The Hindu : Issues for the elections

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 25, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Issues for the elections

By Prakash Karat

India demands alternative policies and a politics that responds to the vital concerns of the people and the country.

THE CAMPAIGN for elections to the 14th Lok Sabha has begun and each one of us must once again consider the issues that should determine the people's verdict.

From the media, it would appear that elections are a matter of the competing claims of film stars, the changing loyalties of politicians, and permutations of the caste identities of candidates — and not of the policies and politics of parties. The great majority of our people, however, are beset with pressing and immediate concerns, concerns that must be at the centre of attention of the conscious citizen and of responsible political parties.

Gainful employment is central to the lives of most adults. The demand for a steady increase in the rate of growth of employment must be a key issue in these elections, particularly since the Bharatiya Janata Party Government has done nothing to deliver on its pledge to create one crore jobs a year. Despite the claims of economic progress, the prospects of such employment for a young person stepping out of the formal education system are very bleak. In rural India, the number of days of work available to a man or woman has declined sharply — in many parts of India, it is less than 60 days a year.

The crisis in agriculture has led to a collapse in livelihoods and living standards throughout the Indian countryside. The root cause of agrarian distress is not drought but government policy. The big cutbacks in public investment in agriculture and rural infrastructure, the removal of quantitative restrictions on imports of agricultural commodities, and the sharp tilt in the terms of trade against agriculture have all contributed to the crisis.

It is not accidental that the largest number of suicides by farmers has taken place in Andhra Pradesh, the State that is projected as a model for policies dictated by the World Bank. The reversal of anti-farmer policies and priority to agricultural development with a clear emphasis on the rural poor has to be on top of the policy agenda in this election campaign.

Another major issue for millions of people is food, the policy area in which the Vajpayee Government has failed most miserably. During the drought of 2002, when the loss of livelihood led to mass hunger among the rural poor, the Government hoarded 60 million tonnes of food grain and refused to distribute them either for food-for-work programmes or free to the needy. It preferred to pay the huge cost of stocking these grains and letting much of it rot. It was willing to sell grain in the international market at prices lower than those offered to starving millions in India. Food is a basic right, one that has been denied to millions of citizens. There are no grounds to continue with the targeted public distribution system, which excludes vast number of deserving people from the purview of the public distribution system in the name of identifying those "below the poverty line."

The problems of unemployment, the agrarian crisis and lack of cheap food are not mutually unrelated. They all emanate from the economic policies of the BJP-led Government, which are determined by the interests of big capital, Indian and foreign, and not by the needs of the Indian people. This is evident from the privatisation spree that has affected every sphere of Indian society. Today, the question is not only the privatisation of profit-making public sector enterprises but the privatisation of water resources, of public services and the provisioning of basic needs. Since many of these areas fall within the purview of State Governments, the Central Government has resorted to the patently unconstitutional device of forcing States to sign Memoranda of Understanding with it.

Two major components of people's living standards are education and health. Both are victims of the prevailing emphasis on privatisation and commercialisation. The public education and health systems are in decay. Despite the 93rd Constitutional Amendment making education free and compulsory for children in the age group 6 to 14 years, drop-outs in the primary stage actually increased from 40 per cent in 1999-2000 to 41 per cent in 2001. There can be no escape from the state's responsibility for ensuring education as a basic right and making health for all realisable. Government expenditure in these vital sectors has, however, been shrinking.

At no time since Independence have the fiscal and taxation policies of the government sections been so loaded in favour of the affluent and against the working people. The current slew of tax-cuts, subsidies and concessions constitute a bonanza for the rich. Such policies effectively rob the public authority of the resources for increased public investment in agriculture and infrastructure and public expenditure in the social sector.

India needs steady economic growth and the capacity to utilise new technology to expand its productive forces. But it is necessary to challenge the existing trajectory of development that benefits only ten per cent of the people while heightening social and regional inequalities. Since the major Opposition party, the Congress, has no economic policies distinct from those of the BJP, it is all the more necessary that alternatives to the current dispensation are brought before the people.

The BJP-led Government's record on secularism, democracy and federalism are major issues. The worst forms of violence were visited upon the Muslims of Gujarat after the Godhra incident. The distinctive feature of this anti-Muslim pogrom was the involvement of the state machinery. When dealing with cases of mass murder, rape and arson in Gujarat, the Human Rights Commission and the Supreme Court have declared that the State Government continues to refuse to render justice and ensure the rule of law to victims.

Secularism cannot survive in conditions where the state itself becomes an instrument for the oppression of a minority. Nor can it be protected by the BJP Government's practice of subverting constitutional and judicial processes by trying to settle the dispute in Ayodhya in favour of one side through Government-backed negotiations. BJP rule, based on the ideology of Hindutva, is antithetical to secularism. If anti-secular trends are to be reversed, the struggle to defend secularism must be linked with struggles to secure the economic and social well-being of the people.

As any thinking Indian knows, the formal trappings of an electoral democracy can be maintained while the essence of democracy is undermined by the open promotion of money power. Where rivers of money flow at election time, where leading politicians are increasingly identified with big business houses, and where government policies are increasingly biased in favour of the rich and powerful, there democracy itself is robbed of any real meaning. Electoral democracy is further debased in India by the predilection of the ruling party to bring about `stability' in the system by such patently anti-democratic proposals as a fixed term for parliament and legislatures. The BJP has also made no bones about its intention to invoke Article 356 to dismiss the Bihar State Government if it can get a majority in the Rajya Sabha.

The democratic system in India can be strengthened only if the federal principle is respected and institutionalised. This finds a certain formal acknowledgement from the BJP-led Government as it has to run a coalition with many regional parties. But in terms of economic and political rights of the States, particularly States where the Opposition is in power, the last few years have seen a worsening of Centre-State financial relations.

Most political parties have no time for the major social issues that affect large sections of our society. The enormous burdens and discrimination that women suffer are rarely debated as matters of public policy. Nor are issues of continuing discrimination against and deprivation among Dalits and Adivasis, who have suffered particularly from the liberalisation drive. Social justice cannot be ensured by today's policy regime, which exacerbates social and economic inequalities. The disjuncture between the political and the social is peculiar to the evolution of electoral politics in India. Despite the odds against linking them together in this election campaign, there must be an attempt to make politics accountable on social issues.

Although foreign policy is considered remote and far removed from the concerns of ordinary people, the protection of India's vital interests, safeguarding national sovereignty and building upon India's strengths as a major developing country are integral to protecting the rights of ordinary people in the era of imperialist globalisation. India needs an independent foreign policy. In a world where the consequences of United States unilateralism and aggression are becoming more and more evident, India's policy should be to promote multipolarity and to forge friendly relations with other major countries in Europe, Asia and in the less-developed world. Contrary to this approach, the Vajpayee Government's emphasis has been to try to impress upon the United States that India is a more reliable strategic ally than Pakistan.

These are the issues on which the case for a democratic alternative to the BJP and its alliance should be based. India demands alternative policies and a politics that responds to the vital concerns of the people and the country.

[The author is a member of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).]

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News Update

Stories in this Section

MIDDLE PATH OF THE CONGRESS

A RESOUNDING VICTORY

Issues for the elections

Tackling tuberculosis

Peace and the peace dividend