• A Historic Milestone for the Indian Communist Movement!

• Prepare for the Third Ghadar!

• One working class, one program, one communist party!

• "Third Front" is a plan to conciliate the class struggle and preserve the status quo

• Unity in Struggle against the Anti-Social Offensive of the Bourgeoisie

• Build the revolutionary united front to defeat the anti-social offensive of the ruling class!

• An attack on one is an attack on all!

• Resolution adopted by the Conference of political activists, Trade Union leaders and other social activists on January 31, 2001

• Speech of Comrade Piara Singh of Canada at Kanpur

• Speech delivered by the representative of Indian Workers Association (Great Britain)

• Speech delivered by representative of Broad Alliance of Australia

• Speech by the representative of the AIPSG

• Diversion and Division of the People in the name of Anti-Pollution

• Increasing hunger and pauperism alongside agricultural production

• Conditions of workers in the "informal" sector of the capitalist economy

• Mumbai meeting condemns state terrorism and the murder of T. Purushottam

• Vigorously condemn the daylight murder of a communist in Ganganagar!

"Third Front" is a plan to conciliate the class struggle and preserve the status quo

For the past 10 years, the working class and people of India have experienced the most vicious offensive against their livelihood and rights, in the name of privatisation and liberalisation. Assets belonging to the whole of society have been sold to private profiteers. The degree of exploitation of labour has been stepped up in both the private and the "public" sectors. Agriculture has been opened up for plunder by global giant corporations, leading to massive destruction of livelihood and of the natural environment. This offensive has benefited the big bourgeoisie, both Indian and foreign monopoly capitalists. Every parliamentary front that has come to run governments in the 1990s has implemented this same program of the bourgeoisie.

First it was the Congress-led coalition government of Narasimha Rao which initiated the liberalisation drive in 1991. Today it is the BJP-led coalition government of Vajpayee that is championing the so-called second generation of market oriented reforms. In between, the people have also seen a 13-party United Front government in which the CPI joined while the CPI(M) extended support from outside. Irrespective of these changes, from one front of the bourgeoisie to another, political power has remained in the hands of the big bourgeoisie. Privatisation and liberalisation have remained the strategic thrust of economic policies, in spite of the demonstrations and protest actions by masses of working people. The will of the big business houses has been imposed on the whole of society, with different sections of the bourgeoisie fighting among each other for control over the central state so as to pocket the lion’s share of the plunder. Repeated elections, bomb blasts and other crimes have been organised by the state and the parties of the big bourgeoisie, to keep public attention diverted and facilitate pushing through the program of privatisation and liberalisation.

One of the most important lessons from this entire experience is that the working class and oppressed masses do not stand to gain from the replacement of one parliamentary coalition by another. What is required is the replacement of one social system by another. The aim of the working class movement is not the replacement of one parliamentary coalition by another coalition, while the system of monopoly capitalism remains in tact and continues to rain death and destruction. The aim of the working class movement is to ensure that capitalism is uprooted and replaced with socialism, which is the first stage of classless communist society. The establishment and development of social ownership of the means of production will bring social relations on par with the socialised productive forces. It will put an end to crises and enable society to ensure protection and prosperity to all its members.

In order to prepare for the revolutionary transformation from capitalism to socialism, the immediate step is for the working class to establish and develop a broad political front of all the oppressed masses that are opposed to the bourgeois offensive against their livelihood and rights. Such a front can and must be built around a fighting program that attacks the very basis of the notion that is being pushed by the bourgeoisie, that every individual must fend for himself or herself in the market place, while the state has no responsibility to anybody except to look after big business interests. In opposition to this assertion of the bourgeoisie, the working class arouses all the oppressed to fight for the principle that it is the duty of the state to ensure protection and prosperity for all members of society. An attack on one is an attack on all! The well being of each is the condition for the well being of all! With such slogans, the communists must provide leadership to the working class, putting forward the vision of the new society that would enable protection and prosperity to be ensured for all its members.

The program of building a Third Front of parliamentary parties is not a revolutionary program. Its aim is not to prepare the conditions for revolution. It is a program of coming to the assistance of the bourgeoisie in its hour of crisis. Its aim is to form a coalition government wherein various sections of the middle strata, such as regional bourgeois groups, find some space in the power sharing arrangement headed by the big bourgeoisie, while there is no space for the working class or the toiling peasantry.

The class struggle against the bourgeois offensive is intensifying. More and more sections of the working class are out on the streets against privatisation, closures and the all-sided attacks on their livelihood and rights. Masses of poor peasants are on the warpath against liberalisation and the onslaught by the global agri-business companies. The intensification of the class struggle against the bourgeoisie and its anti-social offensive is leading to further acute political crisis. It is leading to a situation where both the Congress Party and the BJP, the two main parties of the big bourgeois class in power, are thoroughly discredited. In such a situation, who should occupy the centre-stage of politics has become the issue of contention in the polity.

Either the communists organise the working class and all the oppressed to come to the centre-stage of politics, with a revolutionary alternative program for the renewal of India, or the bourgeoisie will organise one or another political front to fill the gap, even if only temporarily. That is how the question is posed. In such a situation, the revival of the Third Front by some within the communist movement is aimed at preventing the working class from leading a revolutionary front of all those opposed to the status quo and the capitalist offensive.

The parliamentary fronts that CPI(M) has formed or supported in the past, starting from the United Front with the Bangla Congress in West Bengal in 1967 to the 13-party United Front Government at the Centre in 1996-98, have invariably served only one purpose. They have served as a safety valve, to preserve the status quo until the Congress Party, or now the BJP, prepares for a comeback. They have served to block the path of progress, to prevent any revolutionary alternative from emerging. The content of the Third Front being advocated in 2001 is no different. Its aim is to conciliate the class struggle and preserve the status quo.

The pre-occupation with looking for the "progressive" section of the bourgeoisie has become a disease in the Indian communist movement. Those who are the carriers of this disease are obsessed with the finer points of identifying which are the "progressive" bourgeois parties and forming parliamentary fronts with them. Those who they call "progressive" one day turn out to be reactionary the next day. The working class is left hopelessly confused as a result. It is high time that we put an end to such deception. It is high time that this disease is rooted out of the communist movement.

It is high time that we confront the worn out justification that is offered by those who tail the bourgeoisie, that the working class is not yet ready to lead the class struggle. This is a blatant lie. It is an assertion that has no basis in real life. All the developments show that the working class is more ready than ever before to fight against capitalism and the anti-social offensive of the bourgeoisie. It is precisely these so-called leaders of the class, who have succumbed to the anticommunist pressure of the bourgeoisie, that are not ready to take the lead. They are not ready to build the revolutionary front of the working class. They are not ready to give up the line of tailing behind some "progressive" section of the bourgeoisie.

It is with these considerations in mind that the Indian communists who gathered at the Kanpur Conference held on December 25, 2000, adopted a resolution to "oppose and expose those in the working class and communist movement who are creating illusions about a parliamentary front with some 'progressive' section of the bourgeoisie at this time".

The times are calling on all communists to fight to ensure that the Kanpur Communist Resolution 2000 is implemented. All Indian communists should focus their energies on building the revolutionary front led by the working class, with the slogan Hum hai iske malik! Hum hai Hindostan! Mazdoor, Kisan, Aurat aur Jawan! (Workers, peasants, women and youth! We constitute India! We are her masters!). We must build this front by intensifying the struggle against liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation and the capitalist offensive, with no compromise or conciliation. We must work tirelessly to advance the alternative program of the working class, with the revolutionary perspective of overthrowing capitalism, establishing the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and building socialism, the first stage of communism.

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One year after the disinvestment of the Modern Food Industries

An attack on one is an attack on all!

The attacks being made on workers and peasants in the name of disinvestment, privatisation, liberalisation, and globalisation were discussed. Vigorous discussions were held on how on the pretext of controlling pollution in Delhi thousands of toiling workers have been rendered jobless and homeless. There was a militant consensus on the issue of unitedly fighting the antisocial attacks of the capitalists. A resolution was unanimously adopted to take the struggle forward and oppose the unjust attacks on the Modern Foods workers. People's Voice appeals to all its readers to support the struggle of the workers of Modern Food in every possible way, and participate in the overall war against privatisation and globali-sation which is being waged by the working people of India.

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Build the revolutionary united front to defeat the anti-social offensive of the ruling class!

Statement of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, January 26, 2001

Today, the ruling class is organising a military show of strength in celebration of the founding of the present Indian Republic on January 26, 1950. This is a show of strength of the Indian State. But we, the people of India, need to ask ourselves on this occasion — whom has this Republic served? Whom does it really belong to?

The politicians of the ruling class claim that the Indian Republic belongs to all Indians-rich and poor, workers and capitalists, big landowners and landless agricultural labourers, moneylenders and paupers. They make out that this Republic belongs to all people equally and serves them all equally, irrespective of the religion they profess, the caste into which they are born, their gender and the language they speak. They claim that the parliamentary system of representative democracy ensures that power vests with the people.

However, life experience proves just the opposite. This Indian Republic belongs to and serves only one section of Indian society — the big capitalists and big landowners. This big bourgeoisie, in league with the foreign imperialists, exploits the enormous natural and human resources of our vast country for its own interests. The armed forces and police, the bureaucracy and the judiciary, jointly defend this plunder. Meanwhile, the toilers and tillers have to fend for themselves. They are condemned to a present and future of darkness, to illiteracy, ill health and disease. They have to live and die in indignity. The Indian Republic systematically organises communal and fascist violence against the toiling masses, divides the people and discriminates against them on the basis of religion, language, nationality or tribe of origin, and gender. It deliberately perpetuates the age-old system of Brahmanical caste oppression. Terrorism against the toiling masses has become a permanent feature of this Indian Republic. This Republic does not even defend the sovereignty of India. Far from it, it is the instrument for the enslavement of our people by the foreign imperialists.

Today the Indian ruling class has unfurled a thoroughly anti-people, imperialist agenda. One plank of this agenda is to deploy all the human and material resources of our country for the fastest possible enrichment of the native and foreign capitalists. It is doing this under the signboard of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation. The other plank is to beef up the armed forces to provide security to the Indian and foreign capitalists. It is ready to deploy India’s resources in collaboration with US imperialism and other imperialist powers to defend the capitalist system in India and to put down the revolutionary liberation struggles of people in other countries. This is one important reason that all the imperialist powers, particularly the US, are looking towards India favourably. The aim of this bourgeoisie is the old imperialist aim of redividing the world for plunder, implemented in the new conditions of the post Cold War world. The workers, peasants and youth of India are to be used as cannon fodder for its imperialist aims.

Comrades!

Factories, mills, and mines are being closed down and crores of workers are being retrenched all over the country on an unprecedented scale. The peasants are facing ruin as the Indian state is ruthlessly raising electricity and water tariffs, hiking fertiliser and seed prices, refusing to increase procurement prices of crops, and opening the door to imports of food and agricultural produce from the West under the WTO agreement. Banks, insurance, electricity, communications and railways are being privatised. Schools, colleges and hospitals are being privatised. On a broad front, the entire gains that India’s and the world’s peoples made in the twentieth century are under attack. The very notion of sovereignty of a people is under attack, despite all the brave words of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee that India cannot be bought and sold. Increasingly, it has become clear that many of the policies pursued by the government of India cannot be rationalised in any other way than that they are dictated by imperialists and multinationals. In the sphere of polity, the anti-social offensive is being carried out in a diabolical way utilising the judiciary, the election commission and various other agencies, to further disempower and marginalise the toilers and tillers.

The people’s struggle against the attacks on livelihood and sovereignty is mounting. What is hampering this struggle is the fact that the toilers and tillers, the women and youth, are not united under one banner of struggle around an alternative vision for India. This work to forge the unity of the toilers and tillers is a central task of the time. The Communist Ghadar Party of India and many other communists have taken up this task for solution.

Since the Republic established on January 26 1950 has failed to serve the vast majority of people, has failed in providing us a life of dignity and security, it must go! We, the toiling people, need to establish a new state that will serve us and be our instrument for fulfilling our goals, and not those of a minority of Indian and foreign exploiters.

On the front of the economy, our goal is to reorient its fundamental direction from one which is geared to maximum private profit at the cost of the well being of the masses, to one that is geared to providing a livelihood and well-being for all, including for the coming generations. In the sphere of the polity, we need to ensure that political power vests in the hands of the vast majority, in particular the toilers and tillers, as opposed to the present system of representative democracy which excludes the vast majority from power. And with regard to the peoples of other countries, a fundamental change is required from the present imperialist course to one in which India is a factor for peace and security in Asia and the world.

75 years ago, India’s working class gave birth to a communist party to get rid of colonial rule and capitalism and build a socialist India free from all forms of exploitation of persons by persons. 75 years later, that task remains undone, primarily because a dominant section of communists had grave illusions about capitalism and the colonial legacy and did not want to make a clean break with it. They had and continue to have illusions in the Indian Republic, and prate about it being "secular", "democratic" and "socialist". Today, these same forces are trying to forge another parliamentary front of capitalist parties, calling it a "Third Front" or a "secular front". They argue that this course is necessary because the workers and peasants are allegedly not ready to build a revolutionary united front of their own.

All communists, workers and peasants who want to take the struggle against the attacks on livelihood and sovereignty of the people forward to its logical conclusion, must reject this course advocated by those who conciliate with the ruling class. They must refuse to fritter away their energies in forming parliamentary united fronts once again, in becoming voting machines for capitalists and their apologists. The attacks on the workers and peasants are part of the program of the entire ruling class, not of merely this or that bourgeois party. In opposition to this, the working class must hoist its own independent program, and rally the vast majority of the people around this program. In other words, a revolutionary united front of all the working masses around the one program of the working class is the only way to defeat the anti-social offensive of the ruling class. This is what all communists and militants in the movements of the workers, peasants, women, youth and other sections of the people must focus on building.

Let us dedicate ourselves to the building of this powerful revolutionary united front against the anti-social offensive launched by the ruling class and their imperialist allies. Let us build this front with the aim of building that kind of India where security and prosperity is ensured for all the toilers today and for the coming generations.

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Mumbai meeting condemns state terrorism and the murder of T. Purushottam

Those who had come from Hyderabad elaborated a vivid picture of the situation in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Well known progressive writer and poet Varavara Rao described the concrete conditions of the fatal attack on Purushottam. He laid bare the fact that state organised terror against the people is on the rise not only in Hyderabad but all over Andhra Pradesh. Special task forces, anti-naxalite squads, "greyhound" and other armed gangs that have been formed by the state under various names, are all spreading terror.

Those who support the current market reform policies of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu have no answer to the question as to why as much as 40% of the population of Hyderabad, the capital city, still have no access to safe drinking water, said Varavara Rao. The most modern methods are being employed, on the other hand, to quell the rising movement of the people in defence of their rights. Activists of the movement are murdered by the state and recorded as having been "killed in encounter". Even the dastardly incident in which 3 persons were killed by the state’s forces who opened fire on an unarmed mass street demonstration against the hike in power prices recently, was recorded as "killed in encounter".

Varavara Rao reported that Purushottam had, only a few months ago, investigated and published the facts surrounding the rape and murder of 14-18 year old girls in Warangal district by state organised squads. He had received several threats following this, as well as two real attempts on his life. On 23 November 2000, an armed gang of men in a Tata Sumo attacked and killed him with knives. Within 20 minutes of the incident, a Superintendent of Police reached the spot with his men. That the police reached the spot in such a short time shows that they had prior information about the murder, said Varavara Rao. The body of Purushottam was removed from the place with no report having been filed.

Lakhs of people, in Hyderabad and all over Andhra Pradesh, have joined in demonstrations of protest against the brutal state organised killing of 38- year old advocate and human rights activist, T. Purushottam. Workers, doctors, lawyers and teachers have all joined in this mass expression of protest. It is proof that those in authority cannot wipe out the people’s movement only through terror.

The meeting called for unity of all democratic forces against state terrorism. It concluded by condemning the dastardly murder of Purushottam and demanding that the perpetrators of this crime must be severely punished.

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Resolution adopted by the Conference of political activists, Trade Union leaders and other social activists on January 31, 2001

1. Despite all the efforts of workers, trade unionists and enlightened political forces to force the government to reveal the secret terms of the agreement struck between the Government of India and HLL, neither the Union Government nor the HLL management has publicised the terms of the agreement.
2. 6000 employees of a Public Sector Enterprise have been literally sold as bonded labour to a multinational, without their consent and without taking their concerns into consideration, and this continues to remain the case despite one year of struggle by the employees of Modern Food Industries.
3. The management of HLL is ruthlessly pursuing a path of attacking workers in terms of job security, job designation, and making them look superfluous with the aim of reducing the work force all over the country to 600 from 6000, as was stated by a top official of HLL a year ago. In this connection, right in Delhi, production has stopped in the Bread Unit 2 in Kirti Nagar as well as in the Rasika Fruit juice Bottling Plant Lawrence Road, and the former employees of these plants have been added to the work force of Bread Unit –1 at Lawrence Road. Meanwhile, services of casual workers in Bread Unit- 1 are being dispensed with and there is increasing resort to contract labour. Most of the time, the majority of the 4 mixing plants in bread Unit- 1 are kept idle. In sum, an atmosphere is being created to show that workers are redundant, preparatory to their being summarily dismissed.
4. The work conditions of the workers are being progressively being made more difficult, both to increase exploitation and to force workers to give up their jobs in frustration. In this connection, all the labour standards of working conditions that existed in MFIL prior to disinvestment have been systematically violated.
5. That three leaders of the Modern Food Employees Union, Shri Govind Singh Yadav, Shri V K Narang and Shri Ganesh Thakur are being persecuted and victimised and face the sword of termination, simply for daring to fight against disinvestment and privatisation in the courts, in the media and in the plants; simply for defending the rights of workers and exposing the misdeeds of HLL management and the Government of India.

THIS CONFERENCE

1. Hails the indefatigable struggle of Modern Food Industries Employees Union against privatisation and in defence of the rights of workers as an integral part of the great struggle of India’s working class against the anti-social offensive of the bourgeoisie. The struggle of thousands of working people against the attacks on their livelihood by the Supreme Court order to close down small industries, in the name of "controlling pollution", is a part of this struggle.

2. Extends its full support to the Public Interest Litigation pending in the Delhi High Court by the Modern Food Industries Employees Union and the Lok Raj Sangathan questioning the legal validity of the disinvestment commission.

3. Denounces the HLL management for its cowardly attacks on the leaders of the Modern Food Employees Union and resolves to defend the rights of the leaders and of all the workers of Modern Food Industries considering "AN ATTACK ON ONE IS AN ATTACK ON ALL".

4. Calls upon Members of Parliament with conscience, cutting across party and ideological barriers, to raise their voices inside and outside parliament against the anti-national sale of Modern Food Industries to the multinational HLL; get written and binding assurance from the Government of India regarding the job security and work conditions of the employees of Modern Foods.

5. Calls upon Members of Parliament to force the government to set up a monitoring committee of representatives of political parties, trade unions and workers representatives of Modern Foods to look into the grave misdeeds of HLL management in the one year since disinvestment as well as to protect the rights of workmen.

This Conference declares that disinvestment is an attack not just on Modern Food workers, not just on the Indian working class, but on the whole of Indian society. Therefore, we, the undersigned pledge to step up the united struggle against disinvestment and privatisation and initiate and develop all those types of actions including through the media, through the courts, through parliament as well as on the streets to defeat this anti-social offensive.

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The majority of speakers resolutely opposed the anti-social and anti-national character of the privatisation and liberalisation program of the bourgeoisie. They opposed the militarist course of the Indian bourgeoisie and its collaboration with dangerous imperialist powers including the US. They emphasised the grave danger that this course was posing to the fate of Indian society and to the prospects of peace in South Asia.

Unity of communists emerged as the burning necessity of the times, to ensure that the working class can effectively battle the bourgeoisie and unite all the oppressed around its own program to lift Indian society out of the crisis in which it is caught. This theme was captured accurately in the resolution that was adopted by all the communist who participated in this historic conference, entitled "One working class! One program! One communist party!"
The Kanpur Communist Resolution does not issue any empty call for unity, based on sentiment alone. It calls for "pooling the energies of all revolutionary communists to provide unified leadership to the struggles of the working class and all the oppressed". It resolves to "build organisations of class struggle among workers, peasants, women and youth, to intensify the struggle against liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation and the capitalist offensive, to work tirelessly to advance the alternative program of the working class". It is a call to action to all communists, to lead the struggle against the bourgeoisie and its offensive.

Drawing on the rich political experience of the workers of Kanpur, the participants at the conference noted that the fighting spirit of the working class has been sapped by those in the communist movement who conciliated with bourgeois ideology and capitulated in the face of the attacks on the working class. Such class conciliators sowed harmful illusions in the minds of the workers about capitalism and the Indian state. Today, there are similar illusions being spread about a so-called "third way" for capitalism to advance, allegedly without causing disasters and threatening peace, if only the BJP is voted out of power. The Kanpur Resolution took a firm stand against such class conciliation and illusion mongering in the communist movement.

The keynote speech delivered by Comrade Lal Singh, entitled "Only Communism can Save India", clarified that the struggle against the anti-social offensive is not directed against any one party or another. It is directed against the big bourgeois class in power. It is not a struggle of one government policy versus another. It is a struggle for the triumph of one social system over another, of socialism over capitalism.

Comrade Lal Singh boldly challenged the very basis of the notions being promoted by the BJP and Prime Minister Vajpayee to justify orienting the economy towards the global market and selling the assets of the country to the highest bidder. He proved that what the BJP was doing was to negate everything precious that Indian civilisation has given rise to. He accused the Prime Minister of imposing adharma as dharma. With powerful arguments, he set the example of how communists should lead the struggle against the ideological offensive of the bourgeoisie.

The Kanpur Communist Conference 2000 is not the end of the discussion on the program of the working class to defeat the offensive of the bourgeoisie. It is the beginning of this exciting work. The fighting program of the working class will be developed in the heat of the class struggle. The duty of communists is to provide unified leadership to this struggle. One important outcome of the Kanpur Conference is that it has firmly placed this burning task on the agenda of the communist movement.

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Vigorously condemn the daylight murder of a communist in Ganganagar!

On 18th December, Com. Darshan Singh was kidnapped from a bus by thugs hired by the capitalists and their state. He was kept captive in a mill in Gajsingpur and ruthlessly beaten up. After that, he was taken in a jeep and thrown outside the village. Two teachers passing by took him to a hospital where he died. As soon as the news of the ruthless killing spread, tens and thousands of workers from the districts of Bikaner, Hanumangarh and Ganganagar reached the hospital on their cycles and tractors. The entire town of Ganganagar was paralysed for 3 days. Communists, trade union activists, activists of Communist Ghadar Party of India and CPI(M), trade associations and trade unions went on an indefinite dharna demanding the arrest of the murderers of Com. Darshan Singh. From news reports received so far from throughout Rajasthan, processions and strikes are being organised demanding that the culprits be caught and punished. It is well known that the former BJP Minister of State, Kundan Lal Miglani and Gurmeet Singh, Congress MLA from Karanpur, have a hand in this murder.

Throughout Rajasthan, and particularly in the districts of Ganganagar, Hanumangarh and Bikaner, the strugglesof workers and peasants are fast gaining momentum. The workers who are employed in brick kilns and mills live in extremely dire conditions, exploited to the bone. In these districts, communists have been working hard to organise these workers. False cases, attacks by goondas and state terrorism have been the response of the ruling class. The fact that lakhs of communist workers came under one banner to denounce the murder of Darshan Singh, is proof that the workers will forge their unity in the heat of this struggle and in the course of giving them the right leadership, communists will restore their unity.

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A Historic Milestone for the Indian Communist Movement!

Comrade Lal Singh, General Secretary of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, set the tone for the discussion with a keynote speech entitled "Only communism can save India!". He began by saluting the rich patriotic and communist traditions of the workers, women and youth of Kanpur, beginning with the martyrs of 1857. He summed up both the positive and negative experiences of the working class and communist movement over the past 75 years, on the basis of the fundamental conclusions of Marxism-Leninism.

The keynote speech argued forcefully that only the working class, with a revolutionary communist party at its head, can save India from the disasters that the bourgeoisie has in store. The most immediate task is to organise the workers, peasants, women and youth to block the anti-social program of liberalisation and privatisation and unite around the alternative program to lift society out of the crisis and open the door to the revolution and socialism. Elaborating the contours of such an alternative program, Comrade Lal Singh called on all communists to unite to address the immediate task of organising the masses around such a fighting program.

Pointing to the growing resistance and struggles against the anti-social offensive of the bourgeoisie, in India and all over the world, Comrade Lal Singh assessed that a high tide of revolution was on the horizon. Such tides have swept India’s shores before, but they did not lead to revolution, because it was the bourgeoisie that rode the tide each time, not the working class. Analysing the reasons for this, he delivered a sharp critique of those in the communist movement who conciliate with the bourgeoisie and create illusions about capitalism, about parliamentary democracy and the Indian state. To prepare the working class for the coming revolutionary tide, it is essential to oppose, expose and defeat such class conciliators in the movement, he stressed.

Indian Communists from United Kingdom, the US, Canada and Australia participated actively and enthusiastically in the Kanpur Communist Conference, 2000, along with Communists from all regions of India. The conference was addressed amongst others by Comrade Pyara Singh from Canada, Comrade Gurmukh Singh from Australia, by the spokesperson of the Indian Workers Association (Great Britain), and the representative of the Association of Indian Progressive Study Groups from the USA. Amongst those who presented their views at the Conference was Comrade Shiv Kumar Mishra, 87 year old veteran communist revolutionary and a founder member of CPI-ML. Comrade Ravi Pratap Narain from Communist Revolutionary Party, CPI leader and leader of university teachers Comrade L N Pande, Comrade Vijay of CPI-ML (Liberation), Comrade Raj Bali of SUCI, Comrade R K Shukla of COI (ML), Comrade Amar Singh Kushwaha of Forward Bloc, trade union leader Niranjan Bharati, Dr. R D Singh, Professors Rahul and Manali of IIT Kanpur, CPI leader Sarojini, social activists Rajiv, Prabhu Lal and Raman of Lucknow, Comrade Rakesh Rafiq from Moradabad, Comrade Sheomangal Siddhantkar from CPI-ML (New Proletarian), Vijay Chawla from the anti-WTO movement, Sampradakta Virodhi Abhiyan Convenor Suman Raj, IIT employees leader R K Tiwari, Ramkumar from Vikalp (Saharanpur) and Gyan Prakash from Lucknow, Dr. A P Shukla, Retd. Professor from IIT Kanpur and long-standing social activist, were amongst those who addressed the Conference. Leaders of the Kapada Mill Mazdoor Union Comrades Raj Kumar, Vijay Shankar, Mona Sur, Ram Kishore, Chote Lal, Jagdish Baba, leaders of BIC-NTC Sangharsh Vahini Santlal, Shedilal, Shivraj, Mangru Gowd, and numerous other militant leaders of the working class were active participants in the deliberations of the Conference. Apart from these, there were numerous communist and worker leaders from different parties and groups, as well as students and professors from the University, as well as working class youth leaders who actively participated in the Conference.

The significance of the Kanpur Communist Conference 2000 lies in the fact that it is the first time that Indian communists got together on one platform, irrespective of differences in party affiliation, and engaged in a serious and frank exchange of views. They made a collective decision to work together to ensure that the working class marches on the road of class struggle and opposes all forms of class conciliation with the bourgeoisie. This marks a historic milestone in the Indian communist movement.

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Mass Rally on December 26, 2000:

Prepare for the Third Ghadar!

All the leaders of the workers of Kanpur joined the rally, irrespective of political party or trade union affiliation. Speaker after speaker stressed the fact that the time has come for the red flag of class struggle against the bourgeoisie to capture Kanpur and the whole of India once again. They condemned those who had betrayed the class in the past, by conciliating and collaborating with the bourgeoisie.

Comrade Prakash Rao, spokesman of CGPI, drew the key lessons from the experience of the working class, in general, and of the textile workers of Kanpur, in particular. The struggle to revive the closed mills in Kanpur is part of the struggle to rebuild India with the workers, peasants, women and youth as the malik, he declared. We have to fight together for this goal, he explained. The CGPI is not asking for your votes, to put our party in power. No, our goal is to place the working class and oppressed masses in power, he declared.

Moving speeches and songs captured the spirit of the patriots who had risen up in the First War of Indian Independence in 1857. The Great October Revolution inspired a second Ghadar against colonial rule, with the working class and communist movement having become a force in Indian society. The time has come to prepare for the Third Ghadar. This became the main theme that prevailed in all the speeches, militant slogans and revolutionary songs at the rally.

Over 40 working class and communist leaders from Kanpur as well as all over the country and abroad addressed the Rally, with speeches interspersed with revolutionary songs and ballads as well as plays performed by revolutionary youth. A spirit of militant optimism prevailed throughout the rally, with the all-pervasive feeling that Kanpur was giving birth to a new phase in the struggle of the working class against the anti social offensive and for liberation and emancipation. December 26 was a bugle sounded by the workers of Kanpur to take up the struggle for livelihood for workers and the youth into a new and higher phase and through their struggle, rally India’s working class and working people against the capitalist system. The spokesperson of the Indian Workers Association (Great Britain), and the representative of the Association of Indian Progressive Study Groups from the USA addressed the rally. Amongst those who participated actively in the December 26 rally were Comrade T. Wilson, leader of the Kanyakumari Plantation Workers Union, K. Mydeen from Kovilpatti, Tamilnadu, Govind Yadav, leader of Modern Food Employees Union, Comrade 'S K', leader of the Ladakku Garment Workers Union of Mumbai, Virendra Dubey, leader of the BIC Sangharsh Samiti and of the Kanpur Textile Mills, Ashok Bhutani, Ramji Madad and Bharat, leaders of Kanpur Textile Mills, MA Khan, Raja Singh, Shivraj Chote Lal, Jagdish Baba, Mohammed Hanif, leaders of Elgin- 2 and of the BIC Sangharsh Samiti, Uday Pratap Shrivastava, leader of NTC-BIC Mazdoor Vahini and leader of Arthurton Mills, Sant Lal and Chedi Lal of the NTC-BIC Mazdoor Vahini and from New Victoria Mills, Mangru Gowd, Babban Singh and Shiv Kumar leaders of NTC-BIC Mazdoor Vahini from Mayur Mills, Chote Lal, leader of NTC Canteen Workers from Swadeshi Cotton Mills, Gaya Prasad, leader of NTC BIC Mazdoor Vahini from Swadeshi, Ram Singh, Rampher Nirala, Gautam Rishi, Rakesh, Banwari, Ram Swaroop, Buddhiman Singh, Sarjoo, Ram Khilawan leaders from Swadeshi Mills, Ram Samaj, Ajay, Shiv Narain, leaders of Kapada Mill Mazdoor Union from New Victoria Mills, Ram Singh Sardar from Kabadi market Basti, Layak Singh Pal from Elgin No 1. The Rally was addressed amongst others by CGPI leaders from Kanpur including militant leader of Kapada Mill Mazdoor Union from Laxmi Ratan Mills Comrade Ram Kishore, Comrade Raj Kumar from Swadeshi Cotton Mills, Comrade Vijay Shankar from Elgin No. 2. Comrade Mona Sur, Comrade Radhika and Comrade Amit conducted the proceedings of the rally. Comrade Rampher Nirala, Comrade Ram Singh and Comrade Vijay Shankar sang inspiring revolutionary songs.

The Kanpur Rally of December 26, 2000 marks the declaration of war by the working class and communist movement against the bourgeoisie’s anti-people, anti-national and anti-social program of globalisation of capital and production through liberalisation and privatisation.

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Kanpur Resolution, 25 December, 2000:

One working class, one program, one communist party!

1. The workers, peasants, women and youth of India are waging an extremely difficult struggle today, in defence of their livelihood and rights, against the stepped up attacks by the bourgeoisie. All over the country, workers are fighting against privatisation, closures, layoffs, contract labour, intensified exploitation and insecurity of employment. Peasants are rising up in opposition to the penetration, domination and plunder of agriculture by the multinational and Indian monopoly companies in the name of liberalisation and globalisation. Broad masses of people are fighting against the terror unleashed on them by the armed forces of the Indian state. They are fighting against the remnants of feudalism, including the hated Brahmanical caste system that continues to oppress the toilers.
2. There are many parties, including some within the communist movement, that are promising to end the miseries of the people if only they are voted to power. But life experience has shown that whichever party runs the government, it is only the program of the big bourgeoisie that gets implemented. It is capitalism that keeps growing. It is the big bourgeoisie that wields political power. The state — that is, the bureaucracy and armed forces, the courts and jails — serves to preserve the rule of capital and suppress any challenge to this rule. The multi- party democracy and party dominated political process serve to keep the toiling masses out of power.
3. The solution to the problems of growing exploitation ad oppression of the workers and peasants lies in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. Such a transformation of society is only possible if the working class leads all the oppressed in one united struggle to smash the oppressive Indian state and establish a new state of the workers and peasants. To do so, it is essential that the working class is united as one political force around this singular aim, with one revolutionary Communist Party at its head.
4. What the Indian working class needs today is not any parliamentary party that is interested only in their votes. Those in the communist movement who have merged themselves with bourgeois parliamentary democracy have reduced communism to a policy objective, which is always out of reach. The working class needs a revolutionary Communist Party that would arm the class ideologically and organisationally to consistently battle and defeat the bourgeoisie.
5. Restoration of unity of Indian communists in one revolutionary Communist Party is the urgent need of the hour today. Unity of communists can only be established on the basis of intensifying the struggle against privatisation and liberalisation today, not by giving up this struggle and reconciling to put up with the status quo. Unity of communists can be restored only on the basis of a resolute struggle against those in the communist movement who are conciliating with bourgeois ideology and tailing some "progressive" section of the bourgeoisie.

Taking the above into consideration, we the communists and Indian patriots who have assembled in Kanpur on December 25, 2000, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party in India,

Resolve to

• Work towards the restoration of unity of Indian communists, by pooling the energies of all revolutionary communists to provide unified leadership to the struggles of the working class and all the oppressed;
• Oppose and expose those in the working class and communist movement who are creating illusions about a parliamentary front with some "progressive" section of the bourgeoisie at this time; and
• Build organisations of class struggle among workers, peasants, women and youth, to intensify the struggle against liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation and the capitalist offensive, to work tirelessly to advance the alternative program of the working class, with the revolutionary perspective of overthrowing capitalism, establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat and building socialism.

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Speech of Comrade Piara Singh of Canada at Kanpur

It is very inspiring to be part of this Conference on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Communist Party in India at Kanpur where this Conference is now being held. We have heard the main speech presented by Com. LS and others on behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India on the main theme - that is, Only Communism Can Save India! The presentation of the CGPI at this Conference gives a clear view on the need, the desire and the birthright of the Indian people - workers, peasants, women and youth - for revolution as the only way to create a bright, happy and new life for the Indian people, where society is organised to meet their needs and solve their problems and for an ever and constantly-improving life in all aspects - material, economic, political and spiritual. It also presents a vision of how this struggle for revolution and communism is to advance in India, a precondition for which is the unity of the communist forces in the country.

I have also been very happy to hear the views of comrades such as Com Shiv Kumar Misra who have spent their lives in struggle for revolution. This Conference which is being attended by the workers, women and youth of Kanpur as well as comrades from other parts of India, but also to the people of Indian origin living in Canada and everywhere else abroad that they should intensify their work for the revolution in India and for the liberation and emancipation of the Indian working class and people.

Just two months ago, there was a conference and program held in Toronto in Canada in memory of the Indian Ghadari Babas, where over 1000 people attended. They not only honoured the work of the martyrs of the Indian Revolution, but also expressed the sentiment that this revolution should advance in India and that they are ready to do their utmost for this advance, and that they are a reserve for the revolutionary people of India.

The people of Indian origin living in Canada have a long history of fighting bravely and courageously for the Indian Revolution and the struggle for liberation and emancipation, whether from colonialism, as in the years prior to 1947, or from the capitalist, feudalist and imperialist regime in the years after. This was done through the form of the Hindustani Ghadar Party in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. It was again taken up under the inspiring and far-sighted leadership of Hardial Bains, that great patriotic son of India, in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, in the form of the Hindustani Ghadar Party (Organisation of Indian Marxist-Leninists Abroad). People of Indian origin in Canada were greatly inspired by the Naxalbari uprising and the struggles of the Indian workers and peasants throughout the country in the late 1960s and 70s, which gave hope not only to the oppressed workers and peasants of India, but also to the patriotic people of Indian origin in Canada. The revolutionary work of Indians abroad showed that they have unbreakable links with the people who gave them birth, the people of India, and that their hearts beat in unison with the people of India. And every victory in the struggle of the Indian people not only fills them with joy, but inspires them to carry the struggle of the Indian people to all corners of the world. It was such that when the Naxalbari struggle and the work of the CPI(ML) suffered setbacks, many, many revolutionary Indians from abroad, and especially from Canada, came back to rebuild the communist movement in the country.

The people of Indian origin living in Canada and elsewhere are looking with keen interest and are supporting to the best of their abilities the struggle and work of the Indian workers and people, and the struggle of the Indian communists for unity and to defend and advance the Indian Revolution, and the work of the CGPI and all other communist forces in India.

The patriotic people of Indian origin living in Canada pledge to double and triple their efforts for the advance of communism in India and for all the struggles of the workers, peasants, women and youth to overthrow the present social structure, the existing economic and political system and to replace it with a genuinely socialist system where power resides in the hands of the working people and Hindustan truly belongs to the workers, peasants, women and youth of India!

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Speech delivered by the representative of Indian Workers Association (Great Britain)

Comrades,

First of all, on behalf of IWA (GB) I salute the land of this historic city of Kanpur, where the foundations of communist party of India were laid 75 years ago. I also salute the land of India, which gave birth to such brave sons and daughters who laid down their lives fighting to uproot the colonial rule and for the establishment of the rule of workers and peasants in their country.

The delegation of IWA (GB) feels very proud and is very happy to take part in the proceedings of this conference. Seventy-five years have passed since the communist party was founded in India, but the aims for which this party was established, the aspirations for which our forefathers waged strenuous struggles facing enormous difficulties, have not been fulfilled as yet. We need to analyse why this is so.

India was at that time under the yoke of colonial rule of Britain. Countless people made sacrifices to free India from this yoke. Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Chandra Shekhar Azad, Ushfak Ula Khan and thousands of other brave sons of India boldly kissed the gallows as the colonialists put them to death. However, the communist party did not take the leadership of the anti-colonial struggle into its hands. Because the communists let this leadership fall into the hands of those who they considered the national bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie which was actually the creation of the British colonialists and hence their loyal collaborators. In our opinion this was the weakness and the mistake of the Communist Party. However, after the colonialists were forced out of India under pressure from the great tide of the movements of workers, peasants, the army and youth and students, our people hoped that this would bring an end their suffering as well; that there would be livelihood and prosperity for all. But their dreams did not come true, because the class that came to power was the creation of the colonialists. So, what the vast majority of the people, the workers and the peasants got was unbridled exploitation and oppression at the hands of their own bourgeoisie. They got lathis and bullets, they were divided and attacked communal basis, and massacred.

The 53 years of formal independence provided many opportunities arose for the communists to lead the Indian people as a united force. Had they done so, the situation today would have been different and better. But this was not to be so and the main reason for this was the disunity amongst the communists.

The biggest harm to the communist movement came after the death of comrade Stalin when the Indian communists, under the dictate of the Khruschevite revisionists in Soviet Union, adopted the program of parliamentary road to socialism. Many communist parties, including the Communist Party of India could not decide for themselves to cleave to the path to progress of revolution in their own countries. They started to dance to the tune of the Soviet revisionists. After that the divisions were created on questions such as "Is the Soviet Path is the correct one, or rather, is the Chinese or Cuban or Korean one correct?" We ask them, "What about the Indian Path?" Later, some Communists who got scared by the bourgeoisie started saying " yes, the revolution is needed but the people are not ready"

After the collapse of so called socialist systems in East Europe and the Soviet Union itself during 1989-91, it became starkly clear that the systems in those countries could have been anything else, but surely not socialist. Today, there is a very good opportunity for unity of the communist movement because now there is no big party to pull the strings from behind curtains. Every party has to become its own model.

But there is another problem, that the capitalists are doing nonstop propaganda to remove the aspirations of socialism and communism from the consciousness of people. They say that communism has failed, it may be correct in theory but it does not work in practice etc. Our question to them is: "Does capitalism work?" Has not it created havoc for the peoples in the countries where they have restored open capitalism recently? Alongside this, they are trying to make people believe that capitalism is the best they can have; that there is no other way. This the most urgent task facing us today: we have to explain to the people that only communism can solve the problems facing society today. We have to prepare the people to make them capable of answering all the propaganda of the bourgeoisie and their collaborators. We have to convince them that they have to take political power into their own hands if they want to save India from imperialist exploitation, and if they want to end capitalist exploitation in India. This can only be done under the leadership of the working class. This can be done by forming the united front of all the working and oppressed people under the leadership of the working class and not by forming any front with any of the parties of the capitalists. The aim the capitalist class is to safeguard its state power, to increase the profits of the rich by increasing the exploitation of the working people. If the communists were to form a united front with the parties of the capitalists, they would have to call upon the working people to become the tail of the rich and abandon their own aims. The communists must form the united front of the workers, peasants, women and the youth.

Comrades, today it very imperative that all the communists unite in one communist party and take the struggle for socialism forward. We were extremely excited when we heard that a conference is being organised in Kanpur to unite the communist movement. We are fully convinced that only by forging the unity of all the communists the movement for revolution in India can make further progress. Only by developing the theory of revolution suited to the situation in India can we organise the working class and the other sections of the working people. In England too we have started to try to unite the Communists of that land and have achieved some success.

Comrades, Indian people living abroad have historically always played a very important role in the struggles for freedom and revolution in India. We assure you that by upholding these traditions we will create a very strong support for revolution in India. We will make it impossible for the British bourgeoisie to generate any support for the Indian bourgeoisie against the revolution.

Long live Communist unity!
Inquilab Zindabad!

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Speech delivered by representative of Broad Alliance of Australia

Indians living abroad have always been inspired by the revolutionary struggles in our motherland and it is this inspiration that has immersed them in revolutionary activities in the countries of their residence. We know that the racist attacks, humiliation we face by being treated as unequal and the identity crisis facing our youth will only end with the creation of a new India, an India that offers security and prosperity to all and places interests of human beings at the centre stage.

Our people have made numerous sacrifices and persisted in the struggle to create this new society but still our dreams and aspirations remain unfulfilled. It is almost a hundred years since the victory of the socialist revolution in the Soviet Union. There have been many advances and setbacks since that period. The Communist Ghadar Party of India has consistently summed up the stage of revolution and opened up the space to advance communism. This conference and rally is another milestone to bring the victory of the revolution in our country, a revolution that is long overdue.

No matter where we look, we face similar problems as they all stem from the same source, the rule of monopoly capitalism. We are fighting the same battles with our common enemy. The task facing the communists to build a vanguard of the working class, to lead the class to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and establish socialism up to the stage of communism is our central task. In Australia, there has been an absence of a strong Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. We are proud that in India, our Party, the Communist Ghadar Party, is leading the struggle to create one strong communist party on the basis of one class, one program.

A revolution can only be victorious if the vanguard provides leadership to the broad masses, engaged in class struggle, on a revolutionary basis. The Alternative program to build a revolutionary united front is the main program on the economic and political spheres along with an international program. This calls for renewal to empower the people such that people participate in self-governance. It calls for reorientation of the economy so everyone so everyone can live a life of security and prosperity and reconstitution of India so that nations, nationalities and peoples can affirm themselves. This program for renewal, reorientation and reconstitution is the program meeting the needs of the present stage in our struggle for the creation of anew society. It is a program around which all sincere communists, progressive organisations and individuals can unite and collectively implement. By working for the victory of this program and building a revolutionary united front, communists will build communist unity and create the conditions for a single communist party on the basis of one class, one program. In Australia and other countries, we face similar tasks. The Broad Alliance, an alliance of peoples' collectives, has been building unity of all progressive forces on the basis of a pro- social program and become instrumental in building a revolutionary united front.

Whilst we engage in revolutionary struggle to bring about the creation of a new society, we face similar problems. The monopoly capitalist class recruits social democrats to spread confusion in our ranks and divert our struggle. The Labour Party of Australia has never defended the rights of the Australian people but it goes about claiming to be the defender of the workers and immigrant people. It was the Labour Party of Australia, which initiated and implemented the racist White Australia policy. It has colluded in the torture and massacre of the aborigines. But inspite of all this, the social democrats claim to be the representatives of the people and the "lesser evil". The state apparatus of the monopoly capitalist class and the media time and again target the Australian people and push them into the hands one thief or another. In India the "parliamentary third front", i.e. the social democratic front is doing the very same thing. The danger of social democracy cannot be underestimated. All communists and progressive people must come forward to defeat social democratic and take up this up as their urgent duty. In India, social democracy is trying to divert the working class and people so as to preserve the rule of the bourgeoisie. Only by exposing social democracy, implementing the alternative program and building the revolutionary united front can the real communists stand apart from the social democrats and communist unity can be built.

Friends, we have suffered a lot of racist violence and humiliation abroad. We want that our children should live a life of dignity. We want them to be proud of their identity and to walk with their heads held high. In my childhood when I once visited India, I met a well-to-do man in Delhi. He knew nothing more about us other than the fact that we were form Britain and probably believed that we had money. Before we left for Punjab he invited us to join him for a meal. Just then a poor beggar woman came to his door and asked for food for herself and her baby. He cruelly pushed away the poor woman and her crying child. To us he showed unwanted hospitality, thinking that we were rich. I was very young then and I asked myself when our people would be treated like humans and not on the basis of their wealth.

I salute the valiant efforts of your party. The Communist Ghadar Party of India and all its comrades are engaged in the revolutionary struggle to build such a society, which will ensure prosperity and security for all and where the human being shall be at the centre.

Red Salute! Representative, Broad Alliance (Australia)

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Speech by the representative of the AIPSG

TIME IS FOR INDIA !

Today, on this historic occasion, I bring back to Kanpur, the Lal Salaam of not just the members and activists of the AIPSG but of all the patriotic and revolutionary people of Indian origin resident abroad who wish victory to the struggles of the Indian people for a New India and who are militating in the ranks of the workers of the countries of their residences to end exploitation and oppression.

In the seventy five years after the first communist party was founded here in Kanpur, communism has grown and taken deep roots in India, becoming a political force that no one can wish away. This has happened in spite of the suppression and persecution of communists from day one in 1925 till this very moment by the colonial state and later the Indian State. This has happened in spite of the divisions in the communist movement, the interference and infiltration of the ranks of the communist parties by agent-provocateurs, the diversions, splits and every imaginable obstacle put on the path of communists and also by the treachery of the leaders of various communist factions. It has happened in spite of the retreat of revolution and socialism on the world scale. Communism, as the condition for emancipation of the working class and people of India, has entered into the psyche of India.

There is no one in India who is today fighting against the oppression and exploitation of the peasants, the dalits, the workers, the women, the tribals, the youth and students and so on who does not draw strength from the ideals of communism. This condition has been brought about by the heroic and self-sacrificing struggles of the best sons and daughters of India whose blood will be found not just in the fields of Telengana to Naxalbari, but also in the boulevards of Chennai and Kolkatta and the huts of Muzafarabad and Rampur. This is the legacy of 1925 that we have gathered here to take stock of, this is the legacy of 1925 we have inherited.

Today, we have communists in millions in India, but we do not have communism yet on Indian soil. Is this a defeat? For communists, there is no such word in their vocabulary! For them, the only issue is this - what must the communists do today so that communism as the condition for the emancipation of the working class can be realized? The people of India and all the other fighting organization of the people of India are looking up to the communists to answer this question definitely at this turning point of history.

According to the analysis of the AIPSG, conditions for the victory of communism in India i.e. liberation of the people of India from exploitation and oppression, have never been better than they are today. At the dawn of 21st century, India has been thrust into the centre-stage of world developments. What happens in India will determine what will happen in the world in the coming century. With the end of the bipolar division of the world, Anglo-American powers have placed the conquest of Asia on their agenda as prelude to their world domination. Within the post Cold war disequilibrium, after the demise of the former Soviet Union, India’s ruling circles have placed their claim to become a super power in the new century. The history of the last fifty years when India has become home to the maximum number and maximum concentration of world’s poor has also placed the eradication of poverty and deprivation of the people of India on the agenda. The threat of war over control of Kashmir, Afghanistan and Tibet - what is known as the top of the world - has also assumed acute proportions where four nuclear powers face each other and where the American and Europeans powers have enormous stake because of the oil fields stretching from Central Asia to Persia and the Middle East. The control of shipping-lanes in the Indian Ocean that link Europe to Asia as well as the vast oil and other riches of Indonesia among others are of great significance as well. In short, clash of interests of India, China. Russia, European Union and the US are on the agenda in this new century. This is the objective situation, not the wishful thinking of anyone. There are two ways the situation can unfold. Either the big powers will succeed in launching a war to defeat the peoples and take control, or people will defeat the big powers, smash their predatory aims and bring peace, cooperation and progress to India and other nations. There is no force on earth which can escape this mandate of history. Neither those in power in India - the big business houses and big landlords - can work outside this context nor the people, the working class, the communist and revolutionary forces of India can escape this context.

Five hundred years ago, a comparable context had arisen in the world. We know what happened then. By the late fifteenth century, discovering the sea route to India was all the rage in Europe. By the 17th century, wars were fought in high seas and far away from the soil of India between the French, the Portuguese, the Spaniards and the British to control the trade routes to India. The British won those wars and came to control India, divide India, plunder India and create institutions to perpetuate their rule that still continue to do the same. Indian people and the Indian rulers of the time were not even a factor in shaping the future of India. The control of India by the British and the plunder of her enormous riches to fuel the industrial revolution have shaped the entire world history of the last few centuries at an enormous cost to the peoples. Will the Indian people permit a repeat of such history again today? The experience of the last several centuries tells us that time is now for the people of India to place themselves in the centre-stage of the world development and on that basis ensure that the past is not only not repeated but more importantly, a complete break is made with that past.

Today, the verdict of history is that TIME IS FOR INDIA! This verdict is not just being felt by the people, it is also being felt by the ruling circles of India as well. Will the people of India permit the history to be repeated? No, Never again is the single voice of the people of India. It is under this condition that the Indian communists have to set their plan. The immediate aim of this plan is that we the people of India have to renovate all the institutions, ideas and values that the British have left behind here so that the past does not continue to the future. The ruling circles are quite busy to refurbish all these same institutions, values and ideas as well because those colonial edifices do not work for them very well to accomplish their current aims.

The current NDA government, for example, has launched its own drive for ‘total reforms’ at a time when the working class is launching its program for the "last reform". The similarity between the two reforms ends right here because the content of "last reform" is to complete the reforms that should have happened in 1947 during the formal independence and thus create everything afresh while the content of "total reform" is to preserve everything from the past and make the colonial past to continue to the future. The "last reform" is needed to create institutions, values and systems which will serve the interests of the people while "total reform" is meant to refurbish the institutions which have served the interests of the big business houses and big landlords well so far so that they can now help them to emerge as a super power on the backs of the people of India. A frontal clash between the visions of the working class and the visions of the ruling business houses have appeared in front of us. Discussion and debate on the reforms needed to lift India from its current state is the need of the hour not just among Indians here but among Indians everywhere in the world - including those of us who live in the U S, Canada, the UK and so on. That is what the AIPSG has established as its work in the present conditions. The thesis that it is discussing everywhere is that it is not just in India that the institutions and systems do not work, but it is everywhere in the world, including in those countries where these institutions and systems first arose and from where they were brought to India, that they do not work. It is so because the political parties continue to remain as gate keepers to power and people continue to be denied the role of governing themselves and this system has to be modernised to be in step with the aspiration of the peoples of the world. It is the firm conviction of the AIPSG that Indian people and Indian communists will modernize the system in India on the basis of their own negative experience of the last five hundred years when they were marginalized from all significant developments and their past experience of struggle against Brahmanism which they will have to bring to the fore to be at par with the modern conditions of large scale production and distribution.

Friends, at this time, all communists and fighting people have the immediate task to end the anti-social offensive launched by the Indian big business houses in the form of their privatization and liberalization program. The essence of this anti-social offensive today is to hand over the resources of the nations and peoples to private hands so that everything becomes a source of private profit, everything is decided on the basis of what will enhance private profit. Needless to say that interest of the people, interest of society have become afterthoughts at best in this program. The peasantry and working people of India are fighting this program valiantly, against heavy odds. What will make this struggle victorious is that the advanced workers, the communists and progressive forces provide leadership to this struggle and provide it with the short term and long term vision. It does not matter what kind of communist group one belongs to, the aim of defeating the anti-social offensive belongs to all communists. It is in course of fighting the liberalization and privatization program that the program for the last reform, or in other words the democratic renewal of India, can be implemented. This will create conditions for the people to uproot the transplanted capitalist system that is the source of all their miseries and replace it with a socialist system through revolution. This is the essence of the short term and long term aims of the Indian communists within the present situation and they have to take up these aims at this turning point so that history does not repeat itself.

In this conference, a plan has been presented for discussion which calls on the communists to transform themselves to be the leaders of this historic struggle against the liberalization and privatization program. This plan calls for communists to unite at the place of their work or residence to lead the struggle of the workers and peasants who are rising in open revolt against the anti-worker, anti-people and anti-national policy of economic reforms. It is a call to unite where the struggle is and build the organization of communists at that level to lead the struggle. Just to emphasize the point, it is not a call for the leaders of the communist groups, their central committees and their leaders to make a Maha-plan while the working class and peasantry are left leaderless in facing the onslaught of the ruling circles, it is not a call to debate the past among the leaders but a plan for the fighters to debate the course of the struggle today and draw lessons of the past to guide the struggle today. Simply put, the plan is to build new organizations of fighters and leaders to serve as organs of struggle against the anti-social offensive and for renewal. The communists of India, who remain disunited in every possible way at this time, then can find a way to restore the unity of the movement by making these organs of struggle as the mainstay of the new party, building it from bottom to the top in such a manner that all the advanced workers and the leaders of the struggle will unite in one party, around a single program. By empowering the fighters inside the party in this manner - by making the fighting organizations as the organs of struggle and also the mainstay of the party- the path to any future treachery by some "communist" leaders can be blocked once and for all. People of India will not be leaderless in their historic struggle for emancipation and can march sure-footed on the path for progress.

These are exciting times and the prospects for developing the struggle of the Indian people for their liberation are excellent. The work necessary to accomplish these are enormous, but the people of India have proven in the last seventy five years that there is no sacrifice they are unwilling to make to realize the aim of liberation of the people from bondage, humiliation, oppression, persecution and exploitation. The need to have India, as the home to nearly one fifth of humanity, take its place in the world is being felt by one and all the peoples of Indian origin living abroad today because as long as India is continuing to be marginalized in the world, Indians abroad are continuing to be marginalized as well. Indian abroad very much want a progressive India, one that is a factor for peace, democracy and empowerment to emerge in this new century and they are working hard to ensure that the chauvinist India that the ruling circles of India are promoting abroad does not come into being on the basis of war, conflict and exploitation of the peoples. Indian abroad and Indian people at home stand as one at this juncture and pledge on this historic occasion to make the dream of the patriots of India, patriots of 1857, of 1925 and all successive generations, a reality in the new century. The time is not far off when this city of Kanpur will write a new chapter in her glorious history book.

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Diversion and Division of the People in the name of Anti-Pollution

A human being cannot live on clean air and water alone. He or she needs to have some means of livelihood. In present day society, this means some means of earning an income to look after one’s family. Livelihood is a basic need and fundamental right of human beings, and so is a clean natural environment. But one cannot be pitted against the other. The question of pollution cannot be tackled as if it is independent of all other problems in society. The question of pollution is linked to the question of the social system and its orientation. Hence the solution to this problem has to be sought within the context of seeking the solution to the problems of society.

Delhi, the capital of India, is a centre of officialdom and the headquarters of big private and government enterprises. The majority of the population of this city, about 65%, live in slum colonies, in kutcha houses or in resettlement colonies. They lack the most basic necessities of human living, such as clean water and clean air, not to speak of any well functioning sanitation system. This is the capital city of "resurgent India", which the ruling class wants to expand into a major world power — a city where the majority of the toilers live in inhuman and unhygienic conditions!

For the past 5 years or so, the government in Delhi has been pursuing a so-called Anti-Pollution drive. It has closed factories and thrown thousands of workers out of jobs. It has closed small businesses, including taxis and auto-rickshaws. It has broken down the kutcha houses and slum colonies of the poor working people, leaving them homeless or forced to settle in some inhabitable place outside the city. The media is creating the impression that all this is being done because the Government is interested in getting rid of pollution in Delhi. However, the truth is entirely different.

The first important fact to note is that 67% of pollution in Delhi is from motor vehicles on the roads, while factories and power stations contribute about 12% each. The increase in vehicular pollution is a direct result of the rapid increase in the numbers of motor cars, two-wheelers and three-wheelers on the roads.

The people living in Delhi know very well the terrible conditions of travelling from one place to another in this city. If one gets out of the house into the streets of Delhi, nobody can be sure if one will return home alive. The public transport system, which has been neglected and partially privatised, does not provide reliable transport to the working people. As a result, more and more residents of Delhi are being forced to rely on their own individual means of transport — a bicycle or scooter or car, depending on their level of income.

If the government were really interested in providing clean air in Delhi, it ought to give the highest priority to the public transport system. But the government shows no interest in providing reliable means of public transport to the working people. It shows great interest in destroying the means of livelihood of the people, including that of those who ply taxis and auto-rickshaws, with backing from the Supreme Court, allegedly in order to clean up the air in Delhi!

The actions of the government stand exposed with respect to industrial pollution as well. The government has already "sealed" a large number of small and medium scale units, which were allegedly not established in accordance with the law. However, all these industrial and commercial units were established with the permission and licence granted by the very same authority. How come they were allowed to start functioning if this was in violation of the law?

Another important fact to note is that in place of the 168 factories that were sealed in 1996 under the orders of the Supreme Court, over a thousand new units have sprung up. Have all these units been established without the knowledge of the government and the courts? Can so many enterprises be launched so secretly, without the knowledge of the authorities? The government has to answer this question, as to why does it allow illegal businesses to operate in the first place. Why has the government collaborated in polluting the environment?

The struggle against pollution of the environment is a just struggle. However, it cannot be separated from the struggle for livelihood and for the rights of all. Whenever the cause of fighting pollution is invoked to launch attacks on the livelihood of the people, we must immediately understand that this is a plan to divert the people and make them fight one another.

The economic, political and social system and institutions that exist in India serve the needs and interests of a minority of big capitalists and landlords. The system ensures that only these exploiters are the masters of society. Those who toil and produce all the material blessings are the slaves. Sometimes they are attacked in the name of anti- pollution, and at other times under some other pretext.

As long as the working people do not rise up against this system and take their destiny in their own hands, they will continue to be the victims of attacks by the ruling class. This is the key lesson that the working class and oppressed masses need to keep in mind at all times.

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Dire crisis in the agricultural sector

Increasing hunger and pauperism alongside agricultural production

November 2, 2000 saw tens of thousands of peasants and agricultural labourers gathered in the Ramlila grounds in Delhi. They voiced their common problems in so many different languages – Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Assamese, Manipuri, Malayalam, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and so on. The struggles of the peasants and agricultural workers are intensifying in so many states like Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. There is a necessity to understand their demands, how their problems have intensified and the reasons for this and the solution to the problems.

The deteriorating condition of peasants

In Uttar Pradesh, the price of rice has fallen by over Rs. 200 a quintal because of an unprecedented increase in output. The state government had earlier promised the peasants that it would buy the rice at Rs.510- 540 a quintal. But now, it has gone back on this promise under the pretext of financial deficit. The state procurement agencies like U.P. Agro, U.P Cooperative Federation, Civil Supplies Department and so on have given the same excuse, while the Food Corporation of India has refused to buy rice from the state.

The potato farmers of U.P are in the same condition. Although the current year’s production is not as high as the previous year’s output, there is no space to store the potatoes. Hence the price of potatoes has also fallen. The decline in the dairy industry in Punjab has forced the sale of over one lakh cattle for meat, about 5 times higher than normal. Tractor spare parts are being sold today at Kot Kapura, which was at one time, a centre for cotton trade.

There has been a steep decline in prices of coconut, rubber, tea and tobacco grown in the southern part of the country, as well in the prices of cotton, til, wheat, rice, sugarcane, jute grown in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and elsewhere. Peasants growing cash crops are in deep distress, because they have borrowed heavily and are now unable to repay their loans. As a result, both small and middle-level peasants are being forced to sell their land.

Towards the end of October, two peasants committed suicide by ingesting poison in Hassan district of Karntaka, because they could not realise a fair price for the melons they had cultivated. Just three months previously, another peasant and his family of five in the same district, had committed suicide because they could not get a fair price for their agricultural produce. The peasants of Karnataka’s Bellary district, once considered a "granary of rice", are in a poor state on account of a decline in the price of rice. Agricultural labourers are out of jobs because there has been a cut back in production in the face of such circumstances.

Who is responsible for the crisis in the agricultural sector?

The state of the capitalists is responsible for this crisis in the agricultural sector. Only recently, the prices of essential inputs to production - power, diesel and chemical fertilisers have been increased. In the name of privatisation and liberalisation, the policy of global capitalism has been announced in our country, whereby the government is set to export agricultural production in a big way, for which the "corporatisation" of the sector will be carried out. Now, the government is assisting in the take over of the land of small and middle-level peasants by the big capitalists and in this context, land acquisition policy is being reformed. The government is even going to bring about changes in the Constitution in order to enable the capitalists to take over tribal lands. In the first place, tribal lands had been taken over for mines and big dams. The government, with the help of the multinational companies, is preparing a bill for the patenting of crops by which the peasants will have no right over the seeds that have been generated from the crops on their own lands and over which they have enjoyed traditional rights. The price of seeds has also risen. As a result of all these policies, a large number of people are going to be displaced and thousands of peasants will be ruined.

Peasants are fighting to save their livelihood

All over the country, peasants are fighting against their ruinous conditions. Peasants have organised big meetings in Calicut, Ooty, Chennai, Bhopal, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Jullunder, Delhi, Lucknow and other places, where they have expressed their anger.

The peasants have joined hands with others in Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh to express their protests against the increase in power rates. Many hartals were organised in Jaipur against insufficient power supply.

In Cochin, the peasants and dock workers together gheraoed the harbour so that the coconuts imported from Malayasia could not unloaded for a whole day. In Karnataka, the peasants of four districts have united to organise struggles. They are opposing the elimination of subsidies on chemical fertilisers and pesticides. In Kannada and Udipi districts, the peasants are demanding fair prices for their produce and are asking for the cancellation of their debts.

In Shimoga and Bhadravati, the peasants are demanding relief from the government for the damage caused by pests to their coconut, mango, supari, banana and other crops. Peasants from Bellary, Koppal and Raichur and in many other districts too, have condemned the policies of the capitalist and feudal state governments and are carrying their struggle ahead.

In Chittalgud and Husadurg, thousands of peasants set fire to a truck filled with coconuts in front of the Tesildhar’s office in protest against the declining coconut prices. In Devangere district, peasants are fighting for fair prices for paddy, maize, sugarcane and other crops.

Peasants rallies and public meetings are being held across the country in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana, West Bengal, Kerala, Tripura and Tamil Nadu.

Way to get out of the crisis

The crisis in the agricultural sector is part of the all-sided economic and political crisis. Primacy is being given to foreign and Indian capitalists and their representatives rather than to the security and wellbeing of the toilers. The big capitalists think that the country’s resources and all the means of production and production are their private property, which they can plunder to make their profits. They receive the full support and assistance of the capitalist state to plunder in this way. This is how the profits of the big capitalists have multiplied many times over in the last 53 years, while the condition of the ordinary workers and peasants has worsened. Therefore, the way to get out of the crisis in the agricultural sector is the same as the way to get out of the all-sided crisis, that is, by overthrowing the capitalist system.

Workers, peasants, agricultural workers and all the toilers, who are the victims of exploitation in this capitalist system and whose condition is worsening with each passing day, are now rising in struggle against the attacks on them. While we carry on our struggle, we have to be aware of those who want to limit it to just demanding this or that relief measure or reform policy within this capitalist system itself. We have to be very clear that our country’s entire land and resources belong to the workers, peasants and toilers and we, and not the capitalist, have full right over them. Our pathetic condition can be changed, our problems will be solved only when we grab this right from the capitalists, that is, the right has to be appropriated by us, the workers and peasants and we have to work for the renewal of the Indian state so that it serves the Indian people and not the oppressors. We have to organise for a new economy which has as its aim the wellbeing and security of the people and not for the aggrandisement of the profits of the capitalists. The first step in this direction is the overthrow of the capitalist state by revolution. All the people of this country, all the workers, peasants and oppressed, downtrodden people have to unite in a revolutionary united front against these violent attacks of the capitalists and put an end to this exploitative rule, take state power in our own hands and bring about the renewal the country. It is only then that the peasant who labours to meet the food requirements of all the people in the country will himself not remain hungry.

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Conditions of workers in the "informal" sector of the capitalist economy

If the number of under-employed are also added to those fully unemployed, then the massive scale of destruction of productive forces by capitalism will become starkly clear. About 25 per cent of the workers in the "informal" sector are seriously under-employed, according to estimates.

An inevitable product of capitalist accumulation is the huge army of under-employed and unemployed able-bodied men and women. Capitalism cannot exist and grow without a relative surplus labour population or a reserve army of workers. The relative surplus population exists in many forms. Every labourer belongs to it during the time when he is only partially employed or wholly unemployed. According to Marx, this reserve army always has three forms—the floating, the latent and the stagnant.

The workers in the "informal" sector belong to the third category. They are a part of the active labour force, but with extremely irregular employment. Hence, they furnish capital with an inexhaustible reservoir of disposable labour power. As Marx describes, "its conditions of life sink below the average normal level of the working class; this makes it at once the broad basis of special branches of capitalist exploitation. It is characterised by a maximum of working-time and minimum of wages... it forms at the same time a self-reproducing and self-perpetuating element of the working-class, taking a proportionally greater part in the general increase of that class than the other elements." (Italics ours—Ed)

The contradiction in the situation is there for all to see. In order to grow at a steady rate, capitalism needs a growing market, a growing number of consumers. At the same time, to maximise their profits, capitalism pays subsistence wages to the vast majority of workers and maintains a huge army of unemployed to keep the pressure on wages from rising. Moreover, the transition to a capital-intensive technology to boost profits and the pressure of national and international competition have reduced the ability of capitalism to generate jobs at the same rate as before—which is again a law of capitalist growth.

In India, employment elasticity with respect to GDP has consistently declined from 0.59 during the period 1972-77 to a projected 0.38 during the 1997-2002 period. That is, to produce the same value of goods the capitalists need only two-thirds the number of workers they required 25 years back. Thus, GDP growth, which the bourgeois ideologues tout as a measure of progress of society by the ruling class in India, actually takes away jobs from the working people. As a result, for the majority of the people, the goods in the market become unaffordable and capitalism gets into a deeper crisis when the market for goods contracts.

Share of "unorganised" sector in employment and value added (percent)

Available data suggest that the "organised" sector of capitalism in India never generated employment on a large scale (see table above). In the name of efficiency and modernisation, big capitalists who straddled this sector made maximum profits by employing the minimum number of workers and monopolised vital sectors of the Indian economy.

In the mid-nineties, 92 per cent of the workforce was employed in the "informal" sector in the Indian economy. Not only that, most of the additional jobs created in the Indian economy in recent years have been in this sector. About 98% of the additional jobs created during 1993-95 were in this sector. Workers employed on an "unorganised" basis (i.e., without any rights to minimum wages, job security and safe working conditions) predominate in such sectors as agriculture, manufacturing, construction, trade (including hotels and restaurants) and transport (including storage and communications).

Even though the "informal" sector employs around 92% of the labour force, the overall contribution to the net domestic product is only 60%. In fact, studies point out that its contribution in the late eighties and nineties has been well below 60%, coming down to about 53% in 1993-95. This fact corresponds with the general law of capitalist accumulation where the capitalism exploits the fully employed part of the working class to the core, increasing the productivity of the "formal" sector, while at the same time swelling the ranks of the unemployed and under-employed, accounting for the falling productivity of the informal sector. As Marx points out, "The over-work of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure the latter by its competition exerts on the former, forces these to submit to over-work and to subjugation under the dictates of capital". (Italic Ours —Ed) Increasing investments in mechanisation and technology enable the capitalists to get more labour power out of a lesser number of labourers.

Thus, capitalist growth in India has given rise to a massive "informal" or "unorganised" sector requiring very little capital and providing subsistence or near-subsistence wages to millions of workers. These workers provide capitalists with a steady consumer base while at the same time enabling them to reap maximum profits by sub-contracting labour-intensive jobs to this sector. According to a study by the ILO, this sector is "condemned as a vast sea of backwardness, poverty, crime and in-sanitary conditions". Since the "organised" sector had a modicum of labour protection laws, the big bourgeoisie used the strategy of decentralisation of production through sub-contracting. Most sub-contractors operate in the unorganised sector. In effect, the bourgeoisie used the pretext of "rigid labour laws" and encouraged deregulation and casualisation of work. The effect was that whatever insignificant number of jobs were created each year shifted towards the "informal" sector with a general deterioration in the quality of employment.

The widespread penetration of the capitalist mode of production in agriculture and the effects of globalisation and liberalisation have devastated a huge section of the small and medium farmers. Having lost all land and property, the new rural proletarians have further swelled the ranks of the unemployed in the countryside. There is a huge migration of surplus rural labour—rendered surplus by the capitalist mode of production—to the urban "informal" sector as self-employed workers. During 1990-98, the number of own-account enterprises grew by 1.6 per cent per annum in rural areas, compared with a high rate of 6.2 per cent per annum in the urban areas (see table below).

Migration of proletarianised peasantry to the urban informal sector

The effects of a highly concentrated informal sector in the urban areas have been disastrous to the workers employed in this sector as well as to the environment in general. Many informal sector activities cause pollution and congestion. For the people living in slums and low-income neighbourhoods, life has become even more miserable. The big bourgeoisie uses these conditions created by capitalism to further put pressure on the working masses, in the name of "preventing pollution", "preventing crime", "clean" environment and so on according to the dictate of need for maximum profits.

Globalisation has wreaked havoc on workers. The bourgeoisie is planning a drastic overhaul of this sector so that in its quest to become a world player, the "informal" sector can provide cheap labour for it to be competitive on a world scale. With the increasing pressure of global competition, the Indian bourgeoisie sees some promising segments, particularly in the urban "informal" sector, where technological improvement can be attempted while maintaining the supply of cheap labour, without any restrictions. To this end, the ruling class is working out policy changes and market adjustments. Foreign monopolies also have an eye on this sector.

A recent ILO study estimates that around 500,000 jobs have been created in the "informal" sector in the software and related services in recent years. While slightly higher wages are paid to these workers, relatively, their conditions of work and right to job security are no different from others. The bourgeoisie has plans to expand this industry, with more than a million new recruits.

In short, the big bourgeoisie has been using the "informal" sector in India as a vital pawn in its game plan to become a global leader. While maximising profits using the cheap labour and unrestricted rights for itself in this sector, it has condemned millions of working people to live and work in the most inhumane conditions. The Second Generation reforms will be a massive attack on these unarmed workers already deprived of job security and minimum living and working conditions.

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