In his Independence Day speech on 15th August, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh piously declared that “We will provide all possible assistance to our farmers to deal with the drought”.  He also declared that “It is our ardent desire that not even a single citizen of India should ever go hungry.” 

In stark contrast to the noble desires expressed by the Prime Minister, the reality is that millions of workers and peasants in the country face hunger and an extremely uncertain future.  Large sections of workers have lost their jobs while others face over-work and unaffordable food prices.  Peasants face heightened insecurity and uncertainty of survival.  On top of the effects of trade liberalisation, corporate land grab and the penetration of giant retail chains into the countryside, peasants have been hit by widespread drought this year.

The glaring gap between the words and deeds of the Manmohan Singh government is the result of pursuing an economic orientation of maximising capital accumulation by a minority, claiming that this is the best way to tackle poverty.  It is a course that is destined to increase the hardships and insecurity of the people.  Can the Prime Minister convince us that economic prosperity for capitalists means economic prosperity for the workers and peasants, when our experience has been just the contrary? How can the rich grow richer and richer except at the expense of the poor? The "trickle down" theory has been completely belied by our experience of the last two decades, when there was high economic growth but the ratio of wages to profits reflected a continuous decline. The Prime Minister has no magic wand that can annul the inevitable consequences of following a capitalist imperialist course.

According to Indian political theory or Raj Dharma, it is the duty of the State to ensure prosperity and protection for all the people. Several centuries back, it is recorded that Sher Shah Suri established a Public Distribution System to protect people from hunger during a drought, and he cracked down hard on hoarders and black-marketeers. He was just one of the kings who did that, neither the first nor the last.

In independent India we have had successive central governments that have destroyed the very concept of a universal Public Distribution System.  First, Congress Party led governments created a limited PDS covering only wheat and rice, aimed at reducing dependence on foreign powers and empowering the central state with food stocks that could be used in an emergency, to avoid food riots.  In the period of liberalisation and privatisation, bourgeois governments led both by the Congress and the BJP have step by step been dismantling even the limited public procurement and public distribution, in the name of targeting it to only "below poverty line" families.

Indian political theory considered the provision of irrigation works as one of the main duties of the State, with the tiller having the reciprocal duty to cultivate what society needs and hand over part of the product as the State's revenue.  In independent India we have had governments that have completely neglected public irrigation works, allowed unregulated private exploitation of ground water, and presided over the draining of soil fertility as a result of capitalist mono-cropping driven by maximum private profits for a few.

In his speech the Prime Minister said that the use of violence is abhorrent to democracy, and will hence be put down with an iron hand. But this democracy does not find state terrorism abhorrent.  It permits the brutal rape and killing of women by the armed forces as in Kashmir, and the arbitrary daylight killing of women and youth as in Imphal by the so-called security forces. This largest democracy in the world justifies the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, a fascist law that permits the armed forces to rape, torture and kill on mere suspicion.

Saying what the people want to hear, but doing the exact opposite, i.e. acting in the interests of the capitalists class – this is what the Indian ruling class has been doing for the past 62 years. Manmohan Singh is a true champion of this class - he is maintaining the tradition of various Prime Ministers and political leaders before him who have eloquently spoken and even shed tears for the people while implementing the programme of the capitalist class.

There is only one way that the gap between word and deed can be bridged. What is needed is a radical change in the orientation of the economy and the nature of state power. We need to establish a new political power, which will have the interest and the capacity to change the orientation of the economy.  Such a power has to be led by the working class and include the peasantry. Prosperity and protection will then be guaranteed for all members of society.