People's Democracy

ADDRESSING a meeting at Kalyani in Nadia district, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Prakash Karat described the union government as basically a BJP government and not a coalition government, and that too driven by the ideologues of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He said the anti-people nature of the regime's policies has to be laid squarely, in the main, on the shoulders of these two outfits.

The BJP ruling clique in Delhi, said Karat, was virtually doing a repeat act of the corporate-friendly economic steps of the Congress regime that it has succeeded. The core sector of the nation's economy was in the process of being handed over to the MNCs on a platter. Counter-guarantees were provided to foreign corporate concerns like the Enron in Maharashtra to please the foreign corporate players. At the same time, the public sector was made to suffer from large scale of job cuts and finance crunch.

The agrarian scene was overburdened with a dismal predicament as a continuous slide-back on the price front meant dwindling benefits for the farmers. There are a large number of instances where farmers had to commit suicide in states like Andhra Pradesh as a way out of the crisis they had suffered. This was a pointer to the anti-poor outlook of the BJP-RSS economic planners.

The recent development where the union government has dropped dark hints about commercialisation of agriculture brings more bad news for the country's kisans, said Karat.

Quite apart from these counter-progressive initiatives, the BJP-RSS clique, said Prakash Karat, has also indulged in saffronisation of the education scene. Assaults are continuously being organised against the country's historical and cultural heritage. The minorities are being subjected to the depredations of a patently aggressive majoritarianism.

The popular anguish against the BJP regime, said Prakash Karat, has started to increasingly take on the nature of a mass movement. The recent past has seen the BJP suffering big defeats in panchayat and municipal elections in states like Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.

A desperate BJP has started to raise communal slogans like the fresh commentary on the Ayodhya issue as forming a part of the "national sentiment." The time was ripe for a third alternative to emerge and the Left has a vital role to play in this task, concluded Prakash Karat. (INN)