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Arguments for Proportional Representation

Radical Socialist has issued an election stand that is online and will also be available in slightly condensed form in Bangla as a printed booklet. I propose to write briefly about many of our demands, and put them up as blogs and Facebook posts. . As we say, these are demands we will raise before, during and after the elections. The first of these calls for proportional representation. Such a demand faces two criticisms. One from the liberal and right, another from the left. The liberal and right opposition says that proportional representation weakens the government. To this our response is, bourgeois democracy claims it stands for accountability of government and MPs to the people. In that case, the First Past The Post System [FPTP] we have is bad. It ensures that big parties get disproportionate seats. It also ensures skewed representation. First Past The Post: A Route to Marginalising Smaller Parties In the 1962 Parliament, the undivided CPI had just under 10 ...
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An Open Letter to Tariq Ali

Dear Tariq, When I was a very young radical, still a Maoist rather than a Trotskyist, it was your name, rather than that of Ernest Mandel, or of anyone else, that we came across, here in our part of India. There are still older comrades in West Bengal, who talk about a certain period of Fourth International history, in terms of “in those days of Tariq Ali”. This is why, a statement, even though signed by Chomsky, Zinn and others, along with the man who seems to have carried out the coup, a gentleman named Vijay Prashad, becomes most painful because you are among the signatories. As you once wrote in one of your wonderful books, about another comrade of yours, ‘there was fire in his belly in those days’. Perhaps we have all grown older, but some of us have refused to grow “wiser”. I read, and re-read, with a growing sense of wonder, shame and above all anger, the statement that some of you have signed. If you are uninformed, what gave you the authority to issue a pompous statement based...
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“Radical” Defenders of Ragging

One of the things we inherited from our erstwhile colonial masters was the cruel and humiliating tradition of “ragging” junior students. Administrations have traditionally tended to ignore or play down the matter. There are many reasons for this, not least of which is the reality that ragging divides the student community and turns students into torturers. This certainly suits administrations far more than getting radical student communities raising questions about imperialism, the exploitation of peasants and workers, environmental degradation, or other social issues. I remember that when we were students, in Jadavpur University, it was our organisation, the JU Democratic Students Front, that used to generate anti-ragging consciousness. Our elected office bearers used to move among the students, halting ragging. On occasion, we got hold of raggers and demanded that the administration must take action against them. The times have changed. There was a case of ragging in Jadavpur Univers...
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