People's Democracy

On the Coming Elections to State Assemblies

THE Kolkata session of the All India Kisan Council, held from December 28 to 30, 2010, having taken stock of the situation prevailing in the country, attaches the utmost importance to utilising the ensuing elections to state assemblies in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamilnadu, Assam and Puducherri to register the strongest possible protest against the neo-liberal policies followed by the successive central governments. These policies, pursued by the governments led by the Congress and by the BJP, have resulted in the biggest agrarian crisis since independence. Among the features of the current crisis that must be confronted in the coming elections are:

1) one of the highest rates of inflation in the world, particularly in respect of food commodities;

2) dismantling of the PDS and inability of central government to ensure food security;

3) rises in the costs of farm inputs and decline in the prices of outputs;

4) futures and forward trading  in agricultural commodities;

5) free trade agreements which facilitate the dumping of cheap agricultural commodities;

6) the replacement of social and development banking by corporate micro-finance;

7) the penetration of multinational corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and WalMart into different stages of the agricultural process, from research and seed production to procurement and retail sales; and

8) the giving away of vast tracts of agricultural land to big corporations with no or inadequate compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement.

One of the worst manifestations of the neo-liberal policies of privatisation and deregulation is the unheard-of loot of the public exchequer, among the most recent examples of which are the scams related to the distribution of 2G licenses, the organisation of the Commonwealth Games, and the Adarsh Housing scheme, the IPL scam and the scams associated with the BJP government in Karnataka. The total amount involved in these scams would have sufficed to ensure food security and a universal public distribution system, and to initiate meaningful steps to provide irrigation, inputs, education and health to the people in the country who need these the most.

As the elections approach, the Left-led governments in West Bengal and Kerala have been made special targets of the ruling classes on account of the alternative pro-people policies of these governments, on account of the resistance that they offer to the onslaught of imperialist-supported economic policies, and on account of the service they render as advanced outposts of democracy in the country.

In West Bengal alone, 337 comrades have laid down their lives since the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 in barbaric attacks by the Maoist-Trinamul Congress combine. The union home minister has made a blatant and totally unwarranted defence of the TMC-Maoist combine and their violence, thus violating all federal norms and principles of the defence of internal security and against separatist forces in states. His own party has allied with all communal, casteist and other divisive forces in Kerala.

The election battles in Tamilnadu, Assam, and Puducherri must see the defeat of the Congress, the BJP, their allies and various divisive forces.

The recent Wikyleaks revelations show that US Imperialism was greatly worried, on the eve of the 2009 elections to parliament, about the Left playing an important role in government formation. It is to be expected that as in the past the US imperialists will actively seek to influence the outcome of the forthcoming assembly elections against the interests of the peasantry and toiling masses. The designs of US imperialists must be defeated through popular mobilisation.

This meeting of the AIKC calls upon the peasantry and the working class and other democratic people in these states to take up the battle in right earnest, mobilise the widest possible combination of democratic and secular forces, and give a fitting reply to the mentors of the anti-people policies that prevail in India. It calls upon the contingents of the AIKS and all democratic forces all over India to extend their support and solidarity to the people of these states in the campaign ahead.