People's Voice - Organ of CGPI December 16-31, 2005

The Bihar elections have resulted in the JD(U)-BJP alliance gaining a majority of seats in the state assembly. The parties and personalities governing Bihar are changing, but not to the benefit of the peasant masses who constitute the vast majority of the population of Bihar. The new Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, is promising ‘development’ and ‘good governance’, which is being welcomed by the big bourgeoisie and the international financial institutions such as the World Bank.

The existing system of democracy and its political process are designed to enable the big bourgeoisie to install a government of its choice, while creating the illusion that it is the “people’s choice”. If the vote count is examined closely, one finds that the JD(U)-BJP alliance managed to win a majority of seats with only 30% of the total votes polled. Given that only 48% of the electorate voted, it means that the coalition in power has the support of only
15% of the electorate.

The manner in which the elections were conducted, the unprecedented use of police and paramilitary troops, the extended two month period of elections spread over 7 phases, allowing the big bourgeois media much greater opportunity to influence the voting pattern – all these, along with the 15% support, expose the claim that the winning coalition has the “popular mandate”.

Several parties in the communist movement participated in these elections. However, the opportunity for the communist movement to have made an impact was lost, because the communists did not contest on one unified platform. There were at least 5 different platforms from which different sections of communists participated, including the platform of boycotting the elections. Together, the different factions of the communist movement ended up sending conflicting signals to the workers and peasants.

One important lesson to be drawn from this experience is that communists must not participate in elections for the purpose of bringing their own party to power. They must fight to bring the workers and peasants to power. This cannot be achieved by different communist parties competing with each other. It cannot be achieved by becoming the tail of one section or another of the bourgeoisie. Communists must put forward the vision and program for reorganising the economy so that the toiling majority can have secure livelihood and benefit from economic development.

The big bourgeoisie and its media promoted, as usual, two main political platforms in these elections. One was the platform of forming a ‘secular’ government, which was backed by the Congress Party. The other was the platform of dislodging the corrupt Laloo Prasad Yadav regime and providing ‘good governance’ under the existing bourgeois democracy, which was backed by the BJP. There was an opportunity for communists to have put forth the independent program for establishing the rule of workers and peasants. However, pre-empting any such possibility, the CPI(M) joined the Congress Party bandwagon with its platform of a ‘secular’ government. Some others took up the platform of ‘secularism and good governance’.

The big bourgeoisie is promoting the Bihar elections as a success story in terms of the “cleaning up” act by the Election Commission. The brute strength of private armies was replaced by the more massive brute strength of the official armed forces. What did the people of Bihar gain from this? The proportion of the electorate who cast their votes is among the lowest in recent elections. It was much less than the voter turnout of more than 60% in the ninetees and in the 2000 elections. This kind of “cleaning up” of the electoral process is not being done in the interests of those who vote. Rather, it is being done to enable the big bourgeoisie to more easily install a party of its choice.

When communists participate in elections, they must use the electoral arena to expose the flaws of bourgeois democracy and to popularise the program for a thorough overhaul of the system of democracy and the political process. They must not merge with the bourgeois political process and bourgeois vote bank politics. They must contest the bourgeois program of “cleaning up” in the interest of big capital. Communists must advance the program of renewing the political process in the interest of expanding the space for the toiling masses of people.

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Demonstrations and Rallies Mark International Human Rights Day December 10, 2005 in Delhi

December 10 this year was marked by demonstrations and protest actions by diverse sections of the working and oppressed people. In the face of increasing attacks on the livelihood and political right of people, these actions reflected the fact that all sections of the people of India are no longer willing to put up with the violation of their rights, but are determined to fight for the realization and enforcement of their rights.

Under the banner of ‘For Constitutional Guarantees and Enforcement Mechanisms for Human Rights, Democratic Rights and National Rights’, hundreds of activists of nearly 30 mass organizations marched from Mandi House to Parliament in New Delhi. This march captured the demands of the struggles for the rights of many different sections of people; vivid banners and placards highlighted the demands of the participating organisations, which included demands for punishment of those guilty of organizing genocide, those responsible for the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 and of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, those responsible for sufferings of the victims of the Bhopal gas disaster of 1984, demands for repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and an end to atrocities by the Indian Army in Manipur and other northeastern states and Kashmir, demands for a comprehensive legislation for unorganized sector workers, demands for electricity and water supply in urban slums, demand for the right to work, demand for justice for the parents of disappeared persons in Kashmir, demand for rehabilitation of displaced persons and many others. In one voice, the protesters expressed their determination to fight for a new India wherein their rights would be guaranteed by constitution and enforced through mechanisms in the hands of the people.

Participating at the commencement of the march, students from Delhi University staged a street play highlighting the lack of rights. The rallyists from Delhi were then joined by hundreds of workers from Kanpur fighting for the right to work and livelihood, and people from all over India protesting the anti people policies leading to displacement of people in cities and villages from their homes in the name of “development”. Activists from organisations opposing the death penalty gathered under the banner of ‘Phansi Virodhi Manch’. The People’s Caravan (Jan Caravan) which had mobilised thousands of people against the stand of the Indian government at the WTO, a stand which was leading to the ruination of the peasantry and small producers all over India, also joined the demonstrations on International human rights day. The March concluded in a public meeting at Jantar Mantar.

The highlight of the march and Rally was that it brought together people and organizations fighting on different fronts for their rights and interests. It was a convergence of peoples movements for rights

Speaking at the rally, the representative of Lok Raj Sangathan called for a country-wide movement for Constitutional Guarantees and Enforcing Mechanisms for Human Democratic and National rights. A joint statement issued by the organisations participating in the march and rally boldly declared that “The Constitution promises many good things in the name of rights and in the name of directive principles. However, it does not arm the ordinary citizen to be able to defend herself or himself from any kind of violation of her or his right, be it on the basis of class, caste, gender, religious belief, language, ethnicity or any other consideration. The directive principles remain noble words on paper, because there are no enforcement mechanisms in the hands of the people. The mechanisms of authority and power are in the service of a narrow set of interests, for whom private profit maximisation by big corporations is the supreme consideration, while all other rights can be given or taken away as they like! People are demanding that not only must the Constitution guarantee their rights but there must be effective enforcement mechanisms, under the people’s control.”

The participating organizations included Ankur Peoples Education, Communalism Combat, Hind Naujawan Ekta Sabha, Insaf, International Human Rights Organisation (Punjab), Jan Sangharsh Manch (Gujarat), Kam ka Adhikar Abhiyan Samiti, Kapada Mill Mazdoor Union (Kanpur), Lok Awaz Publishers and Distributors, Lok Raj Sangathan, Manipuri Students’ Association, Delhi, Sanjay Colony Niwasi Sangharsh Samiti, Sikh Forum, We for Bhopal, All India Lubana Sikh Sanstha, Manab Adhikar Suraksha Samity, Mazdoor Parishad, National 1984 Victims’ Justice and Welfare Society, Nirman Mazdoor Panchayat Sangam, People’s Consultative Group (Assam), People’s Front, Punjab Rights Organisation, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Purogami Mahila Sangathan, Lawyers for Human Rights International, Revolutionary Democracy, All India Federation of Trade Unions, Disabled Rights Forum, and several others.

Peoples Voice/ MEL hails the developing all-India struggle for Constitutional Guarantee and Enforcing Mechanisms for Rights as an extremely important of the struggle of the workers and peasants, women and youth of all nations and peoples constituting India. As this struggle develops, the working people and their fighting organisations will develop the alternative to the present system which deprives them of all rights, and move to the reconstitution of India so that they can ensure that their rights are constitutionally guaranteed and put in place mechanisms to ensure enforcement of these rights.

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The Nationalisation of the Land

Karl Marx began his essay on The Nationalisation of the Land * with the indisputable logic “The property in the soil is the original source of all wealth...Today,the land question has become a burning issue in big cities, where the shortage of housing is becoming extremely acute. It is also becoming a bone of contention with respect to forest land and mineral bearing land. There is tremendous pressure from big corporations to obtain land, in rural and urban areas,at concessional prices and people who have traditionally lived on the land are being ousted summarily to make way for the former. The question of whose land and who has rights over it is a very crucial question.

Is land a public good or a commodity? We are reprinting the essay written by Marx. Readers must bear in mind that this was written in 1872 and in the context of European conditions of that time. The approach of Marx and the fundamental principles he enunciates must be studied, and applied to the current context when we approach the land question in India today.

* A Paper read at the Manchester Section of the International Working Men’s Association and published in The International Herald No. 11, June 15, 1872

The property in the soil is the original source of all wealth, and has become the great problem upon the solution of which depends the future of the working class.

I do not intend discussing here all the arguments put forward by the advocates of private property in land, by jurists, philosophers and political economists, but shall confine myself firstly to state that they have tried hard to disguise the primitive fact of conquest under the cloak of “Natural Right”. If conquest constituted a natural right on the part of the few, the many have only to gather sufficient strength in order to acquire the natural right of reconquering what has been taken from them.

In the progress of history the conquerors found it convenient to give to their original titles, derived from brute force, a sort of social standing through the instrumentality of laws imposed by themselves.

At last comes the philosopher and demonstrates that those laws imply and express the universal consent of mankind. If private property in land be indeed founded upon such an universal consent, it will evidently become extinct from the moment the majority of a society dissent from warranting it.

However, leaving aside the so-called “rights” of property, I assert that the economical development of society, the increase and concentration of people, the very circumstances that compel the capitalist farmer to apply to agriculture collective and organised labour, and to have recourse to machinery and similar contrivances, will more and more render the nationalisation of land a “Social Necessity”, against which no amount of talk about the rights of property can be of any avail. The imperative wants of society will and must be satisfied, changes dictated by social necessity will work their own way, and sooner or later adapt legislation to their interests.

What we require is a daily increasing production and its exigencies cannot be met by allowing a few individuals to regulate it according to their whims and private interests, or to ignorantly exhaust the powers of the soil. All modern methods, such as irrigation, drainage, steam ploughing, chemical treatment and so forth, ought to be applied to agriculture at large. But the scientific knowledge we possess, and the technical means of agriculture we command, such as machinery, etc., can never be successfully applied but by cultivating the land on a large scale.

If cultivation on a large scale proves (even under its present capitalist form, that degrades the cultivator himself to a mere beast of burden) so superior, from an economical point of view, to small and piecemeal husbandry, would it not give an increased impulse to production if applied on national dimensions?

The ever-growing wants of the people on the one side, the ever-increasing price of agricultural produce on the other, afford the irrefutable evidence that the nationalisation of land has become a social necessity.

Such a diminution of agricultural produce as springs from individual abuse, will, of course, become impossible whenever cultivation is carried on under the control and for the benefit of the nation.

All the citizens I have heard here today during the progress of the debate, on this question, defended the nationalisation of land, but they took very different views of it.

France was frequently alluded to, but with its peasant proprietorship it is farther off the nationalisation of land than England with its landlordism. In France, it is true, the soil is accessible to all who can buy it, but this very facility has brought about a division into small plots cultivated by men with small means and mainly relying upon the land by exertions of themselves and their families. This form of landed property and the piecemeal cultivation it necessitates, while excluding all appliances of modern agricultural improvements, converts the tiller himself into the most decided enemy to social progress and, above all, the nationalisation of land. Enchained to the soil upon which he has to spend all his vital energies in order to get a relatively small return, having to give away the greater part of his produce to the state, in the form of taxes, to the law tribe in the form of judiciary costs, and to the usurer in the form of interest, utterly ignorant of the social movements outside his petty field of employment; still he clings with fanatic fondness to his bit of land and his merely nominal proprietorship in the same. In this way the French peasant has been thrown into a most fatal antagonism to the industrial working class.

Peasant proprietorship being then the greatest obstacle to the nationalisation of land, France, in its present state, is certainly not the place where we must look to for a solution of this great problem.

To nationalise the land, in order to let it out in small plots to individuals or working men’s societies, would, under a middle-class government, only engender a reckless competition among themselves and thus result in a progressive increase of “Rent” which, in its turn, would afford new facilities to the appropriators of feeding upon the producers.

At the International Congress of Brussels, in 1868, one of our friends [César De Paepe, in his report on land property: meeting of the Brussels Congress of the International Working Men’s Association of Sept. 11 1868] said: “Small private property in land is doomed by the verdict of science, large land property by that of justice. There remains then but one alternative. The soil must become the property of rural associations or the property of the whole nation. The future will decide that question.”

I say on the contrary; the social movement will lead to this decision that the land can but be owned by the nation itself. To give up the soil to the hands of associated rural labourers, would be to surrender society to one exclusive class of producers.

The nationalisation of land will work a complete change in the relations between labour and capital, and finally, do away with the capitalist form of production, whether industrial or rural. Then class distinctions and privileges will disappear together with the economical basis upon which they rest. To live on other people’s labour will become a thing of the past. There will be no longer any government or state power, distinct from society itself! Agriculture, mining, manufacture, in one word, all branches of production, will gradually be organised in the most adequate manner. National centralisation of the means of production will become the national basis of a society composed of associations of free and equal producers, carrying on the social business on a common and rational plan. Such is the humanitarian goal to which the great economic movement of the 19th century is tending.

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India-Russia Summit

The Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went to Moscow for a four-day visit in early December at the head of a high-level official and business delegation. The highlight of the visit was the Summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, this being the sixth in a series of annual summits between the two governments.

Relations between India and Russia are warming up again, after a downturn in the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War, India had been a key strategic ally of the Soviet Union in its rivalry with the US. The new Russian state that emerged on the ruins of the Soviet state was closely linked with US imperialism, and it showed little interest in maintaining the old relationship with India.

Certain factors have now revived interest on both sides in renewing the relationship. The US efforts to draw various states around Russia closer to itself and away from Russian influence is greatly resented by Russia, driving it to try and build up its ties with other countries in the region, particularly China and India. The US declaration of its intention to forge a strategic partnership with India has also spurred on Russia in this respect. At the same time, the easing of US objections to India’s nuclear program has also given Russia greater freedom to move ahead on the front of nuclear cooperation with India.

On the Indian side, the need to tap more energy sources and to achieve ‘comprehensive energy security’ has made cooperation with Russia, one of the world’s largest suppliers of oil and gas, an urgent necessity. Already, ONGC has a major stake in the exploration of the Sakhalin-I oil field in Siberia.

Thus, the main thrust of the discussions and agreements during the recent Summit was in the sphere of energy cooperation, and also military cooperation. In military affairs, the thrust was on moving beyond just a buyer-seller relationship – Russia is the main supplier of military hardware to India – to joint research development and production of next-generation military hardware. An Intellectual Property Rights agreement was signed to facilitate technological transfer. Russian officials also appeared more willing than before to consider supplying Low Enrichment Uranium (LEU) for the Tarapur nuclear power plant, which the Indian government has been pressing for.

Nevertheless, India-Russia relations remain lopsided, with the overwhelming emphasis on military cooperation, and minimal trade and business. The annual trade turnover between the two countries, currently standing at $1.9 billion, is only about one-tenth of the trade turnover between India and China. Indian business leaders during the visit cited strict visa regulations on the Russian side as one of the major bottlenecks to increasing business contacts.

During the visit, the Russians described India as a “strategic and privileged partner”. It appears that, as big power rivalries are hotting up in this part of the world, both the US and Russia are once again wooing the Indian state for their own interests. India as an big power in this region with its own global imperialist ambitions is vigorously participating in this big power game.

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Grand Celebration on 25 December, 2005

Twenty fifth birth anniversary of the Communist Ghadar Party of India

The Communist Ghadar Party of India will be twenty five years old on 25 th December this year. These 25 years have been years of painstaking work to establish and nurture a single vanguard party of the working class in whose ranks all the Indian communists would militate. These have been 25 years of upholding the best traditions of our martyrs; a quarter century of sticking to the fundamental conclusion that India cannot progress without a social revolution. It has been a quarter century of addressing the task of the emancipation of labour and of opening the road to the progress of Indian society, by preparing the subjective conditions for the proletarian revolution.

Very few countries in the world have been riper for revolution for such a long time as India. But despite unbearable oppression, and despite countless sacrifices made by India’s workers, peasants and other patriotic and enlightened people, the revolution has marked time. The reason has been the lack of a thoroughly communist leadership – a leading party of the working class with the capacity and clear plan of how to bring about the defeat of reaction and establish the rule of the workers and peasants on Indian soil, which is a necessary condition for establishing socialism and communism. The history of the Communist Ghadar Party of India is the story of how Indian communists, who recognised this absence, took the initiative to create, nurture and build such a consistently revolutionary communist leadership for the Indian working class.

Comrades,

We are celebrating the 25 th anniversary of our birth at a time when the productive potential of India – our highly skilled and youthful labour force and rich natural resources – is attracting worldwide attention. Private monopoly-capitalist ownership and state capitalist ownership of the means of production, along with remnants of feudal property, and the central state which is colonial and imperialist, are restricting the extent to which the productive potential in the country can be tapped for the benefit of all-round progress.

Relentless capitalist growth is producing prosperity for a few and poverty for the many on an unprecedented scale. It is resulting in uneven and skewed growth of the economy, aggravating disparities between and within different regions. It is resulting in colossal wastage and destruction of the human productive forces and the natural environment, alongside rapid growth of a few sectors of production.

Almost fifteen years ago, the bourgeoisie launched the program of globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation. Declaring that “red is dead”, a phrase that had become fashionable internationally, the Indian bourgeoisie pushed capitalist reforms as the solution to the ills of the Nehruvian ‘socialistic pattern of society’.

The policy changes implemented since 1991 have not produced prosperity for everyone as trumpeted. The policy reforms have led to enormous growth in the private wealth and empires of the Tatas, Birlas, Reliance and other business houses, alongside the destruction of workers’ jobs and driving of peasants to suicide. Shopping malls and multiplex cinema halls are growing alongside inhuman slum settlements and growing crisis of water supply, power and other basic services.

The events of the last 25 years have shown that in the existing system and process of democracy, the representatives of the bourgeoisie, who command the highest posts can and do commandeer the State with all its lethal weapons to commit genocide, to promote narrow partisan interests. State terrorism, including overt and covert acts of terror and state organised communal genocide, has become the preferred and permanent back-up to the macabre drama that is the Indian elections. The ballot and bullet policy remains the means to divert, divide and drown in blood the people’s resistance to the rule of the bourgeoisie. Today, as the rulers proceed to make India “the most favored destination for foreign capital”, every act of mindless violence, which they themselves organise through their secret services, is used to arm themselves with even more draconian powers to violate with complete impunity all human, democratic and national rights.

The struggles of the workers, peasants and vast majority of people have exposed the real content of market oriented reforms. Such reforms, with or without a ‘human face’, stand exposed as nothing but a program to further intensify the exploitation of labour and the robbery of peasants in the market place, to serve international capital and the imperialist aims of the Indian bourgeoisie. More and more people are coming out on the streets today to protest against the economic course being followed. The toilers and the tillers of the land, along with large sections of the middle strata, are asserting their claims on the social product. They are fighting for their right to re-orient the economy so that it will be beneficial to them. They are rejecting the plans of the Indian ruling class to emerge as a ‘world power’ by embracing US imperialism. They are demanding their right to adopt a thoroughly anti-imperialist and progressive foreign policy which will be in the interests of the working people of India and the nations the world over.

A powerful united front of the working class and peoples is developing against the capitalist paradigm of growth in which the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, and the powerful nations subjugate the small by threats, economic blockades and war. They are demanding a development model which ensures that it is the human person who is given primacy and not the “market forces”. They wish to create a society where the economy is oriented towards satisfying the ever growing material and cultural needs of the people.

The toilers and tillers are rejecting both the principal fronts of the ruling class – the UPA and NDA led by the Congress Party and BJP respectively. They are also rejecting other conglomerations that appear from time to time, calling themselves the Third Front. They are refusing to be voting cattle and are mounting their own independent initiatives to reorganise society.

Internationally, the alliance of aggressors led by US imperialism is more isolated than ever before. From Latin America to all of the America’s, through Europe to Asia and Australia, the flags of the movement against imperialist war and capitalist reform and in defence of national sovereignty are fluttering high on the streets.

In short, the struggles against imperialist war and the policy of globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation, against state terrorism and in defence of human, democratic and national rights, are all converging and coalescing into a powerful self-conscious movement, which contains within it the potential to end to all exploitation and oppression of humans.

Comrades,

The decision to establish the Communist Ghadar Party of India was taken in 1980, at a time when the communist movement was fragmented. The two major factions, CPI and CPI(M), were both worshipping bourgeois parliamentary democracy, extolling the virtues of the Westminster model, conciliating with the Congress Party at home and with Soviet social-imperialism internationally. The revolutionary forces that had rallied around the clarion call of Naxalbari were also split into numerous factions in the name of waging ‘ideological struggle’, leaving the working class leaderless and rudderless.

The Communist Ghadar Party of India, given birth to by communist revolutionaries from all across the country and abroad, was the product of the recognition that building and nurturing the communist party on the granite foundations of Marxism-Leninism is the only way to put an end to the factionalism and regionalism that prevailed. At the same time, we recognised that there were numerous communists with the same revolutionary zeal all across India, belonging to different parties and groups. We recognised that the work to reconstruct the party, as the party in which all Indian communists would militate, had just begun. We took it up with the knowledge that this can and will happen only if the class is organised around its own progam; and if the united working class provides leadership to all its allies.

The turbulent decade of the eighties was marked by repeated and ever deepening crises of Indian capitalism and the bourgeoisie’s increasing resort to state terrorism in the name of fighting terrorism, and unleashing of communal violence. With the establishment and building of the Party in such conditions, India witnessed a new force on the political landscape, a force that was a consistent and courageous fighter against all forms of state terrorism.

The Communist Ghadar Party of India defended without exception all the victims of terror and national oppression by the central state, be they in Punjab, Kashmir, Manipur or others in the Northeast. It worked to expose and defeat the line of those within the communist movement who took the side of the central state and justified this in the name of defending the “national unity and territorial integrity of India”.

The decade of the eighties ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and other former socialist countries, followed by an unprecedented offensive against communism and against all the rights won by the working class and peoples. The First Congress of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, held in December 1990, noted the abrupt changes that were taking place in the world, declared that “we are our own models” and gave the call to build the political unity of workers, peasants and broad masses of people against the bourgeois offensive. The First Congress initiated the ideological struggle to arm the working class and its allies in their battles against capital in this period. It called for the development of the theory required by the Indian working class to liberate itself and all of society.

Taking up the challenge of the times the Party initiated the work to sum up the whole experience of the revolution through its flow and ebb in the 20 th century. This theoretical work affirmed that following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and collapse of other pseudo-socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, human society is going through a particular period within the epoch of imperialism and revolution. This is a period when the tide of revolution is in ebb and the enemy is on the offensive; communists have to swim against the tide in this period.

Drawing on the experience of the Soviet Union we concluded that it is the workers and peasants, women and youth, organised in their collectives, who should rule. The work of the party established conclusively that a modern communist party cannot seek power in its own hands; it must and can be only an instrument for empowering the working class and oppressed masses of people. Conversely, we declared that a communist party which seeks power for itself and plays parliamentary games is not a communist party. It is a party of the bourgeoisie even though it may carry the red flag and the hammer and sickle.

The work of the party clarified that the task to open the space for communism under the conditions of the bourgeois offensive requires that we recognize that the communist movement is one, and that the road block to this one communist movement comes from those who are conciliating with the imperialist ideology of European social-democracy. We noted that social-democracy presents itself as a moderate between right reaction and the revolution.

In India, the decade of the nineties began with the bourgeoisie abandoning wholesale the Nehruvian model and embracing the mantras of liberalization and privatization. It also witnessed the escalation of state organized terror and violence, bomb blasts and other diabolical tactics to divert and divide the resistance to the unpopular economic course. As opposition grew among the workers, peasants, women and youth to the anti-social offensive, major sections of the communist movement came to the rescue of the bourgeoisie, by advocating the line of supporting the ‘secular’ Congress Party against the ‘communal’ BJP.

Our party pursued the line of putting an end to the anti-worker, anti-peasant and anti-national program of liberalization and privatization, democratic renewal of India, overthrow of capitalism as the condition for completing the democratic, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle, and the building of socialism through revolution. We reaffirmed our conclusion, which real life had confirmed, that the Congress Party and BJP were both champions of the big bourgeoisie and part of the same Indian State, which is colonial and communal at its foundation.

The Second Congress adopted the General Line for this period and adopted the program for the democratic renewal of India. It laid out the practical tasks of the time, around which the working class, peasantry and broad masses of people can and must be united today. The Third Congress, held in January 2005, summed up the experience of over six years of organizing around this program. It emphasized that the purpose of political unity was to establish a new political power in place of the existing Indian Union. The Third Congress adopted the Constitution of the Communist Ghadar Party of India and placed on the agenda the immediate task of strengthening the party in the course of building the mechanisms for the toiling masses to assume and exercise power.

Today we have established the party with its branches spreading all over the country, both in the big cities and in the rural areas. We have strengthened our unity by adopting the party rules, while relentlessly fighting for the restoration of unity of all communists in one party, in the course of providing leadership to the working class movement.

However, the communist movement is still fractured. The section that broke the united Communist Party and formed the CPI(M) in 1964, in the name of defending ideology and the revolution, has today completely abandoned even any mention of revolution. It has joined hands with the ‘lesser evil,’ the Congress party, against the openly reactionary, communal and chauvinist BJP, in the name of pursuing a moderate and middle path. To CPI (M) there is no better system and political process than the multi-party representative democracy of the bourgeoisie. Wherever they are not in control, they have condemned the working class to become the vote bank of the tried and tested party of the Indian bourgeoisie -- the Congress Party.

To the leaders of CPI (M) there is no better program than the ‘common minimum program’ of the Congress led UPA government. They seek to justify this course by repeating the old refrain that the “time is not ripe” and that the “working class is not ready” to lead its own front of struggle against capitalism. It is these ‘leaders’ who are in fact not ready to lead the class on the revolutionary road. They have adopted the bourgeois program, and become ardent defenders of capitalist democracy and state terrorism. It is they who are afraid of the prospect of a revolution. It is they who are blunting the struggles of the class and preventing the working class from playing its leading role.

There is another harmful trend within the communist movement, of parties and groups that are carrying out armed struggle allegedly to overthrow the Indian state, but without organizing the workers and peasants on a political basis. Life experience has shown that such a path does not serve to bring the day of revolution closer; it objectively works to prevent the workers and peasants from establishing their rule. Both parliamentary cretinism and individual terrorism objectively serve the interests of the bourgeoisie. They block the advance of the revolutionary movement.

The Indian working class, whose level of literacy and technical skills has risen and is rising rapidly, and whose unorganised sections are becoming increasingly organised, can and must lead its own political front today. In order to do so, it must settle accounts with the imperialist social-democratic consciousness that the workers cannot rule and that there is no better political theory and democratic system than that of the European bourgeoisie. They must reject the notion promoted by the CPI(M) and its followers that they need to tie themselves to the Congress party to have any share of power.

The working class can and must forge political unity with the patriotic peasantry. We must call on our peasant brothers, the vast majority of whom are leading a precarious existence today, to reject the illusions of achieving prosperity through the capitalist road. We must explain to them that globalization is the offensive of imperialism, which is capitalism at its highest and moribund stage. War and fascism are the preferred weapons of imperialism. We must explain to them that the road of collectivisation and socialisation of their land and labor is the only way forward for the security of their livelihood and prosperity.

The challenge is to make the working class lead the broad masses of people to reject bourgeois democracy and innovate a modern political process through which the toiling masses can exercise power.

Comrades,

All the unfolding events in India and the world over are signaling that another world, the world of socialism and communism, a world without imperialism and war, without exploitation and oppression, is in the making. Rays of the bright new dawn are appearing on the horizon. The tide of revolution is rising and poised to go into flow.

The people of India are declaring that they are the rightful owners and masters of the rich land and labour of Hindostan, and that it is they who have the right to set the agenda for all of society. They are unfurling the banner of the battle for political supremacy over the moribund rule of the monopoly capitalists, both Indian and foreign. The resistance of the Indian working class as the leader of the toiling masses is emerging as the main block to the plans of the bourgeoisie to accelerate the pursuit of its imperialist aims. It is forcing many even in the leadership of CPI(M) to block various efforts of the bourgeoisie in its reckless course.

The key challenge before the communists now is to organise to see that the working class confronts and defeats the class conciliatory trends in its ranks, unites firmly around its own independent program, builds a strong alliance with the peasantry and the national movements, and emerges at the head of all the oppressed in the battle against the bourgeoisie. Only the working class, organised as one around its own class aims, can build and nurture such a united front that can dig the grave of bourgeois rule.

The story of our Party is the story of taking up the task required by the times, no matter how enormous, how daunting the obstacles. It is about standing on one’s own feet and finding the bearings in the most complicated circumstances, without ever swerving from the main objective – the complete emancipation of the working class and peoples and of all-round progress of Indian society.

On the occasion of the 25 th anniversary of our founding, let us take up boldly for solution the task of defeating class conciliation in the working class movement as a necessary condition for ending the rule of the bourgeoisie, and for establi shing a new India of workers and peasants, a new voluntary union of consenting peoples.

The class struggle and the subjective conditions, including the work of our Party, has reached a point where a qualitative leap is on the agenda. The conditions themselves cry out: Hic Rhodus! Hic Salta! Here is the rose, here dance! [*] n

Long live the Communist Ghadar Party of India!

Workers and oppressed peoples of all countries, unite!

Inquilab Zindabad!

[*] Quotation from Karl Marx’s celebrated work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

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Development or devastation?

Sir,

There has been significant coverage in the popular media of the devastating rain on July 26, 2005 in Mumbai which caused widespread death and damage. It also called in question the entire model of urbanization in the country in the present era of liberalization and globalization, while it is important to keep in mind that India is the very land in which urbanization of mankind itself began. Therefore, if there are problems of urbanization today, it is not because the people of India do not know better, or that they do not have experience, but rather it is due to the policies of the ruling circles of the country.

There was tremendous devastation also in Bangalore in October 2005, the jewel in the crown of the Indian ruling circles, with the wettest October ever recorded. There were several deaths and also flooding across the city, with tanks breaching their banks and storm water drains and rivulets across the city completely overwhelmed by the rainfall.

There has been much breast-beating and crocodile tears being shed about the atrocious 'infrastructure' and there are calls to the Dharam Singh Government to 'do something about it', while there is nostalgia also for the reign of the S. M. Krisha, who along with the neo-liberal darling of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh Mr. Chandrababu Naidu, was swept away in the previous assembly elections. The mainstream anxiety about the bad infrastructure revolves around the general clogging of traffic and atrocious conditions of roads in the city, which cause delays for office workers mainly in the highly publicised IT sector to get to work, thereby causing delays in meeting of deadlines. In otherwords, infrastructure must be improved so that labour efficiency can be improved, which in turn would imply the maximizing of profits for the IT elites. This is a continuation of the logic that the Government should (as it has been) provide free or subsidized land, tax holidays, cheap water and power so that the IT czars as they are called their numerous admirers) may create employment and earn dollars and the population of Bangalore itself may see a 'trickle down' effect.

What the city has seen is something different: sky rocketing real estate prices, total breakdown of its services, no improvement of its basic features, no significant improvement of health or education for its denizens, and instead the city has turned into a magnet for the best talent from across the vast country.

Of related interest is the subject of unionization of the labour force in the IT/BPO industry, which is a separate subject. In this sense Bangalore presents a microcosm of the American model, where a small fraction from other places comes in, and makes the most of its insane development, while the rest of the population is left floudering. In the meantime, the 'lily-white' reputation of the IT czars itself has been tarnished by an unseemly public spat between Mr. N. R. Narayanamurthy of the IT flagship company Infosys with the former PM, Mr. Deve Gowda, over land allocation.

The main aim of this long letter to the editor is to illustrate that under the aegis of the bourgeoisie, some sectors grow at reckless speed with capital rushing in at alarming speeds to maximize its profit with no regard to the social cost that is extracted by this irrational and anarchic growth. The people of India should be watchful of the bourgeois propaganda that its redemption can ever come from any initiative of the bourgeoisie.

Sincerely,
A. Narayan, Bangalore

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Anti-popular ‘Grand Coalitions” in Germany and Austria

Sir,

General elections were held in Germany in September 2005, in the wake of soaring unemployment and other economic problems. The result was a verdict against both the major coalitions in contention – the incumbent coalition led by the Social Democrat Party (SPD) and the opposition combine called the Christian Social / Democratic Union (CSU/CDU). Neither of these combinations won a majority.

As the traditional conservative side, the CDU / CSU election program was for a so called “uniform” rate of tax for all, regardless of income, which was heavily criticised as being pro–rich and against the working class and other toiling people. The SDP, having been discredited by its failure to address the economic problems aggravated by the capitalist crisis, relied on the ‘anti-war’ and ‘anti-US’ stance of Chancellor Schroeder. One thing that both big party formations agreed on was that another election must be avoided at any cost, as they were not prepared to go to the people again.

After the election results were known, both the coalitions of big parties engaged in horse trading to win over smaller parties, which were either not allied to either side or allied to their opponent. They could not succeed in establishing a majority in this way. The big bourgeois parties then approached each other, to form a “grand coalition”, after building up sufficient hype in the mass media in favour of this idea.

After weeks of wrangling on which positions would go to which side, these two major combines are now engaged in discussions as to what the ‘practical program’ of this so called “grand coalition” ought to be. In spite of the divided vote and disregarding the popular will, the big bourgeois parties can now adopt whatsoever policy and program they choose, since the people are now excluded from the equation for all practical purposes. The policies and programs can, in fact, be much worse for the working class and people than those outlined earlier by either combine!

A very similar process is also taking place in neighbouring Austria. The conservative Austrian People’s Party (Oesterreicher Volkspartei – OVP) and the Social-Democratic Party - (Sozialische Partei Oesterreich – SPO) are preparing to form a ‘grand coalition’. It was recently announced in the Austrian press (Wiener Zeitung, 15 th October 2005) that “the ice had been broken”, following a “fair deal” between the SPO leader and his OVP counterpart. While the SPO will have control of the ministries of Interior, Labour, Health, Culture and Energy, the OVP would control the ministries of Finance, Tourism, Economy and Transport. Austria has had several such “grand coalitions” in the past, including coalitions involving outright fascist parties such as the “Freedom Party”.

These so-called grand coalitions, touted by the ruling elite as being “inevitable” or “in the national interest”, play on the disgust of the people with the entire political process. Through such arrangements, a regime that is actually voted out manages to remain in power! “Grand coalitions” are a complete negation of the popular will, and an instrument for pursuing the interests of the ruling elite, irrespective of the results of a popular vote.

Sincerely,
Abhijit Khandke, Munich

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Earthquake in Kashmir

Sir,

This is in response to the momentous earthquake, a natural and man made calamity that has struck Kashmir and neighbouring regions. The greatest damage has taken place in the so-called Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, also known as Azad Kashmir with significant damage in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir as well. Large portions of cities and towns including Muzzafarabad and Uri have been destroyed completely. Many regions are located in such a hostile terrain that no aid has reached them from the Pakistan side.

The times are calling for reflection on this calamity and what it holds for the people of Kashmir, and indeed for the people of India and Pakistan. The artificial military division of the Kashmiri nation is at the root of the misery. Enormous amounts of public spending have gone into military spending in both countries to keep control on the part of Kashmir that was integrated into each of the countries in 1948 and thereafter. The results are there for everyone to see. There has been no development of any kind in this part of the world

aimed at the well-being of the people. Large portions of the population still live in isolated villages, herding sheep and leading an agrarian existence that has left them totally vulnerable to the forces of nature.

Had the situation been peaceful, aid could have reached them from the Indian side at the time of catastrophe, if not from the Pakistan side. The atmosphere of hostility between the two countries is at the heart of the suffering of the Kashmiri people. All progressive forces, must insist at this time of calamity, on the peaceable settlement of the differences between India and Pakistan and must work towards the resolution by negotiations of all outstanding problems between the two countries.

Sincerely,
A. Narayan, Bangalore

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Women of Worli Take out Militant Morcha to demand potable drinking water!

On the 28 th of November, in BDD chawls of Worli, hundreds of women poured out of their chawls carrying “handis” (vessels to carry water) and they went from chawl to chawl urging the ones who had not come to join them to take a demonstration to the Municipal authorities demanding increased supply of Potable water .

The B.DD. chawls in Worli are over 80 years old. The water pipes supplying water to the residents of these chawls are also as old and due to age have started leaking in many places. The underwater sewage pipes also run parallel to the drinking water pipes and they are also leaking. The water supply is only for two hours every day, from 4.30 pm to 6.30 pm . When the drinking water pipes are empty, the contaminated sewage water enters the drinking water pipes. When the supply of drinking water is started for the first few minutes it is the contaminated water which gushes out of the resident taps in their households. After about twenty minutes, the contamination is flushed out and then only can the residents get potable water from their taps!

The women from many buildings had individually and collectively approached the local elected representatives. But these so called “representatives” threw their hands up and blamed the Municipal authorities for the problem. But what kind of representatives are these who do not mobilize the people to challenge the Municipal authorities unpardonable callousness?

Fed up with all the false assurances of their “representatives” , the women decided to confront the authorities. On the 27 th night a meeting was held in between the chawls where the details of the next days action were chalked out and explained to every one.

By 10 am in the morning over 500 militant women had gathered in the central chowk.

The police who had arrived in a big force tried to stop the women from proceeding to the local head quarters of the Municipal Corporation, situated about a kilometer away. The women challenged them and said if the police could guarantee them safe drinking water then they would not have taken out the morcha. They militantly went forward and though they were stopped at three places along the way, each time they dared the police to prevent their just demands.

On reaching the Office they were told that the main officer responsible for the water supply was not available. The women told the authorities that they were not going to budge from the place till they heard from his own mouth what the authorities proposed to do.

Faced with the unrelenting attitude of the women the concerned officer had to make his appearance and told a delegation of women that their problems would be attended to. The women told him that he would have to come to their locality and in front of every one drink a glass of water that his Corporation was supplying to the local people and till then they would not let go of their agitation.

By the time the women marched back and reached Worli BDD it was already evening. Before dispersing the women wowed that they would not let down their struggle but on the contrary they would even taken out a bigger morcha to the Mantralaya and Force the attention of the Maharahstra Legislative Assembly on the condition of the residents of Worli BDD !

People’s Voice hails the determination of residents of Worli led by their brave women to fight for their fundamental right to safe drinking water.

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