14) CPI(M) TACKLES SPIRALLING FOOD PRICES

By B. Prasant, PV correspondent in India

(The following article is from the May 16-31, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Meeting in Kolkata on April 29, the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) focused on three main issues: the movement against rising prices, Panchayat (rural assembly) elections in Bengal, and organisational decisions. 

     Speaking later to People's Voice, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat was "flabbergasted" over the failure of the Manmohan Singh central government in Delhi to curb runaway prices of essential articles of common consumption. The vast majority of the people of India, he pointed out, suffer from the government's disinterest in bringing prices down.

     Prakash expressed "deep dissatisfaction" at the government's refusal to tackle the sorry state of the economy, allowing prices of essential articles to spin out of control. The government will not replace the "targeted" public distribution system (PDS) with a universal PDS, and keeps backing the scions of big business as they indulge in futures and forward trading in foodstuffs.

     The CPI(M) leader noted that the Food Corporation of India is deliberately failing in its duty of procuring enough food crops from farmers of Bengal at subsidised prices. The Congress-run central government, he stated, was fuelling the efforts of big business, indigenous or otherwise, and helping these concerns to gather foodstuff for futures trading and forward trading. The matter of endangered food security, he said, was one of the issues the Left has taken up with the central government, and would continue to do to in the days to come.

     The liberalisation process indulged in by the Congress-led UPA government encourages hoarding and racketeering, especially since the former BJP-run NDA government left the Essential Commodities Act devoid of any teeth. Food security or lack thereof was never an issue that concerned India's state governments. The issue has been the responsibility of the central government in every account. The Bengal government's target for food procurement of 1.5 million metric tonnes was being affected by the fact that Bengal had to send 400,000 tonnes of rice to Bangladesh after that country was hit by a storm. Bengal, Prakash pointed out, had also sent rice to some north-eastern states in distress.

     Describing the Congress-run United Progressive Alliance outfit as "callous," Prakash stressed that the neo-liberal economic policies followed by the government fuel rather than curb (as claimed) inflation. The mass of the people, he declared, would not quietly accept such harsh developments, and the Left would not rest until the "central government is brought to its heels."

     The CPI(M) is organizing a massive nationwide, day-long picketing of the offices of the central government on May 15. Millions of people will participate, led by hundreds of thousands of CPI(M) volunteers. The states of Bengal, where local Panchayat polls are being held, and Karnataka, where Assembly elections are due shortly, will be kept outside the purview of this India-wide anti-price rise action.

     The May 15 picketing will be organised around five demands:

1. Strengthen the Public Distribution System by universalizing it.

2. Curb the procurement of foodgrains from farmers by private companies and traders.

3. Ban futures trading in 25 agricultural commodities as proposed by the Parliamentary Standing Committee.

4. Cut customs and excise duties on oil, and reduce retail prices of petrol and diesel.

5. Take stringent action against hoarding of essential commodities and strengthen the provisions of the Essential Commodities Act.

     Prakash said the Polit Bureau heard a detailed report on the run up to the Panchayat polls in Bengal from the state CPI(M) secretary, Biman Basu. As in the past, all non-Communist, non-Left, and non-Marxist forces have banded together as an opposition "grand alliance." This so-called mahajot includes not only the mainstream bourgeois parties, but also sectarian fringe outfits on the right and the left, including religious fundamentalists.

     As the rural polls draw nearer, CPI(M) workers and organisers have been killed brutally by hirelings of the opposition, especially by self-proclaimed "Maoists" and the separatist "Jharkhandis." Since March 2006, no less than 32 CPI(M) workers have been murdered. The people are with the Bengal CPI(M), said Prakash, predicting a victory of the CPI(M) and the left Front on a scale bigger than that of the 2003 Panchayat general elections.

     Prakash did not deign to respond to the calumny that Congress president Sonia Gandhi has recently spread against the Bengal government and the CPI(M) on vague non-issues like "malpractice in governance" and "Marxist terrorism." He said that Sonia Gandhi remained, as before, out of touch with the reality evolving in Bengal, as perhaps elsewhere.