J PS POLITICS 39 reformism is basically meant not to promote but check revolution, ^welfare statism9 is nothing but reformed and, thereby, strengthened capitalism. However, if for argument's sake I accept the government supporters' line of reasoning, then how are they going to account for the deepening poverty of the working and peasant classes, mounting unemployment, widening gulf between the rich and the poor, lengthening shadow of famine and—let us face it—starvation deaths (of persons belonging to "weaker" sections), expanding parallel economy of black money of the political leadership-bureaucracy-businessmen combine, absolute scarcity of basic necessities of life for the broad masses of our people, and miserable failure of land reforms (all this after 25 years of 'developmental' state planning and massive foreign ^id'!), coupled with revolting corruption and distortion of our 'democratic' electoral processes by money power (which has turned the elections into a Himalayan fraud, as in all bourgeois democracies of the world) and increasing repression of mounting popular—that too peaceful—protest? I fervently hope that these apologists of the status quo will not tell me that all this has happened because of the ineffectiveness of the loop, or some such thing; and if they refer to t^& w% designs oT vested interests (both internal and foreign), then how have these vested interests been able not only to survive but become invincible in the present set-up since independence? And how is it that not the public sector but private monopoly capital (in collaboration with foreign monopoly houses) is today occupying the ^commanding heights' of our economy in complete violation of the declared economic policy of the state? How very 'revolutionary^! Mass Action Strategy It follows that no person in his proper senses can find fault with most ofJP's declared goals as such (for example, removal of corruption, electoral reform, lowering of prices, change in education system and eradication of unemployment). Further, his avowed strategy of "mass action" is also perfectly legitimate and democratic, for democratic action is, by definition, mass action (though the converse is not necessarily true on account of the fact that the mass or democratic character of a political action or movement is not determined by the sheer number of people involved in it but by the specific class interests which ii fundamentally serves). Hence Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's sweeping observation in her letter to Acharya Kripalani, that ^the doctrine of mass action is incompatible with the spirit of representative democracy"1 is highly objectionable for being anti-democratic or elitist. And may I ask: whose "representative" our ^democracy" really is? Indira Gandhi's observation fully confirms the correctness of Frantz Fanon's incisive comment on the ruling leadership of many newly independent countries of the Third World: Before independence, the leader generally embodies the aspirations of the people for independence, political liberty and national dignity.