Opinion View from the left: Fabricated allegations

“Amongst the many allegations levelled by the prime minister were those seeking to ridicule the Left as being an ‘anachronism’, ‘outdated’ etc… In this context, however, to put the record straight, during the last years of the Left Front government in West Bengal, the state rose to the fourth position in the country in terms of industrialisation…  The great ‘Gujarat model’ ranked a distant seventh,” it adds. It also alleged that Modi, “by mounting such a campaign of disinformation against the Left” was  “seeking to appease the Trinamool Congress, whose support is crucial for this government to legislate anti-people, pro-foreign and domestic Indian capital economic reforms in the Rajya Sabha”.

GOOD FIGHT
The CPI’s New Age says about the ongoing session of Parliament that “it is obvious that the government is… ready to use all dirty tricks in store to push through these crucial economic policies that will have far-reaching consequences for our economy as a whole.”

“The most crucial issue is the bill to replace the land acquisition ordinance. In Lok Sabha, [the government] made some concessions but refused to listen to the real objections of farmers’ organisations. Now it is contacting regional parties to win them over… And different tricks are being used to force them to give up their positions,” an editorial claims.

“We have repeatedly asserted that most of the bourgeois regional parties too have swallowed the prescription of neoliberalism… The lessons to be drawn from this are clear. Regional and other democratic forces have to be judged on the basis of their approach on crucial socioeconomic issues. It will be possible only when the Left parties take up real socioeconomic issues,” it adds.

COMMON PLATFORM
The CPI(ML)’s ML Update has said that the NDA government has brought the land acquisition amendment bill by “defying widespread opposition and peasant demonstrations across the country”.

“For the sake of pretence, the government did propose a few amendments claiming to accommodate the key concerns of agitated peasants, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The government is still adamant on grabbing fertile land without consent, without doing any social and environmental impact assessment, without bothering about the wider loss of livelihood resulting from every such acquisition and refusing to return land once acquired even if it remains idle and never used for the stated purpose of acquisition. The autocratic and arrogant attitude of the Modi government has only added to the seething anger… and the protests have intensified,” an editorial asserts.

“This is perhaps the first time that democratic forces from such diverse progressive traditions and practices — communists, socialists as well as issue-based social movements — have come together to work on a common platform… We are passing through a period of massive socioeconomic change and churning. The policies and laws are being rewritten in this country in the explicit interest of big private corporate players and the common people, who constitute the vast majority of real producers, workers and consumers in this country, are being systematically marginalised and deprived of their rightful share,” it laments.

Compiled by Ruhi Tewari