People's Democracy

 THINKING TOGETHER

In June Calcutta CC meeting, our political resolution stated as follows:

"Currently, the US has run up a national debt of 86.4 trillion dollars. The decline in the value of the dollar can help to an extent in making imports cheaper but any serious fall in the value of a dollar can lead to major difficulties for the economy."

Please clarify the meaning of above statement. May I know how it is possible that if dollar rate falls, then imports are cheaper?

--- V Sreenivasa Rao (through e-mail)

YOU are right. Thank you for pointing out an error in the above formulation.  Instead of “making imports cheaper,” it should read "making US exports cheaper."  The rest of the para makes sense only with this correction.

Whenever the value of a domestic currency falls, its products are cheaper internationally while its imports become costlier. 

I am disturbed to read that of all places in West Bengal superstitious practices like marrying minor girls to dogs, marrying donkeys and killing witches is common and widely reported. Yet we know that the Left has won an overall majority in these rural areas. What is the CPI(M) doing to bring about enlightenment among the deprived? It is embarrassing to read and defend the CPI(M) here in London where I live for the past 25 years.

--- Vinod Thapar, London (through e-mail)

AT the outset, the claim that such incidents are "widely reported" is not true, at least as far as the Indian media are concerned. 

Popularising the development of a scientific outlook amongst the people of West Bengal in the struggle against superstition and obscurantism has been and continues to be a key activity of the CPI(M). This is an ongoing struggle that the CPI(M) relentlessly carries on.

The practices that you have mentioned are both uncivilised and dehumanising. The CPI(M) is in the forefront of the struggles against such practices. There is no need to "defend the CPI(M)" by approving such practices. On the contrary, the CPI(M) must be defended for condemning such practices and in its struggle against them. 

The social consciousness in rural Bengal is on the average more secular and enlightened than in the many other parts of India. Such isolated incidents cannot be treated as the norm. If such were the case, then it would have been impossible for the Left or the CPI(M) to win democratic elections in these areas continuously for nearly three decades.