The Sichuan Broadcasts

  Three days spent in the bookshops around Connaught Circus later, I was given an appointment. I was introduced to an organizer of the nepali workers' association in India. I had heard about them in Europe. I had hoped to meet them, because they were said to be strongly connected to the maobadis. This trade unionist was sorry to disappoint me, but due to the situation, he too had lost contact.

  As a consolation, my self-appointed lady tutor in strict marxist-leninist observance, suggested I should go down country. In the coal belt of Andhra Pradesh, one lakh miners had gone on indefinite strike two weeks earlier. (...) One hundred thousand workers on strike, that wasn't the people's war, but that sounded exciting enough. I took the next Chennai express, and a day later, I was in the heart of the action, Khammam.
  When I came out of the railway station, I was awaited. There was the Party boss, a genial man, tall and fat, dressed in an immaculate white short sleeves shirt and neatly ironed black pants, with an entire delegation: about a dozen teenagers, who had brought four red banners, one for each local organization, the workers' union, the students' union, the women's association and the Party cell. I was fisrt welcome by a salvo of enthusiastic red salutes and treated to the first stanza of the International in Telugu. My career as a revolutionary journalist was officialy starting. After that little ceremony, everybody jumped on me to shake hands. They were very excited to meet me and eager to ask questions. I was shuffled into the Party jeep, which had two red pennants on the hood to make clear to all that it was the Party's, and I was driven to the Party's house. I would stay there for the few days I would spent in Khammam. I would eat, and sleep on rush mats with the boys of the students' union who came from poor families and lived there all year round. To be a militant member of a students' union, that's a kind of livelihood. In India, to have a roof above your head and rice twice a day without really working, that's almost to be rich. The next day, I was left all alone in that big house. Everybody had gone to the daily demonstration of the miners. That's were I wanted to be. I tried to explain that in Paris demos can get violent too, that I was pretty much used to tear gas and could take a lathi-charge, they wouldn't listen. I was too precious a commodity to be put at any risk. Instead, they had a political tour arranged for me.
  I was taken to visit various Party officials. I had an interview with the women's association leader. She explained to me how they fought against casteism and alcoholism, and codemned western style sexual freedom as capitalist corruption. I had an interview with their representative in the Andhra Pradesh parliament, "our MP" as they called him. I can't remember a word he said. Mainly long ideological monologues, I think. I had a meeting with some of the miners' union leaders. At least with them, I learned a few things about the concrete life and working conditions of the miners. This one CPI(ml) was very powerful in that area, and very much institutionalized. I began to suspect it was well on its way to become like the French Communist Party I had known as a child: communist in words and reformist in deeds.
  More interesting was the visit to the miners' compound. I finally got to meet real people. The coal mines belong to a huge State conglomerate. So the miners are in what's known in India as the organized sector: they have indefinite contracts, a few paid holidays, some health and retirement benefits, and free housing. They're very privileged compared to the daily wage workers of the unorganized sector. And they're almost wealthy compared to the crores of landless peasants. When we left the compound, the rows after rows of three room concrete houses with running water and electricity, I had a brief glimpse of cardboard huts and plastic shacks. Just outside the compound, there was a shanty village. I inquired about it. I got a curt answer: "Oh that? That's a migrant workers camp". But what kind of work did they do? Were they the rickshaw wallahs of the people next door? Their dhobi wallahs? Their shit-sweepers? I was very unsettled. (...)
  Big news put an end to my covering of the great Andhra Pradesh strike: a nationwide cease-fire had been declared in Nepal. In a hurry, I headed back to New Delhi. There, my lady friend confirmed what I thought: now, I had only to show up in Kathmandu. Hundreds of comrades were released from prison, that was part of the cease-fire deal, and it would be easy to meet them. (...)