FOR the second year in succession, large parts in Maharashtra are facing the serious prospect of a grim drought. Last year, the state government had itself officially declared 23,400 villages, i e more than half of the total 42,000-odd villages in the state, as being drought-hit. This year again, there is failure of the monsoon almost all over the Marathwada region, and also in parts of Vidarbha, Khandesh and Western Maharashtra regions.

As a result, over 75 per cent of the kharif crop in large parts of the state has been practically lost, and equally dismal prospects loom ahead for the rabi crop. With several lakes, dams and reservoirs not filling up so far, an acute shortage of drinking water stares the people in the face. The situation of fodder for cattle is equally grim. Along with the peasantry, the agricultural workers have also been hard hit, with little or no prospect of getting any gainful work due to the drought situation.

The Democratic Front (DF) state government's efforts at drought relief were woefully inadequate last year, and the same situation is likely to repeat itself this year. This is mainly because the state government has, in the last one year and a half, coughed out a whopping Rs 3,600 crore to pay Enron, but could spare only Rs 123 crore for drought relief measures last year! This extortion by Enron has severely affected all other developmental and non-developmental expenditure in Maharashtra in the last couple of years.

The response of the BJP-led central government to the drought situation has been callous and heartless. Last year, despite several requests from the state government for a grant of Rs 100 crore for drought relief from the Calamity Relief Fund, the centre refused to oblige. This led to a spate of criticism of the central government from several sources in Maharashtra.

The drought situation has further compounded the travails of the peasantry that has already been hard hit by the precipitate fall in agricultural prices last year, which was a direct result of the lifting of quantitative restrictions on agricultural imports by the Vajpayee regime. According to the information collected by the state council of the Maharashtra Rajya Kisan Sabha last month, the prices of almost all crops in Maharashtra registered an alarming fall during the last season, severely affecting large sections of the peasantry.

Take the following examples of average prices per quintal in 1999-2000 and 2000-2001: Wheat -- Rs 900-1000, down to Rs 600-800; Jowar -- Rs 1100-1200, down to Rs 450-550; Bajra -- Rs 600-700, down to Rs 250-400; Hybrid Jowar -- Rs 400-500, down to Rs 250-300; Tur Dal -- Rs 1800-2000, down to Rs 900-1100; Moong Dal -- Rs 1800-1900, down to Rs 1300-1400; Soyabean -- Rs 1000-1100, down to Rs 700-800; Sunflower -- Rs 1900-2000, down to Rs 800-900; Grapes -- Rs 2500-3500, down to Rs 1400-2200.

Cotton growers were partially saved only because of the state-run Monopoly Cotton Procurement Scheme (which also is under attack) and sugarcane growers have begun to face the onslaught this year. Lakhs of sugarcane-cutters in the state are facing a different but even more serious onslaught --- that of the cane harvester machines that are being imported by sugar factories, which will throw these cutters out of work altogether.

On the industrial front, the countrywide recessionary trend has had a major impact on the state. Thousands of small and medium industrial units have closed down, throwing lakhs of workers on to the streets. Even big industrial units are now being seriously affected by the recession. Retrenchment, lay-offs, closures and forced `voluntary’ retirement schemes (VRS) are the order of the day in Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nasik, Aurangabad, Solapur, Kolhapur, Nagpur and other major industrial centres in the state.

As noted by a recent editorial in the CPI(M) state weekly Jeevanmarg, a large company like Crompton Greaves in Mumbai has cut down on its workers from 10,500 to 7,000 in the last two years. Mahindra & Mahindra has reduced the workforce in its tractor manufacturing unit by nearly 1,000. Rhone Poulenc (formerly May & Baker) sold off its factories six months ago to the Piramal group, which then promptly decided to close down three of these units. Bajaj Auto in Aurangabad has summarily thrown out 1,500 temporary workers. The Godrej plant in Mumbai cut down the wages of all its temporary workers by Rs 2,000 per month and, when this move was met with stiff resistance, it simply terminated their services. Similar moves are on at the Tata-run Telco plant in Pune, which has cut down its truck production by half and has shown a loss of Rs 500 crore last year.

A similar fate has befallen the public sector employees. Several thousand bank employees in Maharashtra, as elsewhere in the country, have been forced to take VRS in the last three months. For the last several years, the state government has enforced a ban on new recruitment and has now decided to cut down its existing staff by 10 per cent. It has already frozen the DA and denied bonus to state government employees. The RCF, a central government undertaking, has not only cut down on its permanent employees, but has now begun attacking the contract workers as well. The National Textile Corporation (NTC) and the Maharashtra State Textile Corporation (MSTC) have decided to close down several mills with government approval. And in this whole background, now comes the ferocious attack of the central government-appointed Rakesh Mohan committee on lakhs of railway workers and on the Indian Railways as a whole.

All this is the inevitable fall-out of the imperialist-dictated policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG) being pursued for the last one decade by successive regimes, both at the centre and in the state.

The other major issue that has bedeviled the people and the government of Maharashtra for the last several months has been that of Enron. After dithering on the matter for months, the DF state government last month finally decided to order a judicial inquiry into the Enron deal. The decision was taken at a crucial meeting of the DF coordination committee that was attended by the chief minister, deputy chief minister and by top party leaders of the INC, NCP, PWP, CPI(M), JD(S), SP and RPI. However, the terms of reference of the judicial inquiry are yet to be finalised. It was decided to do so in the next meeting of the DF coordination committee, that is expected to be held this month.

As is well-known, the NCP in general and its leader Sharad Pawar in particular had earlier publicly opposed the setting up of any such judicial probe into the Enron deal. Naturally, they were joined in their opposition by the leadership of both the SS and the BJP, all of whom had a notoriously corrupt hand in making the Enron's DPC plant a reality.

However, the Left and secular parties supporting the DF regime held firm, and the success of their 50,000-strong April 7 Mumbai rally against Enron and globalisation and the resounding action of the April 25 Maharashtra bandh strengthened their position. Further, some of these parties also threatened to withdraw their ministers from the state government if a judicial inquiry was not ordered. To pressurise the government on the issue, the CPI(M) held large independent anti-Enron demonstrations all over the state on June 25. Moreover, the massive payments to Enron had verily become an albatross around the neck of the state government. The judicial inquiry decision was taken as a result of all these factors. But, as mentioned above, the finalisation of its terms of reference still remains a major question that is yet to be settled.

Meanwhile, the negotiations conducted by the state government with Enron have proved fruitless. Efforts to saddle some other states with Enron's mega-cost power have also proved equally fruitless. For the last three months, the MSEB has stopped purchasing power from Enron. The battle is now raging in the courts at various levels. Hassled by all these developments, especially by the prospects of a judicial probe, Enron is now thinking of disposing off its stake in the DPC and the Tatas have expressed their interest in buying it!

Last month, the Godbole committee submitted the second part of its report to the state government. While the first part of its report dealing with the Enron issue was a welcome document that effectively showed Enron and its friends their place, the second part of the report which deals with the MSEB is most unwelcome. In this part, the Godbole committee has recommended the trifurcation of the MSEB into three components, viz generation, transmission and distribution. It has further recommended that the generation and distribution of power be privatised, but not its transmission!

The CPI(M) has opposed these recommendations and it is expected that the other Left and secular parties will also do so. This will be the issue of a major struggle that lies ahead. As it is, state government moves are on to further increase power tariffs, especially for household consumers and for the peasantry, since industrial tariffs are already extremely high.

On the other side of the political fence, the state and the country were treated to another sparring match between the Shiv Sena (SS) and the BJP on the immediate issue of Sanjay Nirupam's Rajya Sabha attack on the PMO in connection with the UTI scam. This is said to be one of the contributing factors to Vajpayee's recent resignation drama. The BJP threatened to break off the SS-BJP alliance if Nirupam failed to tender an apology to the prime minister. Bal Thackeray responded in typical fashion that if the BJP wanted to break off the alliance, the SS was none too keen to maintain it anyway. SS MPs were told to stop attending parliament. NDA convenor George Fernandes was rushed to Mumbai to mollify Thackeray, who made several charges against the BJP.

And so the controversy raged in the press, until Nirupam sent a letter of apology to Vajpayee and until Thackeray announced on August 10, after a meeting with all his MPs, that all differences with the BJP over the UTI scam had been sorted out; he then lifted the two-week ban on his MPs attending parliament. How these differences were sorted out was never made clear.

As a matter of fact, the current round of differences between the SS and the BJP began after the Tehelka exposures in March, and it is from then that the SS has tried to put a distance between itself and the BJP. The SS had then refused to participate in an NDA rally in Mumbai to be addressed by Vajpayee, and the rally had to be called off. When N K Singh was shunted out of the PMO, it was Thackeray who publicly claimed the credit for his ouster. Next came the SS-led unions' support to the April 25 Maharashtra bandh on the issue of opposing the anti-working class, reactionary amendments to labour laws which had been mooted by both the central and state governments.

Then came the differences on the Kashmir issue and over Musharraf's visit. In both cases, the SS toed the rabid Hindutva line of the hardliners in the RSS. And then came the UTI scam, where again the SS tried to distance itself from the BJP-led regime, fearing loss of support from its traditional middle class constituency.

But beyond this, there are two more reasons for the current disillusionment of the SS with the BJP in general and with the Vajpayee regime in particular. One is that the SS has never been happy either with the number of its ministers at the centre or with the "useless" (meaning "unlucrative") portfolios that they have been given. Thackeray has time and again publicly declared that this must be set right. But Vajpayee has refused to oblige, and the last straw for the SS was the latest cabinet reshuffle when it again drew a blank.

The second reason is more basic and relates to the power equations in Maharashtra. The DF state government, with the prodding of the Supreme Court and the Left parties, is slowly moving in the direction of implementing the report of the Srikrishna commission that inquired into the ghastly Mumbai riots of 1992-93, for which top SS leaders from Bal Thackeray downwards were indicted. This has put the SS leadership in jitters, and it has been desperately trying, ever since Thackeray's brief arrest last year, to dislodge the DF regime by hook or by crook. No session of the Maharashtra assembly begins without the customary prediction by Thackeray that a "miracle" will take place, the DF regime will fall and an SS-led regime will take its place!

Towards this end, the SS has been targeting mainly the NCP MLAs, some of whom, not finding cabinet berths in the DF regime, are not averse to shifting their political loyalties for the loaves and fishes of office. They also draw some inspiration from the ambiguous stand of Sharad Pawar himself vis-a-vis the BJP. One of the leaders of this group of MLAs was none other than former chief minister Sudhakar Naik. It was said that at one time the group had managed to gain 18 adherents, but fell two short of the number required to split the NCP legislature group and thus escape the provisions of the anti-defection act. But after the demise of Sudhakar Naik, this group has been left considerably weakened.

Last month, when the state assembly session was on, an evening daily in Mumbai splashed a scoop that pointed to a new SS strategy. It said that some NCP MLAs had been persuaded to resign their assembly seats, so that it would lead to a loss of the DF majority. The daily further said that they had been promised ministerships in a new regime after inducting them in the legislative council, plus a sum of Rs two crore each! The paper even printed the names and photographs of these NCP MLAs!

Naturally, this led to a furore in the state assembly, with all kinds of charges and counter-charges flying around, and the SS-BJP were thrown on the defensive. Taking advantage of this golden opportunity, the DF regime announced a CID inquiry into the whole affair to find out who was at the root of this "attempted subversion of the people's mandate."

The main grouse of the SS, publicly aired by Thackeray recently, is that the BJP in the state, "under the guidance of a senior BJP minister at the centre," dragged its feet in supporting the SS in its attempts at "Operation Topple"! The unsaid charges are that: (1) the BJP is shying away from breaking the NCP so as not to antagonise Sharad Pawar; and (2) the BJP wants its own man to become chief minister and is therefore thwarting the SS gameplans.

Be that as it may, the bottom line is that, despite all their differences, the two partners of the communal alliance still need each other if they are to survive. None of them has made any significant political headway in the nearly two years that they have been out of power in the state; on the contrary, they have been adversely affected by the failure on all fronts of the BJP-led NDA regime at the centre. Therefore, notwithstanding these occasional sparring matches, it is a safe bet that the SS and BJP will continue to work together for their nefarious communal ends in the near future. Both the SS and the BJP know only too well that if they do not hang together, then both of them will surely hang separately!

The BJP in Maharashtra has been further thrown on the defensive by the recent disclosures in Nagpur, the headquarters of the RSS. By using all kinds of means, the BJP had managed to win control of the Nagpur municipal corporation (NMC) and had installed its own mayor. Due to repeated charges of rampant corruption in the NMC, the DF government appointed the Nandlal inquiry committee to go into these charges. What it found was a hornet's nest of massive corruption involving several areas like sports, health, electric poles, recruitment and so on.

In an unprecedented occurrence, the police arrested as many as 101 municipal corporators of Nagpur in connection with these scams, most of whom belonged to the BJP, and also several officials. The political control over the NMC was exercised by RSS heavyweights Nitin Gadkari (former BJP cabinet minister in the SS-BJP regime and currently leader of the opposition in the state legislative council) and Devendra Fadnavis (former mayor of Nagpur and currently BJP MLA from the city). Naturally, accusing fingers for this huge scam have been pointed at them also. Another RSS activist close to both of them, Abhay Pundlik, was arrested while trying to cheat and blackmail the police commissioner of Nagpur himself, in order to get the arrested BJP corporators released. All this has attracted wide media publicity and has thoroughly exposed the RSS-BJP in its very headquarters.

Taking a cue from the Nagpur incidents, the DF regime last week ordered a similar inquiry into the affairs of the Brihan(Greater)Mumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which has been controlled since long by the SS. If this inquiry is conducted stringently, the skeletons that will come out of the SS cupboards will be even more shocking, considering the huge size of Mumbai and the astronomical size of the BMC annual budget!

Maharashtra is now gearing up for statewide local elections in the coming months. Elections to most of the municipal councils in the state are due in December 2001, and for most of the zilla parishads, panchayat samitis and municipal corporations are due in February 2002. All political forces have begun to flex their muscles for this round of the people's mandate.

The CPI(M)’s Maharashtra state committee is of the view that, in order to politically consolidate the gains of the recent joint struggle of the Left and secular forces against Enron and other aspects of the LPG policies, and also for the defence of secularism against the conspiracies of the communal and semi-fascist forces, it is necessary to rebuild an alternative in the shape of a third force in state politics. This can take the form of the Lok Morcha in Maharashtra, which will bring together all Left, secular and democratic forces not merely for the ensuing electoral battle, but will go beyond it to serve as an effective instrument of struggle to gradually change the correlation of class forces in the state. Attempts to form such an alternative have begun, and it is expected that they will come to fruition soon.

As part of the political-ideological struggle, the CPI(M) Maharashtra state committee, in its last meeting, also took another major decision to establish its own independent printing press and publishing house at Belapur in New Mumbai, very close to Comrade B T Ranadive Memorial Bhavan. For this important endeavour, the state committee has given a call for a special fund of Rs 15 lakh, to be fulfilled this year itself. Having effected some improvements in the state party weekly Jeevanmarg since May, the state committee will also take appropriate decisions to increase the circulation of both state and central party weeklies.

The recent meeting of the CPI(M) central committee has given a clarion call for a massive countrywide struggle against the disastrous economic policies, unprecedented corruption scandals, divisive communal machinations and abject surrender to imperialism of the BJP-led NDA central government, demanding that it either immediately scrap these policies or quit office. This call will be enthusiastically implemented in Maharashtra, with a mass campaign in September, culminating in militant picketing of central government offices and court arrest actions all over the state on September 25-27. The details will be finalised by the state committee this week.

Finally, with the various party conferences to be held from October, in preparation for the 17th party congress, a concerted effort will be made to achieve political and organisational strengthening of the party at all levels to effectively meet the crucial challenges in the days ahead.