Deep in the hinterland of the subcontinent far beyond the ken of page 3 and glamour obsessed English language media, an insurrectionary movement is gathering momentum and has the potential to destabilise the polity and push Indian society into a sea of chaos. According to an AICC (All India Congress Committee) task force report submitted to Congress party president and chairman of the National Advisory Council Sonia Gandhi on April 2, extreme Left Naxalite revolutionary militia are active in 170 of the 524 districts of the Indian Union.

Initiated in 1967 by a breakaway extremist splinter group of the Communist Party of India in Naxalbari, a remote district in West Bengal, the simplistic credo of the Naxalite movement as enunciated by its first leader the late Charu Mazumdar, was essentially Maoist — elimination of class enemies oppressing the rural peasantry, including landlords and officials employed by bourgeois governments. Until the mid 1970s the Naxalite movement centred in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh, enjoyed considerable popular and even intellectual support, across the country. However the agri-science miracle which was the Green Revolution, the excesses of the Naxalite cadres and the rise of the breakaway Communist Party of India Marxist (CPM) which swept to power in West Bengal in 1977 where it has ruled uninterruptedly since, pushed the movement to the periphery of Indian politics.

Against this backdrop the resurgence of the Naxalite movement which is posing a serious threat to law and order in several states of the Indian Union including Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka, is a development which should be regarded with gravest concern. But unfortunately state governments lumbered with leaders preoccupied with primitive accumulation, seem to have little time to address the pernicious socio-economic injustices which are fanning the flames of Naxalism across broad swathes of the subcontinent.

It’s hardly a coincidence that Naxalism — a quintessentially anarchic ideology — is experiencing a resurgence at a time when the newly liberalised Indian economy is recording unprecedented rates of GDP growth bordering 7 percent per annum — double the so-called Hindu rate of economic growth averaged during the period 1960-90. This is because it is now painfully evident that the benefits of post 1991 economic liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy have been restricted to the organised corporate sector. The self-employed, small scale entrepreneurs and farmers continue to suffer licence-permit-quota raj and the blatant corruption of India’s globally notorious kleptocrat bureaucracy. Indeed it is being widely acknowledged that the gains of liberalisation have been grabbed by the greedy new urban middle class and leaders of Indian industry which is incrementally revealing the raw, ugly, face of Indian capitalism. And with nobody — except Naxals — bothered about open, uninterrupted and continuous socio-economic injustices persisting in the new age of liberalisation, it’s hardly surprising that radical Naxalism is experiencing nationwide resurgence.

There’s a distant thunder gathering resonance in the neglected rural hinterland of India. The establishment and the new middle class engaged in conspicuous consumption and primitive accumulation needs to pay attention to the sound of this thunder in its own interest, and stability of the newly emerging social order. To practise denial is to invite disaster.

Abridgement of right to livelihood

The fundamental rights of bar dance girls or ‘live band’ artistes as they are known down south, may strike some readers of EducationWorld as a strange choice of subject for editorial comment. But important principles relating to gender equity, the right to carry on a business, trade or profession and the right to livelihood are involved.

Last month (April) the state government of Maharashtra decreed a ban on dance bars which provide live entertainment in the form of women dancing on stage or in demarcated areas in licensed liquour vending establishments. Almost simultaneously the Karnataka government has declared an intent to deny liquour licences to establishments providing live band entertainment. These arbitrary fiats justified on the grounds of periodic drives against vaguely defined ‘immorality’ will throw over 100,000 women dance artistes out of work in the two states.

Several questions arise of societal propriety and constitutional legality of which foolish politicians who have piloted these decrees through the legislative assemblies of the two states, are obviously innocent. First why should dance bar girls — usually from poor and socially disadvantaged backgrounds — be deprived of their right to livelihood when quite patently as evidenced by the raunchy ‘item numbers’ which are routine in feature films and on television, dancing is not an illegal activity? Secondly, what about the fundamental right conferred in Article 19 (1) (g) which guarantees the right of all citizens, albeit subject to “reasonable restrictions”, to practise their trades and professions without hindrance from ephemeral Parliaments, legislative assemblies and other interfering busybodies?

The principal argument advanced by the state government ministers is that dance and/or live band bars are vice dens which lure some young women into prostitution and corrupt the morals of youth who patronise these establishments. But this argument could with equal logic, be advanced to the film and television industry. Surely then the film industry — indeed the entertainment industry in toto â€” should also be proscribed? The moot point is that entertainment is a legitimate industry involving the marketing of artistic skills through the practice of which citizens are entitled to earn a livelihood. As a spokesperson of the dance bars association has rightly argued, the duty of the state government is to terminate the licences of dance bars whose managements breach reasonable laws drawn up by government and the police in the interests of public order and decorum rather than impose a blanket ban because they don’t trust their provenly corrupt and compromised policemen to enforce the law. 

In the newly globalised world, tourism and entertainment are emerging as massive revenue earning and employment generating industries which deserve encouragement and support. There’s no valid cause for a blanket ban on dance bars which offer women from socially disadvantaged segments of society employment opportunities, and mild socially sanctioned entertainment to adults. Petty bourgeois class prejudice against the poor and disadvantaged and reluctance of state governments to compel law enforcement agencies to do their jobs should not be permitted to become an excuse for abridging the fundamental rights of citizens. These rights conferred by the Constitution are as valuable to the usually socially underprivileged women working in dance bars as they are to middle class women who have access to socially acceptable workplaces.