NPMO To Involve Mass Of People

In Forthcoming Programmes

B Prasant

THE Bengal unit of the National Platform of Mass Organisations (NPMO) has declared that it would like to involve a wide cross section of the people of Bengal in its programme to be held in the forthcoming weeks and months in the state.  With this aim firmly in view, the Bengal NPMO has chosen to highlight the need for the masses to create pressure on the Congress-led UPA government at the centre to implement the policies enunciated in the Common Minimum Programme.

Explaining the NPMO programme before a convention held on January 10 at Barasat in north 24 Parganas district, state president of the CITU, Shyamal Chakraborty said that the CMP was the outcome of the pressure exerted by the Left on the Congress and its allies in the aftermath of the Lok Sabha elections last year. 

The policies contained in the CMP, including the important announcement about providing the right to work with a constitutional recognition, remain largely devoid of execution.  To ensure that the CMP is fully and comprehensively implemented, the NPMO needs to carry out a rigorous movement including within the ambit of the movement the vast mass of the people.

Chakraborty said that the CMP must be explained in detail before the people and a movement initiated to create pressure on the union government towards implementing the programme early.  Without a movement, the people could never be made fully conscious of the dire need for the CMP to be implemented. And without a movement, the Congress-led UPA government would not go about making the CMP something beyond pious hopes and aspirations, he stated.

Chakraborty, underlining the commendable level of political awareness of the mass of the people in Bengal who have ensured a continuum of the Left Front government, pointed out that the programme of action of the NPMO must be reached out to the people of the urban centres and rural stretches. 

Addressing the convention, among others, were Ranjit Kundu and Subhas Mukherjee of the CITU, Saral Deb of the TUCC, Narayan Mondol of the BPKS, Kumaresh Kundu of the AITUC, Ashok Ghosh of the UTUC, and Papri Dutta of the AIDWA.

A meeting was organised by the 12th July Committee in Kolkata on January 12 at the Mahajati Sadan in order to impress upon its members that it was imperative to make a success of the central rally of the Bengal unit of the NPMO at the Shahid Minar on April 17.  The 12th July Committee has decided that as part of the programmes leading to the central rally, members of the committee would take part in the four-month-long campaign movement. 

The 12th July Committee would organise demonstrations in support of the ten-point charter of demands of the NPMO in the afternoon hours of January 28 between 1:30 and 2:30.  Between March 11 and March 17, the 12th July Committee would take part in the jeep-borne tableaux rally.

In his address to the meeting, CITU state general secretary, Kali Ghosh said that while speaking about pro-people endeavours, the UPA government in practice was more prone to adhering to anti-people policies especially exemplified in its economic outlook.  The pension funds, the banking and insurance sectors, among others are under attack.  Important sectors of the national economy were being gradually opened out to private capital, foreign and indigenous.  Only by way of launching a strong movement could these developments be reversed.

Ajoy Mukherjee, an eminent and veteran leader of the employees’ movement said that the economic policies of the Congress and the BJP were quite similar in outlook.  It was only to stave off the possibility of the communal BJP forming a government at the centre that the Left had supported the Congress-led UPA governance. 

In the circumstances, Ajoy Mukherjee said, the dual strategy would be to put pressure on the Congress, on the one hand, to implement the CMP by building up a mass movement, and on the other hand, to isolate the BJP even more isolated than it is now.  At the same time, a strong and wide movement must be set in motion against the imperialist globalisation. (INN)