People's Democracy

Left Shall Continue To Put Pressure On UPA Govt In The Interest Of The People

THE CPI(M) and the Left shall continue to put pressure on the UPA government to make it to adhere to the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) and to desist from appeasing the interests of the corporate houses. The UPA government should realise the importance of resisting the pressure being put on it by the imperialist forces led by the US. 

Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M), Sitaram Yechury said this in Kolkata at the Promode Dasgupta Bhavan recently while delivering the ‘Naren Sen memorial lecture.’  The programme was held under the aegis of the Kolkata district unit of the CPI(M).

Sitaram Yechury spoke on ‘India 2020.’ He said that the Left pressure on the UPA government had made the latter move back from hiking the price of cooking gas and of kerosene, two articles of common consumption.  Yechury pointed out that the Left had offered alternatives to the imperative of hiking the prices of transport fuel, but the UPA government chose not to listen to. Thus there is need for building movements and struggles to give voice to the demands of the people so that the Congress-led government deviates from the path clung pursued by the discredited BJP regime.

Noting that what happened in India 15 years from now depended on what is being done today, the speaker presented three sets of alternative scenarios: the nation’s economic sovereignty would get augmented or would break down; the national unity would get stronger or would fragment; and the parliamentary system will develop further or authoritarianism will raise its ugly head.

Yechury said that the only way to build a democratic, economically self-reliant, sovereign and united India was to go on the path to Socialism.  Those in the union government, who would talk about making India a ‘super power’ come 2020, should pause and think that their prescription has seen India slide to the 127th position among a community of nations of 155.

Linking up Indian capitalism with the remnants of feudalism and with imperialism, Sitaram Yechury noted that it was because of the lingering effects of feudalism that one got to witness in India caste questions and religious fundamentalism as well as intolerance. The effort to make India move along the path to Socialism would meet resistance from the practitioners of these beliefs as well as from imperialism.  ‘We have to struggle and move ahead,’ declared the CPI(M) leader.

Narrating how globalisation allowed foreign capital to penetrate the Indian economy with disastrous results for the people, Yechury said that conditionalities must be imposed on foreign capital as they come into the country. Foreign capital could be allowed only in sectors where there is scope for employment generation, technology upgradation, and increase in productivity.  It is important to ensure foreign capital do not get to decimate and ruin the State sector assets. Struggles must be resorted to, to make the UPA government see things in the proper light.

Yechury pointed out that the issue of negotiating foreign loans must be linked to the question of sovereignty.  While such loans are a necessity for strengthening the economy, the Bengal Left Front government never agreed to make structural changes as a condition of taking such loans.  The erstwhile Andhra Pradesh government of Chandrababu Naidu had bent over backwards to even prepare a state budget according to IMF conditionalities to get a foreign loan component.

Presiding over the meeting, which had a packed hall, was the secretary of the Kolkata district unit of the CPI(M) Raghunath Kushari.