People's Democracy

Maharashtra

Left Begins Mass Campaign

Ashok Dhawale

THE Left parties have begun a mass campaign in Maharashtra against the anti-national India-US nuclear deal and the disastrous UPA government policies that have flouted the Common Minimum Programme and have led to back-breaking price rise and an aggravating agrarian crisis. The campaign is also directed against the communal danger.

The CPI(M) Maharashtra state secretariat, which met on July 10 at Mumbai, a day after the Left central leadership submitted the letter to the president of India withdrawing support to the UPA government, gave the call for launching an immediate mass campaign along with other Left parties and also worked out the details of this campaign.  

Accordingly, in the state capital Mumbai, the CPI(M) and CPI have begun a series of street-corner meetings throughout the city. More than 60 such meetings have been planned and they are meeting with good response. Similar corner meetings are being organised in Pune, where a campaign is also being conducted in the university.

In Solapur, the CPI(M) and the CPI have begun a three-day jeep jatha with attractive placards, slogans and leaflets, which will comb the entire city and take numerous street-corner meetings, aggressively putting forth the stand of the Left on the above issues. In Nagpur, similarly, a jeep jatha led by the CPI(M), CPI and Forward Bloc will course through the city on July 19-20 and a joint demonstration will be held on July 22.

A similar campaign has begun in several other districts in the state as well.

The CPI(M) state secretariat took several other decisions to broaden this campaign in consultation with the CPI and the PWP state leadership. It has been decided to organise large joint public meetings in ten main centres throughout the state and central leaders of the Left parties have been invited to address these meetings. These are Mumbai, Nashik, Nandurbar, Pune, Kolhapur, Solapur, Aurangabad, Nanded, Nagpur and Amravati. These meetings will have a statewide political impact. Two more huge rallies will be held in the rural areas of Thane and Nashik district after the monsoons.

In all other district and tehsil centres where the Left has a presence, similar public meetings will be held and they will be addressed by the state and district leadership.

The CPI(M) state committee will immediately publish the second revised edition of a booklet on the disastrous India-US nuclear deal. 5000 copies of the first edition of this booklet had been published last year and it was completely sold out in a couple of months. The state committee will also publish another booklet on the issue of price rise. Squads for the sale of these booklets will be organised in all major centres.

All district committees of the CPI(M) have been asked to publish thousands of leaflets explaining our stand on the above issues, and some of them have already done so. All mass organisations will also launch their own campaigns. State Party leaders have appeared on Marathi TV channels and have also begun writing articles in the mainline press about the nuclear deal, price rise, the agrarian crisis and other related issues. Seminars on these issues will be held in universities and meetings of scientists and intellectuals will be organised. A campaign of circulating recent Left and Party literature on the nuclear deal and other issues on the internet is already in progress.

The CPI(M) state secretariat decided that the first stage of this political campaign will culminate on August 20, the day of the all India strike call by trade unions. On that day, the Party, CITU and all other mass organisations will mobilise in thousands at all district and tehsil centres throughout Maharashtra.