The struggle is to advance the agenda of the workers and peasants!

Uttar Pradesh is in the throes of the elections to the state assembly, with the polling that began in the first phase on April 7 extending to the first week of May. Uttar Pradesh, as the most populous state in the country, is politically significant for the parties of the bourgeoisie – the party that forms the government will have a decided advantage going into battle in the general elections. Uttar Pradesh is also extremely important for the working class and peasantry in its struggle to build an alternative to the rule of the bourgeoisie.

This state was once the repository of culture and learning, the seat of flourishing arts. It has a long and glorious history dating back many centuries. In more recent history, it has the record of being one of the states that gave birth to a proud tradition of anti-colonial fighters who fought till the gallows with the dream of liberating the Indian people from the hated colonial yoke. However, the Uttar Pradesh of today is but a pathetic shadow of its past.

Uttar Pradesh is near the bottom of the list when measured for 21 indicators including health care, education, unemployment, poverty and social deprivation.

The state accounts for 26 percent of the infant mortality in the country, 76 out of every 1,000 infants do not survive. In UP, at least 47 percent of all children up to the age of three are underweight and at least 14% are "wasted" (the children suffer from protein malnutrition), because thousands of rural and urban families cannot afford pulses or vegetables.

The workers and peasants of Uttar Pradesh have not accepted their conditions lying down. In the anti-colonial struggle, as well as in the past 60 years, the workers and peasants of Uttar Pradesh have fought valliantly in defence of livelihood and rights. This is the reason that the bourgeoisie was forced to carry out limited land reforms including land to the tiller in the fifties and sixties in Uttar Pradesh. The seventies and eighties witnessed powerful peasant struggles and the peasantry forming organisations that claimed a share of power in the state as well as in the center. The main party of the bourgeoisie till the seventies, the Congress Party, was repeatedly challenged by other political forces, particulary those emerging from the peasantry and the intermediate strata of the towns.

The period since the eighties has seen the emergence of a number of political parties of the intermediate strata with a base in Uttar Prasdesh and having all India aspirations. These include the Samajwadi Party and the Bhaujan Samaj Party. This period has also seen the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as one of the principal parties of the ruling class, with a strong base in Uttar Pradesh. The Samajwadi Party and the BSP have pretensions of representing the down trodden sections of the toilers and tillers. However, when the conditions of the toilers and tillers of Uttar Pradesh is reviewed, it can be seen that the rule of the SP or BSP has not addressed any of the problems facing the workers and peasants, women and youth of Uttar Pradesh. Massive unemployment, extremely poor quality of education, extremely poor health services, combined with increasing ruination of peasantry is what stares the people of Uttar Pradesh in the face.

The Congress, and later on the Bharatiya Janata Party, have carried out blatant and cynical caste and communal mobilisation to divide the polity of Uttar Pradesh over the decades. Now the SP, BSP and other such parties have joined the same bandwagon of blatant and cynical caste and communal mobilisation. As a result, the political unity of workers and peasants, who are facing great attacks as a result of the capitalist offensive of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, is greatly endangered. Today, the people of Uttar Pradesh are confronted with a terrible situation wherein all these political parties in fact organise on the basis of extremely narrow sectoral interests of caste and religion while all of them serve the interests of the biggest monopolies and multinationals.

The current election campaign in UP, as previous campaigns, has brought to stark visibility the deep rot in the political process. The big bourgeoisie is using the 7 phase elections to engineer a verdict most suitable to itself. It is using all kinds of weapons, including the election commission, the media, the deployment of large para military forces, as well as the weapons of money power and gangsterism to get a result for its favoured combination.

Criminals convicted of murder and anti-social activities have been put up by all the parties in the fray. There is no attempt to hide the blatantly cynical acts of buying off candidates, putting up independents just to cut a rival party's vote, and the use of money and gun power.

The political system and process in place in our country will no doubt ensure that one or the other or a combination of the BJP, Congress, SP and BSP and some others will come to power. It is a fact that the Congress and the BJP represent the interests of the biggest exploiters and oppressors, the imperialist bourgeoisie of India. It is also a fact that the SP and BSP represent the interests of intermediate strata in UP, who in league with sections of the big bourgeoisie want to use their control over UP to fatten themselves at the cost of the workers and peasants. Plunder of the land and resources, plunder of the state exchequer is the goal of all these parties. It is no wonder that a life and death struggle is being waged by all these parties, every possible weapon, to capture power.

The task confronting the workers and peasants of Uttar Pradesh is how to ensure that the concerns of workers and peasants over issues of livelihood and rights are brought to center stage. Workers and peasant organisations must boldly challenge this criminalisation and communalisation of politics, the domination of the political system and process by criminalised parties of the bourgeoisie.