I : INDIA ATTAINS NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE
1. The military defeat of the fascist powers headed by Hitlerite
Germany and the decisive role played by the Soviet Union in smashing the
fascist aggressors, sharply altered the alignment of class forces on
the world arena in favour of forces fighting for socialism and national
liberation. The crushing defeat inflicated in the war on the belligerent
German, Italian and Japanese fascist powers, not only put these states
out of commission to an extent , but also resulted in the general
weakening of imperialism on the world scale, at least for some time.
World imperialism proved utterly incapable of preventing the emergence
of people’s democratic states in a number of countries of eastern
Europe, which facilitated the formation of the world socialist camp
headed by the Soviet Union. Inspired by these historic victories of
socialism and the debacle of imperialism, powerful national liberation
struggles against colonial rule swept throughout the countries of Asia
and Africa. India, too, witnessed a mass revolutionary upheaval against
British rule, where peasant revolts, general strikes of workers, student
strikes, state’s people’s mass struggles developed on an unprecedented
scale. The armed forces and the naval forces also revolted in many
places.
2. In face of this mounting tide of the struggle which threatened to develop into a general national revolt in India, British imperialism realised that it would no longer be possible for it to continue its rule. The Congrress leadership, on the other hand, was apprehensive that if the struggle against the imperalists developed into a general revolt, the hegemony over the mass anti-imperialist movement would slip away from its hands. Under these circumstances, a settlement was reached between the British imperialists on the one hand and the leaders of the National Congress and the Muslim League on the other.
3. As a result, the country was partitioned into India and Pakistan and political power was transferred in India to the leaders of the Congress party on August 15, 1947. Thus ended the political rule of the British in India and a state headed by the Indian big bourgeoisie was established. With this, the first stage of the India revolution, the stage of the general national united front, chiefly directed against foreign imperialist rule came to an end.
4. The British imperialists hoped that, despite the transfer of power, they would be able, by their entrenched positions in our economy, to make our independence a formal one. But the course of historical developments, since then, belied these hopes of British imperialists.
5. At the same time, with the historic victory of the great Chinese revolution, in 1949, an other important shift in the balance of forces in favour of socialism was witnessed at the world level. On the ruins of colonialism, new (sovereign) nations emerged in Asia, Africa and Latin America. India occupied an important place among them.
6. On the other hand, with the transfer of political power into the hands of Indian bourgeoisie our people hoped that the new national state would wipe out all the ugly legacies of the colonial past, would shatter all the fetters on our productive forces and unleash the creative energies of the people. They fondly hoped that India would rapidly overcome her economic dependence and backwardness, abolish want and poverty, and emerge as a prosperous industrial power increasingly satisfying the material and cultural needs of the people. But these hopes of the people were also belied.
7. This second stage of the India revolution demanded, for its immediate fulfilment, the complete abolition of feudal and semi-feudal landlordism and the distribution of land to the agricultural labourers and poor peasants gratis. It also demanded for its carrying out, the confiscation and nationalisation of British capital, thus eliminating the predatory grip of foreign monopoly capital over our national economy. Abolition of landlordism and a thorough going agrarian revolution would have at once shattered the age-old shackles on our agricultural production, and enabled it to take a major forward stride, provided food for our people, abundance of raw materials and ever expanding market for our industries and would have turned our agriculture into a major source of capital formation for our industries. Similarly, the confiscation and nationalisation of British capital would have placed in the hands of the newly born national state a vast sector of industry and foreign trade, whose profits would turn from a drain on the country, as in the past, into an ever expanding source of investment in industry.
8. Although the working class, peasantry, middle class and the progressive intelligentsia constituted the main fighting force against imperialist rule and bore the brunt of its fury, it was, however, the bourgeoisie that remained in the leadership of the liberation movement and thus grabbed the state power. That is why, after independence, the national state headed by the big bourgeoisie failed to fulfil these urgent tasks of Indian revolution. Afraid of the possible outcome that might follow such a thoroughgoing completion of the basic tasks of the democratic revolution, the big bourgeoisie compromised with imperialism and agreed that British finance capital would be allowed to continue its plunder, besides its acceptance to become a member of the British Commonwealth. In the background of mass upheaval in the native states which threatened to completely overthrow princely autocracy and feudalism, huge concessions were offered to feudal princes and their alliance sought to buttress bourgeois class regime. Landlords, the erstwhile supporters of British rulers, were welcomed into the Congress party. The Congress rulers, kept intact the British-trained bureaucracy to suppress the masses. Thus the democratic revolution was neither allowed to gather momentum nor were its basic tasks fulfilled.
9. It was fully in consonence with the historical experience of the national liberation struggles of our time which goes to demonstrate that the bourgeoisie, if it heads the freedom struggle, does not carry forward the national democratic revolution to its completion. On the contrary, after winning political independence, as the social contradictions intensify, it tends to compromise with imperialism and allies with domestic landlord reaction. Equally does historical experience demonstrate that only when the anti-imperialist national front is under the leadership of the working class, the democratic revolution does not only get completed in all its phases, but also that the revolution does not stop at the democratic stage but quickly passes over to the stage of socialist revolution. India’s unfinished revolution, too, confirms this historical experience.
2. In face of this mounting tide of the struggle which threatened to develop into a general national revolt in India, British imperialism realised that it would no longer be possible for it to continue its rule. The Congrress leadership, on the other hand, was apprehensive that if the struggle against the imperalists developed into a general revolt, the hegemony over the mass anti-imperialist movement would slip away from its hands. Under these circumstances, a settlement was reached between the British imperialists on the one hand and the leaders of the National Congress and the Muslim League on the other.
3. As a result, the country was partitioned into India and Pakistan and political power was transferred in India to the leaders of the Congress party on August 15, 1947. Thus ended the political rule of the British in India and a state headed by the Indian big bourgeoisie was established. With this, the first stage of the India revolution, the stage of the general national united front, chiefly directed against foreign imperialist rule came to an end.
4. The British imperialists hoped that, despite the transfer of power, they would be able, by their entrenched positions in our economy, to make our independence a formal one. But the course of historical developments, since then, belied these hopes of British imperialists.
5. At the same time, with the historic victory of the great Chinese revolution, in 1949, an other important shift in the balance of forces in favour of socialism was witnessed at the world level. On the ruins of colonialism, new (sovereign) nations emerged in Asia, Africa and Latin America. India occupied an important place among them.
6. On the other hand, with the transfer of political power into the hands of Indian bourgeoisie our people hoped that the new national state would wipe out all the ugly legacies of the colonial past, would shatter all the fetters on our productive forces and unleash the creative energies of the people. They fondly hoped that India would rapidly overcome her economic dependence and backwardness, abolish want and poverty, and emerge as a prosperous industrial power increasingly satisfying the material and cultural needs of the people. But these hopes of the people were also belied.
7. This second stage of the India revolution demanded, for its immediate fulfilment, the complete abolition of feudal and semi-feudal landlordism and the distribution of land to the agricultural labourers and poor peasants gratis. It also demanded for its carrying out, the confiscation and nationalisation of British capital, thus eliminating the predatory grip of foreign monopoly capital over our national economy. Abolition of landlordism and a thorough going agrarian revolution would have at once shattered the age-old shackles on our agricultural production, and enabled it to take a major forward stride, provided food for our people, abundance of raw materials and ever expanding market for our industries and would have turned our agriculture into a major source of capital formation for our industries. Similarly, the confiscation and nationalisation of British capital would have placed in the hands of the newly born national state a vast sector of industry and foreign trade, whose profits would turn from a drain on the country, as in the past, into an ever expanding source of investment in industry.
8. Although the working class, peasantry, middle class and the progressive intelligentsia constituted the main fighting force against imperialist rule and bore the brunt of its fury, it was, however, the bourgeoisie that remained in the leadership of the liberation movement and thus grabbed the state power. That is why, after independence, the national state headed by the big bourgeoisie failed to fulfil these urgent tasks of Indian revolution. Afraid of the possible outcome that might follow such a thoroughgoing completion of the basic tasks of the democratic revolution, the big bourgeoisie compromised with imperialism and agreed that British finance capital would be allowed to continue its plunder, besides its acceptance to become a member of the British Commonwealth. In the background of mass upheaval in the native states which threatened to completely overthrow princely autocracy and feudalism, huge concessions were offered to feudal princes and their alliance sought to buttress bourgeois class regime. Landlords, the erstwhile supporters of British rulers, were welcomed into the Congress party. The Congress rulers, kept intact the British-trained bureaucracy to suppress the masses. Thus the democratic revolution was neither allowed to gather momentum nor were its basic tasks fulfilled.
9. It was fully in consonence with the historical experience of the national liberation struggles of our time which goes to demonstrate that the bourgeoisie, if it heads the freedom struggle, does not carry forward the national democratic revolution to its completion. On the contrary, after winning political independence, as the social contradictions intensify, it tends to compromise with imperialism and allies with domestic landlord reaction. Equally does historical experience demonstrate that only when the anti-imperialist national front is under the leadership of the working class, the democratic revolution does not only get completed in all its phases, but also that the revolution does not stop at the democratic stage but quickly passes over to the stage of socialist revolution. India’s unfinished revolution, too, confirms this historical experience.
II : BANKRUPT PATH OF CAPITALISM LED TO GROWTH OF MONOPOLIES AND DANGER OF NEO-COLONIALISM
10. Even before independence, the Indian bourgoisie had attained a
certain stature and had already established itself in certain branches
of industry, such as cotton textile, sugar and cement. During the second
world war, the bourgeoisie, mostly the bigger sections, amassed
enormous fortunes and considerably enhanced their economic positions.
11. After independence, the ruling bourgeoisie proceeded to develop the country’s economy on the lines of capitalism, to further strengthen its class position in society. But possessing neither the technical base of the heavy industry, nor a colonial empire whose loot gave the impertalists vast capital accumulation, the bourgeoisie employed the state power, it had won, for appropriating the fruits of labour of the common people for its own capital requirement and for developing the economy along the lines of capitalism. The economic policies of the Central government since independence have been consistently directed to this end.
12. The Indian bourgeoisie also counted on help from the British and American imperialists to realise its aims, the price of which was paid through protection of their interests from the popular anti-imperialist upheaval, which was gaining unprecedented sweep and strength by 1947.
13. But in the years after independence, the British and American imperialists, far from satisfying the needs of the Indian bourgeoisie, began to put various types of pressure in order to draw the new Indian state into their war plans, began to set afoot plans which would undermine even the political freedom that had been won. Despite repeated pleading by the bourgeoisie, the imperialists refused to help the building of a heavy industry, the basis of industrialistion. They forced the fritteting away of the huge sterling balances accumulated by India out of the toil and sweat of our people during the second world war. Under the pretext of helping to save foreign exchange, they imposed deals with foreign monopolists detrimental to our national interests, as in the case of oil refineries, ship-building, chemical industries, etc.. This stringent attitude of the imperialists forced the Indian bourgeoisie to seek aid from socialist countries especially from Soviet Union for building heavy industry. This disinterested aid from the socialist countries also proved to be extremely useful for the Indian government for bargaining with the imperialist monopolists.
14. Thus the dual character of the bourgeoisie which manifested itself during the years of the freedom struggle in the policy it pursued of mobilising the people against imperialism on the one hand and compromising with imperialism on the other, manifested itself in a new way after achievement of independence. Despite the continuance as well as growth of contradictions between imperialism and feudalism on the one hand and the people, including the bourgeoisie, on the other, and despite the new opportunities provided with the most useful aid and support from the socialist countries, the big bourgeoise heading the State did not decisively attack imperialism and feudalism, so as to eliminate them. Rather it sought to utilise its hold over the state and the new opportunities to strengthen its position by attacking the people on the one hand and on the other, to resolve the conflicts and contradictions with imperialism and feudalism by pressure, bargain and compromise. In this process, it forged strong links with foreign finance capital and monopolists and has been continuously sharing power with the landlords. While not hesitating, in the begining to utilise the easily available socialist aid, for setting up certain heavy industrial projects, to bargain with the imperialists and also to build itself up, it has ultimately reached the stage of becoming a strong votary of the imperialist globalisation and neoliberalism, and is increasingly opening up the Indian economy for the loot and plunder by MNCs. It has, thus, fully exposed its anti-people character and has become a big road-block in the completion of anti-feudal and anti-imperialist democratic tasks of the Indian revolution.
15. The economic planning that the government resorted to as a part of its effort to build capitalism had nothing to do with socialist planning. Only an insignificant part of our economy had been taken under the State sector whereas vast fields of industrial, commercial and other activities have remained under private enterprise. In fact the bourgeois attempts at capitalist planning come up against the spontaneous laws of capitalism and in the ultimate analysis genuine economic planning and capitalism are irreconciliable and they do not go together to an appreciable length. That is why our five year plans have failed in mobilising our total material and man-power resources for the all round development of the society and have mainly relied on the profit motive of the exploiting classes.
16. However, economic planning in an under-developed country like India, backed by the state power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, certainly gives capitalist economic development a definite tempo and direction by facilitating more expedient utilisation of the resources available under the limitations of the policies of the government. The most outstanding feature of these plans was seen in the industrial expansion, particularly in the setting up of certain heavy and machine-buliding industries in the state sector. This gain was, however, possible only because of the steady and disinterested aid and support from the socialist countries, mainly from the Soviet Union. In addition, there has also been considerable expansion in transport, communication and power in the state sector.
17. Bourgeois-landlord government’s budgetary and general economic policies especially its taxation measures and price policy, are determined primarily from the point of view of the narrow stratum of the exploiting classes. Accordingly, colossal increase in indirect taxation and deficit financing which hit hard the common mass of people, is the main source for financing the plans and for meeting the financial costs of maintaining a huge bureaucratic, military, para-military and police machine. The government, in fact, relies on the profit motive for development and refuses to take any effective measure to hold the price-line. Inflation and rising prices constitute a powerful instrument for increasingly depriving the people of their share of the wealth, created by their labour, and also for its accumulation as capital in the hands of the private capitalists.
18. The financial institutions including the nationalised banks, Life Insurance Corporation and other special credit institutions created by the government have all served the interests of the private capitalist’s urge for aggrandisment of wealth. The advisory board of the Reserve Bank of India as well as investment committees of insurance corporation and other state run financial institutions are all packed with the representatives of big bourgeoisie. They are also controlling the credit institutions and functioning of many state sector undertakings. As a result, enormous growth of capital on the one hand and the interlocking of industrial and bank capital on the other have been rapidly developing, since independence.
19. Under the conditions prevailing in India at the dawn of independence, such heavy machine-building and other vital industries as have been built in the state sector, would not have otherwise come to fruition, for the private capital was not in a position to find the required resources for these huge industrial projects. The building of these undertaking in the state sector was, therefore, helpful in overcoming, to a certain extent, economic backwardness and the abject dependence on the imperialist monopolies, and in laying the bare technical base for industrialisation.
20. The state sector, or the public sector as it is otherwise called, can play a progressive role in an underdeveloped economy only if it is promoted along anti-imperialist, anti-monopolist, democratic lines. It reduces economic dependence, creates and strengthens the capital base for industrialisation. It could be an instrument for weakening and eliminating the hold of foreign capital and also for restricting and curbing the growth of monopolies. But the anti-people policies pursued by the government under the leadership of the big bourgeoisie, so far, has belied all such hopes. Increasing concentration of wealth and the rapid growth of Indian monopolies have remained a pronounced phenomenon to date. Penetration of huge foreign monopoly capital in both the state and private sectors continues uninterruptedly. The common people, workers, peasants and the middle classes have been subjected to ruthless exploitation and oppression in the name of financing plans. Although the ruling classes fervently flaunted the public sector as a proof of their intentions to build socialism in India, but actually at that time it was needed as an important instrument for building capitalism. Where as, since the adoption of structural adjustment programme and the new-economic-policies directed by the exigencies of globalisation and neo-liberalism, the process of dismemberment of the public sector as well as its privatisation has started, which would invarialy compromise the economic self-reliance of the country, whatever it there has been.
21. As a result of policies pursued by the government and by virtue of the fact that the big bourgeoisie heads the state, the influence of big business in our state sector has steadily grown, leading to increasing utilisation of it for further bolstering up big capitalists. The bulk of credit facilities from the financial institutions has gone to build them up still further. All major contracts under the plan and otherwise emanating from government go to big business. It is big business, again, that controls the distribution of the products of several state undertakings. Apart from the growing links between state capitalism and the monopolies, government under the drive for globallisation and neo-liberalism has invited capitalists including the foreign finance capital and foreign monopolists to participate in the share capital of state owned undertakings. This further distorts the growth of the public sector. Moreover, the state owned concerns are placed in the charge of bureaucrats who are anti-democratic and hostile to labour. State capitalism loses its progressive character and becomes a weapon in their hands if the influence of big business and the control of the bureaucrats grow in the public sector. Both these harmful tendencies dominated in the affairs of our state-owned industries and have already made several of the units redundent or uncompetitive in comparison to the undertakings owned by the monopolies/ M.N.Cs.
22. Contrary to the industrial policy resolution adopted by the rulers, the heavy and basic industries, which were exclusively reserved for the State sector, were subsequently allowed to be installed in private sector. To begin with, many of these industries already existing in the private sector such as Tata Iron and Steel etc. were allowed to expand their capacity in a big way, with huge financial and other forms of State assistance. But later on, with the fast growth of monopoly capital and due to its ever expanding ties with foreign monopolists, the Indian monopolists now feel fully competent to run all these key industries independently and in collaboration with their Foreign partners. Simultaneously, the govt. relaxed all the restrictions imposed through its industrial policy resolution for setting up new plants for heavy as well as security senstive industries and licences are being freely granted to the capitalists for investments in all the sectors.
23. While the government not only refused to eliminate the exploitation by the already entrenched British, American and other foreign finance capital but they also offered them liberal concessions, guarantees and new opportunities for fresh big inflow. In the name of building a so-called self-generating economy and overcoming foreign exchange shortage, which again was largely the creation of their policies, the Indian rulers have been inviting the monopolists of Britain, USA, West Germany, Itly, Japan and other developed countries to come and invest their capital in India and earn huge guaranteed profits. In addition to this, the rapid growth of U.S. investments in certain key sectors brings to fore the growing danger of American penetration into our economic and consequently political life.
24. Thus the capitalist industrialisation that the big bourgeois leadership of the state had launched upon with its five year plans and the building up of the state sector, paved the way for the growth of Indian big business and, together with it, the perpetuation of the plunder by the foreign monopolists, through continued exploitation of India’s cheap labour and other natural resources. Year after year, tens of crores of rupees have been pumped out of the country as profits, dividends, freight charge and under other visible and invisible heads. These exploiters have nothing in common with our national interests. Ruthless plunder of our resources is their sole concern. They help the growth of Indian big business and other reactionary forces in public life. They overtly and covertly work for undermining our economy and for distorting and slowing down its rate of growth. A dangerous source of anti-national intrigue and machinations, the role of this imperialist foreign capital is fundamentally opposed to the interests of our nation.
25. Thus, so far the government of India, instead of undertaking reorganisation of our agricultrue through radical agrarian reforms in the interests of peasantry and fully mobilising the resources from the foreign and Indian monopolists who have been generating their riches from the country, has imposed back-breaking burden upon the people in the name of development as well as in the name of protecting safety and integrity of the country . Despite the fact that the Indian capital has grown in volume, despite appreciable growth in GDP as well as in volume of foreign trade, despite spectacular development of productive forces in the I.T. sector, the most glaring fact of our economic life to-day is that the country’s economy as a whole is fast becoming subservient to the aid and assistance from the imperialist agencies and is catering to the predatory interests of the MNCs./TNCs.
26. With the introduction of structural adjustment and the so-called economic reforms since 1991 this subservience has further grown in almost all the sectors of economy to the extent that the planning as a whole has become a mockery. Almost all the sectors of Indian economy have been opened for the foreign direct investment as well for the free play of foreign financial parasites. The foreign finance capital is being extended concession after concession and dozens of collabration agreements between Indian and foreign capitalists are being facilitated day in and day out.
27. This constantly increasing penetration of foreign capital into our economy, by means of direct investment as well as through collaborations, constitute a serious danger to our country’s future and to our capacity to pursue independent politico-economic policies both internally as well as externally. It is this dismal situation that breeds extreme right reaction in the country which not only supports the more and more penetration of foreign finance capital in our country but also openly advocates military and strategic alliances with U.S. imperialism and total subservience to it in the economic sphere.
28. With the set back to socialism in Soviet Union and the consequent disintegration of socialist block the richest and the mightiest of the imperialists, the U.S.A. has become the biggest international exploiter, draining out the wealth from the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The .U.S. imperialists are working up to bring many states under their direct control, by resorting chiefly to the policy of military interventions, political destablisation and economic pressure. They resort to economic blockades etc. for pressurising the governments of these countries. They also resort to arm twisting for extending their economic exploitation and political hold on under developed countries. Thus, the American imperialism has become to-day the chief bulwark of neo-colonialism. International developments in the recent past especially the American attack on Afganistan and later on the Anglo-American attack on Iraq have fully established that the U.S. imperialism is the chief bulwark of world reaction, an international gendarme and has become the main enemy of the peoples of the whole world.
In these circumstances the penetration of American capital in India and our growing ties with it are creating a dangerous situation for our country. The imperialists are utilising it to wrest more and more concessions to exploit our natural resources, for establishing collaborations with Indian big business, for imposing their dictates through WTO and for putting pressure on political issues. They are also penetrating in other spheres of our national life including social, cultural and educational spheres. They are establishing direct contacts with different communal and right reactionary elements in our country. They are corrupting our social and cultural life, as is evidenced by the spread of decadent imperialist culture in our country. While our Party upholds the principle of free flow and exchange of modern scientific knowledge, art, literature and culture between different peoples and states of the world, it is firmly opposed to the import of decadent imperialist culture. The Indian government instead of consistently carrying forward the banner of revolt raised by our national liberation movement against the decadent western imperialist education and culture, has been virtually encouraging, by different means, the penetration and spread of reactionary western literature, art and films in our country. The so-called schemes of cultural exchanges are in fact utilised to forge systematic links with the western and particularly U.S. culture which in turn is adversely affecting the new generation of our people in their ideological, social and cultural outlook. All this has posed a serious threat to our social, economic and political life.
29. As our five year plans have solely relied on the private profit motive- and that too of Indian and foreign monopolists, these have failed to harness the patriotic enthusiasm of the masses. Consequently an intense desire to get rich quick was let loose on the community. Imperialist globalisation and consumerism have further whipped up this strong desire and have thus contributed in the emergence of increased social tension and crime. Through blackmarketing, tax evasions and other economic and financial crimes, thousands of crores of rupees have been earned and are continuing to be earned by big business, which again are utilised not for productive investment, but in speculation, on real estate and urban land and property, and in commodity trade. Huge accumulation of unaccounted money, commonly known as black money, is in circulation or in the hands of a few monopolist, bureaucrates, bourgeois politicians and gangsters, and has become the biggest source of rampant corruption, criminalisation of politics and nepotism which defy all attempts at eradication. These socio-political maladies, to-day, are posing the biggest danger to the development of democratic polity in the country.
30. Our experience of the last six decades demonstrates beyond a shadow of doubt that in the period of the general crisis of capitalism, particularly when it has entered into an acute stage and has become more bullish and aggressive, it is futile for the underdeveloped countries to seek to develop along the capitalist path. The possibilities of such a growth are very limited. Even the unprecedented progress in the fields of science and technology, especially in the fields of information technology, bio-technology and genetics, and the consequent huge addition in the volume of production of goods have miserably failed in mitigating this crisis of capitalism as well as the miseries of the masses. Now it is evidently seen that this moribund path cannot solve our basic problems of economic dependence and backwardness, of poverty and unemployment, rather it is bound to lead us towards a danger of neo-colonialism. It is also incapable of ensuring the fullest utilisation of the human and material resources of the country. It gives rise to ever growing contradictions between the working people and the ruling classes and is beset with imbalances and crises. While on the one hand it imposes unbearable burdens and inflicts misery on the common people, on the other it sharpens the appetite of the big business for super profits and intensifies their greed for money and mammon. Thus it gives the people no hope of a better future and brings them into an inevitable conflict with capitalist path of development.
III. BALANCE SHEET OF BOURGEOIS AGRARIAN POLICIES
31. In no other field is the utter failure of the bourgeois landlord government’s policies so nakedly revealed as in the case of the agrarian question. Nearly six decades of bourgeois rule has proved beyond any shadow of doubt that the aim and direction of its agrarian policies is not to smash the feudal and semi-feudal fetters on our land relations and thus liberate the peasantry from age-old bondage, but to transform the feudal landlords into capitalist landlords and to develop a stratum of rich peasants. They want to depend upon the landlord and rich peasant section to produce the surplus of agricultural products to meet the requirements of capitalist development. They are also cultivating these sections as the main political base of the ruling classes in the countryside.
32. The abolition of princely feudal states was carried out with the assurance of paying the ex-princes and their families huge privy purses to the tune of several crores of rupees annually, besides leaving in their hands all their plundered wealth and vast tracts of agricultural and forest lands. The legislative measures for abolishing intermediaries such as zamindars. Jaigirdars, inamdars, etc. deliberately permitted these intermediaries to retain big landed estates in the name of self cultivated lands and guaranteed colossal amounts of compensation to be paid to them. The abolition of these intermediary rights as well as privy purses, later on, were not followed by a free and automatic transfer of proprietary rights to the tillers of the soil. On the other hand, millions of tenants were either evicted outright, both legally and illegally, or were forced to purchase the land rights paying varying prices to landlords. Thus, crores of rupees paid to the ex-princes as privy purses, hundreds of crores of compensation paid to big intermediaries in instalments, and the vast sums of money the big landlords snatched away from the peasantry by selling the land-rights etc, deprived agriculture of the badly needed capital for production and also became a burden over the state, profiting only the idle landlord rich.
33. The tenancy laws, enacted for the ryotwari areas provided, first and foremost, for the so-called right of resumption of land under the pretext of self-cultivation from the possession of cultivating tenants. The depriving of these tenants of their legitimate rights, on one pretext or another, took away in itself all significance of the so-called fair-rent fixation, which in itself had been unfair in most cases. With large number of loopholes deliberately left in the legislations on the one hand and their half-hearted implementation by bureaucratic authorities dominated in by the landlord elements on the other, have actually led to the eviction and uprooting of millions of tenants from the land and is throwing them into the ranks of pauperised peasants and agricultural labourers.
34. Coming to the much-talked of legislations regarding ceiling on land holdings, these acts were so framed as to enable the big landholders either to preserve their holdings untouched or to merrily split them up through fictitious partition among their family members in such a manner as to make the ceiling law inapplicable to them. In most cases, ceiling itself is put high. Besides this, exemption of so-called efficiently managed farms, ‘garden lands’ and ‘pasture lands’ knocked the bottom out of those measures. It is not surprising that very little land was acquired applying these laws for distribution among the toiling peasantry. Whereas with the invent of agriculture machinery necessiating a changed land-use-pattern, strong pressure from the big landloards is gaining momentum for rolling back the land ceiling laws, whatever those are in existence. This impending danger will further speed up the process of alienation of small peasants from their lands. Under the impact of new trend representing corporate farming, now the Indian rulers have altogather shelved the concepts of land reforms.
35. Consolidation of land-holdings is another measure by which the bourgoisie-landloard rulers sought to increase agricultural production. This too, was attempted only in some states. Wherever it was implemented, the major gains went to the richer strata of land-owning classes. They were enabled to manoeuvre and secure the best available lands and the best sites at the expense of the poor and middle peasants.
36. Let alone acquiring landlords’ land for distribution to the tillers of the soil, the government has refused, in these long years, to distribute the bulk of cultivable waste lands to the agricultural labourers and poor peasants under one pretext or the other. Millions of acres of such lands are found in several states and several influential landlords and bureaucrats in different states still occupy them, depriving the deserving peasants from cultivating these lands. Wherever the poor peasants doggedly stick on to the cultivation of these waste lands, otherwise called banjars, heavy penalties are levied and collected from them year after year. In certain states, peasants especially tribals evicted from project sites and sites of industrial enterprises have not been provided with alternate land and have been forced to swell the ranks of landless labourers. Under the impact of imperialist globalisation, arable lands of peasants are being acquired in all parts of the country and are being handed over to the foreign companies as well as Indian monopoly houses in the name of industrial development. The peasants, thus, are being forcibly deprived of their lands.
37. The agricultural labourers with either no land or with small pieces of land, whose main livelihood is derived from selling their labour power, constitute the single biggest section in our rural life. Thanks to the agrarian and other policies of the government, during the past years their ranks have further swelled with millions of evicted tenants, ruined peasants and uprooted artisans. From amongst them, thousands work as farm servants under landlords and rich peasants on annual basis. Despite the loud talk indulged in by the spoksmen of the Central government about legislation fixing their minimum wages and other amenities since 1948, practically nothing effective has been done so far to improve their living conditions and protect them from the brutal exploitation and social oppression by the landlords. The so-called minimum wages legislations which were brought about in some states after years of promise and waiting are nothing but pieces of decoration for the statute book. The scale of wages and other conditions of work prescribed in these legislations are such that they are often much below the wage rates prevailing in the concerned areas and where higher rates have been fixed those have not been enforced, because no worthwhile admnistrative machinery has been developed anywhere, so for. The vast bulk of these labourers neither possess small house-sites nor a hut to live in. Nearly nine months in the year they are either completely unemployed or under employed. Several reports of the government and semi-governmental agencies clearly point out that their real wages are falling, their employment days are decreasing and their indebtedness and pauperisation are growing. Yet completely cold and callous attitude is being displayed towards their most genuine demand for comprehensive labour legislation at the national level. Without a radical change in their living conditions, it is unthinkable to change the face of our degraded rural life and unleash the productive forces in the agrarian sector.
38. The community development schemes and panchayat raj (panchayats, block samities and zilla parishads ) which the government had initiated, despite the limited social amenities and benefits the people can derive from them, have in the final analysis proved to be another device to extend and consolidate the rich peasant and landlord base of the ruling classes in the rural side. Consistent with its class policies, the government has mainly been giving the richer sections of the peasants and landholders direct finanical, technical and other aid almost to the exclusion of the other strata of cultivators and artisans. The bulk of the expenditure on the community development and national extension schemes has gone into the pockets of landlords, rich peasants and bureaucrates. Large sums were advanced to them as taccavi loans. Special agricultural loans were especially granted to them for the purchase of tractors, pump-sets, oil engines, other agricultural implements and for sinking tubewells. It is also they, who grab the lion’s share of the chemical manures, good quality seeds and other improved inputs distributed by the government.
39. Along with the so called green revolution, intensive farming and cultivation of cash crops, there has been rapid expansion of money economy in the rural areas. Forward trading and speculative holding of good grains, and other agricultural commodities have also grown enormously. Along with this the tightening of the grip of Indian and foreign monopolistic trading interests over agricultural produce and its inputs has rapidly grown, bringing in its wake intensification of exploitation of the peasants through unequal exchange, supply of costly as well as under-quality inputs and violent fluctuations in the prices of the agriculture products. As a result, the peasant is fleeced both as a seller of agricultural produce and as a purchaser of agricultural inputs as well as other industrial goods.
40. All this has also led to a considerable increase of usurious capital. Rural indebtedness, in our country, has grown by leaps and bounds. At the same time, it has been becoming increasingly difficult for the peasants to obtain credit for agricultural operations at normal rates of interest. Co-operative credit, government loans and bank credit all put together constitute but an infinitesimal proportion of total rural credit requirements and these are utilised mostly by the landlords and rich peasants. Whereas the middle and the poor peasents have to fall back upon commission agents (arhtias) and other private money lenders to meet with there credit requirments, who charge enormously high interest rates and enmesh the peasants in such a mortal debt-trap that ultimatly many of them have to part with their properties as well as land to get rid of their debt liabilities. Caught in such a deplorable situtation created by heavy debt burden, so far thousands of hapless peasents, finding no way out, have committed suicides in almost all those states who had been boasting of green revolution. Even then the Government has consistently refused to take adequate measures to scale down the enormous burden of rural indebtedness.
41. The complete bankruptcy of these agrarian policies has thrown the Indian agriculture in a full scale deep crisis. Despite spending thousands of crores of rupees on irrigation projects etc. in the earlier years, now there is almost no governmental investment in agriculture related infrastructure i.e. augumentation of irrigation facilities, agricultural research and marketing facilities etc. Consequently the production in agriculture, as a whole, is stagnating and even the per capita availability of food grains is decreasing sharply and a grave danger on the food front is looming large on our heads. But the government, at the behest of imperialists, is trumpeting crop-diversification in favour of cash crops and corporatisation of agriculture as the sole panacea for all agricultural ills; whereas it is also evident that if crop-diversification is adhered to, it will not only further fleece the unorganised, hapless and poor peasents and enrich the big business and MNCs dealing in seeds and other agricultural inputs but also will lead to the scarcity of foodgrains and also to the abject dependence upon other countries in this respect.
42. Today, after about six decades of independence and bourgeoisie rule with all its multitude of agrarian reform laws, concentration of land in the hands of big landlords remains intact as before.With the introduction of corporate farming under the National Agriculture Policy announced in 2000, land-holding scenario in the country will invariably further tilt towards the capitalist landloards and carporate magnets and consequently concentration of land in their hands will further increase. It is common knowledge that the breaking up of the land monopoly and the distribution of land gratis to the agricultural labourers and poor peasants and the abolition of their heavy debt burdens are the pre-requisites for unleashing the creative energy and labour enthusiasm of the millions of peasants. Only such radical land reforms can form the foundation for a tremendous expansion in agricultural production. Whereas, with the present agrarian relations, over thousands of crores of rupees find their way annually into the hands of the landlords and money-lenders by way of rent and interest payments which again are used not for productive purposes but for speculative trading and usurious money-lending. The abolition of these relations would thus provide an important source of capital for our industries and agriculture.
43. We cannot develop agriculture to a considerable extent and provide the country with adequate food and raw materials because the impoverished peasantry deprived of land is unable to purchase even the most elementary modern implements and necessary fertilisers in order to improve its farming.
We cannot develop our national industries and industrialise our country in a big way because the peasantry constituting seventy five per cent of the population is unable to buy even a minimum quantity of manufactured goods.
We cannot improve the conditions of the working class because hundreds of thousands of hungry people forced by poverty leave the countryside for towns, swarm the ‘labour market’, increase the army of unemployed and lower the ‘price of labour.’
We cannot rapidly work our way out of cultural backwardness because the poor and hungry peasants, constituting the majority of the population, are deprived of material means to give proper and quality education to their children.
Thus the agricultural and peasant problems are of primary importance to the life of our country and these still stand as the foremost national question.
11. After independence, the ruling bourgeoisie proceeded to develop the country’s economy on the lines of capitalism, to further strengthen its class position in society. But possessing neither the technical base of the heavy industry, nor a colonial empire whose loot gave the impertalists vast capital accumulation, the bourgeoisie employed the state power, it had won, for appropriating the fruits of labour of the common people for its own capital requirement and for developing the economy along the lines of capitalism. The economic policies of the Central government since independence have been consistently directed to this end.
12. The Indian bourgeoisie also counted on help from the British and American imperialists to realise its aims, the price of which was paid through protection of their interests from the popular anti-imperialist upheaval, which was gaining unprecedented sweep and strength by 1947.
13. But in the years after independence, the British and American imperialists, far from satisfying the needs of the Indian bourgeoisie, began to put various types of pressure in order to draw the new Indian state into their war plans, began to set afoot plans which would undermine even the political freedom that had been won. Despite repeated pleading by the bourgeoisie, the imperialists refused to help the building of a heavy industry, the basis of industrialistion. They forced the fritteting away of the huge sterling balances accumulated by India out of the toil and sweat of our people during the second world war. Under the pretext of helping to save foreign exchange, they imposed deals with foreign monopolists detrimental to our national interests, as in the case of oil refineries, ship-building, chemical industries, etc.. This stringent attitude of the imperialists forced the Indian bourgeoisie to seek aid from socialist countries especially from Soviet Union for building heavy industry. This disinterested aid from the socialist countries also proved to be extremely useful for the Indian government for bargaining with the imperialist monopolists.
14. Thus the dual character of the bourgeoisie which manifested itself during the years of the freedom struggle in the policy it pursued of mobilising the people against imperialism on the one hand and compromising with imperialism on the other, manifested itself in a new way after achievement of independence. Despite the continuance as well as growth of contradictions between imperialism and feudalism on the one hand and the people, including the bourgeoisie, on the other, and despite the new opportunities provided with the most useful aid and support from the socialist countries, the big bourgeoise heading the State did not decisively attack imperialism and feudalism, so as to eliminate them. Rather it sought to utilise its hold over the state and the new opportunities to strengthen its position by attacking the people on the one hand and on the other, to resolve the conflicts and contradictions with imperialism and feudalism by pressure, bargain and compromise. In this process, it forged strong links with foreign finance capital and monopolists and has been continuously sharing power with the landlords. While not hesitating, in the begining to utilise the easily available socialist aid, for setting up certain heavy industrial projects, to bargain with the imperialists and also to build itself up, it has ultimately reached the stage of becoming a strong votary of the imperialist globalisation and neoliberalism, and is increasingly opening up the Indian economy for the loot and plunder by MNCs. It has, thus, fully exposed its anti-people character and has become a big road-block in the completion of anti-feudal and anti-imperialist democratic tasks of the Indian revolution.
15. The economic planning that the government resorted to as a part of its effort to build capitalism had nothing to do with socialist planning. Only an insignificant part of our economy had been taken under the State sector whereas vast fields of industrial, commercial and other activities have remained under private enterprise. In fact the bourgeois attempts at capitalist planning come up against the spontaneous laws of capitalism and in the ultimate analysis genuine economic planning and capitalism are irreconciliable and they do not go together to an appreciable length. That is why our five year plans have failed in mobilising our total material and man-power resources for the all round development of the society and have mainly relied on the profit motive of the exploiting classes.
16. However, economic planning in an under-developed country like India, backed by the state power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, certainly gives capitalist economic development a definite tempo and direction by facilitating more expedient utilisation of the resources available under the limitations of the policies of the government. The most outstanding feature of these plans was seen in the industrial expansion, particularly in the setting up of certain heavy and machine-buliding industries in the state sector. This gain was, however, possible only because of the steady and disinterested aid and support from the socialist countries, mainly from the Soviet Union. In addition, there has also been considerable expansion in transport, communication and power in the state sector.
17. Bourgeois-landlord government’s budgetary and general economic policies especially its taxation measures and price policy, are determined primarily from the point of view of the narrow stratum of the exploiting classes. Accordingly, colossal increase in indirect taxation and deficit financing which hit hard the common mass of people, is the main source for financing the plans and for meeting the financial costs of maintaining a huge bureaucratic, military, para-military and police machine. The government, in fact, relies on the profit motive for development and refuses to take any effective measure to hold the price-line. Inflation and rising prices constitute a powerful instrument for increasingly depriving the people of their share of the wealth, created by their labour, and also for its accumulation as capital in the hands of the private capitalists.
18. The financial institutions including the nationalised banks, Life Insurance Corporation and other special credit institutions created by the government have all served the interests of the private capitalist’s urge for aggrandisment of wealth. The advisory board of the Reserve Bank of India as well as investment committees of insurance corporation and other state run financial institutions are all packed with the representatives of big bourgeoisie. They are also controlling the credit institutions and functioning of many state sector undertakings. As a result, enormous growth of capital on the one hand and the interlocking of industrial and bank capital on the other have been rapidly developing, since independence.
19. Under the conditions prevailing in India at the dawn of independence, such heavy machine-building and other vital industries as have been built in the state sector, would not have otherwise come to fruition, for the private capital was not in a position to find the required resources for these huge industrial projects. The building of these undertaking in the state sector was, therefore, helpful in overcoming, to a certain extent, economic backwardness and the abject dependence on the imperialist monopolies, and in laying the bare technical base for industrialisation.
20. The state sector, or the public sector as it is otherwise called, can play a progressive role in an underdeveloped economy only if it is promoted along anti-imperialist, anti-monopolist, democratic lines. It reduces economic dependence, creates and strengthens the capital base for industrialisation. It could be an instrument for weakening and eliminating the hold of foreign capital and also for restricting and curbing the growth of monopolies. But the anti-people policies pursued by the government under the leadership of the big bourgeoisie, so far, has belied all such hopes. Increasing concentration of wealth and the rapid growth of Indian monopolies have remained a pronounced phenomenon to date. Penetration of huge foreign monopoly capital in both the state and private sectors continues uninterruptedly. The common people, workers, peasants and the middle classes have been subjected to ruthless exploitation and oppression in the name of financing plans. Although the ruling classes fervently flaunted the public sector as a proof of their intentions to build socialism in India, but actually at that time it was needed as an important instrument for building capitalism. Where as, since the adoption of structural adjustment programme and the new-economic-policies directed by the exigencies of globalisation and neo-liberalism, the process of dismemberment of the public sector as well as its privatisation has started, which would invarialy compromise the economic self-reliance of the country, whatever it there has been.
21. As a result of policies pursued by the government and by virtue of the fact that the big bourgeoisie heads the state, the influence of big business in our state sector has steadily grown, leading to increasing utilisation of it for further bolstering up big capitalists. The bulk of credit facilities from the financial institutions has gone to build them up still further. All major contracts under the plan and otherwise emanating from government go to big business. It is big business, again, that controls the distribution of the products of several state undertakings. Apart from the growing links between state capitalism and the monopolies, government under the drive for globallisation and neo-liberalism has invited capitalists including the foreign finance capital and foreign monopolists to participate in the share capital of state owned undertakings. This further distorts the growth of the public sector. Moreover, the state owned concerns are placed in the charge of bureaucrats who are anti-democratic and hostile to labour. State capitalism loses its progressive character and becomes a weapon in their hands if the influence of big business and the control of the bureaucrats grow in the public sector. Both these harmful tendencies dominated in the affairs of our state-owned industries and have already made several of the units redundent or uncompetitive in comparison to the undertakings owned by the monopolies/ M.N.Cs.
22. Contrary to the industrial policy resolution adopted by the rulers, the heavy and basic industries, which were exclusively reserved for the State sector, were subsequently allowed to be installed in private sector. To begin with, many of these industries already existing in the private sector such as Tata Iron and Steel etc. were allowed to expand their capacity in a big way, with huge financial and other forms of State assistance. But later on, with the fast growth of monopoly capital and due to its ever expanding ties with foreign monopolists, the Indian monopolists now feel fully competent to run all these key industries independently and in collaboration with their Foreign partners. Simultaneously, the govt. relaxed all the restrictions imposed through its industrial policy resolution for setting up new plants for heavy as well as security senstive industries and licences are being freely granted to the capitalists for investments in all the sectors.
23. While the government not only refused to eliminate the exploitation by the already entrenched British, American and other foreign finance capital but they also offered them liberal concessions, guarantees and new opportunities for fresh big inflow. In the name of building a so-called self-generating economy and overcoming foreign exchange shortage, which again was largely the creation of their policies, the Indian rulers have been inviting the monopolists of Britain, USA, West Germany, Itly, Japan and other developed countries to come and invest their capital in India and earn huge guaranteed profits. In addition to this, the rapid growth of U.S. investments in certain key sectors brings to fore the growing danger of American penetration into our economic and consequently political life.
24. Thus the capitalist industrialisation that the big bourgeois leadership of the state had launched upon with its five year plans and the building up of the state sector, paved the way for the growth of Indian big business and, together with it, the perpetuation of the plunder by the foreign monopolists, through continued exploitation of India’s cheap labour and other natural resources. Year after year, tens of crores of rupees have been pumped out of the country as profits, dividends, freight charge and under other visible and invisible heads. These exploiters have nothing in common with our national interests. Ruthless plunder of our resources is their sole concern. They help the growth of Indian big business and other reactionary forces in public life. They overtly and covertly work for undermining our economy and for distorting and slowing down its rate of growth. A dangerous source of anti-national intrigue and machinations, the role of this imperialist foreign capital is fundamentally opposed to the interests of our nation.
25. Thus, so far the government of India, instead of undertaking reorganisation of our agricultrue through radical agrarian reforms in the interests of peasantry and fully mobilising the resources from the foreign and Indian monopolists who have been generating their riches from the country, has imposed back-breaking burden upon the people in the name of development as well as in the name of protecting safety and integrity of the country . Despite the fact that the Indian capital has grown in volume, despite appreciable growth in GDP as well as in volume of foreign trade, despite spectacular development of productive forces in the I.T. sector, the most glaring fact of our economic life to-day is that the country’s economy as a whole is fast becoming subservient to the aid and assistance from the imperialist agencies and is catering to the predatory interests of the MNCs./TNCs.
26. With the introduction of structural adjustment and the so-called economic reforms since 1991 this subservience has further grown in almost all the sectors of economy to the extent that the planning as a whole has become a mockery. Almost all the sectors of Indian economy have been opened for the foreign direct investment as well for the free play of foreign financial parasites. The foreign finance capital is being extended concession after concession and dozens of collabration agreements between Indian and foreign capitalists are being facilitated day in and day out.
27. This constantly increasing penetration of foreign capital into our economy, by means of direct investment as well as through collaborations, constitute a serious danger to our country’s future and to our capacity to pursue independent politico-economic policies both internally as well as externally. It is this dismal situation that breeds extreme right reaction in the country which not only supports the more and more penetration of foreign finance capital in our country but also openly advocates military and strategic alliances with U.S. imperialism and total subservience to it in the economic sphere.
28. With the set back to socialism in Soviet Union and the consequent disintegration of socialist block the richest and the mightiest of the imperialists, the U.S.A. has become the biggest international exploiter, draining out the wealth from the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The .U.S. imperialists are working up to bring many states under their direct control, by resorting chiefly to the policy of military interventions, political destablisation and economic pressure. They resort to economic blockades etc. for pressurising the governments of these countries. They also resort to arm twisting for extending their economic exploitation and political hold on under developed countries. Thus, the American imperialism has become to-day the chief bulwark of neo-colonialism. International developments in the recent past especially the American attack on Afganistan and later on the Anglo-American attack on Iraq have fully established that the U.S. imperialism is the chief bulwark of world reaction, an international gendarme and has become the main enemy of the peoples of the whole world.
In these circumstances the penetration of American capital in India and our growing ties with it are creating a dangerous situation for our country. The imperialists are utilising it to wrest more and more concessions to exploit our natural resources, for establishing collaborations with Indian big business, for imposing their dictates through WTO and for putting pressure on political issues. They are also penetrating in other spheres of our national life including social, cultural and educational spheres. They are establishing direct contacts with different communal and right reactionary elements in our country. They are corrupting our social and cultural life, as is evidenced by the spread of decadent imperialist culture in our country. While our Party upholds the principle of free flow and exchange of modern scientific knowledge, art, literature and culture between different peoples and states of the world, it is firmly opposed to the import of decadent imperialist culture. The Indian government instead of consistently carrying forward the banner of revolt raised by our national liberation movement against the decadent western imperialist education and culture, has been virtually encouraging, by different means, the penetration and spread of reactionary western literature, art and films in our country. The so-called schemes of cultural exchanges are in fact utilised to forge systematic links with the western and particularly U.S. culture which in turn is adversely affecting the new generation of our people in their ideological, social and cultural outlook. All this has posed a serious threat to our social, economic and political life.
29. As our five year plans have solely relied on the private profit motive- and that too of Indian and foreign monopolists, these have failed to harness the patriotic enthusiasm of the masses. Consequently an intense desire to get rich quick was let loose on the community. Imperialist globalisation and consumerism have further whipped up this strong desire and have thus contributed in the emergence of increased social tension and crime. Through blackmarketing, tax evasions and other economic and financial crimes, thousands of crores of rupees have been earned and are continuing to be earned by big business, which again are utilised not for productive investment, but in speculation, on real estate and urban land and property, and in commodity trade. Huge accumulation of unaccounted money, commonly known as black money, is in circulation or in the hands of a few monopolist, bureaucrates, bourgeois politicians and gangsters, and has become the biggest source of rampant corruption, criminalisation of politics and nepotism which defy all attempts at eradication. These socio-political maladies, to-day, are posing the biggest danger to the development of democratic polity in the country.
30. Our experience of the last six decades demonstrates beyond a shadow of doubt that in the period of the general crisis of capitalism, particularly when it has entered into an acute stage and has become more bullish and aggressive, it is futile for the underdeveloped countries to seek to develop along the capitalist path. The possibilities of such a growth are very limited. Even the unprecedented progress in the fields of science and technology, especially in the fields of information technology, bio-technology and genetics, and the consequent huge addition in the volume of production of goods have miserably failed in mitigating this crisis of capitalism as well as the miseries of the masses. Now it is evidently seen that this moribund path cannot solve our basic problems of economic dependence and backwardness, of poverty and unemployment, rather it is bound to lead us towards a danger of neo-colonialism. It is also incapable of ensuring the fullest utilisation of the human and material resources of the country. It gives rise to ever growing contradictions between the working people and the ruling classes and is beset with imbalances and crises. While on the one hand it imposes unbearable burdens and inflicts misery on the common people, on the other it sharpens the appetite of the big business for super profits and intensifies their greed for money and mammon. Thus it gives the people no hope of a better future and brings them into an inevitable conflict with capitalist path of development.
III. BALANCE SHEET OF BOURGEOIS AGRARIAN POLICIES
31. In no other field is the utter failure of the bourgeois landlord government’s policies so nakedly revealed as in the case of the agrarian question. Nearly six decades of bourgeois rule has proved beyond any shadow of doubt that the aim and direction of its agrarian policies is not to smash the feudal and semi-feudal fetters on our land relations and thus liberate the peasantry from age-old bondage, but to transform the feudal landlords into capitalist landlords and to develop a stratum of rich peasants. They want to depend upon the landlord and rich peasant section to produce the surplus of agricultural products to meet the requirements of capitalist development. They are also cultivating these sections as the main political base of the ruling classes in the countryside.
32. The abolition of princely feudal states was carried out with the assurance of paying the ex-princes and their families huge privy purses to the tune of several crores of rupees annually, besides leaving in their hands all their plundered wealth and vast tracts of agricultural and forest lands. The legislative measures for abolishing intermediaries such as zamindars. Jaigirdars, inamdars, etc. deliberately permitted these intermediaries to retain big landed estates in the name of self cultivated lands and guaranteed colossal amounts of compensation to be paid to them. The abolition of these intermediary rights as well as privy purses, later on, were not followed by a free and automatic transfer of proprietary rights to the tillers of the soil. On the other hand, millions of tenants were either evicted outright, both legally and illegally, or were forced to purchase the land rights paying varying prices to landlords. Thus, crores of rupees paid to the ex-princes as privy purses, hundreds of crores of compensation paid to big intermediaries in instalments, and the vast sums of money the big landlords snatched away from the peasantry by selling the land-rights etc, deprived agriculture of the badly needed capital for production and also became a burden over the state, profiting only the idle landlord rich.
33. The tenancy laws, enacted for the ryotwari areas provided, first and foremost, for the so-called right of resumption of land under the pretext of self-cultivation from the possession of cultivating tenants. The depriving of these tenants of their legitimate rights, on one pretext or another, took away in itself all significance of the so-called fair-rent fixation, which in itself had been unfair in most cases. With large number of loopholes deliberately left in the legislations on the one hand and their half-hearted implementation by bureaucratic authorities dominated in by the landlord elements on the other, have actually led to the eviction and uprooting of millions of tenants from the land and is throwing them into the ranks of pauperised peasants and agricultural labourers.
34. Coming to the much-talked of legislations regarding ceiling on land holdings, these acts were so framed as to enable the big landholders either to preserve their holdings untouched or to merrily split them up through fictitious partition among their family members in such a manner as to make the ceiling law inapplicable to them. In most cases, ceiling itself is put high. Besides this, exemption of so-called efficiently managed farms, ‘garden lands’ and ‘pasture lands’ knocked the bottom out of those measures. It is not surprising that very little land was acquired applying these laws for distribution among the toiling peasantry. Whereas with the invent of agriculture machinery necessiating a changed land-use-pattern, strong pressure from the big landloards is gaining momentum for rolling back the land ceiling laws, whatever those are in existence. This impending danger will further speed up the process of alienation of small peasants from their lands. Under the impact of new trend representing corporate farming, now the Indian rulers have altogather shelved the concepts of land reforms.
35. Consolidation of land-holdings is another measure by which the bourgoisie-landloard rulers sought to increase agricultural production. This too, was attempted only in some states. Wherever it was implemented, the major gains went to the richer strata of land-owning classes. They were enabled to manoeuvre and secure the best available lands and the best sites at the expense of the poor and middle peasants.
36. Let alone acquiring landlords’ land for distribution to the tillers of the soil, the government has refused, in these long years, to distribute the bulk of cultivable waste lands to the agricultural labourers and poor peasants under one pretext or the other. Millions of acres of such lands are found in several states and several influential landlords and bureaucrats in different states still occupy them, depriving the deserving peasants from cultivating these lands. Wherever the poor peasants doggedly stick on to the cultivation of these waste lands, otherwise called banjars, heavy penalties are levied and collected from them year after year. In certain states, peasants especially tribals evicted from project sites and sites of industrial enterprises have not been provided with alternate land and have been forced to swell the ranks of landless labourers. Under the impact of imperialist globalisation, arable lands of peasants are being acquired in all parts of the country and are being handed over to the foreign companies as well as Indian monopoly houses in the name of industrial development. The peasants, thus, are being forcibly deprived of their lands.
37. The agricultural labourers with either no land or with small pieces of land, whose main livelihood is derived from selling their labour power, constitute the single biggest section in our rural life. Thanks to the agrarian and other policies of the government, during the past years their ranks have further swelled with millions of evicted tenants, ruined peasants and uprooted artisans. From amongst them, thousands work as farm servants under landlords and rich peasants on annual basis. Despite the loud talk indulged in by the spoksmen of the Central government about legislation fixing their minimum wages and other amenities since 1948, practically nothing effective has been done so far to improve their living conditions and protect them from the brutal exploitation and social oppression by the landlords. The so-called minimum wages legislations which were brought about in some states after years of promise and waiting are nothing but pieces of decoration for the statute book. The scale of wages and other conditions of work prescribed in these legislations are such that they are often much below the wage rates prevailing in the concerned areas and where higher rates have been fixed those have not been enforced, because no worthwhile admnistrative machinery has been developed anywhere, so for. The vast bulk of these labourers neither possess small house-sites nor a hut to live in. Nearly nine months in the year they are either completely unemployed or under employed. Several reports of the government and semi-governmental agencies clearly point out that their real wages are falling, their employment days are decreasing and their indebtedness and pauperisation are growing. Yet completely cold and callous attitude is being displayed towards their most genuine demand for comprehensive labour legislation at the national level. Without a radical change in their living conditions, it is unthinkable to change the face of our degraded rural life and unleash the productive forces in the agrarian sector.
38. The community development schemes and panchayat raj (panchayats, block samities and zilla parishads ) which the government had initiated, despite the limited social amenities and benefits the people can derive from them, have in the final analysis proved to be another device to extend and consolidate the rich peasant and landlord base of the ruling classes in the rural side. Consistent with its class policies, the government has mainly been giving the richer sections of the peasants and landholders direct finanical, technical and other aid almost to the exclusion of the other strata of cultivators and artisans. The bulk of the expenditure on the community development and national extension schemes has gone into the pockets of landlords, rich peasants and bureaucrates. Large sums were advanced to them as taccavi loans. Special agricultural loans were especially granted to them for the purchase of tractors, pump-sets, oil engines, other agricultural implements and for sinking tubewells. It is also they, who grab the lion’s share of the chemical manures, good quality seeds and other improved inputs distributed by the government.
39. Along with the so called green revolution, intensive farming and cultivation of cash crops, there has been rapid expansion of money economy in the rural areas. Forward trading and speculative holding of good grains, and other agricultural commodities have also grown enormously. Along with this the tightening of the grip of Indian and foreign monopolistic trading interests over agricultural produce and its inputs has rapidly grown, bringing in its wake intensification of exploitation of the peasants through unequal exchange, supply of costly as well as under-quality inputs and violent fluctuations in the prices of the agriculture products. As a result, the peasant is fleeced both as a seller of agricultural produce and as a purchaser of agricultural inputs as well as other industrial goods.
40. All this has also led to a considerable increase of usurious capital. Rural indebtedness, in our country, has grown by leaps and bounds. At the same time, it has been becoming increasingly difficult for the peasants to obtain credit for agricultural operations at normal rates of interest. Co-operative credit, government loans and bank credit all put together constitute but an infinitesimal proportion of total rural credit requirements and these are utilised mostly by the landlords and rich peasants. Whereas the middle and the poor peasents have to fall back upon commission agents (arhtias) and other private money lenders to meet with there credit requirments, who charge enormously high interest rates and enmesh the peasants in such a mortal debt-trap that ultimatly many of them have to part with their properties as well as land to get rid of their debt liabilities. Caught in such a deplorable situtation created by heavy debt burden, so far thousands of hapless peasents, finding no way out, have committed suicides in almost all those states who had been boasting of green revolution. Even then the Government has consistently refused to take adequate measures to scale down the enormous burden of rural indebtedness.
41. The complete bankruptcy of these agrarian policies has thrown the Indian agriculture in a full scale deep crisis. Despite spending thousands of crores of rupees on irrigation projects etc. in the earlier years, now there is almost no governmental investment in agriculture related infrastructure i.e. augumentation of irrigation facilities, agricultural research and marketing facilities etc. Consequently the production in agriculture, as a whole, is stagnating and even the per capita availability of food grains is decreasing sharply and a grave danger on the food front is looming large on our heads. But the government, at the behest of imperialists, is trumpeting crop-diversification in favour of cash crops and corporatisation of agriculture as the sole panacea for all agricultural ills; whereas it is also evident that if crop-diversification is adhered to, it will not only further fleece the unorganised, hapless and poor peasents and enrich the big business and MNCs dealing in seeds and other agricultural inputs but also will lead to the scarcity of foodgrains and also to the abject dependence upon other countries in this respect.
42. Today, after about six decades of independence and bourgeoisie rule with all its multitude of agrarian reform laws, concentration of land in the hands of big landlords remains intact as before.With the introduction of corporate farming under the National Agriculture Policy announced in 2000, land-holding scenario in the country will invariably further tilt towards the capitalist landloards and carporate magnets and consequently concentration of land in their hands will further increase. It is common knowledge that the breaking up of the land monopoly and the distribution of land gratis to the agricultural labourers and poor peasants and the abolition of their heavy debt burdens are the pre-requisites for unleashing the creative energy and labour enthusiasm of the millions of peasants. Only such radical land reforms can form the foundation for a tremendous expansion in agricultural production. Whereas, with the present agrarian relations, over thousands of crores of rupees find their way annually into the hands of the landlords and money-lenders by way of rent and interest payments which again are used not for productive purposes but for speculative trading and usurious money-lending. The abolition of these relations would thus provide an important source of capital for our industries and agriculture.
43. We cannot develop agriculture to a considerable extent and provide the country with adequate food and raw materials because the impoverished peasantry deprived of land is unable to purchase even the most elementary modern implements and necessary fertilisers in order to improve its farming.
We cannot develop our national industries and industrialise our country in a big way because the peasantry constituting seventy five per cent of the population is unable to buy even a minimum quantity of manufactured goods.
We cannot improve the conditions of the working class because hundreds of thousands of hungry people forced by poverty leave the countryside for towns, swarm the ‘labour market’, increase the army of unemployed and lower the ‘price of labour.’
We cannot rapidly work our way out of cultural backwardness because the poor and hungry peasants, constituting the majority of the population, are deprived of material means to give proper and quality education to their children.
Thus the agricultural and peasant problems are of primary importance to the life of our country and these still stand as the foremost national question.
IV. FOREIGN POLICY
44. The foreign policy of any state and its government, in the final
analysis, is nothing but the projection of its internal policy and it
reflects,in the main, the interests of the class or classes that head
the government and the state in question. The foreign policy of the
government of India naturally reflects the dual character of our
bourgeoisie, of opposition to as well as compromise and collaboration
with imperialism. Unlike the monopolist bourgeoisie, of the imperialist
countries, the indian bourgeoisie, for its very development needs world
peace and is hence opposed to world war. Earlierly when the world was
sharply divided between the war-camp of imperialism on the one hand and
the peace-camp of socialism on the other and faced with the situation
when the imperialist camp headed by th USA launched its schemes of
forging aggressive military alliances in order to bring different
countries under its control, the government of India embarked upon the
policy of neutrality or non-alignment to defend and safeguard the
newly-won political independence of this country and to advance its own
class interests. In pursuit of this policy, it sought to utilise the
contradictions between the camps of imperialism and socialism as well as
the contradictions and conflicts between the U.S. and British
imperialists. Under the same policy the government of India interpreted
the policy of non-alignment and neutrality differently at different
phases, dependeing upon its immediate class interests. However, since
the dismemberment of socialist block and the world becoming a unipolar
one, the Indian government has sharpely moved towards the U.S.
imperialism unabashedly betraying the cause of non-alignment and
neutrality as well as the interests of the underdeveloped and developing
countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Although it still tries to
utilise the inter-imperialist contradictions for the promotion of its
class interests but building a closer co-operation and developing
strategic ties with the U.S.A.. is at present the dominant feature of
its foreign policy.
45. Even in the early period after independence, while it was looking to the imperialists, and particularly the USA, for its industrial development, when it had full faith in the invincibility of U.S. arms, the Government of India exhibited marked tendencies of succumbing to the blackmail of the imperialist camp and leaned heavily on it. The allowing of camps on Indian soil for the recruitment by the British imperialists of Gurkhas for the suppression of the Malayan war of independence, the granting of facilities for the French imperialist planes on Indian bases on their way to fight against the Democratic Rapublic of Vietnam, the sending of help, even though nominal medical aid, to the American troops in Korea, the hesitation to accept the offered aid for industrial development from the Soviet Union-were all clear indications of this trend. It was in this phase that India generally sided with the western bloc in the U.N.-a fact openly and pointedly stated by India’s representative in the U.N.-including the war of agression launched against the Democratic Republic of Korea by the USA under the signboard of the U.N. and the resolution branding North Korea as an aggressor.
46. But later on, with the debacle of imperialist arms in Korea and Vietnam, with the growth in the economic and military might of the socialist world and the breaking of western, chiefly U.S., monopoly of nuclear weapons, with the new unprecedented upsurge in the liberation struggles in Asia and Africa, all of which further altered the world balance of forces in favour of socialism, peace and national independence, with disillusionment in its hopes of getting massive aid for industrial development from the imperialists, with the growing possibilties of receiving from socialist countries’ disinterested aid for building industries of key importance, with the growth of the peace movement and mass radicalisation inside the country as revealed in the first general elections, and with the conclusion of the U.S. Pakistan agreement to enter into the SEATO military bloc with a view to pressurising India, began a new phase in the Government of India’s policy of non-alignment. This was the phase when the government came out against military blocs, against imperialist aggression, in support of peoples’ struggles against colonialism, for prohibition of nuclear weapons and disarmament, and for Afro-Asian solidarity. This was seen in India’s role in the conclusion of peace in Korea, its participation and active role in the Geneva conference for the conclusion of the agreements of Vietnam, Laos and Combodia, in the signing of the Sino-India treaty on Tibet embodying the five principles of peaceful coexistence, and in its role in the Bandung conference of Afro-Asian countries.
This new anti-imperialist content given to the policy of non-alignment, played a positive role in international developments. It ranged India more solidly against the policies of war and nuclear diplomacy, for peaceful solution of international disputes and for peaceful coexistence. India’s own relation with the socialist countries became closer and more cordial and her international prestige rose, particularly in the countries of Asia and Africa.
47. Begining from about the year, 1958, howerver, the foreign policy of the government of India has passed through a new phase of balancing between two blocks-imperialist and socialist. Its role in the Congo, its refusal to recognise the Algerian provisional government, its refusal to take a forthright and firm stand on several anti-colonial issues, its equivocal role as chairman at the international commission in Vietnam and Laos, its stand at the Belgrade conference of non-aligned powers in 1961 which put India in opposition to most of the Afro-Asian countries, its role in the Cairo conference of non-aligned states and its approving recognition of imperialist-inspired Malaysia were all evidences of this new phase.
48. It is noteworthy that several countries of Asia and Africa which shook off their colonial yoke after India attained independence, had taken a forthright and consistently anti-imperialist stand on these and similar issues. At a time when the world situation had become more favourable than ever due to the growing might of the socialist camp and the attainment of freedom by many countries of Africa and the upsurge of the freedom movement in the Latin American countries, one would have expected that the government of independent India would have carried forward the policy of non-alignment, peace, and anti-colonialism in a more determined manner. But, just the contrary had happened.
49. The growth of monopolies and big business in India and their growing links with imperialist monopolies, which were actively encouraged by the government, the increasing reliance of its five-year plans on aid from the U.S.A. and other western countries as well as imperialist agencies such as I.M.F. and World Bank, government’s inability to solve the basic problems facing the Indian people and the growth and accentuation of social contradictions within the country due to the economic policies of the government-all this have a tremendous bearing on all the policies of the government, foreign policy being no exception. The above phases in the government of India’s foreign policy were a result precisely of those developments and arose from the very class character of the government. The increasing reliance on imperialist aid had enabled the Anglo-American imperialists to increasingly interfere in the dispute with Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir.
50. The border dispute with China leading to a border war between the two biggest states in Asia further accentuated the shift towards imperialist block in the government of India’s foreign policy. But the Bangla Desh crisis in 1971 proved to be the turning point in its policy, and the Indian government developed very close relations with the socialist camp, especially Soviet Union which solidly stood behind India.
51. However, as the economic crisis in the country aggravated in the eighties, and aid from imperilist agencies to overcome the balance of payments crisis was immediately needed, again there was a marked shift in the foreign policy towards U.S.A..
52. Evidently, neither the policy of non-alignment nor its genuine implementation could be taken for granted with the big bourgeoisie leading the state and the government and pursuing anti-people policies. More over, with the adoption of new economic approach from 1991, coupled with simultaneous dismemberment of socialist camp, the foreign policy of non-alignment has been seriously jeopardised and is constanly getting emasculated. With the tightening of the grip of imperialist monopoly capital over the economy of our country, the government of India is fast shedding the stance of taking independent positions in internationl affairs and in opposing the hegemonic designs of U.S. imperialists. With the signing of strategic defence and nucler deals with U.S.A., the government has almost mortagaged its policy of non alignment and neutrality.
Hence, it has become a paramount need to mobilise the patriotic masses of India to defend the elements of independence and neutrality in the foreign policy, to oppose the aggressive designs of the imperialists and to build close fraternal relations with China, Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and other developing and under-developed democratic countries of the world.
45. Even in the early period after independence, while it was looking to the imperialists, and particularly the USA, for its industrial development, when it had full faith in the invincibility of U.S. arms, the Government of India exhibited marked tendencies of succumbing to the blackmail of the imperialist camp and leaned heavily on it. The allowing of camps on Indian soil for the recruitment by the British imperialists of Gurkhas for the suppression of the Malayan war of independence, the granting of facilities for the French imperialist planes on Indian bases on their way to fight against the Democratic Rapublic of Vietnam, the sending of help, even though nominal medical aid, to the American troops in Korea, the hesitation to accept the offered aid for industrial development from the Soviet Union-were all clear indications of this trend. It was in this phase that India generally sided with the western bloc in the U.N.-a fact openly and pointedly stated by India’s representative in the U.N.-including the war of agression launched against the Democratic Republic of Korea by the USA under the signboard of the U.N. and the resolution branding North Korea as an aggressor.
46. But later on, with the debacle of imperialist arms in Korea and Vietnam, with the growth in the economic and military might of the socialist world and the breaking of western, chiefly U.S., monopoly of nuclear weapons, with the new unprecedented upsurge in the liberation struggles in Asia and Africa, all of which further altered the world balance of forces in favour of socialism, peace and national independence, with disillusionment in its hopes of getting massive aid for industrial development from the imperialists, with the growing possibilties of receiving from socialist countries’ disinterested aid for building industries of key importance, with the growth of the peace movement and mass radicalisation inside the country as revealed in the first general elections, and with the conclusion of the U.S. Pakistan agreement to enter into the SEATO military bloc with a view to pressurising India, began a new phase in the Government of India’s policy of non-alignment. This was the phase when the government came out against military blocs, against imperialist aggression, in support of peoples’ struggles against colonialism, for prohibition of nuclear weapons and disarmament, and for Afro-Asian solidarity. This was seen in India’s role in the conclusion of peace in Korea, its participation and active role in the Geneva conference for the conclusion of the agreements of Vietnam, Laos and Combodia, in the signing of the Sino-India treaty on Tibet embodying the five principles of peaceful coexistence, and in its role in the Bandung conference of Afro-Asian countries.
This new anti-imperialist content given to the policy of non-alignment, played a positive role in international developments. It ranged India more solidly against the policies of war and nuclear diplomacy, for peaceful solution of international disputes and for peaceful coexistence. India’s own relation with the socialist countries became closer and more cordial and her international prestige rose, particularly in the countries of Asia and Africa.
47. Begining from about the year, 1958, howerver, the foreign policy of the government of India has passed through a new phase of balancing between two blocks-imperialist and socialist. Its role in the Congo, its refusal to recognise the Algerian provisional government, its refusal to take a forthright and firm stand on several anti-colonial issues, its equivocal role as chairman at the international commission in Vietnam and Laos, its stand at the Belgrade conference of non-aligned powers in 1961 which put India in opposition to most of the Afro-Asian countries, its role in the Cairo conference of non-aligned states and its approving recognition of imperialist-inspired Malaysia were all evidences of this new phase.
48. It is noteworthy that several countries of Asia and Africa which shook off their colonial yoke after India attained independence, had taken a forthright and consistently anti-imperialist stand on these and similar issues. At a time when the world situation had become more favourable than ever due to the growing might of the socialist camp and the attainment of freedom by many countries of Africa and the upsurge of the freedom movement in the Latin American countries, one would have expected that the government of independent India would have carried forward the policy of non-alignment, peace, and anti-colonialism in a more determined manner. But, just the contrary had happened.
49. The growth of monopolies and big business in India and their growing links with imperialist monopolies, which were actively encouraged by the government, the increasing reliance of its five-year plans on aid from the U.S.A. and other western countries as well as imperialist agencies such as I.M.F. and World Bank, government’s inability to solve the basic problems facing the Indian people and the growth and accentuation of social contradictions within the country due to the economic policies of the government-all this have a tremendous bearing on all the policies of the government, foreign policy being no exception. The above phases in the government of India’s foreign policy were a result precisely of those developments and arose from the very class character of the government. The increasing reliance on imperialist aid had enabled the Anglo-American imperialists to increasingly interfere in the dispute with Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir.
50. The border dispute with China leading to a border war between the two biggest states in Asia further accentuated the shift towards imperialist block in the government of India’s foreign policy. But the Bangla Desh crisis in 1971 proved to be the turning point in its policy, and the Indian government developed very close relations with the socialist camp, especially Soviet Union which solidly stood behind India.
51. However, as the economic crisis in the country aggravated in the eighties, and aid from imperilist agencies to overcome the balance of payments crisis was immediately needed, again there was a marked shift in the foreign policy towards U.S.A..
52. Evidently, neither the policy of non-alignment nor its genuine implementation could be taken for granted with the big bourgeoisie leading the state and the government and pursuing anti-people policies. More over, with the adoption of new economic approach from 1991, coupled with simultaneous dismemberment of socialist camp, the foreign policy of non-alignment has been seriously jeopardised and is constanly getting emasculated. With the tightening of the grip of imperialist monopoly capital over the economy of our country, the government of India is fast shedding the stance of taking independent positions in internationl affairs and in opposing the hegemonic designs of U.S. imperialists. With the signing of strategic defence and nucler deals with U.S.A., the government has almost mortagaged its policy of non alignment and neutrality.
Hence, it has become a paramount need to mobilise the patriotic masses of India to defend the elements of independence and neutrality in the foreign policy, to oppose the aggressive designs of the imperialists and to build close fraternal relations with China, Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and other developing and under-developed democratic countries of the world.
V. STATE STRUCTURE AND DEMOCRACY UNDER BOURGEOIS RULE
53. The Present Indian state is the organ of the class rule of the
bourgeoisie and landlord, led by the big bourgeoisie, who are
increasingly collaborationg with foreign finance capital in pursuit of
the capitalist path of develoment. This class character essentially
determines the role and functions of the state in the life of the
country.
54. After independence, the leadership of the Congress was expected to remodel the state structure of republican India on the basis of linguistic states, full autonomy to these states and regional or local autonomy to the tribal regions. Although it abolished the feudal states and merged them in the Indian Union under popular pressure and in the background of people’s struggles, yet, under the influence of the shortsighted and reactionary monopolist groups, it refused to reconstitute all the states on linguistic basis. The solution of the problems came ultimately, though haltingly, under the stress of the struggles of the democratic masses. But even now, some unsolved problems remain.
55. The language problem has still not been solved satisfactorily. The languages of the different states are yet to be effectively made the languages of administration and courts and the medium of instructions. English continues to hold the field in our administration and education. Even before the regional languages have come to occupy their rightful place in the administration and educational sphere and even while refusing to give practical effect to their equal status in parliament and in the central administration, attempts were made to impose Hindi in place of English on the non-Hindi-Speaking people.
56. Although our state structure is supposed to be a federal one, practically all power and authority is concentrated in the central government. The constituent states of the Indian Union enjoy very limited power and opprtunities; their autonomy is formal. This makes these states precariously dependent on the central government, restricts their development and other nation-building activities and thus hinders their progress.
57. It was but natural that in such a situation the contradiction between the central government and the states should have grown. Underlying these contradictions often lie the deeper contradiction between the big bourgeoisie on the one hand and the entire people including the bourgeoisie of this or that state on the other. This deeper contradiction started aggravating within a decade due to the accentuation of the unevenness of economic development under capitalism and resulted in the emergence of some strong regional bourgoise-landloard parties which played a positive role in breaking the monopoly of the Congress in government-formation, both at the Centre and in the states, and also in the struggle for democratic decentralisation of powers and in developing federal structure, to some extent.
58. However, later on, because of their class interests, some of these regional parties such as Akali Dal, D.M.K., A.I.A.D.M.K., R.J.D., Smajvadi Party, T.D.P. etc. etc. have also indulged in communal, casteist and parochial chauvinistic slogans and have tried to exploit the backwardness of the people for their narrow partisan ends. And, with the advent of imperialist globalisation, all these regional bourgoise-landlord parties have become strong votaries of neo-libralism and zealously implement the policies dictated by imperialist agencies, whenever and wherever they get a chance to rule.
59. In some states there are compact areas inhabited by trible people who have their own distinct languages, culture and traditions. These people are undergoing transformation and ruination in the new conditions of capitalist development. They have been roused to new consciousness, which finds no opportunity for expression in their present condition of being scattered in small groups in the big states of the Indian Union. They demand regional or full autonomy to advance their regions where their numbers and geographical lay-out permit such a possibility. But the bourgeoisie, for whom these tribal people become good sources of supply of labour in forests, mines, etc., and who, because of their tribal conditions, are easy prey for exploitation, denies their legitimate demands and suppresses them with force or disrupts them by some concessions to their top leaders.
60. The big bourgeois leadership loudly proclaims that ours is a secular democracy and is opposed to religious and obscurantist principles being imported into it. But the truth is that far from effectively combating the anti-secular trends, the bourgeoisie gives concessions to them and strengthens them. Its leaders do not take a consistent secular stand, but are themselves victims of religious obscurantism. They try to distort the whole concept of secularism; they would have the people believe that, instead of complete separation of religion and politics from each other, secularism means freedom for all religious faiths to equally interfer in the political life of the people. In fact, secularism for them is a matter of political convenience and not an ideological committment.
61. Under such a situation, utilising the abject failure of the government in redressing the basic socio-economic problems of the working masses as well as vacillating and opportunistic approach of the ruling classes towards secularism, rabid communal forces led by R.S.S. have emerged in the country in a big way. This development has generated and strengthened feelings of insecurity and alienation amongst the minorities and in its reaction, minority communal leaders and fundamentalists are trying to organise the minorities on communal and divisive lines, thereby posing a grave threat to the unity and integrity of the country.
Our party, therefore, has the duty to fight an uncompromising struggle for the consistent implementation of the principle of secularism. Even the slightest departure from that principle should be exposed and fought. While defending the right of every religious community-whether it is the majority or minority-as well as of those who have no faith in any religion to believe in and practise whatever religion they like or to remain irreligious, the Party should fight against all forms of intrusion of religion in the social, ecomomic, political and administrative life of the nation. Equally opposing the efforts of the leaders of all religious groups to interfere in the public life of the country, we should concentrate fire on the chauvinistic leaders of the majority religious community- the Hindus. At the same time, we should continue to point out to the minority religious groups that their legitimate rights can be defended and protected only on the basis of a consistent application of the principles of secularism.
62. In conditions of capitalist competition, the guaranteed rights to the down trodden, Dalits, Backward secetions and minorities provided in the constitution are also not implemented. The bourgeois-landlord state thus fosters centrifugal and disruptive forces and fails to build the unity of the country on secure, secular and equitarian foundations.
63. The administrative system being based on a highly centralised bureaucracy, reflecting the growth of capitalist development, power stands concentrated at the top and exercised through privileged bureaucrats who are divorced from the masses and who obediently serve the interests of the exploiting classes. Even the Pachayat Raj System has become a victim in the hands of bureaucrats and is failing to deliver any worthwhile expected goods to the people .Thus the Panchayat Raj System becomes an instrument in the hands of ruling classes, in the rural areas, to strengthen their political position. Real democracy of the people can have no place in such a bourgeois democracy, which is run by the exploiters and their bureaucrats.
64. The judiciary is weighted against the workers, peasants and other sections of the working people. The laws, procedures, and the system of justice, though holding the rich and the poor equal and alike in principle, essentially serve the interests of the exploiting classes and uphold their class rule. Even the bourgeois democratic principle of separation of the judiciary from the executive is not adhered to and the judiciary becomes subject to the influence and control of the latter.
65. The bourgeoisie and its landlord allies are a small minority in the whole country compared to the working class, the peasantry and the midddle classes, over whom they rule and whom they exploit by virtue of their ownership of land, capital and all other means of livelihood. Capitalist state power and its government even when elected by a majority vote in the parliamentary system of democracy, represents in its political and economic essence, the power of the minority.
66. When this power and its class interests begin to come into open conflict with the interests of the exploited masses, the government tends to rely more and more on the armed forces and the police to preserve its order. Hence the bouregeoisie keeps the hundreds and thousands of rank and file of these forces away from the people, away from all political consciousness and all democratic rights. Even when they are allowed the right to vote as citizens in elections, they are not allowed to be approached by any political party through any literature and the servicmen are denied the right to contact even their parliamentary representatives for any reason whatsoever.
67. This, however, does not apply to the generals, bureaucrats and other top officials, who in the main, are drawn from the bourgeois-landlord classes and get their education in exclusive institutions. They carry on their politics in their own way behind the curtains.
68. The constitution of Republic of India provides for a parliament elected on the basis of adult franchise and confers certain fundamental rights on the people. But the people have succeeded in making use of these rights only to a very limited extent. With the ongoing intensification of contradictions between the working people and the bourgeois landlord classes and their imperialist collaborators, class oppression upon the people has continued to increase constantly, undermining thereby the democratic norms and forms as well as ethical values. All the democratic institutions embodied in the Constitution, such as Parliament, Legistature,Judiciary, Fundamental rights etc. have lost their credibility to a large extent. Even the Universal suffrage has become, a slave of money power to a large extent. All sorts of anti-social elements, criminals and gangesters too have found a safe sanctuary in the company of bourgeoise politicians. Thus, now the muscle power has also found a good clientele in the parliamentary Politics. The fundamental rights generelly are misinterpreted, distorted and violated by the authorities of the state. When it comes to the struggles of the workers, peasants and other sections of the democratic masses, the fundamental rights cease to apply to them. Freedom of assembly is denied to whole areas and regions embracing lakhs of people, by putting them under section 144 of Cr. P.C., even for months and years under the plea of preserving law and order, which means preventing the workers and peasants from assembling to defend their interests. The violence of the state organs becomes particularly savage against the workers, the peasants and other democratic masses when they act in defence of their political and economic rights and demands. The hated Preventive Detention Act with its new and newer varieties have become a part and parcel of the statute book and has remained in force in all these sixty years of the post-independence period, the laws which even the former British rulers dared not perpetuate except during the war period. Similarly, the provisions of national emergency provided for in the consititution have been misused in 1975 and ordinances are promulagated feely to suppress the just and democratic struggles of the workers, peasants and middle classes.
69. Freedom of the press, assembly and propaganda is a reality only to the exploiting classes, who can own the daily press, the halls and theatres, the radio network, the electronic media and the huge financial resources required for them. The working people cannot compete with their vast resources and are thus disabled in the exercise of these rights, formally given to everyone. Bourgeois democracy always remains a democracy for the exploiting rich and a wordy formality, a shadow for the toiling poor.
70. However, universal adult franchise and parliament and state legislatures can serve as instruments of the people in their struggle for democracy, for defence of their interests. Although a form of class rule of the bourgeoisie, India’s present parliamentary system also embodies an element of advance for the people. It affords certain opportunities to them to defend their interests, intervene in the affairs of the state to a certain extent and mobilise them to carry forward the struggle for peace, democracy and social progress.
71. The threat to the parliamentary system and to democracy comes not from the working people and the parties which represent their interests. The threat comes from the exploiting classes. It is they who undermine the parliamentary system both from within and without by making it an instrument to advance their narrow interests and repress the toiling masses. When the people begin to use parliamentary institutions for advancing their cause and they fall away from the influence of the reactionary bourgeoisie and landlords, these classes do not hesitate to trample underfoot parliamentary democracy with the frequent misuse of article 356 and through the imposition of emergency, so far so even the various political parties of the ruling classes do not hesitate to violate democratic norms and forms just to keep each other away from acquiring power. When their interests demands they do not hesitate to replace parliamentary democracy by military dictatorship. It will be a serious error and a dangerous illusion to imagine that our country is free from all such threats. It is of utmost importance that parliamentary and democratic institutions are defended in the interest of the people against such threats, and that such institutions are skilfully utilised in combination with extra-parliamentary activities.
72. During these 60 years since independence, economic instability, inherent in the capitalist system because of its exploitative nature, has developed into political instability which is expressing itself in the form of credibility-crisis of bourgeois-landlord political parties. Because of their anti-people policies and the evident involvement of their leaders in corrupt, unethical, undemocratic and self-seeking pursuits, people in general are quite disgusted with these parties. Because of their shameful betrayals with the masses, time and again, and undemocratic political practices, the people are fed up with these bourgeoise landlord parties to a great extent. The people, evidently, are in search of a pro-people political alternative. But the bourgeois-landlord ruling classes want to overcome this crisis of credibility of its political outfits by developing a two-party or a two combination system, fondly known as coalition system, so that an effective out-let for the pent-up feelings of the people is provided to them alongwith the ongoing drive towards curtailing democratic procedures and processes, undermining democratic institutions and adopting more and more stringent suppressing measures to curb and crush the developing resistance against policies of globalisation, liberlisation and privatisation. As a whole, this crisis of credibility is further developing towards a general crisis of bourgeois democracy. And, to stall its shift towards a reactionary fascist order, the situation demands an urgent and forceful intervention of the Communists with a clear-cut alternative based on Peoples’ Democratic Programme.
54. After independence, the leadership of the Congress was expected to remodel the state structure of republican India on the basis of linguistic states, full autonomy to these states and regional or local autonomy to the tribal regions. Although it abolished the feudal states and merged them in the Indian Union under popular pressure and in the background of people’s struggles, yet, under the influence of the shortsighted and reactionary monopolist groups, it refused to reconstitute all the states on linguistic basis. The solution of the problems came ultimately, though haltingly, under the stress of the struggles of the democratic masses. But even now, some unsolved problems remain.
55. The language problem has still not been solved satisfactorily. The languages of the different states are yet to be effectively made the languages of administration and courts and the medium of instructions. English continues to hold the field in our administration and education. Even before the regional languages have come to occupy their rightful place in the administration and educational sphere and even while refusing to give practical effect to their equal status in parliament and in the central administration, attempts were made to impose Hindi in place of English on the non-Hindi-Speaking people.
56. Although our state structure is supposed to be a federal one, practically all power and authority is concentrated in the central government. The constituent states of the Indian Union enjoy very limited power and opprtunities; their autonomy is formal. This makes these states precariously dependent on the central government, restricts their development and other nation-building activities and thus hinders their progress.
57. It was but natural that in such a situation the contradiction between the central government and the states should have grown. Underlying these contradictions often lie the deeper contradiction between the big bourgeoisie on the one hand and the entire people including the bourgeoisie of this or that state on the other. This deeper contradiction started aggravating within a decade due to the accentuation of the unevenness of economic development under capitalism and resulted in the emergence of some strong regional bourgoise-landloard parties which played a positive role in breaking the monopoly of the Congress in government-formation, both at the Centre and in the states, and also in the struggle for democratic decentralisation of powers and in developing federal structure, to some extent.
58. However, later on, because of their class interests, some of these regional parties such as Akali Dal, D.M.K., A.I.A.D.M.K., R.J.D., Smajvadi Party, T.D.P. etc. etc. have also indulged in communal, casteist and parochial chauvinistic slogans and have tried to exploit the backwardness of the people for their narrow partisan ends. And, with the advent of imperialist globalisation, all these regional bourgoise-landlord parties have become strong votaries of neo-libralism and zealously implement the policies dictated by imperialist agencies, whenever and wherever they get a chance to rule.
59. In some states there are compact areas inhabited by trible people who have their own distinct languages, culture and traditions. These people are undergoing transformation and ruination in the new conditions of capitalist development. They have been roused to new consciousness, which finds no opportunity for expression in their present condition of being scattered in small groups in the big states of the Indian Union. They demand regional or full autonomy to advance their regions where their numbers and geographical lay-out permit such a possibility. But the bourgeoisie, for whom these tribal people become good sources of supply of labour in forests, mines, etc., and who, because of their tribal conditions, are easy prey for exploitation, denies their legitimate demands and suppresses them with force or disrupts them by some concessions to their top leaders.
60. The big bourgeois leadership loudly proclaims that ours is a secular democracy and is opposed to religious and obscurantist principles being imported into it. But the truth is that far from effectively combating the anti-secular trends, the bourgeoisie gives concessions to them and strengthens them. Its leaders do not take a consistent secular stand, but are themselves victims of religious obscurantism. They try to distort the whole concept of secularism; they would have the people believe that, instead of complete separation of religion and politics from each other, secularism means freedom for all religious faiths to equally interfer in the political life of the people. In fact, secularism for them is a matter of political convenience and not an ideological committment.
61. Under such a situation, utilising the abject failure of the government in redressing the basic socio-economic problems of the working masses as well as vacillating and opportunistic approach of the ruling classes towards secularism, rabid communal forces led by R.S.S. have emerged in the country in a big way. This development has generated and strengthened feelings of insecurity and alienation amongst the minorities and in its reaction, minority communal leaders and fundamentalists are trying to organise the minorities on communal and divisive lines, thereby posing a grave threat to the unity and integrity of the country.
Our party, therefore, has the duty to fight an uncompromising struggle for the consistent implementation of the principle of secularism. Even the slightest departure from that principle should be exposed and fought. While defending the right of every religious community-whether it is the majority or minority-as well as of those who have no faith in any religion to believe in and practise whatever religion they like or to remain irreligious, the Party should fight against all forms of intrusion of religion in the social, ecomomic, political and administrative life of the nation. Equally opposing the efforts of the leaders of all religious groups to interfere in the public life of the country, we should concentrate fire on the chauvinistic leaders of the majority religious community- the Hindus. At the same time, we should continue to point out to the minority religious groups that their legitimate rights can be defended and protected only on the basis of a consistent application of the principles of secularism.
62. In conditions of capitalist competition, the guaranteed rights to the down trodden, Dalits, Backward secetions and minorities provided in the constitution are also not implemented. The bourgeois-landlord state thus fosters centrifugal and disruptive forces and fails to build the unity of the country on secure, secular and equitarian foundations.
63. The administrative system being based on a highly centralised bureaucracy, reflecting the growth of capitalist development, power stands concentrated at the top and exercised through privileged bureaucrats who are divorced from the masses and who obediently serve the interests of the exploiting classes. Even the Pachayat Raj System has become a victim in the hands of bureaucrats and is failing to deliver any worthwhile expected goods to the people .Thus the Panchayat Raj System becomes an instrument in the hands of ruling classes, in the rural areas, to strengthen their political position. Real democracy of the people can have no place in such a bourgeois democracy, which is run by the exploiters and their bureaucrats.
64. The judiciary is weighted against the workers, peasants and other sections of the working people. The laws, procedures, and the system of justice, though holding the rich and the poor equal and alike in principle, essentially serve the interests of the exploiting classes and uphold their class rule. Even the bourgeois democratic principle of separation of the judiciary from the executive is not adhered to and the judiciary becomes subject to the influence and control of the latter.
65. The bourgeoisie and its landlord allies are a small minority in the whole country compared to the working class, the peasantry and the midddle classes, over whom they rule and whom they exploit by virtue of their ownership of land, capital and all other means of livelihood. Capitalist state power and its government even when elected by a majority vote in the parliamentary system of democracy, represents in its political and economic essence, the power of the minority.
66. When this power and its class interests begin to come into open conflict with the interests of the exploited masses, the government tends to rely more and more on the armed forces and the police to preserve its order. Hence the bouregeoisie keeps the hundreds and thousands of rank and file of these forces away from the people, away from all political consciousness and all democratic rights. Even when they are allowed the right to vote as citizens in elections, they are not allowed to be approached by any political party through any literature and the servicmen are denied the right to contact even their parliamentary representatives for any reason whatsoever.
67. This, however, does not apply to the generals, bureaucrats and other top officials, who in the main, are drawn from the bourgeois-landlord classes and get their education in exclusive institutions. They carry on their politics in their own way behind the curtains.
68. The constitution of Republic of India provides for a parliament elected on the basis of adult franchise and confers certain fundamental rights on the people. But the people have succeeded in making use of these rights only to a very limited extent. With the ongoing intensification of contradictions between the working people and the bourgeois landlord classes and their imperialist collaborators, class oppression upon the people has continued to increase constantly, undermining thereby the democratic norms and forms as well as ethical values. All the democratic institutions embodied in the Constitution, such as Parliament, Legistature,Judiciary, Fundamental rights etc. have lost their credibility to a large extent. Even the Universal suffrage has become, a slave of money power to a large extent. All sorts of anti-social elements, criminals and gangesters too have found a safe sanctuary in the company of bourgeoise politicians. Thus, now the muscle power has also found a good clientele in the parliamentary Politics. The fundamental rights generelly are misinterpreted, distorted and violated by the authorities of the state. When it comes to the struggles of the workers, peasants and other sections of the democratic masses, the fundamental rights cease to apply to them. Freedom of assembly is denied to whole areas and regions embracing lakhs of people, by putting them under section 144 of Cr. P.C., even for months and years under the plea of preserving law and order, which means preventing the workers and peasants from assembling to defend their interests. The violence of the state organs becomes particularly savage against the workers, the peasants and other democratic masses when they act in defence of their political and economic rights and demands. The hated Preventive Detention Act with its new and newer varieties have become a part and parcel of the statute book and has remained in force in all these sixty years of the post-independence period, the laws which even the former British rulers dared not perpetuate except during the war period. Similarly, the provisions of national emergency provided for in the consititution have been misused in 1975 and ordinances are promulagated feely to suppress the just and democratic struggles of the workers, peasants and middle classes.
69. Freedom of the press, assembly and propaganda is a reality only to the exploiting classes, who can own the daily press, the halls and theatres, the radio network, the electronic media and the huge financial resources required for them. The working people cannot compete with their vast resources and are thus disabled in the exercise of these rights, formally given to everyone. Bourgeois democracy always remains a democracy for the exploiting rich and a wordy formality, a shadow for the toiling poor.
70. However, universal adult franchise and parliament and state legislatures can serve as instruments of the people in their struggle for democracy, for defence of their interests. Although a form of class rule of the bourgeoisie, India’s present parliamentary system also embodies an element of advance for the people. It affords certain opportunities to them to defend their interests, intervene in the affairs of the state to a certain extent and mobilise them to carry forward the struggle for peace, democracy and social progress.
71. The threat to the parliamentary system and to democracy comes not from the working people and the parties which represent their interests. The threat comes from the exploiting classes. It is they who undermine the parliamentary system both from within and without by making it an instrument to advance their narrow interests and repress the toiling masses. When the people begin to use parliamentary institutions for advancing their cause and they fall away from the influence of the reactionary bourgeoisie and landlords, these classes do not hesitate to trample underfoot parliamentary democracy with the frequent misuse of article 356 and through the imposition of emergency, so far so even the various political parties of the ruling classes do not hesitate to violate democratic norms and forms just to keep each other away from acquiring power. When their interests demands they do not hesitate to replace parliamentary democracy by military dictatorship. It will be a serious error and a dangerous illusion to imagine that our country is free from all such threats. It is of utmost importance that parliamentary and democratic institutions are defended in the interest of the people against such threats, and that such institutions are skilfully utilised in combination with extra-parliamentary activities.
72. During these 60 years since independence, economic instability, inherent in the capitalist system because of its exploitative nature, has developed into political instability which is expressing itself in the form of credibility-crisis of bourgeois-landlord political parties. Because of their anti-people policies and the evident involvement of their leaders in corrupt, unethical, undemocratic and self-seeking pursuits, people in general are quite disgusted with these parties. Because of their shameful betrayals with the masses, time and again, and undemocratic political practices, the people are fed up with these bourgeoise landlord parties to a great extent. The people, evidently, are in search of a pro-people political alternative. But the bourgeois-landlord ruling classes want to overcome this crisis of credibility of its political outfits by developing a two-party or a two combination system, fondly known as coalition system, so that an effective out-let for the pent-up feelings of the people is provided to them alongwith the ongoing drive towards curtailing democratic procedures and processes, undermining democratic institutions and adopting more and more stringent suppressing measures to curb and crush the developing resistance against policies of globalisation, liberlisation and privatisation. As a whole, this crisis of credibility is further developing towards a general crisis of bourgeois democracy. And, to stall its shift towards a reactionary fascist order, the situation demands an urgent and forceful intervention of the Communists with a clear-cut alternative based on Peoples’ Democratic Programme.
VI. CONDITIONS OF THE PEOPLE
73. The democracy that the bourgeois-landlord state and government have
been practising all these years since independence is, in reality,
denied to the people and only the top exploiting classes are flourishing
under it at the expense of the toiling millions of the country.
74. The condition of the people, in spite of growth in production has not improved materially, as most of the increasing wealth is concentrating in the hands of the exploiting classes. The working class, the peasantry, the middle classes and even the small and medium entrepreneurs and businessmen resent the policies of the Government and the growing domination of the monopolies, both native and foreign. This discontent of the toiling people finds expression in various forms of struggle.
75. Heavy burdens have increasingly been imposed on the working classs through indirect taxes and it constantly faces ferocious attacks from the employers and the government, Not only total production but even productivity of the workers has increased. Yet their share in the increasing wealth has fallen while that of their employers has risen. Real wages of the workers have not registered any rise and even when they fight and succeed in getting a wage-rise, ever-spiralling prices have nullified all their wage-gains. In a large number of industries the wage-level has gone even below the pre-second world war level. Though employment has risen earlier with the establishment of new factories and with the opening up of the extensive service sector, but as an impact of imperialist globaliastion and the gradual disbanding of the social sector under the dictates of world bank and W.T.O., avenues of employment have squeezed to a considerable extent and the phenomena of jobless growth has emerged in a big way. Thus, the monster of unemployment in our country, today, has become a quite uncontrolable phenomena. It is also depressing the living standards of the families of the working people further.
76. The workers through determined and long drawn bitter struggles in the past years had forced the employers and the government to establish some machinery like wage boards, minimum wages committees, tribunals, etc. for wage settlements. Though some standardisation has taken place in certain organised industries, wage anarchy which is characteristic of the capitalist system, still continues and though certain norms for minimum wages have been laid down, they still remain unfulfilled, the government itself refusing to give its employees wages based on these norms. The right of forming trade unions and collective bargaining are still denied or made a mockery of by the employer at their will. Any number of legislations have been enacted but they are brazenly violated by the employers, and the industrial relations machinery set up by the government is mainly directed against the strikes and struggles of workers. A section of the workers had won the right to social securtity but its implementation by the bureaucracy has been more a cause of irritation than of help to them, while the so-called housing schemes of the employers and the government have not liberated the workers and their families from the appalling slums to which they are condemned. As a consequence of neo-liberal policies, the right of security of service for the industrial workers has been sharply eroded and a new policy of ‘hire and fire’ has been introduced covertly and treacheously. ‘Special Economic Zones’ have been carved out at various places in the country at the behests of foreign investors, where no labour laws are applicable.
77. Millions of our peasants live in abject poverty and backwardness. A good chunk of the peasantry have practically no land of their own and many millions live as paupers. The plunder of the peasantry through exorbitant rents and interests, through high taxes and manipulations of the capitalist market continues. With the reduction in or abolition of subsidies on the agricultural inputs under the dictates of W.T.O., the process of pauperisation amongst the peasentry has further speeded up. Agricultural labourers and poor peasants have to work in the absence of subsistence wage for their families. Dearth of employment, hunger, indebtedness and destitution-in short the ruination of our peasantry, is what we see in the countryside today.
78. The communal partition of the country into Indian Union and Pakistan had brought in its wake the huge problem of refugees whose number rose to several millions. Creation of Bangla Desh out of East Pakistan in 1971 made this problem further acute. Cross border migration from Bangla Desh has become a constant problem. The continued tension and conflict between these newly-created states have been periodically resulting in reinforcing the number of these homeless peoples. Again, due to the continuous turmoil in Kashmir lakhs of Hindu families had to leave their homes and hearths and had to settle as refugees all over India. This problem too is far from satisfactorily settled. The government has gone back on many of its promises and no adequate provision is made for the rehabilitation of these displaced people. Their condition is extremely miserable. This problem is affecting the life of the people in several parts of India. The schemes of rehabilitation and their practical implementation by the government belie all the hopes entertained on this score.
79. The capitalist path of development that our ruling classes had embarked upon without effecting radical agrarian reforms and the elimination of foreign capital from our economy, is hitting hard the life of millions of artisans such as handloom weavers and other handicraftsmen. They are either being summarily thrown into the ranks of the army of paupers and unemployed or squeezed dry under the impact of extermely low incomes, high prices of food and raw materials and varied burdensome taxes. The meagre subsidies and other concessions provided in the state and central budgets have failed to bring any real relief to the vast masses of these tormented artisans and their families and they are finding no other alternative but to join the ever increasing ranks of wage-labourers. The anti-people policies of the government offer no solution to this problem and discontent is rapidly growing amongst the artisans.
80. The middle classes especially the lower middle strata in the towns are hardly faring any better. Because of the ever rising prices of essential commodities, their standard of living remains in constant doldrums. In the recent years, under the impact of imperialist globalisation and neo-liberalism middle class unemployment has grown phenomenally. Middle class wage-earners working on sub-standerd wages in private offices, business concerns, schools, colleges and the like are also facing bleak future. Our middle classes play an important role in the fields of art, literature, science and culture. But for most of them these fields are closed and we see the educated middle class youth are running from pillar to post for sundry jobs.
81. Even many industrialists, manufactures, businessmen and traders are hit by the policies of the present government and by the operation of the foreign and Indian monopolies and financiers. Problems of capital, allocation of raw materials, transport facilities, import and export questions are carried out by the government and bureaucrats in such a way that almost all except big business suffer. Those engaged in small and cottage industries face a permanent crisis.
82. As a result of the anti-people policies pursued by the government, the vast masses of the people are fleeced by soaring prices, rising taxes and reckless inflation. At one end, while a microscopic few of the top exploiting classes and their hangers on with their newly earned riches are rolling in luxury, at the other end, millions are groaning under squalor and poverty. The conflicts and contradictions between the people on the one hand and the bourgeois-landlord government led by the big bourgeoisie on the other are steadily getting intensified.
74. The condition of the people, in spite of growth in production has not improved materially, as most of the increasing wealth is concentrating in the hands of the exploiting classes. The working class, the peasantry, the middle classes and even the small and medium entrepreneurs and businessmen resent the policies of the Government and the growing domination of the monopolies, both native and foreign. This discontent of the toiling people finds expression in various forms of struggle.
75. Heavy burdens have increasingly been imposed on the working classs through indirect taxes and it constantly faces ferocious attacks from the employers and the government, Not only total production but even productivity of the workers has increased. Yet their share in the increasing wealth has fallen while that of their employers has risen. Real wages of the workers have not registered any rise and even when they fight and succeed in getting a wage-rise, ever-spiralling prices have nullified all their wage-gains. In a large number of industries the wage-level has gone even below the pre-second world war level. Though employment has risen earlier with the establishment of new factories and with the opening up of the extensive service sector, but as an impact of imperialist globaliastion and the gradual disbanding of the social sector under the dictates of world bank and W.T.O., avenues of employment have squeezed to a considerable extent and the phenomena of jobless growth has emerged in a big way. Thus, the monster of unemployment in our country, today, has become a quite uncontrolable phenomena. It is also depressing the living standards of the families of the working people further.
76. The workers through determined and long drawn bitter struggles in the past years had forced the employers and the government to establish some machinery like wage boards, minimum wages committees, tribunals, etc. for wage settlements. Though some standardisation has taken place in certain organised industries, wage anarchy which is characteristic of the capitalist system, still continues and though certain norms for minimum wages have been laid down, they still remain unfulfilled, the government itself refusing to give its employees wages based on these norms. The right of forming trade unions and collective bargaining are still denied or made a mockery of by the employer at their will. Any number of legislations have been enacted but they are brazenly violated by the employers, and the industrial relations machinery set up by the government is mainly directed against the strikes and struggles of workers. A section of the workers had won the right to social securtity but its implementation by the bureaucracy has been more a cause of irritation than of help to them, while the so-called housing schemes of the employers and the government have not liberated the workers and their families from the appalling slums to which they are condemned. As a consequence of neo-liberal policies, the right of security of service for the industrial workers has been sharply eroded and a new policy of ‘hire and fire’ has been introduced covertly and treacheously. ‘Special Economic Zones’ have been carved out at various places in the country at the behests of foreign investors, where no labour laws are applicable.
77. Millions of our peasants live in abject poverty and backwardness. A good chunk of the peasantry have practically no land of their own and many millions live as paupers. The plunder of the peasantry through exorbitant rents and interests, through high taxes and manipulations of the capitalist market continues. With the reduction in or abolition of subsidies on the agricultural inputs under the dictates of W.T.O., the process of pauperisation amongst the peasentry has further speeded up. Agricultural labourers and poor peasants have to work in the absence of subsistence wage for their families. Dearth of employment, hunger, indebtedness and destitution-in short the ruination of our peasantry, is what we see in the countryside today.
78. The communal partition of the country into Indian Union and Pakistan had brought in its wake the huge problem of refugees whose number rose to several millions. Creation of Bangla Desh out of East Pakistan in 1971 made this problem further acute. Cross border migration from Bangla Desh has become a constant problem. The continued tension and conflict between these newly-created states have been periodically resulting in reinforcing the number of these homeless peoples. Again, due to the continuous turmoil in Kashmir lakhs of Hindu families had to leave their homes and hearths and had to settle as refugees all over India. This problem too is far from satisfactorily settled. The government has gone back on many of its promises and no adequate provision is made for the rehabilitation of these displaced people. Their condition is extremely miserable. This problem is affecting the life of the people in several parts of India. The schemes of rehabilitation and their practical implementation by the government belie all the hopes entertained on this score.
79. The capitalist path of development that our ruling classes had embarked upon without effecting radical agrarian reforms and the elimination of foreign capital from our economy, is hitting hard the life of millions of artisans such as handloom weavers and other handicraftsmen. They are either being summarily thrown into the ranks of the army of paupers and unemployed or squeezed dry under the impact of extermely low incomes, high prices of food and raw materials and varied burdensome taxes. The meagre subsidies and other concessions provided in the state and central budgets have failed to bring any real relief to the vast masses of these tormented artisans and their families and they are finding no other alternative but to join the ever increasing ranks of wage-labourers. The anti-people policies of the government offer no solution to this problem and discontent is rapidly growing amongst the artisans.
80. The middle classes especially the lower middle strata in the towns are hardly faring any better. Because of the ever rising prices of essential commodities, their standard of living remains in constant doldrums. In the recent years, under the impact of imperialist globalisation and neo-liberalism middle class unemployment has grown phenomenally. Middle class wage-earners working on sub-standerd wages in private offices, business concerns, schools, colleges and the like are also facing bleak future. Our middle classes play an important role in the fields of art, literature, science and culture. But for most of them these fields are closed and we see the educated middle class youth are running from pillar to post for sundry jobs.
81. Even many industrialists, manufactures, businessmen and traders are hit by the policies of the present government and by the operation of the foreign and Indian monopolies and financiers. Problems of capital, allocation of raw materials, transport facilities, import and export questions are carried out by the government and bureaucrats in such a way that almost all except big business suffer. Those engaged in small and cottage industries face a permanent crisis.
82. As a result of the anti-people policies pursued by the government, the vast masses of the people are fleeced by soaring prices, rising taxes and reckless inflation. At one end, while a microscopic few of the top exploiting classes and their hangers on with their newly earned riches are rolling in luxury, at the other end, millions are groaning under squalor and poverty. The conflicts and contradictions between the people on the one hand and the bourgeois-landlord government led by the big bourgeoisie on the other are steadily getting intensified.
VII. PROGRAMME OF THE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY
83.
Disillusionment and discontent with the policies and the attempts at
building a capitalist economy are growing rapidly among our people. Life
itself teaches them that there is no hope of emancipation from
backwardness, poverty, hunger and exploitation under the present
bourgeois-landlord rule.This is evident from the wide spread resentment
growing amongst the people. Capitalism as a system is getting
increasingly discredited in the eyes of the people.
84. In the historical conditions we got our independence, with the existence and rapid growth of powerful world socialist system and with the fast disintegration of colonial order, theory regarding the possibility of non-capitalist path leading to socialism skipping over the stage of capitalism in the newly librated countries, was put forth by a number of Indian communists. They advocated the feasibility of this possibility in this country too, and advanced the strategic goal of ‘National Democracy’; to be achieved in collaboration with the national bourgeoise, to which, according to them, the state power was transferred by the Britishers.
85. Such a door, however, was clearly barred for us in India. Our country, even while it was under the colonial rule of the British, was one of the capitalistically developed colonies and semi-colonies. The big bourgeoise, which headed the national libration movement and the new independent state since 1947, has been continuously in state power and have utilised that state power to immensly strengthen its class positions at the expense of mass of the people on the one hand and compromising and bargaining with the imperialists and big landlordism on the other. Marching ahead on the path of capitalist development, during the preceding two decades, there had been an enormous growth of Indian monopoly and strengthening of Capitalism even in the countryside. Such being the objective reality, to talk of a ‘National Democratic State’ capable of pursuing non-capitalist path was mere naked revisionism.
86. Moreover it is also pertinent to note that the capitalist development in India is not of the type which took place in western Europe and other advanced capitalist countries. Even though developing in the capitalist way, Indian society still contains within itself strong elements of pre-capitalist society. Unlike in the advanced capitalist countries where capitalism grew on the ashes of pre-capitalist society, destroyed by the rising bourgeoisie, capitalism in India was superimposed on pre-capitalist society. Neither the British colonialists whose rule continued for over a century, nor the Indian bourgeoisie into whose hands power passed in 1947, delivered those smashing blows against pre-capitalist society which are necessary for the free development of capitalist society and its replacement by socialist society. The present Indian society, therefore, is a peculiar combination of monopoly capitalist domination with caste, communal and tribal institutions. It has thus fallen to the lot of the working class and its Party to unite all the progressive forces interested in destroying the pre-capitalist society and to so consolidate the revolutionary forces within it as to facilitate the most rapid completion of the democratic revolution and preparation of the ground for transition to socialism.
87. Faced with these tasks the Communist Party feels duty bound to place before our people these practical tasks and the political programme as the only correct way out of the deadlock into which they have been forced by the present government and the state.
The Communist Party firmly adheres to its aim of building socialism and Communism. It is not deceived by the false claims of the big bourgeois leaders of the ruling classes and their Governments that they are intent on building socialism in India. It is elementary knowledge that real and genuine socialism can be built only when all principal means of production in society are owned by the state, where the principle “from each according to his ability; to each according to his work” prevails as a step to building Communism where the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” will come to prevail. It is evident that this cannot he achieved under the present state and bourgeois-landlord government led by the representatives of the big bourgeoisie. The establishment of genuine socialist society is only possible under proletarian statehood.
While adhering to the aim of building a socialist society, our party taking into consideration the degree of economic development, the degree of the political-ideological maturity of the working class and its organisation, places before the people as the immediate objective, the establishment of people’s democracy based on the coalition of all genuine anti-feudal and anti-imperialist forces headed by the working class. This demands, first and foremost, the replacement of the present bourgeois-landlord state and government by a state of people’s democracy and a government led by the working class on the basis of a firm worker-peasant alliance. This alone can quickly and thoroughly complete the unfinished basic democratic tasks of the Indian revolution and pave the way for putting the country on to the road for socialism. The tasks and the programme which the people’s democratic government will carry out as a prerequisite to advancing towards socialism are :
88. In the sphere of state structure :
The People’s Democratic India will be a voluntary union of the peoples of various nationalities of India.
Our Party is opposed to the drive of the ruling classes for centralisation, denying autonomy and is also opposed to all divisive, disruptionist and secessionist movements.
Our Party works for the preservation and promotion of the unity of the Indian Union on the basis of real equality and autonomy for the different nationalities that inhabit the country, and to develop a democratic state structure as outlined below.
(i) The Indian Union shall be a Federation based on democratic centralism.
(ii) The people are sovereign. All organs of state power shall be answerable to the people. The supreme authority in exercising state power shall be of the people’s representatives elected on the basis of adult franchise and on the principle of proportional representation, and subject to recall.
Universal, equal and direct suffrage for all citizens who have attained the age of 18 to be implemented in a free and fair manner in all elections to Parliament, State Legislatures and local self-government bodies. Secret ballot and the right of any voter to be elected to any representative institution to be ensured.
(iii) At the all-India Centre, there shall be two Houses having equal powers; the House of the People and the House of the States. The President shall act in accordance with the decisions of both the Houses and shall have no other powers.
(iv) All states in the Indian Union shall have real autonomy and equal powers.
The tribal areas or the areas where population is specfic in ethnic composition and is distinguished by specific social and cultural conditions will have regional autonomy with regional Government within the State concerned and shall receive full assistance for their development.
(v) There shall not be upper Houses at the States level. Nor shall there be Governors for the States appointed from above. All administrative services ahall be under the direct control of the respective States or local authorities. States shall treat all Indian citizens alike, and there shall not be any discrimination on the ground of caste, religion, community and nationality.
(vi) Equality of all national languages in Parliament and Central administration shall be recognised. Members of Parliament will have the right to speak in any national language and simultaneous translation will have to be provided in all other national languages. All Acts, Government orders and resolutions shall be made available in all national languages. The use of Hindi as the official language shall not be made obligatory. In the course of growing economic, social and intellectual intercourse, the people of different States of India will develop in practice the language of intercommunications most suitable to their needs. The use of English, in the fields of administration, legislation, judiciary and as the medium of instruction in education shall be discrded replacing it with the national languages. Right of people to receive instruction in their mother tongue in educational institution, the use of the national language of the particular linguistic state as the language of administration in all its public and State institutions, as well as its use as the medium of education in the State up to the highest standard, provision for the use of the language of a minority or minorities or of a region where necessary in addition to the language of the State shall be implemented. The Urdu language and its script shall be protected and promoted.
(vii) The people’s Democratic Government will take measures to consolidate the unity of India by fostering and promoting mutual co-operation between the constituent states and between the peoples of different states in the economic, political and cultural spheres. It will pay special attention and render financial and other assistance to economically backward and weaker states, regions and areas with a view to helping them rapidly overcome their backwardness. Inter-state problems like sharing of natural resources shall be decided on democratic lines and on need based principles.
(viii) The people’s Democratic State, in the field of local administnation, shall ensure a wide network of local bodies from village upward, directly elected by the people and vested with powers and responsibility and provided with adequate finances.
(ix) The people’s Democratic State shall strive to infuse in all our social and political institutions the spirit of democracy. It extends democratic forms of initiative and control over every aspect of national life. A key role in this will be played by the trade unions, peasant and agricultural workers’ associations, and other class and mass organisations of the working people. The Government will take steps to make the legislative and executive machinery of the country continuously responsive to the democratic wishes of the people, and will ensure that the masses and their organisations are drawn into active participation in the administration and work of the State. It works for the elimination of bureaucracy and bureaucratic parctices in the state and administration.
(x) Democratic changes wil be introduced in the matter of administering justice. Prompt and fair justice shall be ensured. The appointment of judges will be subject to approval of Parliament, Legislatures and other people’s organs at different levels.
Free legal aid and consultation will be provided for the people in order to make legal redress easily available to all citizens.
Right of persons to sue any official before a court of law shall be ensured.
(xi) The people’s Democratic Government will infuse the members of the armed forces with the spirit of patriotism, democracy and service to the people. It will ensure them good living standards and conditions of service, and provide them with maximum possible opportunities for cultural life, as well as the education and well-being of their children. It encourages all able-bodied persons to undergo military training and be imbued with the spirit of national independence and its defence.
(xii) Full civil liberties shall be guaranteed. Inviolability of person and domicile, and no detention of persons without trial, unhampered freedom of conscience, religious belief and worship, speech, Press, assembley, strike and combination, freedom of movement and occupation.
(xiii) Right to work as a fundamental right of every citizen shall be guaranteed ; equal right for all citizens and equal pay for equal work irrespective of religion, caste, sex, race and nationality shall be ensured.
(xiv) Wide disparities in salaries and incomes wil be abolished.
(xv) Abolition of social oppression of one caste by another and untouchability to be punished by law.
Special facilities for scheduled castes, tribes and other backward communities shall be provided in the matter of services and other special and educational amenities.
(xvi) Social inequalities and disabilities from which women suffer shall be removed, equal rights with men in such matters as inheritance of property, enforcement of marriage and divorce laws, admission to professions and services shall be guaranteed.
(xvii) Secular character of the State shall be guaranteed. Interference by religious institutions in the affairs of the State and political life of the country shall be prohibited. Religious minorities shall be given protection and any discrimination against them will be forbidden.
(xviii) The State shall fully take over education and its secular character shall be ensured.
Free and compulsory education up to the secondary stage shall be guaranteed.
(xix) A wide network of health, medical and maternity services shall be established free of cost, and rest homes and recreation centres for working people and old-age pension shall be guaranteed.
(xx) The people’s Democratic State and Government will undertake the important task of unleashing the creative talents of our people for developing and extending the new progressive people’s culture which is anti-feudal, anti-imperialist and democratic in character. It shall take the following necessary measures to foster, encourage and develop such literature, art and culture as will--
--help the people in their struggle to improve their living conditions and enrich their material and cultural life.
--help the people to get rid of caste and communal hatred and prejudices and ideas of subservience and obscurantism and superstitions.
--help each nationality including the tribal people to develop their distinct language, culture and way of life in unison with the common aspirations of the democratic masses of the country as a whole.
--Help all our people to develop feelings of brotherhood with all peace-loving peoples and countries of the world, and to discard ideas of racial and national hatred.
89. In the field of agriculture and the peasant problem:
The Peoples’ Democratic government will
(i) Abolish landlordism without compensation and give land gratis to the agricultural labourers and poor peasants ;
(ii) Cancel debts of peasants, agricultural labourers and small artisans to moneylenders and landlords;
(iii) Ensure long-term and cheap credit for the peasants and artisans and fair prices for agricultural produce, assist the peasants to improve methods of farming by the use of improved seeds, other inputs and modern implements and technique ;
(iv) Provide guaranteed irrigation facilities;
(v) Ensure adequate wages and living conditions to agricultural labourers ;
(vi) Encourage co-operatives of peasants and artisans on a voluntary basis for farming and for agricultural services and other purposes.
90. In the field of industry and labour :
Our industry suffers not only from an extremely low purchasing power of the peasants but also from the depredations of foreign capital. We cannot be a strong and prosperous country unless we are industrialised on a wide scale ; but industrialised to such an extent we shall never be so long as British, U.S. and other foreign capital exists in India and is given further opportunities of penetration under imperialist globalisation for the profits of their invested capital are taken out of the country and we are unable to use them.
In the field of industry, therefore, the people’s Democratic Government will :
(i) Take over all foreign capital in plantations, mines, oil refineries, and factories, shipping and trade. It will nationalise all banks and credit institutions and other monopolistic industries. Foreign trade will be nationalised.
(ii) Develop the state sector with the utmost rapidity so as to quickly overcome economic dependence and expand continuously the industries of the country. This together with the setting up of new state-owned industries will make the state sector dominant and decisive.
(iii) Assist the small and medium industries by providing them with credit, raw materials at reasonable prices and by helping them in regard to marketing facilities.
(iv) Regulate and co-ordinate the various sectors of the economy in order to achieve balanced and planned economic development of the country in the interest of the people.
(v) Democratise the management of the state sector by removing persons connected with big business from the management and by ensuring the creative participation of the workers and technicians in the management and running of industries.
(vi) Improve radicaly the living standards and working conditions of workers by (a) fixing a living wage, (b) progressive reduction of hours of work, (c) social insurance at the expense of the state and capitalists, against every kind of disablity and unemployment, (d) provision of decent housing for workers, (e) recognition of trade unions and their right of collective bargaining as well as the right to strike.
(vii) Strengthen Public Distribution System and effectively implement a price policy in the interest of the common people.
(viii) Maximum relief from taxation to workers, peasants and artisans shall be given while graded tax in agriculture, industry and trade will be introduced and profits will be controlled.
91. In the sphere of foreign policy :
In order to ensure that India plays its rightful role for the preservation of world peace, for the democratisation of international relations, for peaceful co-existence and in the struggle against imperialist hegemony the People’s Democratic Government will :
(i) Strengthen solidarity amongst developing and under developed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin-America and support all struggles against imperilism and for democracy and socialism in every possible way, further develop friendly relations and co-operation with the socialist countries and all peace-loving states in the interests of peace and freedom.
(ii) Strive for peaceful co-existence among countries with different social systems based on the panchsheel.
(iii) Do everything in its power in co-operation with all peace-loving forces to deliver mankind from the threat of a nuclear-missile war, demand the immediate prohibition of the testing, manufacture and use of all nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass annihilation and work for the destruction of all nuclear and atomic stock piles ; work for the agreements for nuclear-free zones.
(iv) Work for preventing war, for preserving peace and making it secure; work for the conclusion of a treaty on general and controlled disarmament; demand the abolition of all military pacts and all foreign military bases as well as withdrawal of all foreign troops from other countries; exercise the greatest vigilance against the imperialist warmongers and their intrigues and manoeuvres and inspire the masses in the spirit of such vigilance.
(v) Withdraw India from the British Commonwealth, renounce all agreements and commitments with Britain, USA and other imperialists which are against the interests of the nation or not in keeping with national dignity.
(vi) Oppose environmental pollution by MNCs and promote international co-operation for the preservation of the environment and protection of the ecological balance.
(vii) Always make special and concerted efforts to peacefully settle the existing differences and disputes and establish friendly relation with India’s neighbours--Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Burma and China.
84. In the historical conditions we got our independence, with the existence and rapid growth of powerful world socialist system and with the fast disintegration of colonial order, theory regarding the possibility of non-capitalist path leading to socialism skipping over the stage of capitalism in the newly librated countries, was put forth by a number of Indian communists. They advocated the feasibility of this possibility in this country too, and advanced the strategic goal of ‘National Democracy’; to be achieved in collaboration with the national bourgeoise, to which, according to them, the state power was transferred by the Britishers.
85. Such a door, however, was clearly barred for us in India. Our country, even while it was under the colonial rule of the British, was one of the capitalistically developed colonies and semi-colonies. The big bourgeoise, which headed the national libration movement and the new independent state since 1947, has been continuously in state power and have utilised that state power to immensly strengthen its class positions at the expense of mass of the people on the one hand and compromising and bargaining with the imperialists and big landlordism on the other. Marching ahead on the path of capitalist development, during the preceding two decades, there had been an enormous growth of Indian monopoly and strengthening of Capitalism even in the countryside. Such being the objective reality, to talk of a ‘National Democratic State’ capable of pursuing non-capitalist path was mere naked revisionism.
86. Moreover it is also pertinent to note that the capitalist development in India is not of the type which took place in western Europe and other advanced capitalist countries. Even though developing in the capitalist way, Indian society still contains within itself strong elements of pre-capitalist society. Unlike in the advanced capitalist countries where capitalism grew on the ashes of pre-capitalist society, destroyed by the rising bourgeoisie, capitalism in India was superimposed on pre-capitalist society. Neither the British colonialists whose rule continued for over a century, nor the Indian bourgeoisie into whose hands power passed in 1947, delivered those smashing blows against pre-capitalist society which are necessary for the free development of capitalist society and its replacement by socialist society. The present Indian society, therefore, is a peculiar combination of monopoly capitalist domination with caste, communal and tribal institutions. It has thus fallen to the lot of the working class and its Party to unite all the progressive forces interested in destroying the pre-capitalist society and to so consolidate the revolutionary forces within it as to facilitate the most rapid completion of the democratic revolution and preparation of the ground for transition to socialism.
87. Faced with these tasks the Communist Party feels duty bound to place before our people these practical tasks and the political programme as the only correct way out of the deadlock into which they have been forced by the present government and the state.
The Communist Party firmly adheres to its aim of building socialism and Communism. It is not deceived by the false claims of the big bourgeois leaders of the ruling classes and their Governments that they are intent on building socialism in India. It is elementary knowledge that real and genuine socialism can be built only when all principal means of production in society are owned by the state, where the principle “from each according to his ability; to each according to his work” prevails as a step to building Communism where the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” will come to prevail. It is evident that this cannot he achieved under the present state and bourgeois-landlord government led by the representatives of the big bourgeoisie. The establishment of genuine socialist society is only possible under proletarian statehood.
While adhering to the aim of building a socialist society, our party taking into consideration the degree of economic development, the degree of the political-ideological maturity of the working class and its organisation, places before the people as the immediate objective, the establishment of people’s democracy based on the coalition of all genuine anti-feudal and anti-imperialist forces headed by the working class. This demands, first and foremost, the replacement of the present bourgeois-landlord state and government by a state of people’s democracy and a government led by the working class on the basis of a firm worker-peasant alliance. This alone can quickly and thoroughly complete the unfinished basic democratic tasks of the Indian revolution and pave the way for putting the country on to the road for socialism. The tasks and the programme which the people’s democratic government will carry out as a prerequisite to advancing towards socialism are :
88. In the sphere of state structure :
The People’s Democratic India will be a voluntary union of the peoples of various nationalities of India.
Our Party is opposed to the drive of the ruling classes for centralisation, denying autonomy and is also opposed to all divisive, disruptionist and secessionist movements.
Our Party works for the preservation and promotion of the unity of the Indian Union on the basis of real equality and autonomy for the different nationalities that inhabit the country, and to develop a democratic state structure as outlined below.
(i) The Indian Union shall be a Federation based on democratic centralism.
(ii) The people are sovereign. All organs of state power shall be answerable to the people. The supreme authority in exercising state power shall be of the people’s representatives elected on the basis of adult franchise and on the principle of proportional representation, and subject to recall.
Universal, equal and direct suffrage for all citizens who have attained the age of 18 to be implemented in a free and fair manner in all elections to Parliament, State Legislatures and local self-government bodies. Secret ballot and the right of any voter to be elected to any representative institution to be ensured.
(iii) At the all-India Centre, there shall be two Houses having equal powers; the House of the People and the House of the States. The President shall act in accordance with the decisions of both the Houses and shall have no other powers.
(iv) All states in the Indian Union shall have real autonomy and equal powers.
The tribal areas or the areas where population is specfic in ethnic composition and is distinguished by specific social and cultural conditions will have regional autonomy with regional Government within the State concerned and shall receive full assistance for their development.
(v) There shall not be upper Houses at the States level. Nor shall there be Governors for the States appointed from above. All administrative services ahall be under the direct control of the respective States or local authorities. States shall treat all Indian citizens alike, and there shall not be any discrimination on the ground of caste, religion, community and nationality.
(vi) Equality of all national languages in Parliament and Central administration shall be recognised. Members of Parliament will have the right to speak in any national language and simultaneous translation will have to be provided in all other national languages. All Acts, Government orders and resolutions shall be made available in all national languages. The use of Hindi as the official language shall not be made obligatory. In the course of growing economic, social and intellectual intercourse, the people of different States of India will develop in practice the language of intercommunications most suitable to their needs. The use of English, in the fields of administration, legislation, judiciary and as the medium of instruction in education shall be discrded replacing it with the national languages. Right of people to receive instruction in their mother tongue in educational institution, the use of the national language of the particular linguistic state as the language of administration in all its public and State institutions, as well as its use as the medium of education in the State up to the highest standard, provision for the use of the language of a minority or minorities or of a region where necessary in addition to the language of the State shall be implemented. The Urdu language and its script shall be protected and promoted.
(vii) The people’s Democratic Government will take measures to consolidate the unity of India by fostering and promoting mutual co-operation between the constituent states and between the peoples of different states in the economic, political and cultural spheres. It will pay special attention and render financial and other assistance to economically backward and weaker states, regions and areas with a view to helping them rapidly overcome their backwardness. Inter-state problems like sharing of natural resources shall be decided on democratic lines and on need based principles.
(viii) The people’s Democratic State, in the field of local administnation, shall ensure a wide network of local bodies from village upward, directly elected by the people and vested with powers and responsibility and provided with adequate finances.
(ix) The people’s Democratic State shall strive to infuse in all our social and political institutions the spirit of democracy. It extends democratic forms of initiative and control over every aspect of national life. A key role in this will be played by the trade unions, peasant and agricultural workers’ associations, and other class and mass organisations of the working people. The Government will take steps to make the legislative and executive machinery of the country continuously responsive to the democratic wishes of the people, and will ensure that the masses and their organisations are drawn into active participation in the administration and work of the State. It works for the elimination of bureaucracy and bureaucratic parctices in the state and administration.
(x) Democratic changes wil be introduced in the matter of administering justice. Prompt and fair justice shall be ensured. The appointment of judges will be subject to approval of Parliament, Legislatures and other people’s organs at different levels.
Free legal aid and consultation will be provided for the people in order to make legal redress easily available to all citizens.
Right of persons to sue any official before a court of law shall be ensured.
(xi) The people’s Democratic Government will infuse the members of the armed forces with the spirit of patriotism, democracy and service to the people. It will ensure them good living standards and conditions of service, and provide them with maximum possible opportunities for cultural life, as well as the education and well-being of their children. It encourages all able-bodied persons to undergo military training and be imbued with the spirit of national independence and its defence.
(xii) Full civil liberties shall be guaranteed. Inviolability of person and domicile, and no detention of persons without trial, unhampered freedom of conscience, religious belief and worship, speech, Press, assembley, strike and combination, freedom of movement and occupation.
(xiii) Right to work as a fundamental right of every citizen shall be guaranteed ; equal right for all citizens and equal pay for equal work irrespective of religion, caste, sex, race and nationality shall be ensured.
(xiv) Wide disparities in salaries and incomes wil be abolished.
(xv) Abolition of social oppression of one caste by another and untouchability to be punished by law.
Special facilities for scheduled castes, tribes and other backward communities shall be provided in the matter of services and other special and educational amenities.
(xvi) Social inequalities and disabilities from which women suffer shall be removed, equal rights with men in such matters as inheritance of property, enforcement of marriage and divorce laws, admission to professions and services shall be guaranteed.
(xvii) Secular character of the State shall be guaranteed. Interference by religious institutions in the affairs of the State and political life of the country shall be prohibited. Religious minorities shall be given protection and any discrimination against them will be forbidden.
(xviii) The State shall fully take over education and its secular character shall be ensured.
Free and compulsory education up to the secondary stage shall be guaranteed.
(xix) A wide network of health, medical and maternity services shall be established free of cost, and rest homes and recreation centres for working people and old-age pension shall be guaranteed.
(xx) The people’s Democratic State and Government will undertake the important task of unleashing the creative talents of our people for developing and extending the new progressive people’s culture which is anti-feudal, anti-imperialist and democratic in character. It shall take the following necessary measures to foster, encourage and develop such literature, art and culture as will--
--help the people in their struggle to improve their living conditions and enrich their material and cultural life.
--help the people to get rid of caste and communal hatred and prejudices and ideas of subservience and obscurantism and superstitions.
--help each nationality including the tribal people to develop their distinct language, culture and way of life in unison with the common aspirations of the democratic masses of the country as a whole.
--Help all our people to develop feelings of brotherhood with all peace-loving peoples and countries of the world, and to discard ideas of racial and national hatred.
89. In the field of agriculture and the peasant problem:
The Peoples’ Democratic government will
(i) Abolish landlordism without compensation and give land gratis to the agricultural labourers and poor peasants ;
(ii) Cancel debts of peasants, agricultural labourers and small artisans to moneylenders and landlords;
(iii) Ensure long-term and cheap credit for the peasants and artisans and fair prices for agricultural produce, assist the peasants to improve methods of farming by the use of improved seeds, other inputs and modern implements and technique ;
(iv) Provide guaranteed irrigation facilities;
(v) Ensure adequate wages and living conditions to agricultural labourers ;
(vi) Encourage co-operatives of peasants and artisans on a voluntary basis for farming and for agricultural services and other purposes.
90. In the field of industry and labour :
Our industry suffers not only from an extremely low purchasing power of the peasants but also from the depredations of foreign capital. We cannot be a strong and prosperous country unless we are industrialised on a wide scale ; but industrialised to such an extent we shall never be so long as British, U.S. and other foreign capital exists in India and is given further opportunities of penetration under imperialist globalisation for the profits of their invested capital are taken out of the country and we are unable to use them.
In the field of industry, therefore, the people’s Democratic Government will :
(i) Take over all foreign capital in plantations, mines, oil refineries, and factories, shipping and trade. It will nationalise all banks and credit institutions and other monopolistic industries. Foreign trade will be nationalised.
(ii) Develop the state sector with the utmost rapidity so as to quickly overcome economic dependence and expand continuously the industries of the country. This together with the setting up of new state-owned industries will make the state sector dominant and decisive.
(iii) Assist the small and medium industries by providing them with credit, raw materials at reasonable prices and by helping them in regard to marketing facilities.
(iv) Regulate and co-ordinate the various sectors of the economy in order to achieve balanced and planned economic development of the country in the interest of the people.
(v) Democratise the management of the state sector by removing persons connected with big business from the management and by ensuring the creative participation of the workers and technicians in the management and running of industries.
(vi) Improve radicaly the living standards and working conditions of workers by (a) fixing a living wage, (b) progressive reduction of hours of work, (c) social insurance at the expense of the state and capitalists, against every kind of disablity and unemployment, (d) provision of decent housing for workers, (e) recognition of trade unions and their right of collective bargaining as well as the right to strike.
(vii) Strengthen Public Distribution System and effectively implement a price policy in the interest of the common people.
(viii) Maximum relief from taxation to workers, peasants and artisans shall be given while graded tax in agriculture, industry and trade will be introduced and profits will be controlled.
91. In the sphere of foreign policy :
In order to ensure that India plays its rightful role for the preservation of world peace, for the democratisation of international relations, for peaceful co-existence and in the struggle against imperialist hegemony the People’s Democratic Government will :
(i) Strengthen solidarity amongst developing and under developed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin-America and support all struggles against imperilism and for democracy and socialism in every possible way, further develop friendly relations and co-operation with the socialist countries and all peace-loving states in the interests of peace and freedom.
(ii) Strive for peaceful co-existence among countries with different social systems based on the panchsheel.
(iii) Do everything in its power in co-operation with all peace-loving forces to deliver mankind from the threat of a nuclear-missile war, demand the immediate prohibition of the testing, manufacture and use of all nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass annihilation and work for the destruction of all nuclear and atomic stock piles ; work for the agreements for nuclear-free zones.
(iv) Work for preventing war, for preserving peace and making it secure; work for the conclusion of a treaty on general and controlled disarmament; demand the abolition of all military pacts and all foreign military bases as well as withdrawal of all foreign troops from other countries; exercise the greatest vigilance against the imperialist warmongers and their intrigues and manoeuvres and inspire the masses in the spirit of such vigilance.
(v) Withdraw India from the British Commonwealth, renounce all agreements and commitments with Britain, USA and other imperialists which are against the interests of the nation or not in keeping with national dignity.
(vi) Oppose environmental pollution by MNCs and promote international co-operation for the preservation of the environment and protection of the ecological balance.
(vii) Always make special and concerted efforts to peacefully settle the existing differences and disputes and establish friendly relation with India’s neighbours--Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Burma and China.
VIII. BUILDING OF PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC FRONT
92.
It is obvious that for the complete and thoroughgoing fulfilment of the
basic tasks of the Indian revolution, in the present stage, it is
absolutely essential to replace the present bourgeois landlord state
headed by the big bourgeoisie by a state of people’s democracy led by
the working class.
93. It is also evident that without dislodging the present big bourgeois leadership, which has allied with landlordism, from the leading positions of state power and in its place establishing the hegemony of the working class over the state, no radical agrarian reforms in the genuine interests of the peasantry can be carried out, which alone can ensure enough food for our masses, adequate raw materials as well as expanding market for our industrial goods and surplus capital formation for the country’s development.
94. It is equally clear that out economy cannot get rid of foreign monopoly capital and its predatory exploitation as long as the present rulers with their policy of compromise and collaboration with foreign imperialist capital continues to rule. To uproot and to curb the dominence of the foreign monopoly capital from our country and to place our indepenence on firm and secure foundations, there can be no other guarantee than that of firmly establishing a government of the people’s democratic front led by the working class.
95. Above all, it becomes increasingly evident to one and all that until and unless the present state and government with its anti-people policies is rejected and decisively defeated and is replaced by an alternative state and government with alternative economic and democratic policies, it is neither possible for our people to escape the tortuous path of capitalist development which is historically outmoded, nor liberate our people from the clutches of growing monopoly capitalism which is continuously integrating its economic-political interests with those of the imperialists, a phenomenon that inevitably arises out of such a path of development.
96. The stage of our revolution and the basic tasks facing it not only determine the nature of the revolution but also the role of the different classes in the struggle to achieve it. The nature of our revolution in the present stage of its development is essentially anti-feudal. anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly and democratic. Of course, it cannot be democratic in the traditional sense of the term, when the bourgeoisie was heading the democratic revolution in different countries. Ours is a democratic revolution in an entirely new epoch of world history, where the proletariat and its political party is destined to assume its leadership and not leave it to the bourgeois class to betray it further. In the present era, the proletariat will have to lead the democratic revolution as a necessary step in its forward march to the achievment of socialism. Hence it is not the old type bourgeois-led democratic revolution, but a new type of people’s democratic revolution organised and led under the hegemony of the working class.
97. The anti-feudal and anti-imperialist people’s democratic revolution will have to take upon itself, first and foremost, the task of carrying our radical agrarian reforms in the interest of the peasantry; so as to sweep away the remnants of feudal and semi-feudal fetters on our forces of production in agriculture as well as in industry. This will have to be suplemented by sweeping measures of reforming the social system through which such remnants of pre-capitalist society as the caste and other social systems keep the villages tied to age old backwardness. The task of making such sweeping reforms in the social system, however, is inextricably bound up with the completion of the agrarian revolution which in fact is the axis of the democratic revolution. Any failure to grasp its full significance and import is to miss the very essence of the democratic revolution. The second urgent task of our democratic revolution is the total eradication and summary expulsion of the foreign monopoly capital from our national economy and thus free the economic political and social life of our people from all its disastrous influences. Thus these two fundamental tasks facing the democratic revolution are to be fulfilled. With these is also related the task of breaking the power of monopoly capital.
98. However, these basic and fundamental tasks of the revolution in today’s context cannot be carried out except in determined opposition to and struggle against the big bourgeoisie and its political representatives who occupy the leading position in the state. They resist and oppose agrarian reforms whatever have been carried out so far and have embarked upon the path of reforming feudal and semi-feudal landlordism to serve their narrow class interests, of allying with them in order to buttress their class domination. They also are utilising their state power to increasingly collaborate with the foreign finance and monopoly capital and facilitate their deeper and deeper penetration unhindered. Further, with their policies of compromise and collaboration with foreign monopolists and alliance with big Indian landlordism, they are vigorously pursuing the path of capitalist development which in turn is immensely facilitating the growth and dominance of monopoly capital in our country. Hence the people’s democrtic revolution is not only in irreconcilable opposition to feudal landlordism and foreign monopoly capitalism but together with them it is opposed to the big bourgeoisie which is leading the state and is pursuing the policies of compromise and collaboration with foreign finance capital and alliance with landlordism.
99. Naturally, under these circumstances, the people’s democratic revolution inevitably comes into clash with the state power of the big bourgeoisie of India. Such being the case the people’s democratic front that is to be forged to achieve the revolution cannot be the old overall general national united front, as in the days of the first stage of our national liberation struggle when the edge of the revolution was chiefly directed against the alien rule of Britsh imperialism. The democratic agrarian stage of the revolution and the new correlation of class forces, obtaining in this stage of development, demand a new content for the democratic front to be forged.
100. The people’s democratic front cannot successfully be built and the revolution cannot attain victory except under the leadership of the working class of India and its political party, the Communist Party. Historically no other class in modern society except the working class is destined to play this role and the entire experience of our time amply demonstrates this truth.
101. The core and the basis of the people’s democratic front is the firm alliance of the working class and the peasantry. It is this alliance that constitutes the most important force in defending national independence, accomplishing far-reaching democratic transformation and ensuring all-round social progress. Further, it should be noted that the extent to which the different sections of the national bourgeoisie participate in carrying out the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist tasks also depends to no small degree on the strength and stability of the workers’ and peasants’ alliance. In short the sucess or otherwise of building the broad people’s democratic front to lead the revolution to victory hinges upon forging the unshakable worker-peasant alliance.
102. It is common knowledge that our peasantry is not a homogeneous mass, that capitalism has made decisive inroads in it and brought about definite classification among them. The different sections of the peasantry play different roles in the revolution. The agricultural labourers and poor peasants, who constitute 70 percent of the rural households and are subjected to ruthless exploitation by landlords, by their very class position in present day society, are the basic allies of the working class. The middle peasantry, too, are the victims of the depredations of usurious capital, of feudal and capitalist landlords in the countryside and of the capitalist market, and landlord domination in rural life so affects their social position in innumerable ways as to make them reliable allies in the democratic front.
103. The rich peasants are another influential section among the peasantry. The bourgeois agrarian reforms and new technology have undoubtedly benefited certain sections of them and they have gained to some extent under the rule of the new post-independence regime. They aspire to join the ranks of capitalist landlords and by virture of their engaging agricultural labour on hire for work in their farms, they entertain hostility to them. Nonetheless, heavy taxation, high prices for agriculture inputs and industrial goods and inflation constantly harass them so as to make their future uncertain. Subjected to the ravages of the market under the grip of the monopolist traders, businessmen and industrialists, both foreign and Indian, they come up often against the oppressive policies pursued by the bourgeois-landlord government. By and large, they can also, therefore, be brought into the democratic front and retained as allies in the people’s democratic revolution.
104. The urban as well as other middle classes, with inadequate salaries and other meagre incomes, suffer heavily under the capitalist-landlord rule and its pursuit of the capitalist path of development by compromising with foreign monopoly capital and allying with landlordism. The ever-rising prices of food, clothing and other necessities of life, the high house-rents they are compelled to pay, the increasing cost of education for their children and the impact of daily-mounting direct and indirect taxes imposed by the state are hitting them hard. Unemployment is another scourge that constantly plagues them. This class can and will be an ally in the democratic front and every effort should be made to win them for the revolution.
105. The Indian bourgeoisie as a class, coming as it is from an underdeveloped country as ours, had its conflicts and contradictions with imperialism and also with the feudal and semi-feudal agrarian order. But the bigger and monopoly section, after attainment of independence, seeks to utilise its hold over the state power to resolve these conflicts and contradictions by compromise, pressure and bargain. In that process it has developed strong links with foreign monopolists and is sharing power with landlords. This upper section is anti-people and anti-Communist in character and is firmly opposed to the people’s democratic front and its revolutionary objectives.
106. The other broader section of the national bourgeoisie which are either having no links altogether with foreign monopolists or having no durable links, which are not by themselves monopolistic and suffer at the hands of monopolists in a number of ways, are objectively interested in the accomplishment of the principal tasks of the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution. As the general crisis of the world capitalist system deepens, as the contradiction between foreign monopolists and them grows in all its intensity and as the big bourgeoisie using its economic power and leading position in the state attempts to solve its crisis at the expense of its weak class-brethren in the country, this stratum of the bourgeoisie will be compelled to come into opposition with the state power and can find a place in the people’s democratic front. But it should be borne in mind that they are still sharing state power along with the big bourgeoisie and entertain high hopes of advancing further under the same regime. Notwithstanding its objectively progressive character, by virtue of its weak class position vis-a-vis Indian big monopolists and foreign imperialists, it is unstable and exhibits extreme vacillation between the imperialists and their Indian big bourgeois accomplices on the one hand and the people’s democratic front on the other. Owing to its dual nature, its participation in the revolution depends on a number of concrete conditions, on changes in the correlation of class forces, on the sharpness of the contradictions between imperialism, feudalism and the people and on the depth of the contradictions between the bourgeois-landlord state led by the big bourgeoisie and the remaining section of the national bourgeois class.
107. Every effort must be made to win them to the democratic front and by a diligent and concrete study of their problems no opportunity should be lost by the working class to render them support in all their struggles against both the Indian monopolists and foreign imperialist competitors.
108. The working class and its Party, while not for a moment losing sight of its basic aim of building the people’s democratic front to achieve the people’s democratic revolution and the fact that this has to inevitably come into clash with the present Indian state led by the big bourgeoisie, does take cognizance of the contradictions and conflicts that do exist between the Indian bourgeoisie, including the big bourgeoise, and foreign imperialists. They express themselves on the issues of imperialist hegemony on the economic and political relations with other developing countries, on the terms of aid from foreign monopolists and imperialist agencies, on the question of finding adequate markets for our exports, and on the question of foreign policy and defence of our national independence. In the background of the daily intensifying general crisis of world capitalism, the different contradictions obtaining in the national and international spheres are bound to get intensified. Our Party, while carefully studying this phenomenon, shall strive to utilise every such difference, fissure, conflict and contradiction with the foreign imperialists to isolate the imperialists and strengthen the people’s struggle for democratic advance. Entertaining no illusions of any strategic unity or united front with the bourgeoise-landlord parties, the working class will not hesitate to lend its unstinted support to the Government on all issues of world peace and anti-colonialism which are in the genuine interestes of the nation, on all economic and political issues of conflict with imperialism, and on all issues which involve questions of strengthening our sovereignty and independent foreign policy.
109. In the absence of an effective, unified and politically active movement of the working class, the ever increasing resentment against the monstrosities of the capitalist path has been utilised by certain negative, reactionery, communal and counter-revolutionary forces for consolidating their bases, especially in Hindi-Heartland. These forces are now in a position to cast an immense impact upon the political developments in some states as well as in the centre. They are also extending discernable aid and assistance to the anti-democratic moves and designs of the bourgeois-landlord ruling classes. Out of these forces BJP is now the foremost one. With the fascist ideology of RSS at its back, it has emerged as the flag-bearer of revivalism and has set forth a goal to revive a theocratic-State in the country; thus to negate all the achievements gained so far in the democratic direction. The rabid communal practices and henious attacks by this party and by other outfits of RSS on minority religious communities have generated a deep sense of insecurity amongst them . As a reaction they, too, have built up some strong areas of influence on communal lines. Thus this reactionary phenomena is not only harmful for the unity of working class, but coupled with the rise of fundamentalist forces at the international level, it also poses a grave threat to the general well being of the people as well as to the unity and integrity of the country.
Similarly, abject failure of the ruling classes in redressing the miseries of dalits, down-trodden and backward sections of the society has been utilised by some casteist leaders also to consolidate their political base. These casteist movements though have their roots in socially suppressed and economically exploited sections, yet their leaders work hard to keep these sections away from the revolutionary movement of the working class. Moreover because of divisive and disruptive roles and contents of these communal and casteist forces, the bourgeois-landlord ruling classes as well as imperialist intruders, for their own class interests, extend overt and covert support to these movements.
Therefore for the advancement of struggle for Peoples’ Democracy, our Party will have to firmly combat the reactionery ideology and political agenda of the BJP. It will also be imperative for the Party not to spare any efforts in taking up the issues of social oppression, discrimination and injustice as an agenda of top priority alongwith mobilising the followers of casteist parties to participate in the united struggles of the working people.
110. Basing itself on all these factors, our Party keeps before itself the task of uniting with all the patriotic forces of the nation, i.e. those who are interested in sweeping away all the remnants of pre-capitalist society; in carrying out the agrarian revolution in a thorough manner and in the interests of the peasantry; in elimination of all shackles of foreign capital; and in removing all obstacles in the path of a radical reconstruction of India’s economy, social life and culture.
111. The struggle to realise the aims of the people’s democratic revolution through the revolutionary unity of all patriotic and democratic forces with the worker-peasant alliance as its core is a complicated and protracted one. It is to be waged in varying conditions in varying phases. Different classes, different strata within the same class, are bound to take different position in these distinct phases of the development of the revolutionary movement. The complexities arising out of these shifts in the position taken by different classes and strata in the same class underline the need and importance of developing a Communist Party functioning as the vanguard of the revolutionary working class and bringing into its fold the most sincere and self-sacrificing revolutionaries. Only such a party which constantly educates and re-educates its ranks in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism will be able to master all forms of action appropriate to the moment in accordance with changing correlation of class forces. Such a party alone would be able to lead the mass of the people through the various twists and turns that are bound to take place in the course of the revolutionary movement.
112. The Party will obviously have to work out various interim slogans in order to meet the requirements of a rapidly changing political situation. Even while keeping before the people the task of dislodging the present ruling classes and establishing a new democratic state and government based on the firm alliance of the working class and peasantry, the party will utilise all the opportunities that present themselves of bringing into existence governments at the provincial level pledged to carry out a modest programme of giving immediate relief to the people. The formation of such governments will give great fillip to the revolutionary movement of the working people and thus help the process of building the democratic front. It, however, would not solve the economic and political problems of the nation in any fundamental manner. The party, therefore, will continue to educate the mass of the people on the need for replacing the present bourgeois-landlord state and government headed by the big bourgeoisie even while utilising all opprtunities for forming such governments of a transitional character which give immediate relief to the people and thus strengthen the mass movement.
113. Our Party strives to achieve the establishment of people’s democracy and socialist transformation through peaceful means. By developing a powerful mass revolutionary movement by combining parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forms of struggle, the working class and its allies will try their utmost to overcome the resistance of the forces of reaction and to bring about these transformations through peaceful means.
However, it needs always to be borne in mind that the ruling classes never relinquish their power voluntarily. They seek to defy the will of the people and seek to reverse it by lawlessness and violence. It is, therefore necessary for the revolutionary forces to be vigilant and so orientate their work that they can face up to all contingencies, to any twist and turn in the political life of the country.
93. It is also evident that without dislodging the present big bourgeois leadership, which has allied with landlordism, from the leading positions of state power and in its place establishing the hegemony of the working class over the state, no radical agrarian reforms in the genuine interests of the peasantry can be carried out, which alone can ensure enough food for our masses, adequate raw materials as well as expanding market for our industrial goods and surplus capital formation for the country’s development.
94. It is equally clear that out economy cannot get rid of foreign monopoly capital and its predatory exploitation as long as the present rulers with their policy of compromise and collaboration with foreign imperialist capital continues to rule. To uproot and to curb the dominence of the foreign monopoly capital from our country and to place our indepenence on firm and secure foundations, there can be no other guarantee than that of firmly establishing a government of the people’s democratic front led by the working class.
95. Above all, it becomes increasingly evident to one and all that until and unless the present state and government with its anti-people policies is rejected and decisively defeated and is replaced by an alternative state and government with alternative economic and democratic policies, it is neither possible for our people to escape the tortuous path of capitalist development which is historically outmoded, nor liberate our people from the clutches of growing monopoly capitalism which is continuously integrating its economic-political interests with those of the imperialists, a phenomenon that inevitably arises out of such a path of development.
96. The stage of our revolution and the basic tasks facing it not only determine the nature of the revolution but also the role of the different classes in the struggle to achieve it. The nature of our revolution in the present stage of its development is essentially anti-feudal. anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly and democratic. Of course, it cannot be democratic in the traditional sense of the term, when the bourgeoisie was heading the democratic revolution in different countries. Ours is a democratic revolution in an entirely new epoch of world history, where the proletariat and its political party is destined to assume its leadership and not leave it to the bourgeois class to betray it further. In the present era, the proletariat will have to lead the democratic revolution as a necessary step in its forward march to the achievment of socialism. Hence it is not the old type bourgeois-led democratic revolution, but a new type of people’s democratic revolution organised and led under the hegemony of the working class.
97. The anti-feudal and anti-imperialist people’s democratic revolution will have to take upon itself, first and foremost, the task of carrying our radical agrarian reforms in the interest of the peasantry; so as to sweep away the remnants of feudal and semi-feudal fetters on our forces of production in agriculture as well as in industry. This will have to be suplemented by sweeping measures of reforming the social system through which such remnants of pre-capitalist society as the caste and other social systems keep the villages tied to age old backwardness. The task of making such sweeping reforms in the social system, however, is inextricably bound up with the completion of the agrarian revolution which in fact is the axis of the democratic revolution. Any failure to grasp its full significance and import is to miss the very essence of the democratic revolution. The second urgent task of our democratic revolution is the total eradication and summary expulsion of the foreign monopoly capital from our national economy and thus free the economic political and social life of our people from all its disastrous influences. Thus these two fundamental tasks facing the democratic revolution are to be fulfilled. With these is also related the task of breaking the power of monopoly capital.
98. However, these basic and fundamental tasks of the revolution in today’s context cannot be carried out except in determined opposition to and struggle against the big bourgeoisie and its political representatives who occupy the leading position in the state. They resist and oppose agrarian reforms whatever have been carried out so far and have embarked upon the path of reforming feudal and semi-feudal landlordism to serve their narrow class interests, of allying with them in order to buttress their class domination. They also are utilising their state power to increasingly collaborate with the foreign finance and monopoly capital and facilitate their deeper and deeper penetration unhindered. Further, with their policies of compromise and collaboration with foreign monopolists and alliance with big Indian landlordism, they are vigorously pursuing the path of capitalist development which in turn is immensely facilitating the growth and dominance of monopoly capital in our country. Hence the people’s democrtic revolution is not only in irreconcilable opposition to feudal landlordism and foreign monopoly capitalism but together with them it is opposed to the big bourgeoisie which is leading the state and is pursuing the policies of compromise and collaboration with foreign finance capital and alliance with landlordism.
99. Naturally, under these circumstances, the people’s democratic revolution inevitably comes into clash with the state power of the big bourgeoisie of India. Such being the case the people’s democratic front that is to be forged to achieve the revolution cannot be the old overall general national united front, as in the days of the first stage of our national liberation struggle when the edge of the revolution was chiefly directed against the alien rule of Britsh imperialism. The democratic agrarian stage of the revolution and the new correlation of class forces, obtaining in this stage of development, demand a new content for the democratic front to be forged.
100. The people’s democratic front cannot successfully be built and the revolution cannot attain victory except under the leadership of the working class of India and its political party, the Communist Party. Historically no other class in modern society except the working class is destined to play this role and the entire experience of our time amply demonstrates this truth.
101. The core and the basis of the people’s democratic front is the firm alliance of the working class and the peasantry. It is this alliance that constitutes the most important force in defending national independence, accomplishing far-reaching democratic transformation and ensuring all-round social progress. Further, it should be noted that the extent to which the different sections of the national bourgeoisie participate in carrying out the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist tasks also depends to no small degree on the strength and stability of the workers’ and peasants’ alliance. In short the sucess or otherwise of building the broad people’s democratic front to lead the revolution to victory hinges upon forging the unshakable worker-peasant alliance.
102. It is common knowledge that our peasantry is not a homogeneous mass, that capitalism has made decisive inroads in it and brought about definite classification among them. The different sections of the peasantry play different roles in the revolution. The agricultural labourers and poor peasants, who constitute 70 percent of the rural households and are subjected to ruthless exploitation by landlords, by their very class position in present day society, are the basic allies of the working class. The middle peasantry, too, are the victims of the depredations of usurious capital, of feudal and capitalist landlords in the countryside and of the capitalist market, and landlord domination in rural life so affects their social position in innumerable ways as to make them reliable allies in the democratic front.
103. The rich peasants are another influential section among the peasantry. The bourgeois agrarian reforms and new technology have undoubtedly benefited certain sections of them and they have gained to some extent under the rule of the new post-independence regime. They aspire to join the ranks of capitalist landlords and by virture of their engaging agricultural labour on hire for work in their farms, they entertain hostility to them. Nonetheless, heavy taxation, high prices for agriculture inputs and industrial goods and inflation constantly harass them so as to make their future uncertain. Subjected to the ravages of the market under the grip of the monopolist traders, businessmen and industrialists, both foreign and Indian, they come up often against the oppressive policies pursued by the bourgeois-landlord government. By and large, they can also, therefore, be brought into the democratic front and retained as allies in the people’s democratic revolution.
104. The urban as well as other middle classes, with inadequate salaries and other meagre incomes, suffer heavily under the capitalist-landlord rule and its pursuit of the capitalist path of development by compromising with foreign monopoly capital and allying with landlordism. The ever-rising prices of food, clothing and other necessities of life, the high house-rents they are compelled to pay, the increasing cost of education for their children and the impact of daily-mounting direct and indirect taxes imposed by the state are hitting them hard. Unemployment is another scourge that constantly plagues them. This class can and will be an ally in the democratic front and every effort should be made to win them for the revolution.
105. The Indian bourgeoisie as a class, coming as it is from an underdeveloped country as ours, had its conflicts and contradictions with imperialism and also with the feudal and semi-feudal agrarian order. But the bigger and monopoly section, after attainment of independence, seeks to utilise its hold over the state power to resolve these conflicts and contradictions by compromise, pressure and bargain. In that process it has developed strong links with foreign monopolists and is sharing power with landlords. This upper section is anti-people and anti-Communist in character and is firmly opposed to the people’s democratic front and its revolutionary objectives.
106. The other broader section of the national bourgeoisie which are either having no links altogether with foreign monopolists or having no durable links, which are not by themselves monopolistic and suffer at the hands of monopolists in a number of ways, are objectively interested in the accomplishment of the principal tasks of the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution. As the general crisis of the world capitalist system deepens, as the contradiction between foreign monopolists and them grows in all its intensity and as the big bourgeoisie using its economic power and leading position in the state attempts to solve its crisis at the expense of its weak class-brethren in the country, this stratum of the bourgeoisie will be compelled to come into opposition with the state power and can find a place in the people’s democratic front. But it should be borne in mind that they are still sharing state power along with the big bourgeoisie and entertain high hopes of advancing further under the same regime. Notwithstanding its objectively progressive character, by virtue of its weak class position vis-a-vis Indian big monopolists and foreign imperialists, it is unstable and exhibits extreme vacillation between the imperialists and their Indian big bourgeois accomplices on the one hand and the people’s democratic front on the other. Owing to its dual nature, its participation in the revolution depends on a number of concrete conditions, on changes in the correlation of class forces, on the sharpness of the contradictions between imperialism, feudalism and the people and on the depth of the contradictions between the bourgeois-landlord state led by the big bourgeoisie and the remaining section of the national bourgeois class.
107. Every effort must be made to win them to the democratic front and by a diligent and concrete study of their problems no opportunity should be lost by the working class to render them support in all their struggles against both the Indian monopolists and foreign imperialist competitors.
108. The working class and its Party, while not for a moment losing sight of its basic aim of building the people’s democratic front to achieve the people’s democratic revolution and the fact that this has to inevitably come into clash with the present Indian state led by the big bourgeoisie, does take cognizance of the contradictions and conflicts that do exist between the Indian bourgeoisie, including the big bourgeoise, and foreign imperialists. They express themselves on the issues of imperialist hegemony on the economic and political relations with other developing countries, on the terms of aid from foreign monopolists and imperialist agencies, on the question of finding adequate markets for our exports, and on the question of foreign policy and defence of our national independence. In the background of the daily intensifying general crisis of world capitalism, the different contradictions obtaining in the national and international spheres are bound to get intensified. Our Party, while carefully studying this phenomenon, shall strive to utilise every such difference, fissure, conflict and contradiction with the foreign imperialists to isolate the imperialists and strengthen the people’s struggle for democratic advance. Entertaining no illusions of any strategic unity or united front with the bourgeoise-landlord parties, the working class will not hesitate to lend its unstinted support to the Government on all issues of world peace and anti-colonialism which are in the genuine interestes of the nation, on all economic and political issues of conflict with imperialism, and on all issues which involve questions of strengthening our sovereignty and independent foreign policy.
109. In the absence of an effective, unified and politically active movement of the working class, the ever increasing resentment against the monstrosities of the capitalist path has been utilised by certain negative, reactionery, communal and counter-revolutionary forces for consolidating their bases, especially in Hindi-Heartland. These forces are now in a position to cast an immense impact upon the political developments in some states as well as in the centre. They are also extending discernable aid and assistance to the anti-democratic moves and designs of the bourgeois-landlord ruling classes. Out of these forces BJP is now the foremost one. With the fascist ideology of RSS at its back, it has emerged as the flag-bearer of revivalism and has set forth a goal to revive a theocratic-State in the country; thus to negate all the achievements gained so far in the democratic direction. The rabid communal practices and henious attacks by this party and by other outfits of RSS on minority religious communities have generated a deep sense of insecurity amongst them . As a reaction they, too, have built up some strong areas of influence on communal lines. Thus this reactionary phenomena is not only harmful for the unity of working class, but coupled with the rise of fundamentalist forces at the international level, it also poses a grave threat to the general well being of the people as well as to the unity and integrity of the country.
Similarly, abject failure of the ruling classes in redressing the miseries of dalits, down-trodden and backward sections of the society has been utilised by some casteist leaders also to consolidate their political base. These casteist movements though have their roots in socially suppressed and economically exploited sections, yet their leaders work hard to keep these sections away from the revolutionary movement of the working class. Moreover because of divisive and disruptive roles and contents of these communal and casteist forces, the bourgeois-landlord ruling classes as well as imperialist intruders, for their own class interests, extend overt and covert support to these movements.
Therefore for the advancement of struggle for Peoples’ Democracy, our Party will have to firmly combat the reactionery ideology and political agenda of the BJP. It will also be imperative for the Party not to spare any efforts in taking up the issues of social oppression, discrimination and injustice as an agenda of top priority alongwith mobilising the followers of casteist parties to participate in the united struggles of the working people.
110. Basing itself on all these factors, our Party keeps before itself the task of uniting with all the patriotic forces of the nation, i.e. those who are interested in sweeping away all the remnants of pre-capitalist society; in carrying out the agrarian revolution in a thorough manner and in the interests of the peasantry; in elimination of all shackles of foreign capital; and in removing all obstacles in the path of a radical reconstruction of India’s economy, social life and culture.
111. The struggle to realise the aims of the people’s democratic revolution through the revolutionary unity of all patriotic and democratic forces with the worker-peasant alliance as its core is a complicated and protracted one. It is to be waged in varying conditions in varying phases. Different classes, different strata within the same class, are bound to take different position in these distinct phases of the development of the revolutionary movement. The complexities arising out of these shifts in the position taken by different classes and strata in the same class underline the need and importance of developing a Communist Party functioning as the vanguard of the revolutionary working class and bringing into its fold the most sincere and self-sacrificing revolutionaries. Only such a party which constantly educates and re-educates its ranks in the spirit of Marxism-Leninism will be able to master all forms of action appropriate to the moment in accordance with changing correlation of class forces. Such a party alone would be able to lead the mass of the people through the various twists and turns that are bound to take place in the course of the revolutionary movement.
112. The Party will obviously have to work out various interim slogans in order to meet the requirements of a rapidly changing political situation. Even while keeping before the people the task of dislodging the present ruling classes and establishing a new democratic state and government based on the firm alliance of the working class and peasantry, the party will utilise all the opportunities that present themselves of bringing into existence governments at the provincial level pledged to carry out a modest programme of giving immediate relief to the people. The formation of such governments will give great fillip to the revolutionary movement of the working people and thus help the process of building the democratic front. It, however, would not solve the economic and political problems of the nation in any fundamental manner. The party, therefore, will continue to educate the mass of the people on the need for replacing the present bourgeois-landlord state and government headed by the big bourgeoisie even while utilising all opprtunities for forming such governments of a transitional character which give immediate relief to the people and thus strengthen the mass movement.
113. Our Party strives to achieve the establishment of people’s democracy and socialist transformation through peaceful means. By developing a powerful mass revolutionary movement by combining parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forms of struggle, the working class and its allies will try their utmost to overcome the resistance of the forces of reaction and to bring about these transformations through peaceful means.
However, it needs always to be borne in mind that the ruling classes never relinquish their power voluntarily. They seek to defy the will of the people and seek to reverse it by lawlessness and violence. It is, therefore necessary for the revolutionary forces to be vigilant and so orientate their work that they can face up to all contingencies, to any twist and turn in the political life of the country.
IX. BUILDING OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
114. Vigorous struggles on the ideological front are essential to free
the masses from the influence of bourgeois as well as feudal and
semi-feudal ideologies, to heighten their political consciousness and
to draw them to the positions of scientific socialism. Anti-Communism,
is the principal ideological weapon of the ruling class. They use this
weapon to carry out the ideological offensive against the democratic
movement, and to isolate the Communists from the rest of the democratic
forces. Anti-Communism resorts to monstrous distortions of the Marxist
doctrine and crude slanders against the socialist ideology and system,
presents Communist objectives as utopia and carries on a witch-hunt
against the democratic, forces and organisations. Anti-Communism is
contrary to our national interests as well as the interests of the
democratic movement as a whole. The communists must expose and fight
anti-Communism with the utmost energy. The serious setback to socialism
in the Soviet Union and East European countries has not only given a
god-sent opportunity to the sworn class enemies of Marxism-Leninism to
unleash an enimical tirade against socialism but has also been utilised
by the right revisionists inside the Communist movement to create
confusion amongst the working people and to derail their movements on to
the lines of class collaboration and social democracy. Therefore the
Communists, now, have a hard task in confronting with all these
enemies.
Religious obscurantism, communalism and casteism as well as bourgeois nationalism and regional chauvinism are all exploited by the reactionary vested interestes to disrupt and retard the growth of the democratic movement of our people. Hindutva and Hindi chauvinism have already raised their heads and in resistance to these, minority fundamentalism as well as other linguistic groups are raising disruptive demands. All these are harmful for the movement of the united working class movement as well as revolutionary movement and as such our Party will fight against all of these Anti-people trends relentlessly.
Many bourgeois leaders as well as leaders representing the social democracy demagogically use socialist phraseology for deceiving the masses, whereas these bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaders try to keep the people away from the struggle for a genuine socialist path. They use egalitarean slogans as a cover for their attack on Marxist-Leninist theory and the Communist Party. The Communist Party explains to the masses that the measures of the government representing bourgeois-landlord classes are not in the least pro-people and there is not an iota of scientific socialism in the theories of these bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaders.
For the unity and consolidation of the democratic forces in our country it is also imperative to wage unrelenting ideological and political struggles against the disruptive and anti-communist position of the right-wing socialists, revisionists and left-sectarian adventurists, who too have come up in the country in various shades and strengths.
115. The establishment of a people’s democratic government, the successful carrying out of these tasks, and the leadership of the working class in the people’s democratic state will ensure that the Indian revolution will not stop at the democratic stage but will quickly pass over to the stage of effecting socialist transformation.
116. Our Party places this programme before the people and sets forth the principal urgent tasks of the day in order that our people have a clear picture of the objective they are fighting for as of the course of a democratic national advance.
Our Party calls upon the toiling millions, the working class, the peasantry, the toiling intelligentsia, the middle classes as well as the national bourgeoisie interested in a truly democratic development and in creating a prosperous life, to unite in a single people’s democratic front for the fulfilment of these immediate tasks and for attainment of the objective.
117. Carrying forward the fighting traditions of our people, the Communist Party combines patriotism with proletarian internationalism and in all its activities and struggles the Party is guided by the philosophy and principles of Marxism-Leninism which alone showes to the toiling masses the correct way to the ending of exploitation of man by man, to their complete emancipation. The Party unites in its ranks the most advanced, the most active and most selfless sons and daughters of the working people and ceaselessly strives to develop them as staunch Marxist-Leninists and proletarian internationalists. The Party devotes all its energies and resources to the task of uniting all patriotic and democratic forces in the struggle for a democratic course of development-to the great task of building a mighty people’s democratic front for the realisation of the programme.
118. Fighting thus for democratic advance of our country our Party takes its place in the worldwide struggle against imperialist globalisation which is now the biggest danger for the social progress, for the maintenance of national independence and democracy, and for the struggle for socialism. Our party, guarding itself against all variants of revisionism and sectarionism, is fully committed for the defence of Marxism-Leninisim. The Party, while pledging to fight the menace of modern revisionism which has now engulfed the world Communist movement and has become the main danger, simultaneously warns against dogmatic errors and adventurist actions. Our party strives for strengthening the unity of the international Communist movement which alone is the reliable guarantee for transforming into a reality in each country and the world over the possibilities opened up by the new epoch started since the Great October Revolution.
119. It is also a stark reality to-day that the CPI(M) which had undertaken a vigorous ideological-political struggle against right revisionist line of class collaboration at the time of its formation in 1964 and had thus attracted hundreds of thousands of militant cadres from the working class, peasantry and other working people towards it ranks, has by now thoroughly fallen into the quagmire of reformist deviation of parliamentarism. This party has redrafted the programme adopted in 1964, under the pretext of its updating, and have done violence to the scientific understanding and revolutionary sipirit of that programme. Our party will strive hard to indentify the concrete causes of this setback, will remain vigilant against such alien-class tendencies in future and will spare no efforts in overcoming the damages done by these neo-revisionists to the cause of Peoples’ Democratic Revolution in India.
120. Our Party is confident that the people of our country, led by the working class and its revolutionary vanguard, guided by the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, will achieve this programme. Our party is confident that our great country, India, will definitely emerge as a victorious People’s Democracy and advance on the road to socialism.
Religious obscurantism, communalism and casteism as well as bourgeois nationalism and regional chauvinism are all exploited by the reactionary vested interestes to disrupt and retard the growth of the democratic movement of our people. Hindutva and Hindi chauvinism have already raised their heads and in resistance to these, minority fundamentalism as well as other linguistic groups are raising disruptive demands. All these are harmful for the movement of the united working class movement as well as revolutionary movement and as such our Party will fight against all of these Anti-people trends relentlessly.
Many bourgeois leaders as well as leaders representing the social democracy demagogically use socialist phraseology for deceiving the masses, whereas these bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaders try to keep the people away from the struggle for a genuine socialist path. They use egalitarean slogans as a cover for their attack on Marxist-Leninist theory and the Communist Party. The Communist Party explains to the masses that the measures of the government representing bourgeois-landlord classes are not in the least pro-people and there is not an iota of scientific socialism in the theories of these bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaders.
For the unity and consolidation of the democratic forces in our country it is also imperative to wage unrelenting ideological and political struggles against the disruptive and anti-communist position of the right-wing socialists, revisionists and left-sectarian adventurists, who too have come up in the country in various shades and strengths.
115. The establishment of a people’s democratic government, the successful carrying out of these tasks, and the leadership of the working class in the people’s democratic state will ensure that the Indian revolution will not stop at the democratic stage but will quickly pass over to the stage of effecting socialist transformation.
116. Our Party places this programme before the people and sets forth the principal urgent tasks of the day in order that our people have a clear picture of the objective they are fighting for as of the course of a democratic national advance.
Our Party calls upon the toiling millions, the working class, the peasantry, the toiling intelligentsia, the middle classes as well as the national bourgeoisie interested in a truly democratic development and in creating a prosperous life, to unite in a single people’s democratic front for the fulfilment of these immediate tasks and for attainment of the objective.
117. Carrying forward the fighting traditions of our people, the Communist Party combines patriotism with proletarian internationalism and in all its activities and struggles the Party is guided by the philosophy and principles of Marxism-Leninism which alone showes to the toiling masses the correct way to the ending of exploitation of man by man, to their complete emancipation. The Party unites in its ranks the most advanced, the most active and most selfless sons and daughters of the working people and ceaselessly strives to develop them as staunch Marxist-Leninists and proletarian internationalists. The Party devotes all its energies and resources to the task of uniting all patriotic and democratic forces in the struggle for a democratic course of development-to the great task of building a mighty people’s democratic front for the realisation of the programme.
118. Fighting thus for democratic advance of our country our Party takes its place in the worldwide struggle against imperialist globalisation which is now the biggest danger for the social progress, for the maintenance of national independence and democracy, and for the struggle for socialism. Our party, guarding itself against all variants of revisionism and sectarionism, is fully committed for the defence of Marxism-Leninisim. The Party, while pledging to fight the menace of modern revisionism which has now engulfed the world Communist movement and has become the main danger, simultaneously warns against dogmatic errors and adventurist actions. Our party strives for strengthening the unity of the international Communist movement which alone is the reliable guarantee for transforming into a reality in each country and the world over the possibilities opened up by the new epoch started since the Great October Revolution.
119. It is also a stark reality to-day that the CPI(M) which had undertaken a vigorous ideological-political struggle against right revisionist line of class collaboration at the time of its formation in 1964 and had thus attracted hundreds of thousands of militant cadres from the working class, peasantry and other working people towards it ranks, has by now thoroughly fallen into the quagmire of reformist deviation of parliamentarism. This party has redrafted the programme adopted in 1964, under the pretext of its updating, and have done violence to the scientific understanding and revolutionary sipirit of that programme. Our party will strive hard to indentify the concrete causes of this setback, will remain vigilant against such alien-class tendencies in future and will spare no efforts in overcoming the damages done by these neo-revisionists to the cause of Peoples’ Democratic Revolution in India.
120. Our Party is confident that the people of our country, led by the working class and its revolutionary vanguard, guided by the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, will achieve this programme. Our party is confident that our great country, India, will definitely emerge as a victorious People’s Democracy and advance on the road to socialism.
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