Masses See Possibility of Communism here ā¦ College Canāt Solve Youth Unemployment here ā¦
Masses See Possibility of Communism
NEW DELHI (India), July 31 ā āNever in my life have I seen demonstrations this massive,ā said a man who has lived in Delhi for seventy years. Students, and farmworkers who joined them, witnessed an unprecedented surge, disappearing into the horizon.
Millions protested against a NEET leak resulting in twenty studentsā suicides. NEET is the mandatory competitive exam for medical school admission.
Youths protested the governmentās indifference and corruption. High unemployment added to the fury that spilled from the streets of Delhi and gripped the whole country.
Several months ago, Indiaās Supreme Court Chief Justice called unemployed students ācockroaches.ā āÆThis provoked a mass student movement. Gen Z created memes, TikTok posts, and rap songs to express their rage. They called themselves Cockroach Janta Party. Within 72 hours, they signed up more members than the ruling fascist BJP in 72 years!
Three weeks ago, ICWP comrades brought hundreds of friends to the Hind Rajab docudrama. That was like a dress rehearsal to bring masses with our communist politics to the streets. Many friends came with their entire families. Everyone had read Red Flag. We carried the Red Flag and water in our backpacks.
We divided into groups of ten or fewer, which spread out among the masses. Each group had a leader. We could communicate with the entire party.
Some groups arrived before the Delhi police stopped the Metro to prevent people from going to Parliament Road. Some comrades walked more than 20 kms (12 miles). Some could not reach the protest as the cops had started
attacking students with batons and tear gas. Later, internet service was cut. We switched to local communications apps.
Meet Police Attacks with Communist Collectivity
As night fell, cops brutally attacked the demonstrators. Students surged past their barricades. Police resorted to tear gas, nail-studded batons, and pellet guns.
We realized that we needed to be with friends and make connections. Our groups of ten again spread among the masses. Each comrade was responsible for those around them. People readily gave their social media handles.
A flight attendant with an overnight layover came to the march. She wanted to be a medical doctor, but the corruption in NEET kept her out of medical school. We talked about education in capitalist society, about selfishness, and making wage slaves. We shared Red Flag electronically. She said everyone at her airline is talking about the studentsā courage. She would talk to all her colleagues about our communist conversations.
A couple had driven twenty-four hours from Mumbai. The man, an auto mechanic, said he was donating all he had saved for his three-year-old daughter to feed the students. We said that we need people like him to be communists because he already was thinking of feeding the masses. Two comrades stayed with him for the night. They exchanged phone numbers.
News of the brutal police attacks spread across India and beyond, reaching even the most remote areas. Protests spread too, including high school students.
By the third night, farmworkersāsome armedāhad joined the march. The emboldened students grew more defiant and fought back against the police. In many locations, the outnumbered police had to retreat or abandon their units.
On the third day, we sent two groups to Delhiās industrial area, where we have been distributing Red Flag. Workers were lining up to get our paper when we told them that we were coming from the march.
Safe Among the Masses
āI have never felt safer in my entire life surrounded by millions of people I donāt know,ā said Renu, there with three friends. āThere is a camaraderie, an unshakable bond. We are all the same. I give water to an unknown person. Somebody gives me food. There is a plume of tear gas, police attacking. They suspended the metro, there is no internet, and now the government has cut electricity and water. BUT I FEEL SAFE AMONG YOU,ā she concluded.
Millions like Renu are a threat not only to Modi, but to the entire capitalist system. āThey are all rascals and swindlers,ā Renuās friend shouted, pointing to the Congress Party, which is trying to soothe the masses.
Facing the massesā fury, the education minister resigned.
Renu and her friends have become part of our communist lives. In less than a week, we have made contact with thousands.
At the movementās peak, millions of people were fed. Water was distributed. Doctors and nurses set up emergency field hospitals. Sanitation, cleaning, and cooking were all done by the masses. No money changed hands. So much food and money poured in from all over India that organizers requested people not to send any more.
We are asking our comrades and people like Renu and her friends: Can we feed the masses of millions of people not just for four days, but permanently?
We have to destroy the system that feeds on police and military to protect the capitalist bosses. We have to organize a communist revolution.
The International Communist Workersā Party (ICWP) is the centre of change. Without ICWP, gains are only temporary. The education minister has resigned, but our task of organizing the masses for communism has become clearer and brighter. Letās build our party!
Letter: College Canāt Solve Capitalismās Mass Youth Unemployment
The demand for higher education is not a narrow demand. In India, half of the population of 1.4 billion is under 30. College is the primary means of securing a job and escaping widespread poverty. But forty percent of college graduates cannot find employment.
For this reason, millions of young people took to the streets. The student protest turned into a mobilization against widespread corruption, elite privileges, and repression.
This movement gives voice to unemployed working-class youth and to students seeking a way out of the growing precarity of life. The ācucarachasā include the jobless, the disenfranchised, the impoverished, and those manipulated by government corruption and nepotism. They now seek to win back their trampled demands and rights.
These young people need to understand and embrace the ideas of emancipation promoted by the ICWP. They need to unite to end capitalism, its exploitation, and its wars.
As in Mexico, university entrance exams have been manipulated in India, particularly for medical school, a profession with a reputation for being highly lucrative.
High-ranking Indian government officials had been leaking the answers to the medical school entrance exams. The answers were published ahead of time in exchange for money so that elite cram schools could guarantee admission for a small group of privileged students.
The entrance exams are exclusionary for the majority. More than two million students compete for just 130,000 spots. In India, more is spent on private tutoring than on the entire government budget for higher education. Families spend their savings and mortgage their assets to pay for preparatory courses.
In Mexico, 158,000 students took the exams for various degree programs at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Only 21,962 would be accepted, meaning 86% would be rejected. The UNAM medical program accepts fewer than 2% of applicants through the admissions exam. The UNAM admissions process is under scrutiny amid a major scandal over allegations of fraud.
What interested me was drawing a parallel with the protests here that arenāt going anywhere. Even if the exam were repeated, the result would still be the exclusion of the majority. The most thatās being asked for is an expansion of UNAM so it can admit more students. But if more complete their studies, more wouldnāt find jobs in their field of study. Thousands are already in that situation. In the least bad-case scenario, they would end up in low-paying jobs.
For now, I donāt think the protests will grow in Mexico like they did in India. I hope Iām wrong.
āCollege teacher in Mexico City
Read Communist Education for a Classless Society here