Condemn the UPA Government for failing to protect people from soaring food prices!

Demand and fight for a modern, universal public distribution system!

Statement of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, 19th July, 2006

All over the country, people are extremely agitated over soaring prices of food articles, including pulses and vegetables. Prices of essential food items have risen while the incomes earned by the peasants who produce food crops have not risen. Both the producers and majority of consumers of food – that is the workers and the peasants – are suffering as a result, while massive profits are being made by the capitalist corporations that dominate foreign and domestic trade.

The Communist Ghadar Party of India condemns the UPA government for failing to fulfill its duty to the people. The Communist Ghadar Party of India calls upon the working people to fight for immediate and long-term measures to address this most important question of ensuring adequate supply of essential food articles at affordable prices for all.

We, the people of India, have since ancient times upheld the principle that it is the duty of the State to regulate the private interests to ensure that they do not block the social interest. This means that it is necessary to suppress those private interests that are acting contrary to the social interest. However, the present day rulers of India have replaced this ancient wisdom by the mantra of liberalisation and privatisation, or “leave everything to the market forces”. Production and trade are both increasingly being carried out on private account, with the aim of maximizing private profits. This expansion of space for profiteering has been promoted in the name of liberalisation and privatisation. The present UPA Government, just like the previous government, is guilty of letting private trading interests fleece the workers and peasants, so as to reap maximum profits by exploiting production shortages.

Trade, and how it is organised, has a very important role in determining the price, availability, affordability and quality of commodities of mass consumption. Neither production nor trade in our country is being carried out according to an overall plan to fulfill the needs of society. Trade in agricultural commodities is getting increasingly monopolised and integrated with the world market.

Trade is being increasingly left in the hands of private capitalist corporations, as successive governments have taken steps to reduce state intervention in this sphere, along with the progressive dismantling of the Public Distribution System. The bulk of external and domestic wholesale trade in food grains, and all of the trade in pulses, edible oils, vegetables and fruits, are in the hands of private parties. Control is increasingly passing into the hands of the biggest of the private parties. Multinationals like Reliance, HLL and ITC are aggressively expanding into the sector of trade between the villages and the towns, and with the rest of the world. They not only dominate external and internal wholesale trade, but have also begun to take over retail trade, to replace small shops selling fresh food by giant supermarkets carrying packaged foods with longer shelf life. Foreign trade in agricultural commodities is mainly in the hands of Indian and foreign multinational companies.

The champions of liberalisation are using the present crisis to argue for further opening up of trade in agricultural commodities to Indian and foreign multinationals. They argue that the supply of all commodities, including the most essential articles of consumption, is best left to the “market forces”, that is the giant monopolies. Will such corporations use their control over trade to fulfill the consumption needs of the toilers and tillers? Or will they exploit shortages to profiteer from hoarding, thereby aggravating the problem? The answer is self evident!

If the workers, peasants and majority of Indian people are to be protected against rising food prices in the present and in future, it is essential to establish social control over the trade in agricultural commodities. We need a central authority – in India as a whole and in each constituent of the Indian Union – that would take charge of organising and managing trade in a way that ensures secure livelihood, both to the peasants who produce the food and to the working people of town and countryside who have to buy their food in the market. The present day governments and state machinery are neither interested in nor capable of carrying this out. On the contrary, they are committed and geared to serving the biggest monopoly capitalist interests. We must therefore prepare the conditions for establishing new kinds of government and a new state machinery wherein the workers and peasants will control and exercise political power and ensure that their livelihood is protected.

We need workers’ and peasants’ governments at the centre and in each state, with the central government calling an immediate halt to the liberalisation and privatisation program and taking steps to nationalise external and domestic wholesale trade. A workers’ and peasants’ government at the centre will cooperate with the state governments to reorganize production and trade according to one integrated plan for society as a whole. The state governments will take charge of the trade within their respective territories. They would also trade with one another for mutual benefit, according to agreed upon rules monitored by the centre. The central government will take charge of external trade, to be conducted in the common interests of all the constituent peoples of the Indian Union.

Under such an arrangement of workers’ and peasants’ rule and a new voluntary union, it will become possible to establish and sustain a Modern Universal Public Distribution System in the towns and villages, and all over the country. All essential items of mass consumption will be provided in adequate quantity, of acceptable quality, and at affordable prices for all. The workers’ and peasants’ governments will use their control over trade to ensure that the PDS is kept fully supplied at all times, and also take steps to progressively bring all spheres of production under social control.

Workers’ and peasants’ rule will ensure security of livelihood of the peasants, and ensure adequate supply of essential consumption needs to all working families at affordable prices. Over a period of some years, the productivity of agricultural labour would be raised by promoting and encouraging collectivisation of agriculture and application of modern technology by peasant cooperatives.

The Communist Ghadar Party of India calls upon all communists, trade union activists, and the activists among peasants, women and youth to agitate for the above measures. Let us demand these measures even though we know that capitalist governments are not likely to accept these demands. Let us, in the course of fighting for these immediate demands, agitate for the need to establish workers' and peasants' governments at the centre and in the states of our country.

Demand and fight for the nationalisation of external and domestic wholesale trade!

Demand and fight for a modern, universal public distribution system!