People's Democracy

"THE Left Front government of Bengal and the Left Democratic Front government of Kerala represent bastions of the Left movement of the country. The people of the two states shall ensure that, come the Assembly polls, both Left citadels not merely remain intact but get strengthened further in the process."

This was stated by CPI(M) Polit Bureau member, Prakash Karat addressing two evening Hall Sabhas in North 24 Parganas on March 11. Explaining in details the background to the electoral battle ahead, Karat emphasized how the Left in general had been in the forefront of the fight against the forces of reaction in particular, over the past three years, when the attacks on the people’s basic rights had assumed a new stage of fearsome intensity.

That is why the forces of reaction led by the BJP and its ideological mentors in the RSS had concentrated their attacks on the Left, very often-unleashing physical violence on Left political activists.

The alternative pro-people policies being pursued assiduously by the Left, said the CPI (M) leader, have made the elements of reaction stand in terror of the Left in such provinces as Kerala, Tripura, and Bengal.

In Tripura, the advent of highly-trained fighters of the extremist outfits funded from devious sources, and the grossly inadequate posting of security forces (thanks to the recalcitrance of the BJP-led union government) has meant that the Tripura government has to remain on a footing of emergency most of the time. This affects developmental initiatives.

In Kerala, the BJP-RSS combine has resorted to a series of murderous attacks on the activists of the CPI (M), especially in the Kannur district where Party workers had been martyred.

In Bengal, added Karat, the Trinamul Congress in conjunction with the BJP, has spread terror in small pockets in a bid to terrorise the populace in the run-up to the polls. By withholding assistance for flood relief, the BJP-led union government has sought to please its partner in Bengal, while leaving the Bengal Left Front government in difficult conditions.

The BJP-led NDA government, was also keen on reversing the sweeping land reforms that had marked the tenure of the Left Front government in Bengal. Of the total amount of land in the country vested in the state and then redistributed among the rural poor, no less than 22 per cent has been in Bengal.

Of late, the CPI (M) leader reminded the audience, the BJP-led central government was manoeuvring attack the land reforms scheme of the Bengal Left Front government. They have decided to hand over the khas (i.e., vested) land to big corporate houses and to do away with the Land Ceiling Act. All this if it materialises will have three kinds of effects.

The land reforms programme in Bengal will be adversely affected; the big landed elements will be suitably encouraged; and the process of commercialisation of agriculture will get further entrenched.

Prakash Karat also pointed to how external forces have joined hands with the reactionary forces inside the country to try and eject the Left from office. To the imperialists, the Left is a formidable thorn in their side.

This kind of outlook, said Karat, "is nothing new, for the imperialists had twice earlier tried to pour funds into an effort to oust the Left in Kerala and in Bengal, as former US envoy to India Daniel Patrick Moynihan has written."

The process of setting up a Third Alternative comprising the Left, democratic and secular forces at the national level, said Karat, was assuming greater importance every day, as the instrument to fight the anti-people policies of the BJP-run union government.

Here, the role of the Left as an agent of crystallization is of major importance. A big win for the Left in Bengal and in Kerala in the coming Assembly polls thus assumes greater importance than ever before, concluded the CPI (M) leader.