OF late the virulent effects of the anti-people and anti-worker economic policy of the BJP-led NDA government have been drawing increasing flak from the Trade Unions. For some time now, all national TUs, irrespective of political affiliations, have started to realise the importance of pulling together and opposing these policies if they were to build up an effective barricade against the IMF-World Bank-WTO-dictated measures of the NDA regime. And as the INTUC representative at the Kolkata convention declared, "we must go all the way in joining hands with the Red Flag if we are to successfully wage the battle against the BJP government’s anti-worker and anti-people policies."

The two basic points to emerge from the convention were the need to fight the BJP regime’s economic policies at every level, and the issue of building up on what the CITU leader Dr M K Pandhe declared as the newly-established shaandar ekta (strong unity) among the TUs.

The convention was held under the joint auspices of CITU, AITUC, INTUC, BMS, UTUC, UTUC (L-S), TUCC, AICCTU, NFITU, and of all national-level organisations of state and central government employees, of bank, insurance, defence and mercantile employees.

In his speech, Dr Pandhe described how the "swadeshi" ideologues’ "videshi-loving" policies were affecting the whole array of social groups of the country. Even the affluent have come to realise how it would be a matter of time before they, too, would get sucked into the vortex of economic and financial crises that now stalked the nation itself.

Dr Pandhe explained how these policies have thrown hundreds of thousands of workers and employees out of work. The loss of work of more than one lakh mazdoor in the plantations in south India was a recent case in point.

The core sectors of the economy, said Dr Pandhe were being continually sold out to foreign and indigenous corporate capital for a song. If the process is not forced to come to a stop, he declared, India would quickly become burdened with a totally dysfunctional economy.

The only way, said the all-India general secretary of the CITU, was to meet the challenges being thrown at the working class by launching united struggles all over the country. The people must be made to realise the dangerous political overtones of the BJP-led government’s economic policy that would affect the sovereignty of the nation itself. The working class must never take this lying down.

Giving the lie to the insidious propaganda that the corporate capital of the MNCs had become all-pervasive and all-conquering everywhere, Dr Pandhe said that "on the contrary the recent times have revealed how resistance worldwide was on the rise against the depredations of corporate capital as depicted in the angry demonstrations at Davos, Toronto, Prague, and Vancouver where the WTO and the IMF have met to machinate more ruinations of the common people everywhere."

Explaining how a nationwide support-base was being built up in favour of the all-India strike of the defence employees of July 23-24 and that of the government employees of July 25, Dr Pandhe declared amidst applause that a one-day nationwide chakka jam will be observed sometime soon when the wheels of industry all over the country will come to a halt, sending a warning to the union government to withdraw its anti-worker, anti-people, and anti-national policies, or worse will follow.

Other speakers at the convention included Chittabrata Majumdar (CITU who placed the resolution), Gurudas Dasgupta (AITUC), Sunil Sengupta (UTUC), Asutosh Banerjee (UTUC L-S), Lalbahadur Singh (INTUC), Saral Deb (TUCC), Upendra Singh (AICCTU), Samir Roy (HMS), Tarakeswar Chakravarty (Bank), Samir Mustawphi (Mercantile), Saila Bhattacharya (Defence), Anil Bhattacharya (Railways), and Chunilal Dasgupta (12h July Committee).

THE BJP-led union government has, in a recent order, chosen to renege on the existing order that requires that at least 10 per cent of food grain, sugar, and urea, in transit or in storage, uses jute packaging.

By diluting the existing legislation, the union government has thrown more than 40 lakh of jute growers and 2.5 lakh of jute mill workers into a terrible uncertainty as far as their livelihood is concerned.

Since most jute mills of the country and by far the largest stretches of jute growing areas happen to be concentrated in Bengal, it is the state economy of Bengal that stands to suffer the worst, noted the CITU and AIKS leaders.

The pressure being brought upon the NDA regime by the corporate houses that lobby for synthetic packaging material against the eco-friendly jute blends, is being suitably utilised by the latter to try and put economic and financial pressure both on the people of Bengal and on the Left Front government of the state.

Bengal units of the CITU and the AIKS have called upon the farmers and workers of the Bengal to "combat this onslaught through united struggle."

In the meanwhile, the prices of Hessian material, especially B-Twill, have started to slide in the inevitable aftermath of the union government’s decision to dilute the existing packaging order. If during the coming season, cash crops are not packed in jute in adequate quantities, the scenario for farmers and workers in the jute sector look fearfully bleak and alarming.