Freedom First

Summary

Freedom First No. 230 (July 1971) is a monthly periodical issue from the Democratic Research Service, edited by V. B. Karnik, opening with M. S. Dabke’s critique of Finance Minister Y. B. Chavan’s 1971 budget as regressive and economically incoherent, followed by an unsigned Notes section on the Bangladesh refugee influx, the PSP-SSP socialist merger, and election-law reform. The issue continues with S. R. Mohan Das on factional disarray in India’s trade union movement (INTUC, HMS, AITUC), S. S. Voronitsyn on growing educational and class stratification in the Soviet Union, a Reviews section covering a comparative-politics volume edited by Gabriel Almond and James Coleman and B. K. Dutt’s account of the 1946 Royal Indian Navy mutiny, and A. Yodfat’s survey (via New Middle East) of Soviet relationships with Arab Communist parties across Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Sudan. It closes with a reprinted Economist note on Chinese refugees swimming to Hong Kong and the recurring ‘With Many Voices’ column of press quotations.

Essays

The Budget and the Common Man

By M. S. Dabke

M. S. Dabke argues that the 1971 budget piles fresh, regressive burdens on the common man while doing little to reduce poverty or spur real development. He contends the government’s own figures understate the tax burden, criticizes heavy reliance on indirect taxes on necessities (pressure cookers, thermos flasks, petrol, cigarettes) that hit the middle and poor classes hardest, and faults the Finance Minister for never studying the ‘marginal utility’ of a rupee to different income groups before taxing them. Dabke traces India’s falling savings rate and declining capital-formation ratios (from about 20% in 1962-63 to roughly 12% by 1971) to the cumulative effect of successive budgets’ ‘collections-oriented approach’, and closes by noting how little of the Rs. 2,722 crore revenue (about Rs. 85 crore, or 3.5%) is actually directed to welfare and employment schemes.

• The full-year burden of new taxation is about Rs. 285 crores, or 35% more if annualized beyond the nine-month collection period.
• Budgets are supposed to raise resources, reduce inequality, spur capital formation, and encourage savings and investment, but Dabke argues the 1971 budget fails on most counts.
• Heavy new excise on pressure cookers and thermos flasks (up to 30-50% combined) is criticized as mislabeling necessities as luxuries.
• India’s capital formation rate has fallen sharply from about 20% (1962-63) to around 12% by 1971, driven by non-Plan expenditure and public-sector losses.
• Of Rs. 2,722 crores in revenue, only about Rs. 85 crores (3.5%) goes to employment generation, child welfare, and education combined.

Notes (Refugee Problem; PSP-SSP Merger; Election Law)

The unsigned Notes section addresses three current issues: the influx of refugees from Bangla Desh into India, which the editors argue is an international responsibility that the United Nations must help shoulder (as it did for Palestinian refugees via UNRWA); the merger of the Praja Socialist Party and Samyukta Socialist Party into a new unified socialist party, which the piece treats skeptically given the PSP’s weakness and history of factional splits; and Parliament’s decision to set up a committee to reform election law, addressing malapportioned constituencies, new subtler forms of electoral corruption, and uncontrolled campaign expenses.

• Refugees from Bangla Desh are pouring into India at a rate that could reach ten million; the piece argues this is an international, not purely Indian, responsibility.
• The UN’s precedent of UNRWA for Palestinian refugees is cited as a model for handling the Bangla Desh refugee crisis.
• The PSP and SSP have agreed to merge into a new ‘Socialist Party’ offering a radical alternative to Congress(R), but the piece doubts the merger will hold or matter much given both parties’ current weakness.
• A new parliamentary committee will examine election-law reform, including proportional representation, constituency size, and new forms of election-related corruption such as promised temple or road construction.

Labour Movement - The Future

By S. R. Mohan Das

S. R. Mohan Das analyzes the fragmentation of India’s labour movement following the mid-term Lok Sabha elections, describing how INTUC, HMS, and AITUC have lost political direction and are being pulled into confused, shifting alliances (including INTUC’s rapprochement with the AITUC despite historic anti-Communist positioning). He argues regional labour federations sponsored by parties like the DMK and Shiv Sena add further confusion, and that the deeper problem is structural: India’s labour movement has always been an intelligentsia-led response to industrialization rather than an organic, worker-controlled institution, leaving unions vulnerable to being reduced to symbolic or ‘commissar’-style functions as the state increasingly sets wages and conditions by notification.

• Mid-term Lok Sabha results dealt a blow to the intelligentsia controlling the labour movement, leaving INTUC, HMS, and AITUC without clear political direction.
• INTUC, historically anti-Communist, has had to soften its stance toward the AITUC to retain government patronage under Minister of State for Labour R. K. Khadilkar.
• Regional labour federations sponsored by the DMK and Shiv Sena add further fragmentation to the union landscape.
• The author argues India’s labour movement was never built on a genuine worker-driven business function, leaving it vulnerable to becoming a mere ‘veto-using instrument’ rather than a protective institution.
• The piece foresees continued splits and fragmentation unless unions restructure to allow real worker decision-making and control.

Russia: Towards Hereditary Elite

By S. S. Voronitsyn

S. S. Voronitsyn describes a widening gap in the Soviet Union between the number of secondary-school graduates and the limited places available at higher educational institutions, arguing this is producing a disillusioned surplus of young people shut out of higher education and skilled employment. He shows that access to higher education is increasingly determined by parental wealth, official position, and connections rather than merit, despite formally competitive entrance exams, and that this is entrenching a hereditary elite. The piece closes by comparing this emerging Soviet ‘establishment’ problem to the intelligentsia’s self-isolation and the political dangers of ‘overproduction’ of educated but unemployed youth in both capitalist and Communist systems.

• About three million Soviet students finish secondary education yearly, but only 500,000 full-time places exist at higher institutions.
• Since 1951, day-study places have doubled while secondary graduates have risen by 650%, sharply widening the gap.
• Admission is increasingly influenced by parental wealth, social standing, and personal connections rather than pure merit, despite competitive entrance exams.
• A Russian journal is quoted describing parents’ ‘siege’ of examination and enrolment commissions through influential contacts.
• The author sees this producing a self-perpetuating hereditary elite and drawing an implicit parallel to capitalist countries’ ‘establishment’ problem.

Reviews: The Politics of the Developing Areas (ed. Gabriel A. Almond and James S. Coleman)

The Reviews section (signed V.B.K.) covers two books: ‘The Politics of the Developing Areas’, edited by Gabriel A. Almond and James S. Coleman (Princeton), praised as an intellectually ambitious attempt to build a functionalist comparative-politics framework for analyzing developing-area political systems, though criticized for lacking attention to geo-cultural factors of the kind Karl Wittfogel examined in his studies of oriental despotism and irrigation societies; and ‘Mutiny of the Innocents’ by B. K. Dutt (Sindhu Publications), a first-hand account of the February 1946 Royal Indian Navy mutiny in Bombay, which the reviewer credits with hastening the transfer of power and playing a real, if understated, role in Indian independence.

• Almond and Coleman’s volume proposes input functions (political socialisation, interest articulation, political communication) and output functions (rule making, rule application, rule adjudication) as a universal analytic model.
• The reviewer credits the model’s ‘mutuality vs dominance’ distinction as key to comparing developed and developing political systems, but faults it for omitting geo-cultural factors like those Wittfogel studied.
• B. K. Dutt’s ‘Mutiny of the Innocents’ gives the first full account of the 1946 RIN mutiny, arguing it convinced the British they could no longer rely on their armed forces to hold India.
• The mutineers wanted to hand power to national leaders, but the mutiny failed because those leaders were not ready to accept it.
• The book’s foreword was contributed by ‘Mr. Natarajan’, editor of the Free Press Journal at the time of the mutiny.

Reviews: Mutiny of the Innocents (B. K. Dutt, Sindhu Publications)

By V. B. K.

A. Yodfat (reprinted from New Middle East) surveys the fraught relationship between the Soviet Union and Arab Communist parties across Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Sudan. He shows that Soviet geopolitical interests in the region — securing oil deals, military bases, and anti-Western alignment with ruling regimes — have repeatedly overridden solidarity with local Communist parties, who are often imprisoned or persecuted even by the same ‘progressive’ Arab regimes Moscow courts. The piece concludes that Arab Communist parties, lacking Soviet backing when it conflicts with state-to-state interests, have increasingly converged with nationalist positions rather than pursued independent revolutionary lines.

• Since 1960, Soviet policy has treated Arab Communist parties as an embarrassment when they conflict with relations with ruling Arab regimes.
• In Egypt, small Communist groups were repeatedly repressed even as Soviet-Egyptian relations warmed; some were disbanded in 1965 and merged into the ruling Arab Socialist Union under Soviet advice.
• In Iraq, the Ba’ath regime received substantial Soviet economic and military assistance and oil deals, while Iraqi Communists continued to be imprisoned and tortured, a fact the Iraqi Communist Party protested in a May 1970 statement.
• In Jordan and Lebanon, Communists have found relatively more freedom to operate, with Lebanon home to the only legal Communist newspaper (an-Nida) in the Arab world.
• The Sudanese Communist Party, once among the strongest in the Arab world with deep trade union support, was suppressed even as Sudan moved closer to Moscow.
• Yodfat concludes Soviet leaders prioritize military bases and oil/strategic interests with Arab regimes over consistent support for local Communist parties.

Books Received

A short ‘Without Comment’ item reprinted from The Economist reports on the 1971 wave of Chinese ‘freedom swimmers’ fleeing across the five-mile stretch to Hong Kong, describing rising disillusionment among city youths forcibly sent to rural communes since the Cultural Revolution, harsher measures against escapers and their families, and a growing parallel phenomenon of overseas Chinese being smuggled into Hong Kong via Macao for a fee.

• More than 150 swimmers were detected crossing to Hong Kong in the month before publication, part of an estimated 10,000-11,000 annual escapers.
• Escapers are disproportionately former Red Guards and urban youths sent to rural communes since the Cultural Revolution who now face bitter disillusionment.
• Chinese authorities have begun threatening a ten-year labour-camp term for families that fail to report intended escapes.
• A parallel smuggling route brings expatriate Chinese into Hong Kong via Macao for fees ranging from £50 to £100 per person.

USSR And Arab Communist Parties

By A. Yodfat

The closing ‘With Many Voices’ column collects short press quotations on the period’s major controversies: Soviet interests in general instability, the PSP-SSP socialist merger, socialism as a search for followers in India, the East Pakistan/Bangladesh refugee crisis and the exodus of Hindus, Solzhenitsyn’s remarks on Samizdat publishing, and Yahya Khan’s military position, among others, drawn from outlets including the Swiss Press Review, Indian Express, Time, The Observer, and The Sunday Times.

• Includes a quote from Lee Kuan Yew comparing India and Ceylon as examples of chaos following declarations of ‘complete freedom.’
• Includes Minoo Masani describing himself as ‘always a radical, never a conservative of either the Left or the Right.’
• Quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn on being forced to publish only via Samizdat due to Soviet censorship.
• Quotes The Observer and The Sunday Times on the scale of the Bengal refugee crisis and army-Bengali tensions in East Pakistan.

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