People's Democracy

         An Anti-Left Alliance Shaping Up In Bengal

B Prasant 

EFFORTS to put together an unholy anti-Left alliance in Bengal have intensified as the polling date to the Lok Sabha poll approaches. The alliance as of now remains mostly but not wholly covert. The alliance comprises the entire spectrum of anti-Left forces from the BJP-Trinamul Congress, to the Pradesh Congress, to the SUCI, to the villainous PWG-MCC fractions. 

This was how Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M) and a senior Left Front leader, Anil Biswas summed up the political scenario in Bengal while addressing a big assemblage of CPI(M) workers at Mashat in Hooghly district.

The Left Front must wage a relentless struggle, political as well as ideological, to wrest as many seats away as possible from the small number held by the opposition in Bengal.  This will not only augment the strength of the Left, secular, and democratic forces all over the country, said Biswas, but also boost the issue of pro-people governance of the Bengal Left Front government itself.  Certainly, a Left sweep shall see masses of the people being encouraged not just within the state of Bengal but also all over the country itself.

Elections to the Lok Sabha, to the Vidhan Sabha, to the Panchayats, and to the urban local bodies are always looked to by the masses with great expectation about the progress achieved by the Left, especially by the Communists, particularly, but not exclusively when the poll exercise includes states like Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura where the Left is in the ascendance or are in office and have started to consolidate further their position among the people, deep and wide. 

Thus, ensuring a massive defeat of the counter-democratic forces of the opposition in Bengal becomes a task, important and emergent, for the democratic-minded people of this state.

Over the past six years, Anil Biswas said, thousands of people have starved to death across the country especially where the ruling NDA coalition partners, and the BJP, hold office.  The average off take of food by the masses has gone down alarmingly.  And this government seeks to talk about removing bhookh?  This is nothing but a cruel joke played on the people of India.

Under the BJP-led NDA’s dispensation, the minorities feel imperilled as never before.  The Gujarat killing fields yet burn with pain and aftershock. More than 300 members of the minority community are kept behind bars without justification or justice. The criminals who perpetrated the riots move about freely and even aspire to become people’s representatives.

The masses of India are subject to fear being instilled in them by the BJP governance.  The gutless proponents of the Hindu rashtra would not allow the people to cross the Laxman Rekha for the sake of their own version of the mythical Ram Rajya.

In the name of suppressing terrorism, virulent attacks are orchestrated against the people.  Just as the Bush administration is busy proving itself to be the greatest terrorist regime of the world, so does the BJP never tire of trying to terrorise the people in the name of religious fundamentalism.  Would this government ever be able or willing to fight bhay?

In terms of corruptions and frauds, the NDA government has created a record of sorts, and very often have been caught on the act on some lively video and audio footage.  In the 46-year-old-misrule that the Congress burdened the masses with, there were 21 cases of mis demeanour, especially of the financial kind. 

In the six years the BJP-led NDA has been in office, the coalition led by the ‘party with a difference’ lived up to this adage by managing to chalk shamelessly up to its ‘credit,’ 32 cases of scams and scandals which are pending before the courts of law.  Could this government, concluded Anil Biswas, ever be without the comforting cocoon of bhrastachar?