Massive Rally At Brigade Concludes The Conference

 B Prasant

Surjeet addressing the five-lakh strong rally at Brigade grounds

THE 21st state conference of the Bengal unit of the CPI(M) ended in a mass rally that was held at the Brigade Parade grounds. The scorching sun notwithstanding more than five lakh of people filled the grounds and cheered the speeches of the leadership who addressed them.

In his address to the rally, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and Left Front chairman Biman Basu who presided over the occasion described the conference as showing the way forward, looking to the interests of the basic classes and of the mass of the people. The conference, said Basu, who spoke first, had identified the importance of involving every section of the people in the anti-imperialist struggle.  He called for the CPI(M) to take the struggle forward nationally by strengthening its pro-people and especially pro-poor stance. 

The anti-people policies of the Congress-led UPA government at the centre must be resisted through struggles and movements. The separatist movement is to be fought ideologically even as the LF government paces up the development process in the backward areas in particular, and all over the state in general.

Biman Basu also spoke of the need to strengthen the mass organisations and for the CPI(M) to increase its mass contact in the state.  The political consciousness of the people must be enhanced further and democracy would flourish even as development would go on keeping in view the interest of the mass of the people.

State secretary of the Bengal CPI(M), Anil Biswas said that reception to President Chavez on March 5 and the remembering in condemnation of the US war on Iraq which was launched on March 20 would form part of the anti-imperialist struggle going on in Bengal.

Biswas said that the Bengal CPI(M) would in the days to come further firm up its organisational structure, enhance the level of consciousness of its members, and work for the poorest of the poor in the state.  It will widen and broaden its policy of mass contact all the way.

The independent role of the CPI(M) must be augmented.  The conference has evaluated the role of the opposition, anarchic and destructive, in Bengal and the CPI(M) would continue to be vigilant about the activities, overt and covert, of the RSS and its cohorts. 

The deceptive moves of the separatist elements must be exposed and resisted ideologically and those who have strayed into their fold, although miniscule in numbers, must be brought back, especially intellectuals. 

The campaign-movement against the Congress in Bengal would continue apace and the demand for restructuring of the centre-state relationship would be made into a mass movement.

In his brief address, the general secretary of the CPI(M), Harkishan Singh Surjeet said that the 21st conference had shown how the strength of the CPI(M) in Bengal had continued to grow. The growth and development of the Bengal CPI(M) has been the result of continuous struggle.  There is a long way to travel yet in making more and more people attracted to the scientific theory of Marxism-Leninism, and allowing the Bengal CPI(M) to keep on growing along with an enhancement of the level of political consciousness of its members and supporters.

The 21st state conference, said the CPI(M) general secretary, had identified the road to progress further along the path to socialism.  The CPI(M) is sharply vigilant about its political development and not concerned, like other parties, just with elections and winning them.  Surjeet praised the role of the Bengal CPI(M) in the advancing of the cause of the Party in the country itself.

Prakash Karat commenced his speech by identifying the Bengal CPI(M) as the most advanced contingent of the Party in India and said that the Bengal unit was the most developed and the largest of the CPI(M) units in the country.  Prakash Karat also praised the movements and struggles unleashed by the CPI(M) and the Left in Bengal over the years.  He paid his homage “to the great sacrifices made by the Bengal comrades in the task of advancing the cause of the Party.”

Speaking about the national political situation, Karat mentioned that in supporting the Congress-led UPA government, the CPI(M) never for a moment let slip of the important fact that the Congress represented a party of the bourgeois-landlord classes. However, it is also to be kept in mind that the RSS-BJP combine represented the communal fascists. 

The way forward would be to expose the anti-people outlook of the Congress, in Bengal and elsewhere in the country, and to insist on the implementation of the pro-people aspects of the CMP.  The upcoming Party Congress, said Karat, would review the one-year-old record of the Congress-led UPA governance of the country.

Karat warned the Congress not to surrender to capitalist globalisation and not to take on the mantle of the BJP by pursuing a pro-imperialist foreign policy.

Jyoti Basu, speaking briefly, said that the people of Bengal had already created history by electing the Left Front six times to office.  The CPI(M) has come a long way from 1977, and a very big section of the people were now with the CPI(M) and the Left Front.  The rich heritage that the people have created must not be tarnished.

The CPI(M) tells the people what it could do and what it could not, explaining the circumstances carefully.  The contact with the masses must never diminish in any circumstances.  The large rallies that the CPI(M) organises are the results of many struggles and many sacrifices.  The Bengal CPI(M) would continue to grow politically, ideologically, and organisationally in the days to come, said Basu whose speech was repeatedly greeted with cheering from the massive gathering.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee explained how the 21st state conference of the Bengal had discussed the ways and means to further change the situation in the state.  The CPI(M) had made advances in Bengal that were unprecedented in the country.  The support and confidence of the people have urged upon the CPI(M) to devote itself ever more rigorously to the task of providing relief to the people to the best of its abilities through participation in the Left front government that has been in office for 28 years now.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee noted that in the villages and urban areas of Bengal, self-governing bodies have grown up and proliferated, strengthening the base of participatory democracy. Decentralisation of financial and administrative power right down to the level of the villages and small towns has continued to augment this process.

The economic achievements of the state include the success in land reforms, agricultural production, and industrial development.  Urbanisation has gone apace without hampering the interests of the people. Education, health, and literacy along with employment generation have been going on in a manner that was entirely pro-people, especially pro-poor. Self-help groups and self-employment schemes have been successfully put in place. 

Yet, the task is far from finished.  The CPI(M) and the Left Front have to go far. Economic development has to be paced up.  Democracy would be allowed to flourish even further.  The interest of the poor must be carefully looked at and preserved. More people must be brought under the Red Flag, concluded Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, bringing to an end the process of organisation of the 21st state conference of the Bengal unit of the CPI(M).