End the divestment! Stop this FDI! End the Price Hikes!!
For whom are these reforms?
The government of the Congress has again begun its old capitalist tricks. Winning the presidential elections has given it the confidence to restart its reactionary programme of attacking the workers and poor peasants and petty bourgeois. The first major attack has already be fallen us in the form of a triple offensive of fuel price hikes, divestments, and FDI in retail and aviation. Whilst this has made ‘Corporate India’ very happy,(Stock markets rose 400 points immediately after this announcement), it has made ordinary Indian working people very miserable. Imagine a family of 8 having to ration their consumption with only 6 LPG cylinders a year! On top of that food inflation still keeps rising!! It is for these reasons that the enraged people of India have taken to the streets in protest, in an all India general strike and shut down!
On the one hand this capitalist’s government impoverishes the masses with its incessant price hikes in fuel and food, on the other hand it attempts to drain the power of the organized workers of India through divestments. Four key public sector companies, NALCO, Oil India Ltd, MMTC and Hindustan Copper Ltd. have been okayed for stake sale of up to 12% share. All these companies are in the core sectors like mining and heavy manufacturing. There is very little doubt about who the main beneficiaries of this stake sale will be and why this stake sale is being undertaken. Just like the stake sale of CIL, where the Birlas bought most of the stake, it will yet again be the big Indian conglomerates and their foreign partners like JPMorgan who will benefit. The workers of these companies of course will get minced in the process.
FDI here is a shot in the arm of the Indian capitalist class who wants to more thoroughly exploit the population. It is aimed at benefitting the big Indian monopolist conglomerates by destruction of small retailers and petty producers. There is no doubt about it, that this was a step done entirely on the pressure and lobbying of big Indian retailers and Conglomerates like the Sunil Mittal and the Birlas who want to expand their retail biz nationally and internationally. These looters and their lick-spittle government now aims at the destruction of small retail and the peasantry. The genocidal proletarianization machinery of India has revived its destructive act!
Why now?
For around a year now, the Indian economy has been underperforming, due to the world crisis. Primarily, it was the internal situation with a political crisis looming large over India and the insurgent situation in the countryside, and the ascent of the working class militancy in recent years, which held back a rapid and unabashed expansion of Indian capitalism internally. For a prolonged period, the bourgeois tried to keep its pacification policies to soften the resistance of the poor against its policies, which resulted in a deadlock. After this deadlock sustained for nearly a year, the Indian capitalists having become fed up, frustrated and desperate, have launched their recent tirades against the people. Pacification has now given way to domination, the repressive face of which is being seen in the police action in Kudankulam.
With industrial productivity and investment stagnating, it became all the more essential for the bourgeois state to undertake the responsibility for capitalist expansion. Thus, the government would undertake a policy to liberalize FDI in sectors such as retail, aviation and allow divestments in core sectors to force these companies to expand where private capital wouldn’t. Of course, the interest behind this is that of big monopolist capitalists like the Birlas, and Mittals. It wouldn’t be surprising if it would ever be found out, that hefty bribes were given by the Birlas and their ilk to win over the government to this agenda. After all, their kind are gifted with pockets as deep as their bellies are large!
What must be done!
A one day strike and all India shut down can shake up things for now, but we need to do more than simply show our anger and ‘shake up’ temporarily. What this means for us now, and for any future action we undertake against the capitalist pigs and their lick-spittle politicians, is that we must heighten our actions, become more aggressive and more demanding! We have already shown our strength to mobilize the multimillions in India, now we must use that strength more aggressively and why not!? If the capitalists can be aggressive then so can we! If they can privatize our public sector corporations and use them like cattle for pulling their weight, then we too can Nationalize their corporations and use their wealth for our welfare! If they can loot us with their price hikes and inflation, we too can demand from them our right to a sliding scale of wages, and increase our wage with inflation levels!
{module Propaganda 30 anos}This aggression today is a necessity. But can we expect any of the parliamentary opposition to bring about such an action? Not the NDA coalition nor the Left Front are interested in the ascent of class struggle. The BJP which leads the NDA is born of the same blood which runs in the Congress party, and as such is just as committed to capitalism as the latter, not to mention their penchant for corruption which runs just as deep as the congress. The Left front which has already showed its true face in Bengal and Kerala, with Singur and Nandigram, that they are only useful idiots for big capitalists to pacify the masses and make way for their investments. What we need in India today is a revolutionary Bolshevik Leninist party which can lead the working class and their allies on the path of revolution!
Let them know! That we have not created their crisis! And we will not pay the price for it! We will not be dragged into their genocidal equations just to make a good balance sheet for fat banias! Let them know that the working poor of India are not cattle, that they can milk during boom time and kill when in crisis! We are our own people and we will demand what we feel is justly ours! If we don’t get this, then we will take it from the clutches of the oppressors!
We demand:
· Immediate rollback of fuel price hikes! No rationing for LPG! Family needs come first!
· Immediate rollback of divestments!
· Control of public sector companies by elected council of workers!
· Immediate stoppage of FDI in retail and aviation!
· Nationalization of all Monopoly conglomerates under workers control!
