People's Democracy

THE country is today standing at a crossroads and we are passing through a critical phase of our history. Though the Congress party has irrevocably lost its monopoly of power, unfortunately the gap has been filled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) --- a party that is totally against the noble ideas that inspired millions of our freedom fighters to rise and challenge the British imperialist power.

The first immediately observable aspect of our national situation today is that the BJP, that is running the central government with the help of about two dozen smaller, mostly regional, parties, is causing a great harm to our national unity by its actions. The party has always been inimical to federalism and secularism that are the two pillars of our national unity.

Here it is worthwhile to recall what great value the makers of our constitution attached to these two pillars of India’s unity. Even though the British imperialists were able to vivisect the country in 1947 on communal lines, as a result of which the people of this country had had to pass through a trail of blood and mayhem, our constitution makers refused to be swayed by narrow considerations and decided that independent India could not be anything but a secular federal republic. They were clear that India was a land of unity in diversity, comprising as it did a great number of religious, linguistic and ethnic groups, each with its own identity and its own distinct culture, and that therefore this unity in diversity could not be maintained except on the basis of secularism and federalism.

The facts and the experience since then have proved the validity of this observation. As much as 18 per cent of India’s population consists of the religious minorities whose members too played an equally glorious role in our freedom struggle. India can boast of the second biggest concentration of Muslim population after Indonesia. And, for the last half a century, despite temporary erosions of the principle of secularism, all these minorities have been living in peace in this country, contributing their share to its development.

The same can be said about the principle of federalism. As far back as in 1928, the Nehru report categorically said that India would have to be reorganised as a union of linguistic states so that people of each linguistic state could interact with their respective state government in their own language. Even before that, in 1921, the Indian National Congress had formed its units not along the lines of the British division of provinces but along the lines of linguistic regions.

This was a principle whose soundness had never been in doubt, and it was duly incorporated in the independent India’s constitution. It is another matter that, after coming to power, the Congress party chose to forget its own commitment to the principle of linguistic states and people had had to fight for the formation of linguistic states in most parts of the country. It was thus that the country witnessed mighty struggles for the formation of a Telugu speaking Andhra Pradesh, for a Marathi speaking state, for a Malayalam speaking Kerala, and so on. In all these struggles, in most of whom the Communist Party played a significant role, people had had to make tremendous sacrifices in order to realise the idea of linguistic states.

But precisely these very principles of secularism and federalism have been an anathema to the BJP and its precursor, the Jan Sangh, whose leaders never took any part in the country’s epic struggle for freedom. In fact, after its formation in 1925, the RSS --- which controlled the Jan Sangh earlier and which controls the BJP today --- only helped the British government by trying its best to break the fighting unity of the Indian people against imperialism.

The BJP government’s moves against secularism and federalism are therefore not surprising. It has done everything it could do to mould the educational and research institutions along communal lines and to change the educational curricula and syllabi in accordance with the communal fascistic designs of the RSS. And now it has even appointed a committee to review the tenets of our constitution in order to achieve its nefarious goals.

All this is apart from the depredations which various outfits of the saffron brigade are perpetrating all over the country. The barbaric murder of Father Graham Staines and his two minor sons in Orissa in January 1999 was only an extreme form of the communal offensive which these outfits have launched against the minorities.

Apart from all this, the BJP-led regime has played havoc with the country’s foreign policy of peace, disarmament and world peace. It has done its best to make India an adjunct of the United States in international affairs. Even the country’s defence is being geared up in the same direction.

No less harm has been done to the people’s living standards because of the imperialist-dictated economic policies the BJP-led government is pursuing with a vengeance. All the facets of these policies have been dealt with in these pages from time to time and there is no need to dwell upon them at length here.

Of course, these policies of LPG (liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation) were initiated about a decade back by the then Congress government led by P V Narasimha Rao. But the Congress party also paid a heavy price for these policies as they caused a big erosion in the people’s already low living standards. An example is that the rate of poverty, which had been on a decline till then, began to rise again after 1994, as a direct consequence of these policies. And now, the new measures taken by the BJP regime, like the removal of quantitative restrictions, threaten to further deteriorate the living standards of the Indian people, kill our self-sufficiency in food and thereby make us vulnerable to imperialist blackmail.

But, on the other hand, the Congress party --- even though it is the official opposition in parliament --- is simply unable to meet the challenges being posed by the BJP rule. Because of its pursuance of the bankrupt bourgeois-landlord path of development, its severe attacks on the people’s living standards, its depredations against the states’ autonomy, its over-centralisation drive, and its capitulation before the forces of communalism time and again, among other things, it has lost a big chunk of its mass base. It has today the lowest ever representation in Lok Sabha since 1952. The fact is that by its actions the Congress party has irrevocably alienated the minorities, the Dalits and the Adivasis, etc, who remained with and solidly supported the party for a very long time.

Surprisingly, however, the party seems to be quite oblivious to the causes that ended its monopoly of power. It is not prepared to review its stance in the sphere of economic policies, and still continues to compromise with communal forces now and then.

This situation does not bode well for the country and its people, as it is another bourgeois-landlord party that has filled up the space vacated by the Congress party. Moreover, this party, the BJP, is not like other bourgeois-landlord parties. For, it is controlled by the communal-fascistic RSS that wants to establish a theocratic state in the country. Moreover, here we have a party that is openly and stridently pro-imperialist and is prepared to go to any length to appease the leaders of US administration. The situation gets further compounded by the fact that, for the present, no party seems to be capable of displacing the BJP from the seats of power. The AIADMK’s withdrawal of support from the BJP-led government in April 1999 did cause the government to fall but, in absence of any credible alternative, it was the BJP that again came to power with the help of several smaller and regional parties.

On their part, these smaller and regional parties too are playing an opportunist game today. Some of these parties stand by secularism and federalism, and have been vocal in championing the cause of the states’ rights in the past. The stance adopted by late Shri N T Ramarao in this regard is a case in point. But, today, it is the spoils of power the leaders of these parties are hankering after.

On the other hand, taking the country as a whole, the Left and democratic forces are sadly quite weak. Even though these forces played a big role in the struggle for independence and after, and have made tremendous sacrifices for the people’s cause, they are not in a position to replace the bourgeois-landlord regime immediately. This is the saddest aspect of the situation today.

Yet this does not mean that nothing can be done to take the country out of the morass into which the BJP regime is out to throw it. The fact is that, despite their present weakness, the Left and democratic forces enjoy a high degree of prestige in the country and their consistent fight for the people’s cause, in defence of national unity and against corruption is widely recognised. So is recognised the principled politics of these forces. All this can be suitably utilised to forge a third alternative in the country.

It was in this situation that a Lok Morcha (People’s Front) was formed by some of these parties, groups and individuals in order to catalyse the forging of a third alternative against both the BJP and the Congress. Based on a common minimum programme, the front intends to give the country a new direction and take it out of the sad plight in which it is today because of the successive regimes in New Delhi.

The programme which the Lok Morcha intends to implement is one that takes into account the vital concerns of the toiling masses of this country. It is very clear that the policies of the Congress and the BJP have singularly failed to solve the glaring problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, ill health, lack of housing facilities, etc, from which millions and millions of our people have been suffering over all these decades. The Lok Morcha’s attempt will be to give up the policies that make the rich richer at the cost of the toiling people. The Morcha will take such steps as will strengthen our public sector, develop our agriculture, enhance our self-reliance and food security, expand and strengthen the public distribution system, protect the rights of the working people, ensure equal status for women in the social, economic and political spheres, and raise the living standards of the people.

At the same time, the Lok Morcha is also seized with the threats to our secular and federal democratic edifice, and proposes to take such concrete steps as will defend our democratic system and expand it further in the common people’s interest. The Morcha will also defend the country’s non-aligned foreign policy of anti-imperialism, peace and total disarmament, and do its utmost to protect our economic sovereignty from imperialist encroachments.

Social justice will be an important component of the Lok Morcha’s programme of action. It is committed to ending all forms of caste discrimination and oppression, and safeguard the lives, honour and property of the Dalits, tribals, minorities and other weaker sections of our population.

The Lok Morcha proposes to publicise its common minimum programme very soon. It is also going to form its units at the state, district and lower levels, and launch a series of agitations as well as people’s awareness campaigns in order to impress upon them the need to forge a third alternative for the sake of the country’s regeneration and its people’s well-being. In short, much as the BJP leaders may harp on the TINA (there is no alternative) factor, the Lok Morcha is determined to prove that a pro-people alternative to both the BJP and the Congress is indeed possible, and that such an alternative is bound to take shape soon, come what may!