Glossing over Rural Crisis

One fact about the book is that it is a revised version of the general secretary’s report to the 22nd national conference of the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) held at Vijayawada in June last year. Because the book is based on the report of a general secretary to his organization, it is infected with all the defects such a report suffers from—a brief account of the party’s activities during the period under discussion in which an attempt is made to play up the role of one’s own organi­zation while running down rivals; a hasty glance, meant more to gloss over rather than uncover, at some none-too-glorious episodes in the party’s history; a sweep­ing formulation of the party’s program­me which is general enough to make one eel that one has done one’s duty by the people and vague enough to cause con­fusion in the ranks when it comes to implementation. A major part of Sinha’s book is devo­ted to an analysis of the crisis of the capitalist path of development that broke out in the Indian economy in 1973-74 and its deleterious impact on the agri­cultural sector.