The Editor,

Sir,

I am writing to express my solidarity with the call given by the CC of the CGPI to `Defeat the program of liberalisation and privatisation!  Fight for the democratic renewal of India!’ on the occasion of the annoucement of the Election commission of elections to six state assemblies.  The elections are now imminent and there will be a vast clamour among political parties to make the most out of the election.  The atmosphere in which these elections are taking place are one of outright bloodbaths across the length and breadth of the country, with violent bombings in Delhi,

Assam and elsewhere, communal strife in Orissa, and continuous state repression in Kashmir.  The statement points out that this is time of great suffering for the Indian people under galloping price rise, worsening insecurity and job loss, in the background of the global economic crisis.  The people of India have a right to ask why the state of affairs is this.  After all, the bourgeoisie has promised them that the streets would be paved with gold if they were to tighten their belts and sell off the precious social assests to attract large scale investment!  If the promise has been broken, is it not a time for a pay-back?! 

The people of India have a right to a life that can be considered human: one where their basic needs are met, their children are educated, they have roofs over their heads, have job security, and the state provides them security.  This is their experience through the millenia:  that the state ought to be guarantor of these.  This has been repudiated by the brutal conquest of India and its conversion to a colony, where the purpose of the state is only to guarantee law and order and conditions for private property to flourish.  This state passed into the hands of the brown-skinned bourgeoisie which has adapted and perfected these functions, while paying lip service to the the laudable goals listed earlier.  Such a set-up is continuously in a crisis, and lurches from major crises to minor ones.  It experiences periods of `civil society’ a Eurocentric notion where the bourgeoisie carries on in relative harmony to one of outright crisis, at which time massive violence is unleashed by the bourgeoisie to sort out its crises. 

The people of India are sick of this state of affairs.  They have to script a path out of this desperate state of affairs.  Indeed, the call for the democratic renewal of India is a step in this direction.

By calling, at this time, to defeat the program of liberalisation and privatisation, and uniting it with the programme of democratic renewal, the focus is brought on to these burning questions of the polity.  I congratulate the CC of the party for its initiative in this regard.

Sincerely,
S. Nair
Kochi