Opinion Misplaced agenda

CPI (ML) has argued that the Left must not reduce the 2014 poll campaign to a single-point communal versus secular debate.

October 23, 2013 05:17 AM IST First published on: Oct 23, 2013 at 05:17 AM IST

With the Left set to bring together several regional parties including the SP,AIAMDK,JD(U) and BJD,on a common platform against communalism,the CPI (ML) has argued that the Left must not reduce the 2014 poll campaign to a single-point communal versus secular debate. Any coalition exercise in the name of secularism with discredited and opportunist forces,many of whom have joined hands with the BJP in the past and may well cross over once again for the sake of power-sharing,will lack credibility and only trivialise secularism.

And it will weaken the necessary political thrust of a powerful peoples campaign at this critical juncture to stop corporate plunder of national resources… and free Indias basic policies and international role from strategic subservience to global capital and US imperialism, an editorial in CPI(ML) weekly ML Update says.

The editorial also discusses the coal block allocation case in the light of the CBI FIRs against industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and former Coal Secretary PC Parakh. It alleges that the PM and his office stand incontrovertibly implicated in the dust and fume of coalgate and even if the CBI is used selectively and shamelessly to save the PM for the time being.

TWO TRAGEDIES

CPM journal Peoples Democracy has compared the handling of Cyclone Phailin to the temple stampede in Madhya Pradesh,arguing that while the former showed how the state apparatus can deliver,the latter showed how it can be rendered ineffective and helpless. The contrast could not have been sharper,it claims in an editorial subtly praising the BJD governments performance. Thousands of lives were saved due to timely intervention,accurate forecasting and rare administrative efficiency in the devastation caused by Phailin. In sharp contrast to the natural disaster of the cyclone was the man-made disaster that left at least 115 people dead in a stampede at Ratangarh temple in Datia,Madhya Pradesh, it says. It notes the manner in which the Centre and state governments of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh worked.

It opines that in contrast,the tragedy in Madhya Pradesh showed that the BJP government… while pursuing the basic objective of communal polarisation to further their agenda of creating an RSS version of a Hindu Rashtra, goes around projecting itself ostensibly as a government for good governance and development. Under the current BJP chief minister,Madhya Pradesh was seen as giving a good competition to Gujarat… [but as this temple stampede testifies,there has been no good governance. It is,indeed,a shame that despite a previous history of such stampedes in religious places in Madhya Pradesh,no lessons have been learnt and no administrative measures have been put in place to prevent such tragedies. This is the natural corollary of pursuing the objective of advancing the communal agenda, it concludes.

MANUFACTURED DEBATE

CPI journal New Age accuses the media of manufacturing issues to divert attention from issues like price rise. It says while the government has been arguing that prices will come down,the inflation rate has touched a seven-month high of 6.4 per cent. Prices of almost all vegetables have registered over 200 per cent increase in September. In one month alone the food index has gone over 16 per cent. The consumer price index is in the vicinity of double digit… Price rise neither depends on weather nor any cyclone that recently hit Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. It is direct result of the government policies, it says.

The day all newspapers carried the news about inflation and higher prices of essential commodities… the major channels,at prime-time,organised discussions on the statement of a Maulana on Muslim vote-banks, it asserts,referring also to the discussion over the purported letter written by the home secretary of UP for a meeting to discuss the law to be passed by the Parliament for construction of a grand temple at Ayodhya.

Compiled by Manoj C.G.