali communists a duty of unrelenting pressure on their behalf, especially those unjustifiably still held in Indian prisons.

 

workers dying at mittal’s steel point

LONDON: Controversy surrounds a Romanian steel plant bought by NRI tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, with a report saying that scores of workers have died or were injured in accidents on the site.Some 25 people have been killed and another 254 injured at the Galati plant in eastern Romania since it was bought in late 2001 by Mittal, the world’s largest steel magnate, said a report in The Sunday Telegraph.Mittal’s purchase of the business caused controversy after disclosures that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had sent a letter to the Romanian government endorsing the bid after it had succeeded, just weeks after Mittal donated 125,000 pounds to the Labour Party, the report said, adding Mittal had last year donated 2 million pounds to Labour.

Last month one worker died and three others were injured after being set ablaze at the Romanian plant’s oxygen unit. The three survivors are still in critical condition, with more than 70 per cent burns.

There have been six fatalities at the plant so far this year, state safety inspectors said.

The company disputed the inspectors’ death and injury figures, but admitted that over the same five-year period 17 employees have died from accidents and another 203 have suffered injuries which prevented them from working.

It had sacked five managers in response to the most recent incident, which it blamed on “safety procedures not being applied”.

Trade union officials said some of those injured have been permanently disabled and Gheorghe Tiber, a lawyer with the Steel Workers Solidarity Union who worked at the plant for 23 years, is threatening to take the company to court over the latest accident which he blamed on poor management and lack of effort to improve safety conditions.
from:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1761848.cms

The revolt of the penguins in ChileJune 16, 2006 | Page 9

FEDERICO MORENO reports from Chile on a student rebellion that is shaking the country. CHILE HAS been overrun by high school students whose mass protests have forced the government to drop planned cuts in education spending. Called “penguins” because of their suit-and-tie uniforms, the students have shaken the foundations of the rigid Chilean social structure, inherited from the bloody dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Now, the government of President Michelle Bachelet of the Socialist Party, which took office earlier this year, has been forced to retreat.

The last six weeks in Chile have been marked by a strike of over 1 million students; the occupation of up to 1,000 high schools and most of the country’s universities; and weekly, sometimes daily, marches.

The movement has also persevered in street battles against Chile’s sophisticated repression machine–complete with carabineros (the national police) clad in riot gear and tanks firing water cannons that shoot a mixture of water and tear acid. Students, some as young as 13, fought back with sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails.

The struggle began as a defensive fight–stopping the Bachelet government proposals last March for an increase in the cost of the University Entry Exam (PSU) and a restriction on student transportation passes to two trips per day.

But it has since snowballed into an offensive struggle. The movement now demands free transportation and an end to all fees for the PSU, as well as the elimination of a law (known by its initials LOCE) implementing the privatization of Chile’s education system–the last law that Pinochet approved before stepping down.

“The average cost of college is $4,000 a year,” explained Rodrigo Olivares, president of the Federation of Students in Solidarity (FESOL), and a member of the committee of 34 students that negotiates with the government. “Only 30 percent of high school students make it to college, and working-class families can’t afford their kids’ meals and transportation fares. Bachelet says there’s no money, but the price of just one of the 17 F-16 jets she bought for the armed forces this year is enough to cover all our demands.”

The movement has been organized by the Coordinating Assembly of High School Students (ACES), which formed this year through the merger of the youth organizations of the Communist Party (JC) and Socialist Party (JS) with the independent FESOL.

The ACES is composed of two delegates from each school, and it elects a committee of 34 representatives to negotiate with the government. The democratic character of the ACES has meant active participation of students at the occupations–and made the movement difficult to derail, despite the youth organization of Bachelet’s own party being one of the main forces leading it.

The march of the penguins has brought behind it broad layers of Chilean society, including university students, various sections of the working class and most parents. According to opinion polls, 87 percent of the population supports the students.

Weekly marches against Bachelet’s initial proposals were met in April with repression and thousands of arrests, which generated anger and sparked an increasingly militant response from students. Under pressure from escalating mobilizations, Bachelet gave up on her proposals but refused to consider the students’ further demands.

In May, students at 13 Santiago high schools occupied their schools, waiting for Bachelet to address the issue in her May 21 address to the nation. When Bachelet finished her speech without so much as mentioning it, the occupations spread like wildfire.

On May 29, the Minister of Education, Martín Zilic, called for a meeting with representatives from the high schools. When hundreds showed up, only a select few were allowed into the ministry, and Zilic sent a secretary in his place.

“This caused a fury in the movement,” said Olivera. “We said we wouldn’t sit down until the minister came himself. Now we imposed the conditions, not the government. Plus, all the students that came from across Chile joined the ACES, which became a truly national assembly.”

The next two weeks saw the paralysis of Chile’s educational system. With close to 1,000 high schools occupied nationwide, university students occupied their own campuses in solidarity with the penguins, and presented their own demands.

There were important marches for three days each week in various regions, which included confrontations with the police and thousands of arrests. In these conditions, the government began negotiations with the ACES’ 34-student committee, and found itself in constant retreat, conceding on almost all of the students’ demands.

The climax of the penguins’ revolt came June 5 with a national strike call by the ACES, which various social and political organizations and unions–most remarkably, the workers of the Ministry of Education–honored. Santiago woke up to street barricades, and thousands of students confronted the police throughout the day and well into the night.

The 15-, 16- and 17-year-old students who lead this movement have become a phenomenon in Chile, embarrassing senators on live televised debates, infuriating news anchors and treating government ministers like kids who don’t get it.

Olivares explained how in negotiations with Zilic, “If the minister walked out for a smoke or to go consult with Bachelet, we would stop the meeting. If he wasn’t there himself, we wouldn’t dialogue. That’s how we had the guy those days, from 5 p.m. until midnight. He was entrenched. If we didn’t like what he was saying, we would interrupt him: ‘Mr. Minister, you can’t say that, that is an insult to us, that is not what we are asking for.’”

According to Olivares, “Bachelet’s latest offer to the students, while undoubtedly a victory–especially in the radicalization and organization of thousands–is a trick. She gives the PSU and transportation pass free to the poorest four-fifths of students, but privatizes the administration of both services.

“As far as the LOCE, she offers a commission to reform it, with 10 percent student participation, but it’s only advisory. The Congress can just ignore whatever it says. The JC and JS leaders are ready to accept this offer if Bachelet gives students 50 percent plus one representation in the commission.

“I think this is a bad maneuver on their part at the behest of their parent parties, because we have the forces on our side and could win the whole of our demands.

“For now, the ACES has decided to end the occupations, but maintain the mobilizations to pressure the government. This is fine because the kids were tired and strained. I know the JC and JS want to negotiate and demobilize, but it’s going to be hard to quiet all the students who thought they were fighting to eliminate the LOCE.”

The struggle of the penguins is far from over, but they have already taught the world a mighty lesson–it’s possible to win against repression by organizing democratically, uniting with other sectors of the working class and mobilizing in the streets.

Police attack in Oaxaca sparks mass protest
Mexico teachers resist crackdownBy Elizabeth Lalasz | June 30, 2006 | Page 16

TENS OF thousands of public school teachers and their supporters clashed repeatedly with riot police in the Mexican state of Oaxaca in a battle over the future of education. On June 16, more than 300,000 people marched through Oaxaca City in support of the 70,000 teachers, who have been on strike since May 22. The demonstration–reportedly the largest in the history of Oaxaca–also called for the resignation of state governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz of the right-wing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which is widely accused of corruption.

The march was a response to a police attack two days earlier on the striking Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE).

Around 5 a.m. on June 14, close to 3,000 state police with riot shields and clubs stormed the teachers’ encampment (known as the plantón in Spanish) in the zocalo, the main city center. Strikers were brutally beaten, and there were reports that at least one helicopter dropped tear gas.

Eyewitness reports said 11 people died, including two children asphyxiated by the tear gas. Up to 100 people were detained, and many went “missing.”

Leading members of Section 22 were also imprisoned. Police also raided the union hall and destroyed “Radio Plantón,” the pirate station broadcasting from the encampment since the beginning of the strike.

In response to the repression, university students at the Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca began a radio broadcast round-the-clock to inform residents about what had just happened. At one point, police tried to shut down the station, but the broadcaster declared over the air that the police “will have to pass over our bodies in order to take away the microphones from us.”

Strikers fought back–and by 10 a.m., five hours after the police attack, the zocalo was retaken by about 5,000 strikers and supporters armed with sticks and batons. The imprisoned union leaders were released within hours. The plantón has since been rebuilt and strikers continue to occupy the zocalo.

The “mega-march” on June 16 to protest this repression was supported by college students, local health and university workers, and other unions. Also backing the strike were popular, left-wing organizations, including supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Front’s “Other Campaign,” which rejects all candidates in the upcoming July 2 presidential elections.

The crackdown in Oaxaca is part of a “strategy of tension” stoked up by the current Mexican President Vicente Fox, leading into the elections.

Fox wants to whip up fear of social chaos if the presidency is won by Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the center-left Revolutionary Democratic Party, rather than Felipe Calderón, the candidate of Fox’s conservative National Action Party.

This strategy has involved the violent May 4 police attack on residents of the town of San Salvador Atenco, where residents had resisted displacement in an airport expansion plan. There have been similar attacks on striking copper miners and on citizens of Isla Mujeres, who are protesting against the building of a rubbish dump on their island for the garbage from the nearby tourist resort of Cancun.

Meanwhile, there were solidarity pickets at the Mexican consulates in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco with university faculty unions, Chicago public school teachers and immigrant rights groups.

The struggle has highlighted the problems of teachers in Oaxaca, who can earn somewhere between $600-700 per month, frequently less. They are calling for an increase for students receiving grants, which now amount to 450 pesos per month–$40 in U.S. money. The union is also demanding decent schools, classroom supplies and government funding for uniforms, which are out of reach for so many poor families that the children stay at home.

The Oaxaca teachers’ union, Section 22, has a 26-year history of social and workers’ struggles to defend gains and win improvements in education and teachers’ salaries. Their strategy has been to hold a strike every year as their contracts are renewed, but this year, the strike has lasted longer than usual, due to the government’s defiance of the teachers’ demands.

The teachers have come from all over the state of Oaxaca and engage every day in civil disobedience, including shutting down tollbooths and tearing down electoral propaganda around the city for the upcoming July 2 elections.

With negotiations with the federal Department of the Interior going nowhere, Section 22 held a Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca June 17 to create a permanent space for citizens to debate and discuss strategies for going forward with their struggle.

About 170 people representing 85 organizations attended, including SNTE delegates, union members, social and political organizations, non-governmental organizations, collectives, human rights organizations, parents, tenants farmers, municipalities, and citizens of the entire state of Oaxaca. Follow-up meetings took place June 20 and 24, and the teachers threatened to mobilize a popular boycott of the July 2 elections.

Whatever the outcome of the strike, the mobilization and organization of hundreds of thousands of teachers and their supporters will not be quickly forgotten–and points the way forward for building the left and popular struggles in Mexico.

PU set for major fee hike
Sanjeev Singh Bariana
Tribune News Service Chandigarh, May 27
Panjab University is all set for a major fee hike on the campus and its affiliated colleges from the forthcoming academic session (2003-2004).A formal decision to this effect has been taken by a high-level committee, “in protest” against the Punjab Government’s fee hike decision. The committee was assigned the job by Prof K.N.Pathak, Vice-Chancellor, when the fee hike ordered by the Punjab Government was not accepted by the university Syndicate recently.

The Punjab Government, in a letter of the Director Public Instruction (Punjab) dated May 13, had communicated the revision of fees and funds being charged by government, aided and non-aided colleges and the state universities.

A student is now required to pay an admission fee of Rs 750 for undergraduate courses, Rs 1,000 for postgraduate courses and Rs 1,250 for M Phil and PhD courses. In addition, a student pays Rs 350 per month for undergraduate courses as tuition fee, Rs 550 per month for professional courses and Rs 650 per month for postgraduate courses.

This is as compared to the existing tuition fee of Rs 70 in the case of PU.

Students will also be required to pay enhanced amounts in the case of the amalgamated fund, annual charges, library, hostel charges, building construction, besides several others.

The committee members included Dr M.L.Anand, Principal Tarsem Bahia, Principal A.C.Vaid, Principal P.S.Sangha, Principal B.D.Budhiraja, Mr Rajinder Bhandari, Mr Mukesh Arora and Mr Ashok Sachdeva.

The committee’s decision, however, needs a final clearance of a sub-committee of the Syndicate.

The matter had figured in the university’s last Syndicate meeting. The university first decided to accept the fee hike in principle. Prof Charanjit Chawla, however, differed on the subject and wished to have his dissent recorded. Principal P.S.Sangha also showed his reservations against passing the fee hike. The university finally decided to reconsider the matter.

It was pointed out that the government needed to keep in mind that at least 70 per cent students came from rural colleges and that a majority of the colleges in Punjab would face problems on the likelihood of decrease in the student strength due to higher price for education.

The committee cleared the fee hike because colleges were dependent on the government for funds to support financial activities, which include salaries for the staff, had no option but to accept the dictates, a Principal said.

Principal A.C.Vaid pointed out that the fee in the university and affiliated colleges was not the prerogative of the government. The government had acted against the autonomy granted to educational institutes.

The committee also pointed out that the government had totally ignored the fact that a majority of the student strength in the affiliated colleges came from the rural background and it was economically not very well-placed.

The committee also suggested that the government should work out a differential fee structure. This would mean charging fee according to the financial status of the family of the student.

The committee has also allowed colleges to charge additional funds, as the need may be, under the supervision of the university. The need to revise the aid to colleges and the number of teaching posts as per the student strength was also highlighted today.