[lbo-talk] Poll rout leaves India's communists a spent force

[ravi]

On May 20, 2009, at 1:30 PM, dredmond at efn.org wrote:
> Well, the contradiction here is that Indian capitalism (a subject I  
> know a
> bit more about than Indian politics) isn't terribly liberal, nor was  
> its
> neoliberalism all that neoliberal. The place is too complex for that.
> There's a fairly large state sector, 90% of the banks are owned by the
> state, etc. Several of the major entrepreneurial families are  
> running the
> Indian equivalent of chaebol - vast, sophisticated corporate networks.
> <snip happens>

Yes, I am aware of the above. In case you didn't know, my name  
("ravi") is perhaps the most common Indian male name. My point/concern  
is not whether India meets some textbook definition of [liberal]  
capitalism, but what the election losses of the BJP and the Left might  
mean, and what the Congress offers as an alternative. Of course it is  
true that we can under or over-interpret the results. I (and others)  
have made some points regarding this (the alternating nature of Kerala  
elections, the local issues in WB, etc).

	--ravi