Wide spread opposition of the people to the Congress and BJP

Elections to the state assembly in Gujarat are being held in two phases on December 11 and December 16. Both the campaigns being run by the Congress and the BJP – the two main contenders for power – as well as the coverage in the media are being conducted in such a manner as to deliberately exacerbate tensions and inflame divisions among the people not just in Gujarat but in the country as a whole. They are also designed to spread misinformation about the widespread opposition of the people to the anti social offensive of liberalisation and privatization, and the communal and fascist terror.

The election campaign clearly shows that neither the BJP nor the Congress has been able to whip up any enthusiasm amongst the people for their respective parties. This is a reflection of the deep dissatisfaction amongst the peasantry and tribal people as well as other sections of working people against the liberalization and privatization program.

The Congress Party as well as BJP are vociferous proponents of the same liberalization and privatization program. Various organizations of the bourgeoisie, including the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, have awarded the government of Gujarat certificates for pursuing these reforms with a vengeance! The bourgeoisie is afraid that the assembly elections are revealing the deep opposition of the people to the liberalisation program. In this situation, tremendous propaganda is being whipped up to portray these elections as a mahayuddh between communalists and secularists, Gujaratis and the rest of Indians, and so on.

There has been widespread revolt in the ranks of the BJP in Gujarat. Many of those who revolted were leaders in the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in 2002. They have now joined the Congress party, or are standing in the elections with Congress support. This reveals the hollowness of the “secular” plank of the Congress party. Despite being in power at the centre for the last four years, the Congress led UPA government has taken no action at all to bring to book those responsible for the communal carnage in Gujarat in 2002, including the then state government of Narendra Modi. The reason for this is very clear. The Congress party and government themselves have organised similar communal massacres, as in November 1984, and they have no intention of setting a precedent of punishing the guilty of such massacres. They know that doing so will only backfire on them.

Modi and the BJP are portraying this contest as a fight between Gujarat and the rest of India. Their campaign slogan is“Jeetega Gujarat”. Any attempt to draw attention to the crimes of the Modi government is being dismissed as an attack on Gujarat and the Gujarati people.

According to the bourgeoisie, Gujarat is a model of “development”. The truth is that growth has been registered in certain sectors of manufacturing and services only, with the majority of the benefits being cornered by a small stratum of wealthy capitalists. Most of it has been concentrated in SEZs, where the big capitalists are not constrained by even minimum labour laws and other regulations, and in certain urban corridors. On the other hand agriculture, on which the majority of working people depend, has suffered definite decline, leading to overall impoverishment in the rural areas, particularly in southern and eastern Gujarat. Inequalities between classes, between the urban and rural areas, and among the different regions of Gujarat, have sharply increased. The “Vibrant Gujarat” of which BJP boasts completely leaves out the suffering peasants, of whom hundreds have committed suicide under BJP rule, as well as the large proportion of tribal people in the state.

Both in terms of its economic conditions, as well as in terms of the politics of communal violence and state-organised terror, Gujarat is not a special case, but is typical of what is going on in India as a whole today under the rule of the big bourgeoisie. The conditions of the toilers – the working class, peasantry, tribal and other people – are getting worse while pockets of “high growth” are making the big bourgeoisie ecstatic. At the same time, Gujarat is a very clear case of how state terrorism and communal and fascist violence are being systematically unleashed as a method to impose the agenda of the ruling bourgeoisie on the people and stamp out all opposition.

The present political system and process enables the bourgeoisie to replace one party that rules on its behalf with another, to carry on the same program. In this situation, organizations of workers, peasants, tribals and working people have taken up the task of exposing and opposing the Congress as well as BJP in these elections. They are campaigning for an alternative to the liberalization and privatization program. They are exposing the hollowness of the opposition of the Congress party to state terrorism and communal and fascist violence. They have fielded candidates to challenge the Congress and BJP. This struggle of the working people of Gujarat deserves the support of all those who are fighting the anti social offensive of the bourgeoisie.