The
early years of the Left Front government in West Bengal
in the late seventies had been marked by severe power
cuts in Calcutta (as it then was) and elsewhere in the
state. One evening as ''load-shedding'' began, a little
urchin in a slum neighbouring a high-rise, jumped up
and down clapping his hands, shouting: ''Babuder alo
gyalo re.'' The slum to which he belonged was devoid
of power supply and hence not affected by the power
cut, while the high-rise was; in his excitement that
urchin was expressing an important truth: power supply,
and hence by inference the concept of ''infrastructure''
itself, has a class dimension.
Any
particular growth trajectory requires infrastructure
specific to it. The advent of colonialism, for instance,
which entailed a growth trajectory for the economy that
was totally different from what had obtained earlier,
meant the building of a whole new type of infrastructure,
such as ports, railways, and urban metropolises around
ports, and the decay of the infrastructure that had
existed earlier. Gaur and Murshidabad declined as Calcutta
came up, Thanjavur and Warangal became marginalized
as Madras flourished, and Pune and Satara became minor
cities as Bombay occupied the centre stage. The investment
undertaken for this new infrastructure was part of the
promotion of a new growth trajectory, and hence ipso
facto in the interests of the classes that stood to
benefit from this trajectory and against the interests
of the classes that became its victims. The term ''infrastructure''
therefore cannot be seen as an undifferentiated catch-all
category which is always ''socially necessary'' and investment
which is always ''good for the people''.
But then isn't it the case that since the shifting growth
trajectories have the effect of developing the social
productive forces, the investment in the shifting infrastructure
requirements for these changing growth trajectories
is simply part of historical progress? Doesn't looking
at this historical progress merely in terms of being
beneficial to some classes and against the interests
of the others, amount to the adoption of a rather narrow
and moralistic perspective, to the exclusion of an overarching
view based on the development of social productive forces?
Who for instance would deny that the introduction of
railways in India, though motivated by the colonial
regime's need to open up Indian markets to foreign goods
and to cart Indian raw materials off to the world market,
nonetheless played a remarkably positive role in the
development of the Indian economy and society. And given
this role, isn't it churlish to cavil at the particular
class interests that brought the railways into existence
in India? Isn't looking at the development of infrastructure
through the prism of class interests then an altogether
unjustified occupation, especially for Marxists who
take a ''longer view'' and measure social progress in
terms of the development of the social productive forces?
Karl Marx interestingly had made a most remarkable statement.
Talking about India he had written in a letter to Danielson
in 1881: ''What the English take from them annually in
the form of rent, dividends for railways useless to
the Hindus; pensions for military and civil servicemen,
for Afghanistan and other wars etc. etc.- what they
take from them without any equivalent and quite apart
from what they appropriate to themselves annually within
India…amounts to more than the total sum of income of
the sixty millions of agricultural and industrial labourers
of India!'' (Emphasis added). The same Karl Marx who
had written elsewhere that the ''railway system will...become
in India…the forerunner of modern industry'' had no compunctions
about calling the railways ''useless to the Hindus''.
The development of the productive forces in his perception
in other words, could never be looked at in isolation
from the class character of this development.
The matter acquires a special pertinence when we are
looking at the development of the productive forces
not just in the context of history, but in the midst
of a struggle over the mode of development of productive
forces, i.e. when this development is itself a matter
of class struggle, as is the case now. Bourgeois spokesmen
would argue that something called ''infrastructure'',
as a supra-class, supra-growth-trajectory entity, is
essential for society, and that investment in it must
be encouraged at all costs. The expenditure of Rs.35,000
crores on developing the ''infrastructure'' in Delhi to
cope with the Commonwealth Games is socially necessary,
and that there should be a political consensus on such
investment in general. Their attempt is precisely to
deny that infrastructure has a class character as well.
The development of expressways has a rationale only
in a society where the car population is increasing
rapidly; it benefits only the car-owning population,
and no matter what its long-run benefits for society
as a whole, it is ''useless'' (in Marx's sense) for the
bulk of the people of the country.
''Infrastructure'' as a catch-all category, being made
into a sacred cow which must be worshipped by all irrespective
of political differences and class perspectives, is
therefore a bourgeois subterfuge to pass off the interests
of the beneficiaries of the current neo-liberal growth
trajectory as the ''social interest''. True, the development
of infrastructure even in this sense may stand society
in good stead at some indefinite future date even after
the current growth trajectory may have passed. But that
cannot be an argument for supporting expenditure on
''infrastructure'' indiscriminately, for that would mean
an abdication of the espousal of the class interests
of the oppressed, and an endorsement of the prevailing
growth trajectory itself.
Once we see ''infrastructure'' as having a class dimension,
we must distinguish ''infrastructure'' that is in the
interests of the people at large and ''infrastructure''
that uses social resources for the benefit of the few.
While economists have been surprisingly chary of drawing
this distinction, artists, at least some of them, have
been more forthright. The late Habib Tanvir in a play
called ''sadak'' had lampooned the obsession with expressways,
''useless'' to the people but of benefit only to the rich
or to the State, (reminiscent of the Nazi autobahns),
that the country had acquired.
To be sure, as long as the specific growth trajectory
continues, not developing infrastructure appropriate
for it would cause contradictions, bottlenecks and inconvenience.
On the other hand, distinguishing between different
kinds of infrastructure, ensuring that expenditure on
infrastructure ''useless'' to the people is curbed, even
if it causes inconvenience to the beneficiaries of the
current growth trajectory, and using the resources for
meeting instead the health and education needs of the
people at large, for universalizing the public distribution
system and other such ends (for all of which the government
pleads scarcity of resources), is not only socially
desirable in itself, but may even become the first step
in an overall attempt to change the growth trajectory
itself. To treat as a sacred cow something that is an
integral part of a specific growth trajectory is an
endorsement, whether consciously or unconsciously, of
this trajectory itself. Rejecting this sacred cow can
be the start of a struggle against this trajectory itself.
The little urchin who had clapped at ''load-shedding''
could implicitly draw a distinction that Karl Marx had
done explicitly. Do we have the courage to draw this
distinction today?
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