Imphal, December 03 2008: 3.India's Easy Money: The huge amount of valueless easy money (being spent for consolidating colonial rule and 'counter insurgency operations', but not investments for Manipur's economic development) but being pumped into Manipur has disoriented not only those subservient to it but also a number of revolutionary organisations.

In the effort to mobilise fund for the liberation struggle, it has become sort of a culture among the revolutionary organisations to even use coercion for grabbing 'projects' (contract/supply works) and hobnobbing with MLAs/Ministers/Engineers and other officials.

Today it is common practice among sycophant contractors/suppliers to try to buy out connection with any Party capable of securing contract works.

Such contractors, in the greed for easy money, do not have any moral compunction to inject poison into their benefactor Party against other Parties.

This is one of the factors standing against the unity among the parties.

Actually, it is an indication of changing equations in corruption once centered among the Engineers/Ministers of the puppet State Government to the revolutionary organisations.

It is an indication of shifting of power centre.

A change in power centre in favour of revolutionary struggle is welcome.

However, shifting of corruption will be disastrous and should be resisted.

The competition for grabbing contract works creates various frictions among our Parties and thus sidelines the basic issues of the liberation struggle.

This is not a correct practice which has done more harm than good to our struggle.

Taking advantage of the rather chaotic situation, State Police Commandos and even some officers of the IOF Assam Rifles have also resorted to large scale extortion from prominent contractors threatening them with dire consequences "for having connections with insurgents".

Police commandos have even extracted shares in the contract works.

Thus, anybody engaged in contract/supply works today have to associate with the revolutionary organisations in order to get contract/supply orders on the one hand and also buy their life from the State Commandos and IOF Assam Rifles on the other.

This is the reality of today.

What is disturbing in this phenomenon is the degeneration of our inherent strength for self reliance because of the corruption in contract/supply works of the Indian system and the emergence of decadent culture for grabbing easy money.

The negative effect of this phenomenon on the revolutionary parties is the erosion in the integrity, particularly of 'project officers' dealing with contract/supply matters, frictions arising from favouritism in awarding contract/supply works resulting in formation of cliques within the party, and culminating in desertions sometimes.

This is the costly lesson the UNLF learnt during 1998-2003 when the Party was directly involved in contract/supply works.

From an overall perspective, despite the existence of individual patriotic contractors, creation of a dependent opportunist social class solely driven by the tendency of becoming rich overnight from contract/supply works in the Indian system will in the long run harm the struggle and erode the vitality of our society at large.

Therefore, only when revolutionary organisations do not involve themselves directly in contract/supply works can the problems of factions within and frictions among revolutionary organisations be resolved and remove the present weakness of disunity among them.

�to be contd.

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