The UPA (United Progressive Alliance) is seeking to hand over a natural resource essential for right to life to the corporate sector through its ill-conceived National Water Policy.

Karl Marx claimed that the state would wither away once the proletariat took over the material and productive forces of society and made the state apparatus redundant; classes would cease to exist and political representation would be unnecessary. This writer has always held this stateless communism in disdain, preferring instead democracy where the state acknowledges its duties towards citizens, even if it fails to meet all their aspirations.

Today, the dissolution of the state as we know it is taking unexpected forms as the UPA Government absolves itself of responsibility to meet citizens’ basic needs. Acting under covert pressures, it is working to establish Corporate Raj over the citizenry. For the first time since the exit of the East India Company, we are in danger of being ruled for the benefit of shareholders of private firms.

This dangerous metamorphosis in the substance of our democracy is currently taking shape in the guise of a new national policy to privatise water supply. Water, like air, is an essential prerequisite for life. It is intrinsic to the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution; any curtailment of the citizen’s right to water is an attack on the right to life.

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