In coming months of April – May, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamilnadu, Assam and Pondicherry are going to polls for the state legislatures. From among the states, the elections in West Bengal and Kerala are of crucial implications for both the working people, not only in those two states, but in the entire country, and also for the ruling class, the corporate employers and the landlords, obviously for different reasons. This election is also crucial for the sustenance of the democratic institutions and democratic polity of the country as a whole.
So far as the working people are concerned, their demands and aspirations inevitably coincide with the Left’s vision of society, economy and rights of the people. In fact the basic demands of the working people for right to work, living wages, social security and trade union rights raised from whichever unions, right, left or centre, do basically reflect the vision of the Left on the role and rights of the working people in the society and economy.
And as is the experience in general, the demands of the workers both on their rights and the politico- economic policy regime are always raised and asserted in the political forums mainly by the Left parties. And the Left parties not only raise their voice in support of the demands and rights of the working people, but also take on to the streets and fight shoulder to shoulder in defence of workers' rights and livelihood and for asserting their demands. Therefore Left parties are the natural allies of the working people and strengthening Left forces is the foremost task before the working class movement.
On the other hand, also for the anti-left forces ruling at the centre and the major non-left opposition, representing basically the landlords and the capitalist class, the forthcoming Assembly elections in both the Left ruled states, West Bengal and Kerala areof supreme importance. And that is why they have been making hell-bent effort to organise a gang-up of all right reactionary forces and the all hues of anarchist, extremists and disruptive elements against the Left forces and the capitalist controlled media, both print and electronic, unleashed malicious onslaughts and vicious campaign against the Left and also against the Left ruled governments in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. And the imperialist agencies are not sitting idle. They are also proactively involved in the anti-Left tirade through all their agencies.
This is because it is the Left forces who are standing in the way to hinder their aggressive pursuit of the imperialist-piloted neoliberal economic policy regime based on loot and plunder of the mass of the people and enriching the richer class.
It is the Left forces who are opposing privatisation of public utility services like water, electricity, education, health care et al on which majority of populace and the poor in particular depend and survive.
It is the Left who are opposing and trying to blockade deregulation of the financial sector, the banks and insurance in particular. It is the Left forces that are strongly opposing the deregulation and decontrol of essential commodities like food, fuel and fertilisers and insisting on subsidised supply of those commodities to majority of the populace.
One may review in retrospect, had there been no consistent opposition by the Left parties to the neoliberal policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation since 1991, backed by countrywide movement by the working class seeking to blockade the neoliberal policy drive at every stage, both nationally and sectorally, what could have happened. By this time, no public sector industries covering crucial sectors like electricity, coal, petroleum, port & dock, banks and insurance, defence industries, Airlines, Minerals etc would have been in existence. Entire Public Distribution system in whatever messy form it exists on date, would have been totally dismantled. As a corollary to that, the very system of foodgrains procurement by the Govt through an agency like Food Corporation of India would have been vanquished and the entire small and marginal peasants population would have been totally thrown at the mercy of the market and money-lenders.
All essential public utilities like water, education, health-care etc would have been thrown wholly at the mercy of the market, fleecing the mass of impoverished people more barbarously. And the workers' movement which had been the only social force to maintain continuity in its active opposition to all these anti-people policies would have been completely stripped of all its rights to organise and fight.
Workplaces would have been governed by the service conditions of virtual slavery as all the labour related laws have been targeted for complete overhauling in favour of employers. And once, the rights of the working class are completely clipped, the entire democratic system would have been put in complete jeopardy.
One may well imagine, what could have been the situation for the workers at large, if the labour laws could be totally changed in favour of the employers through introduction of hire & fire or banning of right to strike?
It could have brought down severe onslaught on the entire trade union movement of all affiliations besides enslaving the toiling people in a big way and that would also affect the democratic institutions as a whole. The labour laws could not yet be changed in that direction since the trade union movement is united in opposing such nefarious designs and the Left forces stood firmly by their side at the political forums.
No doubt neoliberal policy regime to the extent it could make headway in the national economy brought miseries to the mass of the people. But life would have been put in unimaginable miseries and distress for the majority millions had there not been continuity in struggle by the working class and had there not been consistent voicing of the peoples’ concern and determined opposition to neoliberal policies by the Left forces at the political level. Not only that, owing to consistent and determined opposition of the Left forces alone, the neoliberal policy regime of the existing capitalist-landlord combine could not yet fully culminate in making the country’s governance fully subservient to imperialist interests, which would otherwise have been the natural destination of the ruling classes fully weded to neoliberalism.
And again it is the Left parties who fought hard to force upon the Govt the legislations like National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Forest Tribal Rights Act, Right to Information Act, all of which mitigate against their own policy of neoliberalism. Had there been no dependence on the Left parties for the UPA-I regime, these pro-people rights-based legislations would have never seen the light of the day.
Hence it is the Left forces alone which happen to be the villain before the votaries of capitalist-landlord combine in governance of the country and also for the imperialist forces seeking to subjugate fully the economy, market and governance of this major developing country in the world. There has been a consistent effort to completely hijack the entire system and machinery of governance by the foreign and domestic corporates and it is the Left forces alone who stood firmly in the way of that disastrous process and hence weakening and marginalising the Left has been the long cherished targets by capitalist and landlord classes and imperialists made a common cause with them.
For the favourite project of the capitalist-landlord combine and their imperialist bosses to marginalise Left in the national political scenario to succeed, they have to weaken and marginalise Left in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura.
And these three states being the strongest centres of the Left, the tirade is concentrated there through the bourgeois media, a unholy gang-up of all the bourgeois political outfits –all simultaneously abusing the Left and its ideology in various forms and different angles, a gang-up of a section of so called picked up intellectuals with liberal gratification from various agencies, both Govt and non-Govt untiringly abusing the Left forces both from extreme right wing and ultra Left angles. Added to this has been the physical attacks to eliminate the Left activists in West Bengal and terrorise common people to get them passive and muted.
These three Left ruled states are the strongest bastions of the Left contributing to the decisive intervening capability of the Left forces. The intervening and deterring capability of the Left in Parliament and national political forums comes from these three states and in terms of numbers, mainly from West Bengal and Kerala.
This intervening and deterrent capability is crucial for defending the national economy from the imperialist’s grip, saving the country’s national assets and resources from the greedy targeting by the international finance capital, for building resistance to capitulation by the ruling polity to US imperialist’s politico-economic hegemonist strategy and for defending the rights of the toiling people thereby defending democracy as such.
The forthcoming assembly elections in West Bengal and Kerala are thus just not one to decide as to who will be forming the state Governments there but also to decide as to which direction the politico-economic events will unfold.
Behind the conflict surfaced by the assembly elections in these two states, is underlined the conflict to distinct trends—the neoliberal’s hell bent bid for a push toward more right-wing direction to ultimately jump into the bandwagon of the imperialist agencies on the one hand and a determined opposition by the Left and progressive forces to halt such rightward sojourn.
The one means surrender to imperialist forces and attendant erosion of the rights of the people in favour of the interests of big business, both domestic and foreign, the other means strengthening the opposition to the machinations for complete destruction of welfarism, democracy and rights of the people and making them retreat.
The elections in other states also should be looked into as part of this political battle. There also further strengthening of the left and additional strengthen to the voice of the left in legislatures are important.
The working class movement must take upon themselves the task of strengthening the left, the real champions of all sections of working class. CITU calls upon all its units and activists to join the battle with all its seriousness!
Courtesy: www.citucentre.org/
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