Elections to the State Assemblies in five states are being held at a time when the economic crisis of the system is deepening, unemployment is rising and conditions of the people is worsening. These elections are being held at a time when RSS-BJP Govt. at the Centre is moving towards imposing fascist dictatorship over the country and towards that end is unleashing jingoist propaganda targeted against Pakistan and is deepening communal division in the country. RSS-BJP Govt. is couching its utmost anti-people acts in the garb of cleansing the system and fighting corruption, is serving big capital including foreign capital and giving it the name of spurring growth and development. Demonetization of high value currency notes was such an exercise which rendered tens of millions of workers jobless, harassed hundreds of millions of peasants in the service of corporate. Agriculture is being deliberately undermined to siphon off the toil of the hard working peasants and agricultural labourers. Make in India is making Indians further destitute and unemployed. Further, small businesses are being crushed and retail sector is being brought under the control of foreign capital and their compradors.
Forcible displacement of peasants, large part of these tribals, is continuing. Mafia-bureaucrat-ruling politicians nexus is being employed to rob the natural resources. Smart cities are being planned to oust the jhuggi dwellers and toiling people from these urban centres. The inequality in the country has grown to the extent that top 1 percent own 58% of the country’s wealth and 57 billionaires have as much wealth as 70% of the people!
RSS-BJP Govt. represents the most cruel and cynical attack of the ruling classes against the toiling people of the country. On the other hand, the other ruling class parties are also following the same economic policies, advocating and implementing ‘development’ in the interest of big capital. These too are defending landlords’ control over lands and rural life. Land reforms have even disappeared from their agenda. Attacks on Dalits and tribals are growing as also their dispossession from land. Attacks on women are growing as feudal values are being glorified. Youth are being fed on drugs and led astray into chauvinist channels. Health and Education are being privatized and taken out of the reach of the common people. While opposition ruling class parties talk of opposing RSS-BJP brand of aggressive Hindu communalism (Hindutva), these are neither consistent nor really secular but view it only as a way to garner votes. All ruling class parties are looting the people and the exchequer and amassing wealth at the expense of the people. Ruling class politicians, while serving foreign and domestic big capital, are themselves amassing enormous wealth.
People are groaning under the weight of exploitation and oppression of the big capitalists and big landlords. State machinery denies them even those democratic rights enshrined in the Constitution and law of the land. Provisions of the laws enacted by colonial rulers to crush Indians have not only been kept intact but are routinely abused to suppress the struggles of the people. Police force is routinely used to suppress people’s struggles including firing on the people and fake encounters of revolutionary cadres, false criminal cases are foisted against leaders and cadres of people’s movements, reactionary and goonda elements are used against the people’s struggles and their leaders and even democratic rights of assembly and agitation are being denied to the people. As the crisis of the system deepens, the ruling classes are sharpening their tool of repression and increasingly using their tools of suppression.
Even as the vast majority of the people of the country are going through inhuman conditions of existence and braving increasing attacks of the rulers, their concerns are not the issues in these elections. With the help of corporate controlled media, the agenda before the people is distorted in such a way that people are made to choose between the ruling class alternatives all of which agree on the basic policies which are causing havoc in the lives of the people. Elections in the country are controlled by 3Ms- money, muscle and media- all in the service of the ruling classes. Elections have become so costly that a common person or a party depending on them has little opportunity of taking its message to the people. Seats are decided in such a way that a party getting a small proportion of votes gets clear majority as seats are not apportioned in proportion to the votes polled by the parties. A candidate once elected amasses wealth without fearing any backlash from the people for not honouring his/her promises or manifesto of their parties as there is no right to recall. On top of it, the whole system is heavily controlled by the unelected representatives of the ruling classes controlling bureaucracy, police and judiciary. Ruling classes have devised their system in such a way as to preclude people’s assertion and to subvert it in case it makes it through. No ruling class party or corporate media raises any such issue as this undemocratic system serves their interests.
Even on the question of communalism which is one of the main issues of these elections particularly in UP, these parties wish to only benefit from communal polarization without making any effort to outlaw the communal politics itself, without curbing attempts to unleash communal violence. No action is taken against the officers of police and administration nor against so-called people’s representatives for communal violence under their watch in which they play an important role. A Bill against communal violence was not even tabled in the Parliament.
Allies of the BJP like Akali Dal and opposition parties of the ruling classes like Congress, SP, BSP etc. do not represent any alternative policy. These serve the interests of the same ruling classes. SP and BSP are the main regional parties in the most populous province of UP but their rule over the last decades proves that they serve the same ruling class interests. Even a new party like AAP which scored a big victory in Delhi in 2015 only focuses on the failures of the main ruling class parties but has no different economic or social policy nor is opposed to the undemocratic election system. They shout a lot about not having control over the police in Delhi but do not favour that police should not have any right to harass common people nor intervene in people’s struggles. It is silent on the struggles of the masses e.g. Dalits’ struggle for their share of panchayat lands in Punjab. Revisionist parties are acting as the left wing of the ruling classes, defending the interests of the ruling classes and striking election alliances and adjustments with ruling class parties. CPI(ML)-Liberation, which came out of the election front of the revisionist parties on the question of one seat, is supporting AAP in Punjab except where they have fielded their candidates. Earlier these revisionist parties – CPI, CPM and Liberation – had supported AAP in Delhi. These revisionist parties are not building struggles of the basic masses nor even supporting them where such struggles are being built.
In Uttarakhand, both the parties – Congress and BJP – are traditional parties of the ruling classes. In Goa, AAP is a new entrant even as BJP and Congress are facing erosion in their support. In Manipur, the issue of AFSPA is a live issue but none of the main parties of the ruling classes is in support of repealing AFSPA.
Workers, peasants and middle clases; tribals, Dalits and women; students, youth and other margnalized sections are groaning under the heavy economic burden, are being deprived of their legitimate share and being attacked for fighting for the same, are being subjected to police repression for defending their lands and livelihood and for demanding basic legal rights. The bankruptcy of the system and the ruling classes is coming out clearly.
CPI(ML)-New Democracy appeals to the people of the five states to see through the designs of the ruling class parties and oppose these parties and their candidates in the elections.
CPI(ML)-New Democracy appeals to the people to see through the election process designed to help the anti-people parties and forces.
CPI(ML)-New Democracy appeals to the people to support the candidates of CPI(ML)-New Democracy to build struggles for the economic, social and political rights of the people. To build struggle against police repression on people’s struggles, to build struggles for rights of the people over their means of livelihood – land, minerals and other resources, to build struggles against anti-people policies of the ruling class parties and the fascistic attacks on people’s struggles, support and vote for CPI(ML)-New Democracy candidates!
Where CPI(ML)-New Democracy candidates are not in the field, vote NOTA to express your opposition to ruling class parties’ policies and anti-people governance!