r/IndianLeft

I grew up in Pune. My grandfather was a milkman and we had buffaloes and cows. My father studied incredibly hard, got into Fergusson College, and eventually built a career in the corporate world. Watching his journey, I worked hard too, earned a degree in computer science engineering, moved abroad, and now I'm doing STEM research.

People often describe Pune as India's "Oxford of the East", a city of education, progressive thinking, and merit. That has certainly been true for many people. But growing up, I also experienced what I can only describe as a quiet undercurrent of casteism that rarely gets talked about.

I went to a school in Erandwane (I'd rather not name it). At a very young age, I experienced discrimination from teachers because of my caste. I'm a Kshatriya, and I was made to feel that I didn't belong among the "intelligent" students because I wasn't from one of the so-called upper castes. I still remember being told, directly or indirectly, that only people from certain castes could attain the highest levels of knowledge.

When you're a child, you don't know enough to question authority. If a teacher says something like that, you don't argue, you believe it. It took me years to realise how damaging those messages were.

As an adult, I understand that favouritism exists everywhere. But I still believe a classroom should be one place where a child's potential isn't judged by the family they were born into. No child chooses their caste.

What has always puzzled me is how people take pride in something they had no role in earning. Your caste isn't an achievement. It's an accident of birth. Even more ironic is how many people ignore the traditional rules associated with their own caste whenever it's convenient, but when it's time to establish social superiority, caste suddenly becomes very important again.

Living abroad has made me realise how much lighter life can feel when people judge you by your work instead of your surname. Here, I'm simply an Indian researcher. My colleagues care about my ideas, my work, and what I contribute not the caste I was born into.

Sometimes I wonder: if I eventually earn a PhD, would there still be people back home who'd see my caste before they see my work?

I'm not claiming this is everyone's experience in Pune, nor am I trying to start a caste war or blame an entire community. This is simply my experience growing up in a city that prides itself on education and rational thinking. For me, there was always a quiet undercurrent of casteism beneath that image.

I'm curious whether others from Pune have experienced something similar, or whether my experience was an exception.

Even Youtubers are getting slammed with UAPA now.

As the question suggests : I work in an academic/grassroots capacity in Assam, and lately I’ve been strongly feeling like there seems to be no movement on the ground? People don’t seem to organise and trade unions to my knowledge are diluted and don’t function in the same way. Sorry if this question is very naive and silly but : how does anyone start?

Do you think religions are progressive?

The stereotype of Muslim Terrorist is quite a common phenomenon (at least as per my experience) but it is exceptionally new. For centuries the Muslim world was renowned for its contributions to science, philosophy, political theory, art and so on but from the 20th century this image was gone. For roughly half a century the Muslim world, especially West Asia, has been known for making terrorists. A well known story. Pick up any book by the left and you will find declassified files after files that talk about how the NATO funded radical right wing (often called the Wahabi muslims) islamic orthodoxy in the region. The ISI in Pakistan,the house of Saudis, the Haqqani network and a host of other groups were provided with money, arms and intelligence to combat the progressive movements in the region. In the process these radical right wing groups dominated over and often crushed more moderate movements like Sufism. It was all justified in the name of combating communist influences, especially the influence of The USSR but its effects were felt by the vast majority of the moderate muslims throughout the cold war who dreamed of a more free and democratic world. Learned comrades know about the series of regime change operations like in Indonesia, Iran, Iraq , Afghanistan, Libiya, and most recently Syria and many others that took place. What is usually missing from the conversations about these monumental changes in global politics is the role of the deep state.

We know a regime change happened in India in 2014 but can we rule out foreign collusion? Journalist and author Josy Joseph in his book The Silent Coup: A History of India's Deep State. had written to understand the Deep State in the Indian context. Now the concept of deep state is simple. It is the state that is not accountable to the electors but it has state-like powers and can even influence the decisions of the political state. You can understand it as the private state of the uber wealthy that looks after their interests when the law cannot. Joseph shows in his book that the Indian deep state is fused with the political state in India in a very unique way. There are a series of middle men connecting different institutions and consisting of governmental and non governmental personnels who mediate decision making processes of the society. These personnels work completely independently of the political will of the people. Obviously the media is a big part of it. You can look at most histories of regime change operations and you are bound to find that the regional deep state was involved in them. The best examples I know are Chile, Ukraine (during the Euromaidan event), Pakistan and recently Bangladesh but you can find many examples. The deep state is also popularly called “The Fifth Column” when talking about its international role in regime change.

Now this deep state in India includes both formal and informal workers which is unique. Another unique point about the Indian deep state is that the military is mostly subservient to it (with the exceptions of AFSPA governed areas) while in countries like Pakistan and many others the army is a strong part of the deep state, but that is not important for this discussion. Concerning the composition of the deep state I give the following examples of formal and informal workers that operate within the deep state respectively. We have the police but also the informants that work for the police informally, you have banks and non banking financial entities that hire goons informally to recover properties of defaulters, the Intelligence Services (R&AW) that hire agents to give them intelligence and execute overseas operations (as you may have seen in Dhurandhar), the shell companies and hedge funds that pay the corrupt politicians for favours and the party workers who depend on the politician’s corruption to get some income from party or public funds (think the Ram Mandir stolen funds scandal recently) and many more. Needless to say the deep state is a machine of immense violence that can take out powerful people who don't tow the official line like Justice Lohia and can conjure up riots at the drop of a hat as we have seen in the Gujrat, Delhi riots for example. Then the whole state machinery is activated to protect the perpetrators and scapegoat innocents.

In the Indian deep state the informal workers far outnumber the formal workers but they have almost no control over its workings. So any damage to the deep state affects the incomes of many informal workers too. For example if you go to a big government hospital for some tests or treatment there are these agents who earn a commission for redirecting patients to private labs and nursing homes. They may have other jobs but they earn a significant amount from cashing in on government inefficiencies.The decision to under-fund government hospitals is made from the top, from the political state (maybe influenced by big Pharma and IMF etc.) but if the government decides to reverse this decision then the incomes of these many informal workers get hit. So the system is fueled by both the class interests of formal and a vast number of informal workers. Hence the deep state is the political counterpart of the Black Economy (on which Arun Kumar the retired JNU professor have written and spoken extensively). Needless to say that the Deep state and the Black economy are intimately interconnected because the majority of the money circulating within the deep state is unaccounted money.

Now I must be a bit tedious here and I definitely don't want to bore you with theory but it is important to be more specific when you are talking about something that is so detrimental to democracy. The deep state doesn't produce any new value in the Marxist sense. That is not what it's for. It works on meditating decision making processes and enforcing private property, hence it counts as a state not as part of the productive economy. The political state is like the tip of an iceberg and the deep state constitutes the vast majority of state machinery but they are parts of the same body.

There are formal workers that work in the deep state like there are formal workers employed in the productive sector while most informal workers often work in both but the functions of the deep state are purely politico-bureaucratic not productive. In other words The deep state is not necessitated by the social requirements of production (like factories or farms etc.) but the political requirements of the ruling class.

As we see from Arun Kumar’s work, the black economy creates various inefficiencies in the economic system. For example building a new police station increases local crimes, doctors over prescribe to waste patient’s money, infrastructure crumbles, teachers take more time from the students than needed to teach the same things, GDP growth becomes slower etc.The most recent incidents include the privatisation of the competitive exam system that claimed the lives of many students.

The deep state creates similar inefficiencies as well in the decision making process of the society. For example a judge might deliver a biased judgment influenced by money (or gifts/a seat at the Rajya Sabha or some other private benefits), a politician may hand tender to a contractor who charges more money from the exchequer and delivers poorer results than his competitors only due to personal connections, a bureaucrat may show favouritism by delaying your work, the police may refuse to register an FIR against a rich or upper caste person, the state policies and budget gets shaped in favour of big business and against workers etc. In the heart of all these inefficiencies is the deep state or the private state in which money power and traditional alliances reign supreme. The deep state is also responsible for creating massive deficit in trust the citizens have with respect to their governments which makes India a low trust society

Now let's return to geopolitics. Now we know from all regime changes funded by the US and other imperial powers like France have required the cooperation of the regional deep states or The Fifth Column. What makes the deep state so vulnerable to outside influence is that it runs purely on the interest of private money. People like George Soros use their money openly to influence the politics of other countries. Various NGOs, CIA cutouts like the Freedom foundation, media, and institutions influence the political state in foreign soil. This creates a massive internal security threat to the nation because your representatives are not working for your interests.. For example the PM cares fund is said to have received massive amounts of funds from Chinese firms before the PM's infamous speech regarding the Galwan Valley clash in which he refused to recognise China as an aggressor. We have pretty good indications that this has been happening in India for a long time. We have APCO World Wide which did extensive PR work for Modi and the Gujarat government under him has extensive links to western corporations, Cambridge Analytica has been said to have worked with various political groups in India, the Israeli NSO group which is a private company had helped India spy on its citizens with the malware called Pegasus, social media platforms changing their rules to influence public opinions, the scandal of the Rafale deals have exposed the corruption in foreign trade deals and many more. We only see glimpses of the workings of the deep state but we never get the full picture because it is by design meant to be secret. But we see the same pattern i.e. a network of government and private entities acting as middle-men and moving money across the globe.

The most important part of this is that these channels are used to exercise control over the Indian society to serve the interests of the imperial core. The most appropriate example that I can think of is the following. The former chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel in 2021 when India was going through a shortage of COVID 19 vaccines for its own citizens had insisted that India prioritise the vaccine demands of the West above its own consumption because, (and I'm almost quoting her verbatim), they have “allowed” India to become a pharma hub so it would prioritise exports over its own requirements. If this is the power of a petite imperialist power like Germany, imagine the power the US has to shape our economy and the society at large. It has single handedly changed India's political alignment in favour of Israel, almost brought Adani (the richest man in Asia) to his knees and is making us buy stuff we don't even need. This is a massive violation of sovereignty by the imperial core and none of this will change much with only a change in the regime.

Now many of you might be thinking that this is just old colonialism in a different form but you couldn't be more wrong. The sheer autonomy of the deep state in India suggests that it is not like a puppet of the comprador. It is qualitatively a new phenomenon although its effects may be similar to old colonialism. In this case the Indian bourgeoisie is a stakeholder to the imperial plunder. Massive amounts of Indian capital is being invested in mines in Africa, Australia, pharmaceuticals and other consumer items worth billions are exported overseas which are not even of good quality. If the Indian bourgeoisie wants to keep exporting cheap low quality products and services overseas it needs the cooperation of the imperial core. Hence India cannot even speak when its own sailors die by American missiles while crossing the Strait of Hormuz. This wouldn't be the case if it were not for the influence of the Indian deep state.

Now the question you might be asking is if the deep state and the black economy create so much inefficiencies and are even a threat to internal security then why doesn't anyone do anything about it. The reason is simple, class interest. Millions of people depend on the deep state and the black economy for their livelihoods and most are in the informal sector. It is actually impossible to crush the deep state without also causing harm to a good part of the informal sector. So what is the solution?

Arun Kumar gives a number of solutions for the problems of the black economy both for short and long term in his book Understanding The Black Economy and Black Money in India That also applies to the Indian deep state like breaking the nexus of corrupt politicians, corrupt executive and businessmen through broad mass movements but I'm going to explore a different angle. The present regime has waged a war against the informal sector which is obvious from its policy decisions thus far. There are many reasons for why it's doing so but the main reason is that it enables growth. Basically every economy that has been able to crush its informal sector like South Korea, China, Singapore etc. have been able to grow faster and have more stable governments (not necessarily democratic governments but relatively stable ones). India is trying to follow this exact route so it is actively killing its informal sector and creating what in South Korea is called “chaebolism”, which is Asian for an oligopoly. In this the deep state becomes more formalised and centralised making it easier to control. In such a situation the domestic military industrial complex can also grow at a disproportionate rate as India plans to be a leading arms exporter and “net security provider" of the QUAD in the South Pacific. Hence a broad based decentralised alliance of parties and political and social groups can at best change the regime not abolish the deep state and take away its autonomy. Today those who are being immiserated by the crushing of the informal sector can be organised as a parallel government with its own parliament (in the form of workers councils), tenants associations and women’s committees, people's courts and municipalities etc. This will take a lot of time, efforts and resources to materialise but it is the only way in my opinion that the deep state can be decisively dethroned.

I watched poet Naresh Saxena's videos on AkshatGram's Instagram page, and one of his poems about a fish and water (do check it out if you haven't) made me question what patriotism actually is.

Is patriotism something that's meant to be followed only by the middle class and the poor? Because the rich seem to be the least patriotic of the bunch, including businessmen, politicians, and even artists. So are only we, the people at the bottom of the chain, supposed to be nationalists, and make all the sacrifices? The rich are eating our country from the inside.

The biggest question his poem made me think about is this: we're always told, "What can we do for our country?" But who is going to ask, "What is this country doing for us?"

With all these paper leaks, corruption, religious fights, and other issues, I sometimes feel like the people at the top are fooling us in the name of patriotism and making us blind with it, while they enjoy their lives in luxury and their children are settled abroad.

It will be on Sunday and we are lacking some left members as we have 7 debaters against and only a 3 for the motion and I guess 10-12 audience .

So it would be good if we could have some educated people in this debate. This will be organized on google meet.

You can register by clicking on the given link the comment. (if the mods approve the link).

This is important for us too, our brain rot is a​ slow burner with a sprinkle of gomutra and ethanol. We also had that trans bill to test the waters.​​​​​​

So yesterday Sony confirmed that they will be cutting production for physical disk based games. Now this issue to non gaming folks might seem largely unrelated but this sets a very dangerous precedent. Essentially now what happens you can't buy second hand games or trade old games, this also leaves you at the mercy of sony for buying games as they will have a monopoly.

They will be able to raise price by how much ever they want and whenever they want . That's not even the worst part. The worst thing is that there will be no guarantee that your games will live on . Yes that's right, the product you pay for can also clear to exist if the corpos want it. They can just just say we are not going to pass secret updates or outright shutting them and there is nothing you can do about it.

This example can be emulated by other corpos if they want best example at the top of my head is gpu manufacturing. Example:- let's say you want to do something gpu or cpu intensive (gaming, modelling,rendering etc) but the gpu and cpu companies decide that it's more profitable for them if you buy computing power from them (cloud based services) making your machine effectively a useless box that you can just use to surf the net.

This by the way is being done by Amazon (AWS) and Google as well, this can put huge dent in academia and research or even daily livelihood of people who won't be able to purchase computing power for their freelancing work.( Theoretically they can give poor tgp gpus and rent out higher tgp ).

Another thing that can be raised is essentially knowledge be held hostage as foss or fosd ( free open source software/hardware) will also be at the corpos mercy and guess what? Gpu tech is so IP protected essentially out of amd and nvidia or intel no one has been able to reproduce them (on curriculum level like you can learn how to make a cpu but not gpu).

Even in EU parliament, yes the bastion of lobs were not able to hold of save games bill even after it got 500k plus signatures.

Im being honest here if most other countries had as much problems like us the people would already overthrow their governements and establish a new system.

I dont need to explain u all might know it already Corruption , paper leaks , Poverty , Unemployment , Preventive deaths due to bad govt healthcare and Infrastructure etc..... and millions of problems more its gonna be an endless list.....

My blood boils when I see these politicians using our tax money to buy their Fortuner and Range rover cars living in Villas , travelling in private jets/helicopters that same money which could have saved lots of lots of lives indirectly through quality free healthcare , housing .........

I mean this is horrible are they even humans its a fck*ng silent slow genocide happening rotting our countrys future generations WE HAVE FAILED AS "THE REPUBLIC OF INDIA "

I see a hope that in our lifetime we will see an uprising where these white kurta Netas will finally bow down in front of the people and all their politcial parties , generational wealth turn to ashes. If things continue to go like this and if they still get no shame I maybe exaggerating but we may see a violent af revolution not far in the 10-20 or maybe even 30 years but for sure if nothing changes.

Plz drop down ur opinion what do you all think ?

Edit:- I hope Indian army does a coup