Free The Gypsy Goddess by Meena Kandasamy Page A

Congress government was kicked out of power because of famine and starvation.
    The proletariat will never forgive a tyrant who forces them to bury their children. You are in power only because your party’s election manifesto promised one measure of rice for one rupee.
    In fact, this Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government has overseen the most difficult year of the last decade. Every time a mill has shut up shop, workers have been forced to flee to other states in search of employment. Workers are striking in rubber plantations, paper mills, rice mills, sugar mills, textile mills. To date, twenty-seven cotton mills have been closed, rendering 20,000 weavers jobless and bringing their families to absolute penury. Teaching and non-teaching staff have not been paid for months in several colleges across the state. Schoolchildren are forced to go without midday meals in several districts. There is not a single class of people that has not been affected by the mishandling and incompetence of the present government. In all the cities, there is water shortage. Cholera and malaria are touching alarming levels.
    The bitter truth is, we have an undeclared famine. In the southern districts, rationing is hitting the poor, who are getting less and less from the public distribution system. People who were entitled to 1,200 grams of food grain per week are now being allowed only a maximum of 800 grams. This is a one-third cut in consumption that the government has gifted to the people. Being the wonder that is India,we also hear reports of fire destroying food-grain storage godowns . Only a fool will fail to see the hand of money-hungry landlords behind these acts of arson.
    In this dire situation, moneylending in villages has become deplorable, with rates of interest ranging from 50 to 300 per cent. The poor have no recourse but to further enslave themselves in these circles of debt.
    At least as a humanitarian gesture, the government loan collection could have been postponed. But when does the government act with the proletariat in mind?
    Only an extremely heartless and perversely well-entrenched government can be unmoved on hearing of the atrocities of untouchability that are committed against the Adi Dravidar agricultural labourers in our Tanjore district. The landlords build a cement shelter for their cows, but these people have to huddle under a blanket of night sky because they are considered ‘untouchable’. Even worse, the greed of these landlords is killing the poor workers. In the last two years, at least three men have died in every large farm because of the poisonous effects of spraying Polydol. They have died in the field, hospital, or en route, and while it is clear that these deaths have occurred because of chemical pesticides, the government has not taken a single step to prevent these deaths from occurring, it has not issued any stern warning to the landlords and it has even not paid any compensation to the families of these victims. Instead,it has maintained its comprador-bourgeois character and continues the import of these poisonous pesticides in order to bring about its promise of a ‘Green Revolution’.
    We have been swindled in the name of gods, in the name of religion, in the name of caste. Now, we are being swindled in the name of development.
    Comrades, we will be making a grave blunder if we assume that everything that is happening in the delta district is merely a local problem. Was it just drought and defective distribution that caused the food crisis? Even American imperialism needs to shoulder its share of the burden of guilt. Using the ruse of the Indo-Pak War, America delayed shipment of food grains, and we sank into famine. America is interested in the Green Revolution because it seeks to prevent the Red Revolution.
    In the name of this Green Revolution, we are dependent on American fertilizers. In Tanjore district alone, the use of fertilizer has had a 2,000 per cent increase. This