Posted in translations on March 18, 2021| Leave a Comment »
The following are some recent translations of RUPE materials. An earlier collection of links to translations was given here: https://rupeindia.wordpress.com/2021/01/27/translations-of-recent-articles-related-to-agriculture/
We thank all those who have undertaken these translations. They help reach these materials to those who can make best use of them. (more…)
Posted in translations, Uncategorized on February 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »
[A Telugu translation of this article is included in Bharata Raitangam Pai Daadi (translator: P. Jamuna), the pdf of which can be found here.]
In the previous two parts of this article, we saw how
(1) the Government is trying to ram through a conclusive determination of property rights in agricultural land throughout the country. This is being done explicitly in order to develop a “vibrant land market”, i.e., in order to facilitate transfers of land;
(2) for the last 20 years or so, there has been an intensifying drive by international investors to get control of land, including agricultural land, in the Third World;
(3) the penetration of organised retail in the Third World, generally linked to giant transnational retail firms, leads inexorably to the ousting of small peasants; and
(4) the existing crisis of the Indian peasantry under neoliberal rule has created the conditions for small peasants to lose their land, either to large landholders or to corporations. Indeed, when the rulers say they plan to double farmers’ income, they mean that they plan to halve the number of farmers.
What will these changes, if they come to pass, mean for India as a whole?
Advocates of neoliberal policies argue that the pain of these changes is temporary. Farmers may lose their land, but the land will be put to higher-value uses, thus increasing total income. And jobs will be created for workers in agriculture, logistics (procurement, storage and transport), food processing, and retail. ‘In the net’, i.e, after setting losses against gains, they argue, this process will lead to greater prosperity and jobs all round.
This is a travesty of the truth. In fact these changes will wreak a terrible and varied devastation. That devastation will not take place all at once; its effects will differ across regions, sectors, castes, genders, and communities, in this, the world’s most stratified society. At first, most who are affected will not realize the interconnections between their own fate and that of others similarly affected; why they are ripped from their tenuous but familiar subsistence and cast on the open waters, as so much flotsam and jetsam; how different sections of working people, though strangers to them, are facing the same confusion and misery; and which classes are responsible for the social calamity. And so, which classes they must join hands with in order to resist the attack.
It is all the more necessary, therefore, to make people aware of these very concrete facts and interconnections.
Posted in translations, Uncategorized on February 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »
[A Telugu translation of this article is included in Bharata Raitangam Pai Daadi (translator: P. Jamuna), the pdf of which can be found here.]
In the previous part of this article we saw that the Indian rulers are actively preparing the legal groundwork for parting peasants from their land. In the following part we place this in an international context.
The world economy is witnessing an intensifying drive by international investors to get control of land, including agricultural land, in the Third World. Why is this so?
The imperialist economies have been afflicted by a long-term trend of slowing growth, for reasons inherent to capitalism in its present stage. Over decades, capitalism has sought to counter that tendency toward stagnation by employing various means. In particular it has sought to do so by expanding financial sector activity – i.e., the activity, not of generating surplus in the course of production, but of acquiring and trading claims over the surplus.
Despite this extraordinary growth of finance, the captains of world capitalism remain pessimistic about the prospects for growth. Indeed, even prominent ‘mainstream’ economists now predict that the advanced countries will undergo ‘secular (i.e., long-term, chronic) stagnation’ for the foreseeable future. (However, they avoid linking this tendency to the nature of monopoly capitalism, which indeed is at the root of it.)
Posted in translations, Uncategorized on January 27, 2021| Leave a Comment »
We will be posting here links to translations of writings on the current agrarian crisis and agitation, as and when we receive them. We request readers to refer to this page for updates regarding translations.
These and other translations are also collected at the following link: https://rupeindia.wordpress.com/category/translations/
We understand that readers have translated or adapted articles from the blog into other languages as well. If this is the case, we request them to send us the pdf files or web links for posting at this site, so they can reach more readers.
— RUPE
The Kisans Are Right. Their Land Is At Stake (Part 2 of 3)
March 2, 2021
English: https://rupeindia.wordpress.com/2021/02/03/the-kisans-are-right-their-land-is-at-stake-part-2-of-3/
Telugu: https://rupeindia.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/kisans2telugu.pdf
The Kisans Are Right. Their Land Is At Stake (Part 1 of 3)
January 26, 2021
Telugu: https://rupeindia.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/kisans1telugu.pdf
When Multinational Grain Traders Told an Official Committee Why They Wanted the FCI to Be Wound Up
January 10, 2021
Telugu (translation by Paruchuri Jamuna): https://rupeindia.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/graintelugu.pdf
Modi’s Farm Produce Act Was Authored Thirty Years Ago, in Washington D.C.
January 5, 2021
Telugu: https://rupeindia.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/telugumodi.pdf
December 3, 2020
Hindi: https://rupeindia.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/hbooklet.pdf
Telugu (translation by Paruchuri Jamuna): https://rupeindia.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/telugupeasant-1.pdf
Marathi (translation by Rashmi Divekar and Vandana Palsane): https://rupeindia.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/marathi.pdf
Tamil adaptation: https://rupeindia.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/tamil.pdf
Tamil: full translation at https://tamilrupe.wordpress.com/ .
Turkish: The progressive Turkish website İleri Haber has published the Turkish translation of “Peasant Agitation against Three Acts” by Onurcan Ülker: https://ilerihaber.org/icerik/ceviri-koylulerin-uc-yasaya-karsi-galeyani-kavga-yalnizca-onlarin-degil-122394.html
_________________________________________________________________________
A publication of May 2017 that remains relevant:
No.s 66-67: India’s Peasantry under Neoliberal Rule
English: https://rupe-india.org/66/contents.html
Hindi translation by the Karwan Collective, which may be contacted at karwancollective(at)gmail.com.
The pdf of the entire book is freely downloadable at https://rupeindia.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/aspects66.pdf
Tamil:
Print edition translated and published by New Democratic Labour Front. Distributed by:
Keezhai-k-Katru.
16, Arumalai chavadi,
Cantonment Pallavaram,
Chennai – 600043.
India.
Cell:9444881066
(Note: We could not ascertain if copies are still available.)
Oriya
The Oriya print version, Nabya Udarabadi Sasanare Bharatara Krushaka, has been published by
Subarnashree Prakashini, Neliabag, Shreekanthapur,
Baleswar, Odisha.
Phone: 06782-261020.
Price: Rs 130.
Posted in translations, Uncategorized on January 26, 2021| Leave a Comment »
[A Telugu translation of this article is included in Bharata Raitangam Pai Daadi (translator: P. Jamuna), the pdf of which can be found here.]
[A Marathi translation of this article (translator: Rashmi Divekar) is available here as a pdf.]
Part 1
The protesting kisans on the borders of Delhi repeat one thing over and over: When fighting against the three farm-related Acts, they are fighting to save their land.
“See, they want to capture our land. Adani, Ambani, corporate houses…” says one young protester. Though wheelchair-bound, he has come from Punjab to take part in the Delhi protest. An older kisan, shelling peas for the protesters’ collective kitchen, declares: “The Britishers, they captured our land. We shooed them away. We have to do the same thing now. We will not rest till we shoo them away.”
Yet the authorities are unanimous in declaring: the kisans are misled. There is no threat to their land.
Posted in translations, Uncategorized on January 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »
[A Telugu translation of this article is included in Bharata Raitangam Pai Daadi (translator: P. Jamuna), the pdf of which can be found here.]
An official report prepared under the Vajpayee government in 2002 gives us a glimpse of some of the major lobbies pressing for restructuring of India’s agriculture and food economy.
What interests lie behind the three Farm Acts of the Modi government? Various private corporate interests, domestic and foreign, with stakes in: trading in grain and other agricultural commodities; contract or corporate farming; logistics (including storage and transport of agricultural products); seeds, fertiliser, and other inputs; food processing; organised retail; and financial sector activities (including investment in commodity markets).
Worldwide, many of these firms are involved in multiple activities. The leading agricultural traders own ocean-going ships, ports, railways, refineries, silos, oil mills and factories. Their activities include growing crops; selling inputs; buying output, transporting and storing it; processing crops to produce various products, or supplying other producers of final goods; and carrying on sophisticated financial speculation in agricultural commodity markets.
The financial news service Bloomberg once said that Cargill was not only part of the value chain but was the chain itself – from the field to the shop counter. In a 2001 corporate brochure Cargill described itself thus: “We are the flour in your bread, the wheat in your noodles, the salt on your fries. We are the corn in your tortillas, the chocolate in your dessert, the sweetener in your soft drink. We are the oil in your salad dressing and the beef, pork or chicken you eat for dinner. We are the cotton in your clothing, the backing on your carpet and the fertilizer in your field”.[1] Four such firms, of which Cargill is the largest, control 70 per cent of the world market in agricultural commodities.
Although the major Indian business groups Reliance and Adani have both strenuously denied pushing the so-called ‘reforms’, and the Modi government has strenuously claimed that it has no plans to wind up public procurement, both Government officials and private investors state their views and demands more frankly behind closed doors. These demands are then processed into recommendations by official committees – dressed in the language of ‘greater efficiency’ and ‘fiscal savings’.
Posted in translations, Uncategorized on January 5, 2021| Leave a Comment »
[A Telugu translation of this article is included in Bharata Raitangam Pai Daadi (translator: P. Jamuna), the pdf of which can be found here.]
The kisan agitation at the gates of Fortress Delhi has forced even the corporate media to take note of the corporate drive to capture control of the remaining non-corporate sectors of the country’s economy, including its agriculture; the phrase “Ambani-Adani” is now a popular term for this process.
At the same time, the ‘reforms’ which the Modi government is trying to impose on India’s agriculture are part of a broader process of imperialism’s increasing capture of the Indian economy. Indian business giants such as Reliance and Adani are major recipients of foreign investment, as we have seen in sectors such as telecom, retail, and energy. At the same time multinational corporations and other financial investors in the sectors of agriculture, logistics and retail are also setting up their own operations in India. Multinational trading corporations dominate global trade in agricultural commodities. For all these reasons, international capital has a major stake in the restructuring of India’s agriculture.
Posted in translations, Uncategorized on December 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The following is a Marathi translation of the article “Peasant Agitation against Three Acts: Not Their Fight Alone”. [pdf] We thank all those involved in its translation.
The following is a Tamil adaptation of the same article, jointly published by CPDR – Tamil Nadu and CPCL – Tamil Nadu. [pdf] A complete translation has been published on the blog “Tamil RUPE,” run by Tamil Friends of RUPE.
Posted in translations, Uncategorized on December 16, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Telugu translations of two recent articles are now available in PDF format:
(1) Peasant Agitation against Three Acts: Not Their FIght Alone. A Telugu translation of this article is included in Bharata Raitangam Pai Daadi (translator: P. Jamuna), the pdf of which can be found here.
and
(2) Mayday 2020 and the Creation of Wealth
Translations by P. Jamuna.
Tamil Friends of RUPE (https://tamilrupe.wordpress.com/) have recently posted Tamil translations of the following two pieces:
A Brief Comment on Crisis and Predation: India, Covid-19 and Global Finance by RUPE – Amiya Kumar Bagchi and The story of schistosomiasis in Mao’s China and after – Zhun Xu.
Tamil Friends of RUPE has translated the book Crisis and Predation: India, Covid-19 and Global Finance. The book will soon be published by Chinthan Books, Chennai (https://www.commonfolks.in/books/chinthan-books).
Posted in translations, Uncategorized on June 18, 2018| Leave a Comment »
As readers of this blog know, in January we published a lengthy interview with Fred Engst) carried out by Onurcan Ülker. This interview was translated into Hindi by Sachin Kumar, researcher in the economics department of Patna University. It is to be published by Gargi Prakashan. We thank Sachin Kumar for translating this important interview, and for making it available to our site.
We are also happy to know that the interview has been translated into Chinese and is being shared in China. Below we attach both translations.
– Editor.
rupeindia 