CPI(ML) HOME Vol.10, No. 25 19-25 JUNE 2007

The Weekly News Bulletin of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)(Liberation)

U-90, Shakarpur, Delhi 110092. Tel: (91)11-22521067. Fax(91)11-22518248

 
In this Issue

Presidential Election: Beyond the Politics of Pretension

The office of the President of India is the highest constitutional office in India ’s parliamentary democracy. No wonder then if election to the office of the President generates some high political drama and public pretension.

After weeks of speculation, the Congress has finally declared former Maharashtra Pradesh Congress chief and current Governor of Rajasthan Pratibha Patil as its presidential candidate. With the support of other UPA partners, the Left Front and the BSP, she should have the numbers to see her through the elections. In other words, within a few weeks India may well have her first woman President. Sections of the media have already begun discussing if the vernacular term for President – Rashtrapati – will foot the bill for a woman President or a new term needs to be coined to describe the first woman occupant of the highest constitutional office. The possible victory of a woman President is also being described simultaneously as the fall of one of India ’s last unconquered male bastions – the armed forces! After all, does not the President of India also serve as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces?

Indeed, the UPA-Left camp would like us to believe that a woman occupying the Rashtrapati Bhavan is the greatest symbol of women’s empowerment in the sixtieth year of the country’s Independence . Nothing could be more pretentious than this rhetoric of empowerment. The women’s reservation bill has been lying in Parliament’s cold storage for more than ten years now. Following six years of NDA rule, the UPA too has completed three years in office and in all these three years it never had the time to table the women’s reservation bill. If having a woman as President is the way to advance the cause of women’s empowerment why did the Congress not support the candidature of Captain Laxmi Sehgal in 2002 instead of joining hands with the NDA even as Gujarat was still burning?

If the Congress wants to utilise the Presidential poll to drive a wedge in the NDA – it expects the Shiv Sena to break ranks with the BJP and support a Maharashtrian in her race to the highest office – while pretending to champion the cause of women’s empowerment, the BJP and its NDA partners are also no less desperate to hoodwink the public. Their claim is that their man BS Shekhawat is an independent candidate for the office. It seems ever since the NDA was ousted from office in May 2004 there is nothing official about the NDA any more! It may be a nice opportunist way to attract a few ‘secular’ votes to the NDA kitty, but can the mere pretension of ‘independence’ whitewash a man’s lifelong association with the communal politics of the Sangh Parivar? Or has the BJP now become so apologetic about its own political identity that it sees greater political virtue in pretending to be independent than in beating its drum of being the only party with a difference?

The CPI(M) and its Left allies began with a profound political claim that the President’s post being a political office they wanted only an experienced politician to occupy it. And then came the suggestion that Pranab Mukherjee could be the best choice in the present circumstances! This is the CPI(M)’s way of telling us that the political experience of the Congress leadership (and by implication the Congress policies, for experience is accumulated on the basis of policies) is the best asset that can stand the country in good stead in today’s crucial juncture. Or was there also the additional consideration of keeping post-Nandigram Bengal in good humour by sending a Bengali for the first time to the Rashtrapati Bhavan! With the Congress never showing any enthusiasm on Mukherjee’s name, the Left leaders are now left celebrating the candidature of Pratibha tai while clamouring, and possibly contending among themselves, for the Vice-President’s post!

The President’s is indeed a political post. The President not only represents the country in the international arena, he or she has a crucial constitutional say in many major issues of domestic policy and governance. And of course the President can always play a big role in mooting ideas and mobilising public opinion. In the past we have seen important leaders of the Congress and BJP come up with the idea of introducing a US-style Presidential system in India and most recently we have heard the incumbent President advocate two-party rule on the occasion of the 150 th  anniversary of India’s First War of Independence. Ironically, by undermining the independent voice of the Left and reducing India ’s largest ever parliamentary bloc of the Left to a mere ‘Left wing’ of the Congress-led coalition, the CPI(M) is only playing into the ruling classes’ two-party game plan.

The CPI(ML) rejects this sinister design and in keeping with its principled opposition to the policy platforms underpinning the UPA and the NDA, the party refuses to support either of the two candidates for the highest constitutional office.

Reports

Spirited Campaign against Block Administration follows Starvation Death In Begusarai

On April 30, Gyanshankar Gupta of Balia Bazar, Begusarai died of hunger. A three-member fact-finding team of CPI(ML) visited the spot and met his wife. She informed the team that Gyanshankar had a shop on the Balia High School campus that was his sole means of livelihood. The School Board had harassed him on the pretext of non-payment of rent, and the local administration had forcibly thrown out him and his family from the shop. Forced to live in a hutment by the roadside, Gyanshankar’s family had been reduced to starvation. And on April 30 he had died of hunger – and his wife had given a written notification to the local police to this effect. The CPI(ML) team held the school board authorities responsible for the death and had demanded action against them, and also adequate compensation  for the affected family.

CPI(ML) launched a sustained struggle following this starvation death. On May 5, CPI(ML) held street-corner meetings at various places in Balia Bazar. On May 7, AIALA held a statewide demonstration in which 400 people protested at the Balia Block office. A list of 300 poor people was presented and their inclusion in the BPL list was demanded. The BDO conceded this demand and agreed to allow the party to scrutinize the BPL list of 18 panchayats. At the mass meeting at the Block office, people held the anti-poor policies of the Nitish Government responsible for Gyanshankar’s death, and demanded that the findings of the investigation into the ‘Food for Work’ scam in Balia Block be made public.

On May 16 CPI(ML) called a Balia Bandh in protest against Gyanshankar’s death by starvation. The party held a procession appealing for support for the bandh that blocked NH 31 ( Assam Road ). On May 17, the Balia Rickshaw-pullers Association held a demonstration at the Block office in which scores of rickshaw-pullers raised a range of demands – including issue of identity-cards to all rickshaw-pullers and provision of rations and kerosene at the block office.     

‘Hisab Do Jawab Do’ Campaign at Musahari

Several weeks of campaign culminated in the ‘Hisab Do Jawab Do’ (We Want Accounts, We Want Answers) demonstration on 12 June at the Block office at Musahari, Muzaffarpur, in which hundreds of people with red flags and banners entered the block office raising slogans. Three days before this demonstration, mike campaigns had been conducted at 11 panchayats. 800 people from these panchayats marched to the block office on 11 June and gheraoed the office. A delegation met the BDO and demanded an investigation into the scams in NREGA works, and the BDO agreed to submit a report in this matter within 10 days.

At Minapur Block in Muzaffarpur, AIALA and CPI(ML) jointly held a protest demonstration on 14 june, raising several issues related to employment guarantee, BPL, PDS scheme and anganwadi programmes. At Aurai, agricultural labourers held a ‘Hisab Do Jawab Do’ demonstration at the block office on 15 June despite being badly affected by incessant rains and floods.   

Joint Dharna and Demo by Trade Unions at Rudrapur Collectorate in Protest against Closure Notice

The Bhaskar Genset Company enjoys a range of benefits, waivers and subsidies given to companies in the name of development soon after Uttarakhand state was formed. But it has been least interested in the state’s development, and only interested in raking in profits. On 27 June this company has announced a lockout – and this attempt at closure exposes the reality of ‘development’ and the mockery of workers’ rights in the state.

In October 2006, DLC Haldwani conducted a raid on this company which revealed that workers are illegally being made to work on a contract basis. Whereas workers were earlier recruited through a written test and interview, they were secretly shifted to a contract system within four months. The Bhaskar management, found guilty of violation of labour regulations, tried to escape by scrapping the contract system but also laid off all the workers. Workers were forced to launch an agitation.

After 15 days of the movement, an agreement was reached through the intervention of the Labour Department and District Administration, in which it was decided that the management would immediately take 55 workers on for a 90-day probation period, after which they would all be regularised. The remaining 35 workers would also be similarly taken on probation and regularised as soon as production demands necessitated more labour. The management violated the terms of this agreement after 90 days, illegally extending the probation period by 40 days. Also, some people recruited as overseers were being made to work as workers; whereas under the terms of the agreement, workers were only to be recruited from among those laid off.

The Labour Department conducted several rounds of talks following violation of the agreement. During these talks, the management handed termination-of-service notices to nine workers participating in the talks, and the workers protested by boycotting work. Again, through intervention of the Labour Department and District Administration, an agreement was reached according to which the workers’ representatives were restored to their jobs and the management agreed to regularise 20 workers every month.

The management then bypassed the seniority priority in bringing out the regularisation list at the end of the first month. Holding this to be a violation of the agreement, the Labour Department and District authorities intervened to force the management to issue regularisation papers according to the seniority list. After this the management withheld the regularisation list at the end of the second month and accused workers of violent agitation, issuing a secret and illegal closure notice.

The Government can, if it chooses, cancel this illegal closure notice –but it is yet to do so. In order to demand an immediate end to this illegal lockout, the ‘Save Bhaskar Struggle Committee’ comprising some 30 organisations – mainly a range of trade unions including the AICCTU, CITU, and HMS – held a dharna and demonstration on 19 June at Rudrapur Collectorate. The agitation is still ongoing. 

Jan Sanskriti Manch Seminar Commemorates 1857 at Bareilly

On May 31, JSM organised a seminar on ‘1857: Memory, Reality and Dream’ at Bareilly College Hall. At the outset of the seminar, Utkarsh Malaviya played the pakhawaj. The seminar was introduced by the State Secretary of UP JSM Ashutosh Kumar. Actor Kumar Jitendra performed a mono-act based on Shailesh Matiyani’s play ‘Uthaigir’. Speakers at the seminar included poet Viren Dangwal, Mangalesh Dabral, Sudhir Vidyarthi, litterateur Pyiyadarshan Malaviya, writer Subhash Kushwaha, Rohtak University lecturer Bhupendra Yadav and JSM’s former General Secretary, journalist Ajay Singh.   

Demonstration at Ranchi against Government’s Protection for Land Mafias

Ever since Jharkhand became a separate state, the land rates went up steeply in the capital Ranchi . With this, land mafias enjoying Government protection became very active. It should be noted that it is tribals who own most of the land in Ranchi – land on which the land mafias have a greedy eye. There is a roaring racket in the illegal sale of land belonging to poor tribals, and when tribals raise the issue with the local administration, they themselves face harassment instead of justice. There is a spate of murders in Ranchi related to land, and all this is happening right under the nose of the Government and administration. In many cases, illegal construction is ongoing on land acquired through such dubious methods, despite the imposition of Section 144; and the police turn a convenient blind eye.    

CPI(ML) took up the issue, and the Ranchi City Committee held a militant demonstration on 15 June at the Dy. Commissioner Office, warning that if the administration fails to act, the party itself will break the illegal constructions. 

Hundreds of tribal people marched to the DC office and held the demonstration. Finding the main door to the office locked, the demonstrators forced their way into the office, raised slogans and sat on a dharna. Half an hour later, the Magistrate appointed by the DC arrived, accepted the memorandum of demands, and gave an assurance of prompt action.

A mass meeting followed. Tribal women were at the forefront of the entire demonstration, displaying their anger and outrage boldly.

Obituary

Red Salute to Comrade Sohanlal!

Labour leader Comrade Sohanlal passed away on 19 June at his home in Lucknow in a tragic accident by electrocution. He was 51. As a worker at Scooters India Ltd., he had come into contact with the Indian people’s Front in the late 80s, and later became a member of the CPI(ML). He was also an enthusiastic cultural activist, and was an active member of ‘Mashal’, the noted cultural tem consisting of party members in Scooters India, that presented plays and songs.

He was a member of the AICCTU National Council and UP State Committee. He had led many movements in Scooters India in the 90s, and was for long the Secretary of the AICCTU-affiliated Scooters India Kamgar Union. He was active in party campaigns and trade union movements. At the time of his death, he was a member of the Scooters India Party Branch.

His death is an irreparable loss to the struggle of Scooters India workers as well as the working class movement and the party in general. Party leaders Comrades Lal Bahadur Singh, Arun Kumar, AIPWA leaders Shobha Singh, Meena, Ranjana Yadav, Comrade Amarnath Sharma and Balram Yadav were among those who saluted him on his final journey and expressed deepest condolences to his family at his untimely death.

Edited, published and printed by S. Bhattacharya for CPI(ML) Liberation from U-90, Shakarpur, Delhi-92; printed at Bol Publication, R-18/2, Ramesh Park, Laxmi Nagar, Delhi-92; Phone:22521067; fax: 22518248, e-mail: mlupdate@cpiml.org, website: www.cpiml.org

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