Chandigarh, May 29
Visibly annoyed over the non-implementation of the pro-poor and pro-common man agenda enlisted in the common minimum programme (CMP) of the UPA government, the Left parties are all set to launch a “people’s struggle” against the Manmohan Singh government.
Mr Prakash Karat, General Secretary of the CPM, said here today that the decision regarding the form of the struggle would be taken at the three-day meeting of the Central Committee of the party scheduled to be held next week in Kolkatta.
At that meeting the performance evaluation report of the UPA government prepared by the top brass of the CPM will be put up before the Central Committee for discussion.
Obviously, the CPM does not want to give any respite to the UPA government for its failure so far in implementing the pro-poor agenda. And it does not want to confine itself to just making formal statements on various issues, on which it does not agree with the UPA government. It is in a mood to build pressure on the UPA government to make it deliver the pro-common man agenda. To be aggressive against the government is also an electoral need of the Left parties in West Bengal and other states. The CPM wants the Assembly elections in Bihar after the monsoon season.
Except on the foreign policy front, the CPM has found the UPA government wanting on social, political and economic issues. In fact, the CPM has found lack of political initiative in the UPA government on the Kashmir issue. “The Central Government should have started political dialogue with all Kashmiri groups, including the Hurryiat Conference. But no serious effort has been made on this front,” said Mr Karat. The CPM wants that the Siachen and Sir Creek issues should be resolved at the earliest with Pakistan.
“We have evaluated the one year’s performance of the UPA government,” said Mr Karat. “My party is not satisfied with the performance. The Congress-led government has been very swift in implementing the pro-rich and pro-direct foreign investment agenda, but has not shown that much enthusiasm on the pro-poor agenda,” he elaborated.
Asked to differentiate between the policies of the NDA and the UPA governments, he said while the NDA wanted to sell all PSU, the UPA had been kept under check to do so by the Left parties.
Asked for how long his party would have to wait to get the common minimum programme implemented, Mr Karat said no deadline had been fixed for the UPA government. “However, we want its implementation to be as fast as had been the case with regard to the foreign direct investment and disinvestment etc,” he said.
Enlisting the priorities for the UPA government, Mr Karat said the Employment Guarantee Bill should be brought to Parliament in the next session and the same should be done in the case of the Women’s Reservation Bill to fix the number of seats for women in Parliament and state Assemblies. He said the over two-third members of Parliament were prepared to pass the Women’s Reservation Bill.
The CPM would also build pressure on the UPA government to distribute surplus land among landless people, resolve the problem of unemployment and streamline the food-for-work programme for the poor. Mr Karat said the food-for-work plan launched in 150 backward districts had not been successful. “My party has got the survey done of this programme and its benefits are not reaching the targeted people,” he asserted.
Talking about the government’s decision of 10 per cent disinvestment in BHEL, Mr Karat said the Union Government would have to review it. Disinvestment in the profit-making PSU such as BHEL could not be made to bridge the budgetary deficit. “We would have accepted the decision if it had been taken by the Board of Directors of BHEL to invest the money, earned through disinvestment, for its (BHEL’s) expansion and betterment,” said Mr Karat. However, as the decision had been enforced on BHEL by the Union Government, it was not acceptable, he added.
“We are not blindly opposing the UPA government,” he added. He said he did not approve the manner in which the UPA government had allocated the money from the special reserve fund (SRF), which was workers’ money, to pay the enhanced rate of 9.5 per cent interest to employees’ provident fund subscribers yesterday.
He denied his meeting with the Nepal’s Maoist leader Babu Ram Bhattarai, but said his party was in touch with democratic and Communist parties in that country for the restoration of democracy.
