About the Book
India still has a significant and relatively powerful communist movement. In spite of the massive setbacks communist parties have suffered in and since the 2014 national elections, and their general decline during the past decade, the Indian Left is a significant component of the political spectrum. It is represented in virtually every state in the form of trade unions, peasant associations, women’s organisations and student unions, and in state legislatures, municipal bodies and village councils.
The Phoenix Moment seeks to understand how a communist movement, almost unique within the world’s capitalist democracies, flourished for so long in India, and what accounts for its initially gradual and then rapid decline. It also asks how far and in what manner the Left has accomplished its goals; whether it could have achieved more and what its future prospects are. Crucially, political analyst Praful Bidwai investigates whether the Left’s core agenda of progressive or socialist transformation can yet be reinvented and restored to relevance – either with its own agency or through other forces, formations and initiatives.
Given the paucity of analytical literature on the mainstream Left at the national level, Bidwai’s timely and deeply insightful book fills a crucial void.
About the Author
Praful Bidwai (1949–2015) was a journalist, political analyst, author and activist. He started his journalistic career as a columnist for the Economic and Political Weekly, beginning in 1972. He then worked for magazines and newspapers including Business India, Financial Express and The Times of India. His articles were published regularly in the Hindustan Times, Frontline, Rediff.com, and other outlets. He had also been published in The Guardian, The New Statesmen and Society (London), The Nation (New York), Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris), and Il Manifesto (Rome). A veteran peace activist, he helped found the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND), based in New Delhi, was a member of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists against Proliferation, and was one of the leaders of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, India.
He is the author of The Politics of Climate Change and the Global Crisis: Mortgaging Our Future (Orient Blackswan, 2011). He has coauthored Testing Times: The Global Stake in a Nuclear Test Ban (Dag Hammerskjöld Foundation: Uppsala, 1996), New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament (Interlink, 1999), both with Achin Vanaik; Religion, Religiosity and Communalism, with Harbans Mukhia and Achin Vanaik (South Asia Books, 1996); and India Under Siege: Challenges Within and Without, with Muchkund Dubey, Anuradha Chenoy and Arun Ghosh (South Asia Books, 1995). He was the coeditor (with M.N.V. Nair) of The History of the Trade Union Movement in India, 194147 (Indian Council of Historical Research, 2005).
He passed away on 23 June 2015 while attending a conference in Amsterdam. Bidwai was a fellow at Transnational Institute at Amsterdam in the Netherlands.