Expose BJP Govt’s Anti-People Policies: Surjeet

B Prasant

ADDRESSING the media at Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan, Kolkata, after the CPI(M) Central Committee meeting, party general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet said a nationwide movement would be launched to expose the ruinous anti-people policies of the BJP-led union government and of some state governments toeing the BJP line in malgovernance, towards their ouster.

The campaign will start from August 16 and last for a fortnight. It will be anti-imperialist and anti-communal in nature, and also seek to provide help to the rural poor who suffer most from the “anti-human” policies of the government.

Surjeet said that in its pursuit of internal and external policies, the BJP-led government is bent on ruining the whole nation. By kow-towing to US pressure in an essentially unipolar world following the demise of the Soviet Union, the BJP government is willing to barter away the nation’s political and economic sovereignty, with scant attention to the needs of the mass of people. 

The present point in time, said Surjeet, represents a dangerous crossroads of the nation’s foreign policy where the non-alignment tradition is ignored and politico-economic supineness to imperialist powers is recklessly resorted to. Surjeet strongly condemned the BJP government’s attempt to allow the US to set up military bases in India and its willingness to send troops to Iraq under US occupation. 

The union government appears to be under the thumb of the US, said Surjeet, adding that it is far from willing to defy the US in any manner. However, the CPI(M) leader warmly welcomed the Indo-Pak peace initiative and said any normalisation of relationship is always welcome. 

Coming down heavily on the BJP government’s increasingly vicious communal pursuits, Surjeet said the NDA has long been reduced to a non-entity and that the BJP policies and principles are holding sway at every level.

“Despite L K Advani’s assertion to the contrary some time back,” said Surjeet, “the NDA agenda is now truly and properly buried under the BJP’s communal agenda and the BJP’s endorsement of the VHP brand of trishul propaganda is a clear case in point.” He condemned the hypocritical stand of the BJP and its partners over the reservation bill for women. 

Surjeet also pointed out how the economy is in a shambles, how there is little economic growth, and how the nation’s debt burden is on the rise, with the poor being the worst sufferers of the entire fall-out.

Surjeet said there is no democracy as such in Uttar Pradesh under the BJP-BSP. Here the governor is behaving in a manner that is not becoming his office, showing bias all the way. 

Speaking about the third alternative, the CPI(M) leader said it would be based only on policies “alternative to the policies of the bourgeois-landlord parties.” He said “a revival of third front, which is a continuous process in the making, must be based on certain principles and policies keeping all the while the interests of the people in mind.” 

Dwelling on the forthcoming assembly elections, Surjeet said while the BJP is a communal party, the Congress, despite compromises with communal forces, is not a communal outfit, though both represent the bourgeois-landlord interests. Responding to a question about the Congress call for a broad-based alliance, Surjeet said “the Congress had perhaps, at last, seen the reality of the situation where it did not have the strength to go it alone.”

The CPI(M) general secretary congratulated the party and the Left Front for the notable success in the Bengal panchayat polls. 

(INN)