People's Democracy

RELEASING four well documented pamphlets on the "Vajpayee Government, Quit!" theme at the CPI(M) headquarters on September 8, Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury said time had come to seek the removal of the Vajpayee government that had failed on all fronts.

The CPI(M) has launched a three weeks long countrywide agitation from September 7, which will involve over a crore of Indians. Several jathas will crisscross the nation in this duration. Cadres of the party and of the trade unions and other mass organisations led by it will spread out, exposing the harm the BJP-led NDA is doing to the people and the country by running a most corrupt, economically disastrous, highly communal and pro-imperialist government.

Speaking to the press, Yechury dwelt on each of the four points of the campaign. He said the Vajpayee government has provided the "most favoured" treatment to American capital and multinational corporations. It has also reversed India’s long-standing non-aligned foreign policy and has now adopted a foreign policy in tune with the USA’s geo-political interests. In addition, the government has accepted the US role of an arbitrator in India’s relations with Pakistan. It has entered into military collaboration with the US on the latter’s terms. The so-called strategic relationship involves US agencies’ intervention in India’s internal affairs.

Yechury said the BJP-led government came to power by promising the moon. They extolled swadeshi, pledging to protect and strengthen India’s economic sovereignty. They promised to create one crore jobs every year. They claimed to liberate the people from bhook, bhay and bhrashtachar (hunger, fear and corruption). But it is now clear that the economic policies pursued by this government are all videshi and no swadeshi. Instead of eliminating bhook, these policies have led to an alarming rise in starvation deaths and distress suicides. The economy is in a deep crisis with fall in growth rates, menacingly rising unemployment, erosion of the livelihood of a vast majority of the people, growing inequalities between the rich and the poor, growing regional disparities, and the overall impoverishment of the vast millions. The vision of providing every Indian with roti, kapada and makan remains an illusion, and that too is receding farther and farther.

During these years, this government has mortgaged the Indian economy to foreign capital and is imposing unprecedented burdens on the people. The public distribution system has been virtually dismantled. Millions of people who are arbitrarily defined "above-poverty-line" no longer receive any protection. Even the recently announced reduction in the prices for this section is meaningless since these prices are close to the prevailing market prices. Prices for the below-poverty-line people were hiked from Rs 2.50 for wheat and Rs 3.50 for rice in 1997 to Rs 4.15 for wheat and Rs 5.65 for rice. Sugar has been withdrawn altogether from the PDS.

The administered prices of all essential commodities have been hiked. By relying on hikes in indirect taxes as the means for raising its revenues, the government has been passing the burdens on to the poor rather than the rich. During the last three years, an extra burden of over Rs 20,000 crore has been put on the people through excise duty hikes. On the contrary, the rich have got direct tax concessions in every single budget during this government’s tenure. The last budget alone gave them concessions worth Rs 5,500 crore, Yechury said.

It was criminal that in this period petroleum prices have been hiked seven times, imposing a burden of thousands of crores on the people. The last hike was in the 2001-02 budget. The September 2000 hike imposed a burden of Rs 8,000 crore on the people. Items of mass consumption like kerosene and LPG have seen a sharp rise. Petroleum price hikes have a cascading inflationary impact, adversely affecting the livelihood of the vast millions of people. Every single railway budget in this period has imposed burdens through hikes in freight or passenger fares. In short, the government has nearly ruined the economy. On the employment front, what of creating one crore jobs, unemployment has grown and the youth see no future after years of study. The economy is in the doldrums and the GDP growth rate has declined to an all-time low.

Explaining the communalisation agenda, Yechury said the last three years have seen the BJP-led government imposing the RSS agenda on the country. RSS men have infiltrated most of the educational institutions; there is an effort to distort the history of the Indian people. Bajarang Dal volunteers are being given arms training. There have been a number of communal killings in the last few months. Yechury here detailed the efforts being made to communalise all aspects of governance.

Explaining the contents of the fourth pamphlet on corruption, Yechury said the Vajpayee government is perhaps the most corrupt, supports the corrupt people and is giving shelter to the criminals who have looted the wealth of the nation. He referred to the Tehelka scam, the US-64 scam, the stock market scam, the Mauritius route which has resulted in India losing Rs 3,000 crore annually, the loot of nationalised banks and the disinvestment scam. He said wherever you touch the BJP-led NDA government, there is financial bungling. Be it the telecom sector, the defence deals and any other sector, you name it and corruption is there. Never in the history of India has there been such rampant corruption.

In such a situation, the CPI(M) has no other alternative but to go to the people and press for recall of the present government which has resulted in starvation deaths and suicides all over.

Yechury announced that millions of party workers and supporters would picket the central government offices in all states and districts on three days during the campaign. These will include the FCI godowns. It is pathetic that there are starvation deaths when there is no storage space and the godowns are overflowing. This government has lost its mandate to rule and it must quit. Hence the CPI(M)’s slogan ---