People's Democracy

THE tenth Conference of the CITU which concluded on December 31 in Hyderabad decided to increase its membership from the present 32 lakhs to 40 lakhs in the next three years. A nationwide protest on January 24, 2001, against the phenomenal increase in prices of all essential commodities resulting in harrowing living conditions for the workers will be held. This protest will highlight the plight of the common people and workers who are being subjected to growing attacks and repression on workers' rights and struggles. W R Varada Rajan, secretary of CITU informed the media that the introduction of drastic changes in the labour legislation would adversely affect the interests of workers, which was being done to comply with the requirements of employers and MNCs. The downsizing of workforce and job reduction in the government and all sectors of industries will render the lot of unemployed more acute and miserable, and will proliferate industrial sickness and closure of lakhs of industrial units in all parts of the country.,

The CITU has called for active participation during February 5-7, 2001, when organisations of peasants and agricultural workers would be holding dharnas and picketing all over the country to show solidarity. Workers would join their rural brothers for massive picketing of central and state government offices on February 7, 2001.

The CITU would also take the initiative to organise a national convention in consultation with its counterparts in the Sponsoring Committee of Trade Unions, which will include Trade Unions and other mass organisations of peasants, agricultural workers, women, youth and students. The aim will be to intensify the struggle against the reckless pursuit of the disastrous policies of economic liberalisation by the NDA government.

During the conference 41 delegates participated on the report presented by the general secretary M K Pandhe. There 22 delegates deliberated on the report on the organisation set up. In all 309 delegates took part in the discussions in the seven commissions on different subjects. The reports of the commissions would be finalised by the secretariat of the CITU and the same would be published as CITU policy documents.

The conference passed a resolution unanimously, extending support to the strike of the Federation of Medical Representatives of India from 8-15 January 2001. The strike was against spurious drugs and black-marketing of drugs.

The CITU conference elected a 35-member secretariat, with E Balanandan as president and M K Pandhe as general secretary. A 470 - member general council and 117-member Working Committee were also elected by the conference. Ranjit Basu was elected the Treasurer. Jyoti Basu, Samar Mukherjee, R Umanath, Md Amin, M M Lawrence, Suseela Gopalan, C Kannan, T K Rangarajan, Suryanarayana Rao, Chandi Prasad, Balwant Singh, and Ahilya Rangnekar were elected vice-presidents.

Kanai Banerjee, P K Ganguly, Jibon Roy, Niren Ghosh, Chittabrata Majumdar, Kali Ghosh, Shyamal Chakraborty, K N Ravindranath, A Dakshi, Tapan Sen, S Dev Roye, K Hemalata, A K Padmanabhan, K L Bajaj, S B Bhardwaj, W R Varada Rajan, S Veeraih, M A Gaffor, P K Gurudasan and S K Bakshi were elected secretaries. Manik De was designated special invitee.

In the outgoing 37-member secretariat veteran leaders from Andhra Pradesh, Nanduri Prasada Rao and Parsa Satyanarayana were relieved for health reasons. So also was the case with A G Dastidar of Assam and Shantiranjan Ghatak, minister for labour, government of West Bengal. Prabhakar Sanjgiri from Maharashtra was relieved because of his preoccupation with political work. V B Cherian was relieved as he shifted from the CITU central office to Kerala.