The run up to the elections to the Gujarat Assembly as well as the results of these elections reveal that the bourgeoisie is firmly backing the Narendra Modi led BJP as the best bet to vigorously implement the liberalisation, privatization and globalization program in that state.

It is well known that Gujarat is one of the states wherein, despite opposition from workers and peasants and working people, the economic reforms program has been implemented most resolutely. During the run up to the elections, the big bourgeois media left no stone unturned to paint the Narendra Modi regime as “corruption free”, “provider of good governance”, and as a government which had brought “relief” to the common people of Gujarat. Those opposing the Modi government were either labelled as people who were “corrupt” or those opposed to the “rule of law”.

To declare the elections as a mandate in favour of liberalization and privatization program, the bourgeoisie ensured that there was no discussion on the economic reforms program as implemented in Gujarat or the “good governance” platform. Communal hysteria was whipped up with the two major parties, Congress and BJP, as well as the media playing their parts. With full confidence that the big bourgeoisie was backing him, and that the Central Government would take no action against him, the architect of the 2002 genocide of Muslims openly dared anyone to punish him for the massacres. The BJP and Narendra Modi even openly justified the encounter killings that have gone on in Gujarat, making it an important central point of their campaign. Thus BJP and Narendra Modi were projected as the foremost fighters in the “war against terrorism”! The Congress Party, for its part, publicly refused to either condemn the genocide of Muslims, or to oppose the liberalization and privatization program. It was made out that the people of Gujarat are communal, and supporters of terrorism. The bourgeoisie achieved what it wanted – a government which will pursue vigorously its agenda without let up.

The Gujarat elections saw massive pressure put on all political forces opposed to the liberalization and privatization program, to state terrorism and state organized communal violence, to support the Congress Party as the “lesser evil”. An objective analysis of the situation reveals that the need of the times is to build the political unity of the workers and peasants and working people around the platform of opposing the liberalization and privatization program and the onslaught on rights of different sections of toiling people, and against state terrorism and communal violence. Just as in the case of Gujarat, in the coming period too, the bourgeoisie and its apologists will try to make the workers and peasants and their organizations give up their own program and line up behind the Congress or some other party in the name of defeating the communal danger. Political forces who are wanting to actually build an alternative to the capitalist system and the reforms program must refuse to fall into this trap.

Gujarat elections are a warning to the working class and peasantry that the bourgeoisie will not brook any opposition to the program of globalization, liberalization and privatization, through which it is trying to become a world class imperialist power. If need be, as it has done in the past, it will resort to state terrorism including communal violence to achieve its goals.