A Brief note on Political Situation

1. The socio-political situation in India, at present, is very alarming and worrisome. The country, as a whole, stands badly engulfed by a whirlwind of deep rooted socio-economic adversities such as wide-spread poverty, sky-rocketing prices, ever increasing unemployment and under-employment, horrible mismanagement, rampant corruption and various types of social and administrative oppression. All these maladies, jointly, are inflicting mortal blows to the potentialities we have in our country for social development. A handful of super rich do have some ill-earned fruits to enjoy, but the vast multitude of toiling masses are virtually living from hand to mouth or are actually starving. The gap of disparity between the rich and the poor in our country, with 1% owning 54% of its wealth, is the second biggest in the world. Such an alarming imbalance in the ownership of national wealth, combined with wide spread unemployment, has put the Indian society on the top of a social volcano which may erupt and destroy it not long before. Politically, the democracy here stands diluted to periodic elections only, which are often hijacked by money power or muscle power and are no longer a free and fair expression of public opinion.

2.       Freedom from the colonial rule in 1947, ultimately, proved to be merely transfer of state-power from the Britishers into the hands of political representatives of Indian exploiting classes-capitalists and landlords. The toiling masses, especially the workers and peasants who had made tremendous sacrifices during the struggle for independence, got nothing but empty rhetoric from the new rulers. Age old obnoxious caste system, which had taken an institutionalised form of social oppression and in-built exploitation, remained intact as earlier. Thus the Dalits and the other landless lower castes, who were forced to live in dehumanised socio-econonic environment by the ruthless Brahmnical Order, got no relief from their centuries old slavery. The independent India, no doubt, gave them a voting right and some doles in the shape of reservations and grants etc. But in the absence of radical land reforms, overwhelming majority of these landless poors had to continue to work as menials, bonded labourers or casual daily wagers in order to earn their livlihood. Even the meagre constitutional provisions made for the upliftment of these down-trodden sections of society were not implemented properly and the majority of them remained deprived from all such benefits. They still don’t have any assured or dependable source of income. Even those, who could get some benifit from reservations, had to often bear with severe mental torture and humiliation at the hands of so-called upper castes. With the capitalist mode of development and concentration of wealth in the hands of corporates and big landlords, the trials and tribulations of these deprived and despised sections of society have become more horrible and horrendous.  Another irony of the situation is that even a big chunk of the progressive intelligensia has so far failed to gauge and grasp the real depth of this castiest oppression and have not evolved any effective steps to end this deep rooted cancer of Indian society, which has been blocking the over all development of productive forces.

          Similarly, even after 70 years of independence, the women in India, who constitute nearly 50% of its population, have still not got any reckonable relief from the bondages of suppresive Patriarchal Order prevalent here since centuries. Several of the half-baked programmes announced by the governments so for in the direction of women empowerment have remained only on papers. And, the women in general, particularly from the poor strata, are still helpless victims of various types of discriminations, domestic violance, sexual attacks and naked exploitation as work force.

3.       The capitalist path of development, adopted by the bourgeiose landlord ruling classes after independance, in collaboration with the foreign finance capital, has strengthened the grip of monopolies and land-lords on the Indian economy. They have amassed good fortunes and some of these corporate houses are now ranking amongest the global wealth magnates, where as the vast multitude of toilng masses have been mercilessly looted by the governments through anti-people budgetry measures, ever increasing burden of taxes, levies and administrative prices. The economic policy stance as well as administrative approach of almost all the governments at the Centre and bureaucracy, in general, have through out remained pro-corporates and pro-imperialist. Such an anti-people and anti-national set of policies of the ruling classes have created the present awful socio-political scenario where poverty, alongwith widespread unemployment, price-rise and corruption have emerged as the major issues of public concern. With the implementation of imperialist dictated neo-libral policies since 1991, all these problems have become more aggravated. The propaganda being made by the govt.and its agencies, with the help of hollow statistics, regarding growth in GDP and in other macro economic indicators is an eye wash to a great extent, and is proving to be false and misleading. In fact the widely acclaimed export oriented growth is of little use for the welfare of the toiling masses as well as for the upliftment of the Indian economy, which badly needs expansion of internal market i.e. a substantial increase in the purchasing capacity of the working people. Because of continuous and steep erosion in real wages in the country, this vital need is being badly ignored by the govt. Under these circumstances, the people have fallen an easy prey to grave despondency and bewilderment. And, this over all frustration is giving rise to hapless suicides by debt ridden farmers, pauperised agriculture labourers and other hard ups.

4.       Another dark aspect of the Indian political situation is  more and more opening up of its economy for the rapacious plunder of imperialists. By now almost all the major fields of Indian economy such as Banks, Insurance, Railways, I.T., defence production etc. and even retail trade stand opened for the infiltration, occupation and exploitation by the imperialist finance capital i.e., FDI. With the so-called strategic alliances signed by the Indian governments with the American imperialists, this loot has further been made easy and institutionalised. Even the national security concerns have been compromised to a great extent. It is an open secret now that these imperialists are hankering after a neo-colonial world order to perpetuate their plunder and to establish their dominance over all the natural resources on the earth. They are sparing no crime to build a political structure suited to their needs and are undermining all the democratic norms and forms. Certainly such an ill-advised drive and insatiable greed of the imperialists is fraught with unimaginable dangers for the mankind. And unfortunately, Indian ruling classes are speedily integrating their economic and political interests with these monsters.

5.       With the installation of B.J.P. government at the Centre, secularism, one of the main pro-people pillars of Indian Constitution, has further been jeopardised. The political power has, by and large, been gone in the grips of Sangh Pariwar and they have immensly intensified their communal fascist offensive for creating a theocratic state. So for, these reactionary forces have succeded in controlling several vital constitutional institutions and are vehemently trying to distort the  history of Indian society and to saffornise its culture and educational system. No effort is being spared by them to polarise the society on communal lines. Reactionary-obscrunantist forces have been fully unleashed by the RSS and dissent is being curbed with brutal force. As a result of such an atmosphere of fear, intolerance and communal divide, brutal attacks on minorities, dalits, women and Adivasies have not only increased but have become more ghastly.

6.       No doubt, the progressive democratic and revolutionary forces in the country have, throughout, been giving a stiff fight against castiest oppression, capitalist and pre-capitalist froms of exploitation and communal onslaughts, both politically as well as through mass mobilisations. But this resistance could not take a country-wide, decisive and organised political shape. The reasons for this weekness are needed to be analysed properly. This over all situation definitely demands intensification of class struggle in all its forms-economic, political and ideological, while keeping the political struggle in command, and mobilising the masses for broadbased struggles on various issues affecting their living conditions. As India is a big and vast country, inhabited by more then three dozen nationalities, speaking different languages and each having its own rich culture, customs and traditions, different regions of the country, naturally, have different types of problems, priorities, geographical conditions and needs. Therefore the peculiarities of each area should be studied properly and militant mass movements organised on pressing regional issues as an urgent priority. And then these local and regional struggles should be conjoined with the All India movement. Thus the historic necessity underlines steadily building a strong enough mass movement, capable of advancing towards socialism.

7.       Such a great and giganatic task cannot be successfully undertaken without creative application of Marxist analytical tools, which provide us the most potent and comprehensive scientific approach for the revolutionary transformation of human society. Alongwith this scientific analytical approach, the contributions made by several Indian scholars and socio-political crusaders such as-Periyar Ramaswamy Naiker, Baba Sahib Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, Ghadrites and so many other pro-people social reformers to dismantle inhuman Brahmnical Order and to advance towards an equalitarian socialist society, should also be properly grasped and followed. Half baked and faulty approaches on these counts always act as stumbling blocks in the advancement of revolutionary movements. In the history of revolutionary movements and struggles in India, inspite of innumerable sacrifices of leaders and cadres, such weaknesses in theory and approach as well as deviations from principles of Marxism-Leninism have acted as big hinderances in the development of a decisive people’s movement, capable of eradicating casteist oppression and capitalist exploitation. No doubt, in 1964, a good team of marxist stalwarts led by Comrade P. Sundrayya made comendable efforts for analysing the Indian objective socio-political reality and formed a political party which attracted thousands of militant cadres from the working class, peasantry and other working people, towards it ranks. But on the whole, Left Forces in this country, deviating from the scientific path have often gone either to the right revisionist road of class collaboration or to the left sectarian Adventurism. At present parliamentary opportunism, the latest variety of right revisionism is causing a big harm to the revolutionary movement. The ruling classes have succeeded in utilising these deviations and thus disrupting and dismembering this movement to a misrable extent. The disruptions and deviations in the international communist movement too have contributed to this sad state of affairs of the present Indian movement.

8.       Therefore the need of the hour is to develop a real revolutionary party, functioning as the vanguard of revolutionary working class, capable of bringing into its fold the most sincere and self-sacrificing cadres, and capable of co-ordinating with all the progressive, democratic and secular struggles in our country as well as in the international arena. The ongoing lapses on these counts will have to be identified and rectified at the earliest. Earnest efforts will have to be undertaken to approach and unite all the left forces in the country and united struggles will have to be launched, suitably combining parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forms of struggles, for the real emanicipation of the people.

9.       The Revolutionary Marxist Party of India is being launched to confront all these big challanges in the socio-political arena. It will put in all sorts of efforts required for advancing towards this long and ardous endevour. To start with, the Party will spare no efforts for mobilising all sections of the working people : -

                    

-  to oppose neo-libral policy frame work

- to thwart the communal-fascist offensive of Sangh Pariwar,      

-  to pressurise the govt. for controling prices of essential commodities and of public utility services

-  to curve corruption and mal-administration.

-  to get the employment avenues generated in a big way.

-  to oppose casteist oppression, all types of oppression on minorities,dalits, women and Adivasies as well as all attacks on democratic rights, norms and forms. 

-  to awaken and arouse the masses against the ever increasing intervention of imperialist forces in the affairs of our country.

-  to strengthen unity and integrity of the country and to resist dilution of federalism.

-  to safeguard ecology from wanton destruction

-  to strengthen proletarian-internationalism.