Mahanirban Calcutta Research group

The beauty of social/protest movements based on genuine (felt by a large number of people) grievances is that they create a relatively autonomous space for people’s action – sometimes peaceful sometimes violent – which cannot be fully controlled or ‘contained’ by any leader or organisation (no matter, how powerful they are). They possess the capacity to spread horizontally like a rhizome – a subterranean stem that assumes diverse forms of bulbs and tubers in all directions. A rhizome has specific uniqueness yet connectivity. Borrowing from Deluze/Guattari, we may describe the popular protest movements as ‘rhizomatic’ (Deluze and Guattari 2004:3-28) because the spirits of genuine protest movements, despite their singularities, move across different times and spaces and continues to ignite the minds and actions of new protestors.

The present paper is an attempt to pose the question of global finance as is imminent in what is today known as the financialisation process vis-a-vis labour in the global capitalist development. The current global crisis will remain at the focus of our attention while we study this inter-relationship. In our rendition, globalization, global capitalism, neoliberalism and financialisation are distinct but mutually inter-related processes. Development will not take place, as is claimed by the proponents of neo-liberal globalization, unless the domestic economy fails to attract foreign capital. And foreign capital would not come unless the economy becomes a free-market economy bereft of any government control and regulation – a laissez-faire economy. Competition should be the mantra for market economy to flourish. To sustain competition firms need to be cost efficient, which has a clear message for the labour, labour regime and labour rules for neo-liberal globalized economy – that is flexible labour.
 
The paper is organized as follows. While Section I discusses the financialisation as an intrinsic process of current globalization Section II delves into the emerging global labour conditions as is imminent in terms of labour market flexibility. In our understanding the relation between finance and labour can only be transparent in terms of class positions. So, we will briefly delineate our ideas of class. Then, we take up the task of associating the question of labour with global finance via class processes. Section III will render an understanding of the current global crisis and its implications for labour.

This paper talks of the arbitrariness of the Radcliffe Line and its implications on the people living in the Bengal Borderland - its effect on their daily lives, their participation in the border-making process, insecurities of both the states and their measures to tackle the border. Through stories and anecdotes discovered in the old government files and IB reports, this paper gives a glimpse of how the territorial division was actually happening on the ground and how people were gradually being incorporated within the fold of ‘partitioned times’.
 

The paper discusses the possibility of looking at the persistence of the refugee question in West Bengal as a set of ‘dispersals’ and ‘accumulations’ that are structured by the material network of settlement spaces generated out of the interaction between the refugee population and the changing directions of state policy concerning refugee rehabilitation. In the course of laying down a suggestive narrative based on interviews of several erstwhile camp dwellers; now settled in the gram panchayat areas presently bordering the Barasat Municipal area; the paper attempts to foreground the existence of a ‘circulating population’. The paper tries to bring into focus a mobile and flexible set of controls that both captures and mobilises the said population.

This paper analyses the negotiations of the women in Nagaland with a state that traditionally privileges patriarchal values. In their negotiations with the state the women undertook many innovative actions to fight violence and traditional injustices and create a more just society. The women’s groups in Northeast India have been instrumental in redefining security, be it their fight to repeal AFSPA, ensuring food security, ensuring securitization of life and livelihood through patrolling the neighbourhood and resorting to non-violent dialogues with the underground movements and the army, and creating innovative ways of engaging with the governments or fighting for the women’s land rights and reservation of seats for the women in the elections. Through their activism they have made the state realise that upholding their cause will help the cause of justice and peace. Women’s engagements with conflict and peace in Nagaland have transformed the traditional definitions resistance and thereby have serious impact on both gender roles and governance.

The signing of the Instrument of Accession, by Regent Maharani Kanchanprava Devi, made ethnic conflicts, regular in Tripura. Though earlier, various kings of Tripura had promoted Bengali migration, the Partition and Tripura’s merger with India changed the demography, which resulted in ethnic conflicts as more and more Bengalis migrated from East Pakistan.

 
It was only in 1993, that the CPI(M) could settle on Dasharath Deb, a tribal to be the Chief Minister of Tripura. The Congress earlier, gave primacy to the refugees over the indigenous people. Political groups like the Tripura Upajati Juba Samity (TUJS) , the Sengkra, the Tribal National Volunteers(TNV), then later the National  liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), Tripura Resurrection Army(TRA), All Tripura Tribal Force(ATTF), championed the cause of the tribal people in Tripura. When the level of violence increased, the Bengalis started hitting back. Their answer was, the United Bengal Liberation Front(UBLF) and Amra Bangali. 

 
The Congress has used various tribal militant groups to unleash terror to unsettle the Left. But, earlier Nripen Chakrabarty’s and later Manik Sarkar’s decision not to arm the party cadres against the TNV was hailed.  New economic measures , like the introduction of plantation crops like, rubber, were adopted by Chakrabart which were aimed to undermine the roots of tribal insurgency. Further, two police officers, B.L. Vohra and G.M. Srivastava had contributed to check the underground  movement in Tripura. Things promised to look better when Hasina, on coming to power took systematic action against all North-East India’s rebel groups.

 
The writer suggests that, the only way to restore peace is through the restoration of tribal lands, rights, prevention of marginalisation of indigenous people by some “innovative socio-political engineering”. Economic development has also to be ushered in by a corruption free administration. He argues that, Manik Sarkar’s Government can do more and start off, by scrapping the Gumti Dam, where Tripura’s landless tribal peasants can be settled. With huge natural gas reserves, it is certainly a waste of money to invest in the Gumti Hydel project. Settling landless tribal peasants in wet lands, would also prevent them from practicing jhum. This should be done even if Bengali fishermen are displeased at the loss of the Dumbur lake (Gumti reservoir), as this can start off the process of ethnic reconciliation and ,in effect buy peace.

This paper analyses the negotiations of the women in Nagaland with a state that traditionally privileges patriarchal values. In their negotiations with the state the women undertook many innovative actions to fight violence and traditional injustices and create a more just society. The women’s groups in Northeast India have been instrumental in redefining security, be it their fight to repeal AFSPA, ensuring food security, ensuring securitization of life and livelihood through patrolling the neighbourhood and resorting to non-violent dialogues with the underground movements and the army, and creating innovative ways of engaging with the governments or fighting for the women’s land rights and reservation of seats for the women in the elections. Through their activism they have made the state realise that upholding their cause will help the cause of justice and peace. Women’s engagements with conflict and peace in Nagaland have transformed the traditional definitions resistance and thereby have serious impact on both gender roles and governance.

This essay seeks to study changing forms and technologies of governance as a means of addressing – if not resolving – the conflicts that have hitherto marked Assam. Primarily focusing on the post-colonial times, the first part of this paper gives a general idea about the insurgency in Assam. The second part studies the ‘peace’ that has been produced through the deployment and circulation of various forms and technologies of governance. It seeks to study the location of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) in the politics of ‘peace’. The third part seeks to draw our attention to the newly emergent concern for rights, justice and democracy in the Northeast and how it has been playing a critical role in triggering off a series of new social movements in the region particularly in Assam. Insofar as the public agenda is being redefined, a new citizen seems to be surfacing in the region – a citizen who harps less on her distinctiveness from the outsiders or the foreigners as seen in course of the Assam movement (1979-1985) but more on the three key issues of rights, justice and democracy. The process is likely to be a trendsetter for peace in future – although it is highly unlikely that it will not face any reverses – given that the region has until recently been a standing witness to ethnic schism occasionally erupting into acute xenophobia, violence and insurgency.

Through a critical review of sociological literature on the Information Technology (IT) and its allied industry, and SEZs in India, this paper tries to understand the relations between flexibilisation of labour practices and its impact on the spatial aspects of work arrangement.