(Artist: Archana Ravi, in solidarity with
the striking ASHA workers of Kerala)
has Power
turned the one who once
sprinted through these paths
holding aloft the flag woven from
the threads of our blood,
into a mad brute?
- Desamangalam Ramakrishnan
The ongoing Asha workers’ strike has once again put the focus back on workers’ rights, trade unionism and leftism in Kerala. There is a tendency often to hold true to the nature of justice as people often protest when they face injustice. This has to come naturally, a basic foundation to building a world without exploitation. This should be the basic prerogative for anyone living in a liberal socialist system especially one that boasts of having a leftist/communist history. The leftists in Kerala, who are always proud of its leftist heritage, foregrounds a political consciousness that often advertises an 'ideal' image of struggle, revolution and politicking. This leftist consciousness mainly revolves around questions related to how; 1) workers are organized, 2) power is held accountable. In other words, this is about how to fight the good fight! Hence, the protectors of this consciousness believe theirs to be the default launchpad into whatever the future has in store for us (communism or barbarism). In Kerala, this group of protectors mainly fall under the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)], and Communist Party of India (CPI). Additionally, the dominant leftist imagination is trapped in the machinations of the Communist parties, themselves slaves to the socially engineered rationalities of power. Today Parliamentary Cretinism is the fundamental attitude that drives the party forward (the tendency to equate purposive political action with the drive to obtain parliamentary power by gaining more seats in representative institutions). They would sometimes openly attack detractors, with their leaders encouraging them with almost the same word for their actions, rakshapravarthanam. The underlying idea is the same here, even when most of the leftists don’t get it (thinking within the consciousness is not allowed). Moreover, the rescuers of this leftist consciousness are ordinary people who’d go to any extent to protect it and its influence in politics and society. This rescue and protection of the leftist consciousness also has its strategies related to food, culture, history, religion and has became more prominent with the entry of Sangh as the political antagonist in Kerala politics.
After 2016, the mainstream
narrative regarding the growth of the Sangh in Kerala is that the leftist
consciousness has been under attack. There might be doubts regarding how
powerful the Sangh is in reality, but there are no doubts regarding how effective
they are in challenging the leftist consciousness. At least that is the mainstream
talking point of the left in Kerala. With this being touted as the challenge in
front of the people, there has been efforts to protect or rescue the leftist consciousness
against Hindutva and its attacks. And this has been more than revelatory. Post-2016,
the leftist consciousness has been thoroughly exposed under the communal narratives
of the Sangh. The inadequacies in workers’ rights, gender issues, labour movements
are all out in the open today and there is no denying that the global
socio-political movements/the internet, has their fair share of influence in this matter.
Thus, this inadequate leftist consciousness that the mainstream communist parties
take pride in, comes off as a repugnant tool of parliamentary cretinism in pursuit of power. This is exactly
what Marx addresses in his letter to Arnold Ruge: “The reform of
consciousness consists only in making the world aware of its
own consciousness, in awakening it out of its dream about itself, in explaining to
it the meaning of its own actions. Our whole object can only be – as is also
the case in Feuerbach’s criticism of religion – to give religious and
philosophical questions the form corresponding to man who has become conscious
of himself.”
The latest event that has
exposed yet another crack in the leftist consciousness is the ongoing Asha
Workers’ Strike. The government under Pinarayi Vijayan is
adamant in ignoring the striking workers as there is no end to the protests in
sight. Considering how this is a government that takes pride in their pro-poor
image, and also considers it to be run by a party that calls itself communist/revolutionary, the irony is not lost on the protesting workers. The demand
of the Asha Workers “for higher remuneration, commensurate with the enormous
hike in the ASHA workers’ workloads over the years”, is clearly just. But the
government is fighting another fight within this fight. The statements from the
leaders calling the protest as “politically motivated” or “unnecessary” has a different
sense of politics to it.
Before getting to that,
there is a relevant political aspect to the protests explained by J Devika, that
puts the Kerala Model or exceptionalism into question. She writes:
“While the ASHA workers
were on strike in front of the State Secretariat and an ASHA Workers’ mass meet
called by the striking association drew a very large number of such workers to
the capital city, the government was busy holding an investors’ meet. Such a
government cannot be expected to be attentive to the needs and rights of the
workers, perhaps. However, one can hardly forget that the effort to pitch
Kerala as the ideal investor’s destination to global capital continues to rest
on the region’s image as a place where social development has arrived
permanently — where there is a healthy, educated, plentiful workforce
accustomed to the rhythms of capitalist work and docile too. Now, a large part
of this story is possible only and only because underpaid and unrecognized
social development workers — including the ASHAs — have toiled at the grass roots
day and night. Indeed, the second Pinarayi Vijayan government was actually
facilitated not just by the effective PR they did about Covid management —
indeed, that very PR was made possible by the incessant labours of women
‘volunteers’ and ‘community activists’ at the bottom, of which the ASHA workers
are a prominent group.”
The government’s response to the protest is the dominant leftist consciousness in action. A leftist consciousness that has bought into the neoliberal financial capital betraying the working class or rescuers is no shocking news, but it magnifies the inadequacies in it. Going back to the “politically motivated” allegations, the CPIM considers itself to be the representative of the authentic left in Kerala and this is one reason that the Asha Workers’ protests are still ongoing. The issue here is similar to what is popularly known as Union busting. The CITU-affiliated ASHA workers’ federation has issues with the SUCI’s (another leftist outfit) Kerala Asha Health Workers’ Association (KAHWA). The ongoing Asha Workers’ strike is led by KAHWA and as a result, CITU alleges that SUCI backed union is trying to sow division among the workers and possibly harm their job prospects. The truth of the matter is that CITU or CPIM considers only them as the sole voice of the left in Kerala. Another leftist organization in the likes of SUCI are a challenge to their dominant position as protectors or rescuers of the leftist consciousness. As a result, there were statements from the leaders of CPIM and SUCI addressing the protesting Asha Workers as “Anarchists”, since they are led by SUCI backed union. Other slurs included “tin-pan collectors”, again showing the disapproval of SUCI’s organizational structure and functioning. Explaining the insults, J Devika writes that the protesting workers clearly maintained that SUCI respects the workers and they never asked for any money to any workers. J Devika interprets this accusation as also an intolerance towards the less restrictive organizational structure of SUCI and their timely interference in issues that matter to the workers. In other words, CPIM is only concerned with maintaining their power in the representative systems, which in turn captures the leftist consciousness. In order to do that, they are willing to even sacrifice real workers’ lives. Some would say, that is more communist than anyone could ever ask for. But in reality, what we need is a ruthless criticism of all that exists inside and outside of this leftist consciousness. The Asha Workers’ protests will remake and reform the leftist consciousness in the long run, with or without CPIM. That is sure. As Marx would have it, “We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.”
(To get updates and
analysis on the Asha Workers’ Strike, follow KAFILA Blog!)
-----------------------------
No Other Land won
the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Feature). The news is really shocking in
the sense that the documentary doesn’t even have distribution in the US. This speaks
a lot of the current sensibilities with regards to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
But what caught my attention was something else. There is a book of essays titled,
Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed el-Kurd and I
recently read the same (great timing!). After No Other Land won the
Oscar, many Palestinian supporters on X shared shots of certain pages of the book
explaining how Palestinians can be perfect victims. The essays are excellent in
the sense that it gives an overarching view into how victims are made out of Palestinians,
good and bad. But the real issue here was No Other Land’s authenticity
of it being Palestinian. The film was produced under an Israeli-Palestinian
collective and this was enough for some people to use Perfect Victims to
discredit No Other Land.
Below is the ‘controversial’
extract from Perfect Victims:
“Take the genre of
Israelis and Palestinians making films together. The Palestinian filmmaker is
chaperoned to the film festival, allowed on stage as their authoritative
cosignatory’s charismatic sidekick. No one—not the producer of the festival,
not the columnist writing a review—seems to care about the content of the film,
whether it is good or garbage. What matters most is that the film was
codirected, a mode that satisfies a libidinal urge in the viewers. They
eavesdrop on a forbidden conversation, a titillating reconciliation between the
slayer and the slain. Discussions about the film, reviews, the way it is
promoted, and our excited elevator pitches to one another all become masturbatory,
reducing the film to the fact that it was a collaboration between an Israeli
and a Palestinian, fulfilling the viewer’s fantasy of a happy ending to an
otherwise miserable story. We turn it into a fetish.”
Here what matters is that
the film is a first-hand narrative of a Palestinian under occupation/martial
law. The events are clearly shot by a Palestinian himself, there is no issues
of the outsider’s gaze here. This is just an obstinate idea that Palestinians
should be seen individually at the world stage, and not in any partnership with
the Israelis. And therefore, for some, No Other Land’s win shouldn’t be reason
for celebration, because films like From Ground Zero are more eligible
than No Other Land since From Ground Zero is exclusively a
Palestinian production without Israeli involvement. To make matters clear, I
understand and support the arguments of Mohammed el-Kurd but there can be no
perfect revolutions, even when there are perfect victims. What matters is how
the Israeli genocide is shown in its full force to the global cinema audience,
and yes, maybe the Israeli Collaboration gave credence to the film but one
shouldn’t forget the fact that only through collaborations and partnerships can
Palestinians be free. Again, this in no way discounts el-Kurd’s arguments but
only explores different ways of imagining futures for people everywhere.
-------------------------
Donald Trump finally
proves that diplomacy is not about mutual respect or political assurances based
on problem solving, but rather abuses that protect self-serving business
interests of America.
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