Rise against Soaring Prices and Rampant Corruption!
Rise against the
Corrupt, Repressive and Treacherous UPA Regime!!
Onward to Delhi,
Onward to the March 14 “People’s March to Parliament”!!!
Can you imagine a country where 77% people live on a daily budget of less than Rs. 20 while foodgrains rot in state custody and rising food prices subject more and more people to hunger and malnutrition?
Can you imagine a country where national wealth is routinely drained out of the country and amassed in foreign banks and the government refuses to take any action against the culprits in the name of ‘international diplomacy’?
Can you imagine a country where ministers and bureaucrats work in tandem with corporate houses to rob the national exchequer of enormous funds that could have been used for public welfare and the Prime Minister likens this loot to whatever little money the government spends in the name of food, fuel and fertiliser subsidy for the poor?
Can you imagine a country where every year tens of thousands of farmers are compelled to commit suicides and the government conspires with corporate houses to dispossess peasants of their land and livelihood?
Can you imagine a country where the government throws all laws of the land to the winds – from environmental laws and land legislations to panchayat acts – to allow desi and foreign companies to plunder the country’s mineral and other natural resources with impunity?
Can you imagine a country where the government is so mortally afraid of the truth that it always seeks to silence people’s struggles with batons, bullets and black laws and imprison upright intellectuals under sedition charges?
We do not have to imagine such a country. This is the country we are living in. This is India after two decades of liberalization, privatization and globalization. This is India under UPA rule where governance has become a licence for unbridled corruption, where democracy is overshadowed by dark clouds of state repression and the common people have to wage a grim battle for sheer survival.
This state of affairs cannot be tolerated any longer. The UPA government has betrayed all its promises and hence lost its mandate to rule. It has proved to be a government of runaway inflation and unbridled scams. And the Prime Minister and Congress leaders would like to explain everything away as a ‘coalition compulsion’! Whatever ‘compulsion’ the Congress or the UPA may have, the country certainly has no compulsion to tolerate such a regime. Come, let us all join the People’s March to Parliament on March 14 and ask the UPA government to stop giving lame excuses and quit office.
What is the alternative? The NDA would like us to believe that it can bring down prices and stop corruption. But NDA-ruled states – whether Gujarat or Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh or Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand or Bihar – are as badly mired in corruption as states ruled by the UPA. Worse still, while the country is seeking an end to corruption and repression, the BJP and the RSS are busy whipping up tension over Kashmir and Ayodhya, and some of them are involved in downright terrorist activities. The NDA is clearly not an acceptable alternative.
Indeed, no government which enforces the policies of liberalisation, privatization and globalization can control prices or curb corruption. No government which represents the corporate agenda can guarantee basic welfare for the people. What the country needs is alternative policies, policies that keep the people’s needs and aspirations, and not the profit and power of capital, at the centre. And to this end, the country needs a powerful awakening of the people and a united assertion of all fighting Left forces.
The CPI(ML) and its allies in the All India Left Coordination are fighting on every front for such a pro-people alternative. Make the March 14 “People’s March to Parliament” a big success to carry this battle forward.
Central Committee
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
In Solidarity with the anti-POSCO Resistance Struggle in Odisha
The Ministry of Environment and Forests has chosen to clear the notorious POSCO project in Odisha – in spite of the fact that three separate committees – the Saxena Committee, the POSCO Enquiry Committee and the Forest Advisory Committee – set up at the behest of the Ministry itself have testified to rampant and deliberate violations of the Forest Rights Act by the project. The various ‘conditionalities’ which accompany the Ministry’s clearance of the POSCO project are nothing but a flimsy piece of fiction to hide the fact that in India today, corporations are a law unto themselves, with a licence to loot in brazen violation of laws to protect the environment and people’s rights. The POSCO and Odisha Government are being given a green signal by the UPA Government on their ‘assurances’ to comply with environment and forest rights laws that they have already violated and lied about.
Following the CPI(ML) Central Committee meeting held at Balugan in Odisha from 3 to 5 February, a CPI(ML) team comprising General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, Odisha State Secretary Khitish Biswal, General Secretary of All India Kisan Mahasabha Rajaram Singh and Odisha state AICCTU leader Mahendra Parida visited Dhinkia panchayat in Erasama block of Jagatsinghpur district, the main centre of the people’s resistance to the proposed Posco project on 7 February, 2011. The delegation met several leaders of the Posco resistance struggle including Akshay Das, Prakash Jena (member of Erasama block panchayat samiti) and woman activist Monorama Khatua and several others and addressed an impromptu meeting of villagers at Dhinkia.
The villagers of Dhinkia were visibly angry with the UPA government for giving the go-ahead signal to the Posco project in spite of adverse recommendations by several expert committees and the continuing struggle of the local people for the last five years. But they also expressed their determination to resist the Posco project in one straightforward slogan: “Maribo kintu daribo na, bhita-maati chhadibo na” (we are not afraid to die, but we will not abandon our hearth and home). The Posco project entails acquisition of 4,000 acres of coastal/forest land that has been home for several hundred years to as many as 8 villages in three panchayats. At least 20,000 people face eviction and loss of livelihood – the area is known for its good crop of paddy, cashew, coconut and high quality betel leaves that are much in demand outside of Odisha. The project also involves the construction of a new captive port for POSCO (with devastating consequences for the coastal ecosystem) in spite of the availability of the nearby Paradip port.
Activists of the Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) also described how the state administration was trying to break the morale of the fighting people. An undeclared embargo has been imposed on the area with some 2000 people facing arrest on leaving the village. Routine panchayat work has come to almost a standstill and people are being denied basic benefits like ration or old age pension. Elected panchayat representatives are being harassed by the block administration for supporting the resistance struggle. Even the post master of Dhinkia post office has been suspended for his alleged sympathy for the movement. In the face of this economic blockade and repressive threats, the morale of the people of Dhinkia and other adjoining villages like Gobindapur, Nuagaon etc. still runs high and the PPSS is determined to fight till the end.