People's Democracy

On The Successful August Campaign 

Prakash Karat

THE August national political campaign conducted by the CPI(M) was the most successful of its campaigns in recent years. The campaign began on August 1, but continued till September 15, as the period had to be extended in some places due to the monsoon rains. During this six-week period, the Party held 120 public meetings addressed by central leaders. Most of the Polit Bureau and a large number of central committee members participated in these meetings.

The central committee in its meeting held in June at Hyderabad had called for this campaign keeping in view the current political situation in the country. In May, the CPI(M) and the Left had won big victories in West Bengal and Kerala. More and more people outside these states were eager or curious to know about the Left platform which had found such a resounding endorsement in these two states. The unprecedented seventh successive victory for the Left Front in West Bengal underlined the fact that this was platform distinctive from other political parties in the country. The role of the CPI(M) vis-à-vis the UPA government also needed to be taken to the people. In May, the UPA government had completed two years in office. While extending support to the UPA government, the CPI(M) had adopted an independent line where it judged the policies of the government both external and domestic from the standpoint of whether it served the people’s interests, protected national sovereignty and adhered to an independent foreign policy. 

On the occasion of the two years of the UPA government, the Left parties had submitted a comprehensive note which evaluated the performance of the government in the light of the CMP, made a critique of the economic policies which favoured big business and foreign capital to the detriment of the working people and set out the policies and steps that need to be taken in the coming days which would constitute a new direction to policies.

PARTY’S STAND SPELT OUT 

The August campaign was meant to spell out the Party’s stand on major political issues such as the fight against the communal forces, the necessity to counter terrorist violence and an independent foreign policy. In its ten-point programme, the Party set out its views on the vital problems of the people concerning land, food and employment. The measures to curb price rise and the strengthening of the public distribution system, corrective steps in policies towards agriculture, provision of cheap credit to farmers and stepping up of public investment in agriculture. The demands include an end to repression on the working class and attacks on trade union rights; one-third reservation for women in legislatures and an end to female foeticide; regulation of fees and admissions in private and self-financing professional institutions. The steps necessary for resource mobilisation to meet increased public expenditure in health, education and employment generation were also propagated.

Everywhere, during the campaign, it was found that the urban and rural poor were agitated about the non-availability of BPL cards, the defective implementation of the rural employment guarantee act, the failure to check price rise of essential commodities and the totally inadequate relief extended in flood affected areas. Lack of electricity, civic facilities and increasing costs of private education and health in the face of collapsing public systems and rampant corruption added to the woes of the ordinary people.

The central committee in its meeting from September 24 to 26, reviewed the experience of the August campaign based on the reports received from twenty states. 

POSITIVE FEATURES

What is positive about the campaign is that there has been detailed planning undertaken by the state committees which were further concretised in the district and local committee meetings. In many states general body meetings were held of Party members. Wherever, more than one district was involved in a central mobilisation, joint meetings of the concerned districts or regional meetings have also taken place. 

Another good feature of the campaign has been the efforts of the Party units to conduct extensive local campaigns in preparation for the central meetings. These were in the form of jathas, cycle jathas, jeep jathas, village level meetings, corner meetings and processions. All states issued posters, pamphlets and leaflets. The notes prepared by the Party centre for conducting the campaign were mainly used as the campaign material.

All the states have reported good attendance in public meetings. In states like Tamilnadu, Tripura, West Bengal, Kerala the campaign was extremely extensive. For example the Tamilnadu report states: “There were van/jeep jathas, cycle rallies and at some places padayatras. All the jathas put together, criss-crossing the state, about eleven thousand kilometers of campaign journey was undertaken propagating the alternate policies proposed by the CPI(M) and demanding land, food and employment for all. 

“During the campaign, not less than 6000 street corner meetings took place with prominent cultural troupes in attendance. About 15 lakh handbills and notices were distributed in the door to door campaign. All the 34 party district committees were engaged in this campaign.”

In Tripura after district level conventions in district headquarters, grassroots level mass meetings, conventions in all the gram panchayat and village committee and nagar panchayats were held. 10,228 small meetings and conventions were held at panchayat/village/nagar-ward level covering about 1.08 lakh people. In Tripura the ten demands of the central campaign were supplemented by four additional demands highlighting urgent issues concerning the overall development of the state. 

In the weaker states too, a good effort was made to reach out to the people by local campaigns of door-to-door contact, street corner and mohalla meetings. For instance, the Madhya Pradesh report states: “Other than public meetings, 174 villages and 179 mohalla meetings were also organised. Campaign was conducted in 1046 villages, 312 mohallas and 62250 households were also contacted in door to door campaign. Total 3,57,600 people were contacted through campaign.”

There were also intensive local campaigns before central meetings in many places. For instance, in Sikar district in Rajasthan, 8 jeep jathas were organised and in about 700 villages meetings held. If the meetings were not possible, pamphlets were distributed. In the town, 7 street corner meetings were held. Apart from Sikar, in four other districts also, such an intensive campaign was organised before the big meeting addressed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. 

In Bihar, reports from the districts received so far show 771 village level and branch level meetings were organised prior to the district level central meetings. In Uttar Pradesh, in the local campaign, the villages covered in some of the districts were Sultanpur – 160, Allahabad – 260, Balia – 250, Varanasi – 150, Etawah – 100 through cycle jathas, jeep jathas and village level meetings. In Haryana, 600 villages were covered. Attendance in the seven central meetings in Punjab was noteworthy.

It was found that where the Party units had taken up local issues and launched sustained campaigns and struggles, there was a better response and bigger mobilisation of people in the central meetings. This underlines the importance of the Party units taking up the innumerable local issues which affect the lives of the working people. Based on the experience of the August campaign, the state committees should direct the Party units to identify the local issues on which movements and struggles can be launched.

BEHIND THE SUCCESS

The response to the campaign and the good attendance in the public meetings cannot be attributed solely to the organisational effort made by the Party units. The success of the campaign is due to the widespread appreciation for the political platform of the Party, the attitude adopted towards the UPA government and its policies and the consistent role in opposing the pro-US orientation in the ruling establishment. In states like West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, there is a higher degree of appreciation of the Party’s role in the current situation. The anti-imperialist mobilisation was impressive in West Bengal when 30 lakh (3 million) people participated in the human chain on September 1 against the attacks of US imperialism on the peoples of Palestine, Lebanon and Cuba and demanding that the UPA government follow an independent foreign policy. In the same period, the people of Kerala contributed a record Rs 87.45 lakhs (Rs 8.7 million) for the Palestine solidarity fund.

The large attendance of women and people belonging to the dalit, tribal and Muslim communities attested to the fact that the Party is taking up their problems and championing their cause.

The big response for the campaign and the support for the policies demanded by the CPI(M) are a clear indication that the overall direction of the policies of the Central government and most of the state governments are not benefiting the people. 

The UPA government harps mainly on achieving and maintaining 8 per cent GDP growth. It is unable to comprehend the depth of the agrarian crisis and the distress of the rural poor. It is unwilling to muster the political will to raise more resources by taxing the rich and asking the foreign and Indian speculators in the stock market to part with a small portion of their huge profits. The naïve reliance on the USA for achieving progress on various fronts, goes against the national priorities set out in the CMP of the UPA itself.

The CPI(M) has been fortified by the August campaign to more vigorously strive to ensure that the ten-point issues are taken up and the way forward suggested in the document on the two years of the UPA government is carried out.