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?