The forces of imperialist dominance are growing stronger with every passing day.
Yet the public sector remained strong, Nagi Reddy explained, precisely because it served as an instrument to promote private capital and monopoly capital. He pointed out even then that the public sector was being used as a means to invite imperialist powers, foreign technology and foreign investment, and thereby establish their dominance.
He was remarkably precise: in reality, the public sector functioned solely to strengthen the private sector, reinforce monopoly capital, enable multinational corporations to entrench themselves in our country, deepen our economic dependence, and hand over the nation’ s entire wealth.
In this sense, the public sector successfully fulfilled its role. Today it has become irrelevant. The dominance of monopoly capital has intensified, and the grip of imperialist forces has grown stronger still. This dominance now extends far beyond the usual sectors of agriculture, industry and foreign investment. It has tightened its hold over our land, our labour, our forests, our minerals, and even the space sector.
India is today trapped in a deeply wicked and complex crisis. If the public sector was truly essential for building a great socialist society, why is everything being sold off now? The answer is simple: the public sector successfully performed the role it was actually designed to play, and that is precisely why it has b ecome irrelevant. Public-sector undertakings are therefore being sold. The vast and valuable lands belonging to the public sector are being handed over exclusively to monopoly capital— whether domestic or foreign.
Foreign capital may not always appear bourgeois in the 4 conventional sense, yet Nagi Reddy Garu had already identified it as belonging to the comprador bourgeoisie. Whether these assets are transferred to the comprador bourgeoisie or handed directly to foreign capital, the result is the same: foreign investment grows ever stronger.
In Andhra Pradesh, Nagi Reddy fought for the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant. Fifty years after his death, we are forced to fight again because livelihoods are being destroyed and the nation’ s entire wealth is being surrendered to monopoly capital.
What stands out clearly is that the forces of exploitation alone remain powerful— indeed, they have only grown stronger. For this reason, every word and every sentence of Nagi Reddy Garu’ s analysis remains more relevant than ever across every field.
When he wrote the book, the Green Revolution had only just begun. Even at that early stage he predicted that it would benefit only the landlord class and the wealthy, that it would swell the ranks of landless labourers, and that small and marginal farmers would lose their livelihoods and sink into crisis. Looking at the severity of today’ s agrarian crisis, we can see how remarkably clear-sighted his observation was.
What astonishes me most is what he wrote about the public sector in relation to defence. Even India’ s military sector— the defence sector, regarded as vital for national security— is dependent on foreign capital and foreign technology. It remains a dependent sector; that dependence continues to deepen. W e have neither independence nor autonomy in it. Nagi Reddy Garu said all this as early as the 1970s. Today the reality is that military expenditure continues to rise sharply.
Faced with the intensifying crises of unemployment, poverty and hunger, what does the government say?“ We are providing free ration to 84 crore people; therefore there is no hunger problem.”
In reality this means that more than half the population cannot survive without free ration. That alone reveals how severe the crisis truly is.
Meanwhile, military expenditure is increasing day after day. The reason is clear: to divert the attention of people trapped in crisis, the government constantly stresses that national security is of utmost importance. Pointing to Pakistan on one side and China on the other, it argues that the country must be protected and therefore allocates ever-larger budgets to the military.
As a result, if you ask any ordinary person whether the military budget should rise, the answer is almost always the same:“ Yes, it must increase. There is a serious threat from Pakistan and China, so we have to strengthen our armed forces.”
An atmosphere has been deliberately created in which the entire population accepts this narrative.
Our rulers have spoken of indigenous production, of Make in India, of Atmanirbhar Bharat, and of Amrit Kaal. They use many grand phrases, and I, as a student of political economy, keep waiting to see whether any of this will actually benefit our country and its people. Yet nowhere do these terms bring even the slightest benefit to the majority or to the oppressed; they only appear impressive on the surface.
In military expenditure, however, India ranks among the top countries in the world. Whether in 2023 or 2025, we remain one of the top five nations in military spending. After such enormous outlays, what are we actually doing? Are we recruiting soldiers?
Class Struggle