Workers and peasants must organise to become the rulers of India!

Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, 12th August, 2018

The cities and the countryside are resonating with the mounting protests of workers and peasants. They are fighting to halt and reverse the anti-social program of globalization, liberalization and privatization. They are demanding immediate implementation of measures to ensure prosperity and protection for all.

Statement of the Central Committee of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, 12th August, 2018

The cities and the countryside are resonating with the mounting protests of workers and peasants. They are fighting to halt and reverse the anti-social program of globalization, liberalization and privatization. They are demanding immediate implementation of measures to ensure prosperity and protection for all.

About 150 capitalist monopoly houses are pocketing the lion’s share of the wealth produced by workers and peasants through their labour and sweat. Monopoly capitalists are using their control and domination over the Indian State to satisfy their greed for maximum profits.

Successive governments led by the Congress Party and BJP have been implementing the same anti-social program to enrich the monopoly houses. More and more sectors of social production, public services and institutions are being wrecked. More and more people are being driven into poverty and destitution.

In the name of attaining “global competitiveness”, capitalists are taking all-sided measures to intensify the exploitation of workers. They are hiring workers on contract and firing them at will, extending their working hours, paying them the lowest possible wages – even below the prescribed minimum wages, denying them any social security and depriving them of the right to form unions and the right to strike. In the name of improving the “ease of doing business”, central and state governments are amending labour laws to facilitate the offensive of the capitalists against the working class. Workers are being denied even the limited legal recognition of their rights, won through years of struggle and sacrifice.

Under the banner of trade liberalization, markets for agricultural inputs and outputs have been opened up for accelerated penetration by Indian and foreign monopoly companies. Peasants are being forced to buy seeds, fertilizers and pesticides from capitalist companies at an exorbitant cost. Capitalist monopolies are buying the peasants’ produce at extremely low prices and selling them in the towns at the highest possible price. Public procurement of wheat and rice has been cut back for the benefit of the capitalist trading companies, Indian and foreign.

Caught between the soaring costs of farming and the unstable and inadequate price they get for their produce, the vast majority of peasants have been sinking deeper and deeper into debt. Indebtedness to banks and to individual money lenders is growing among the peasants. Those who feed the whole of society have no security of livelihood. Lakhs of peasants have committed suicide in recent years. Many have lost their land to banks and other money lenders.

Privatisation is being pursued in all possible sectors. Public assets built with people’s money in the past are being sold cheaply to Indian and foreign monopoly capitalists. Essential services which have so far been regarded as the responsibility of the State are being handed over to capitalist companies. Education, health care, drinking water supply, rail and road transport, irrigation, seeds and fertilizers, banking and insurance, power generation as well as defence production — are all being privatized. Hard earned savings of various sections of the working class, meant to provide them social security, are being diverted to the stock market for the benefit of the monopoly capitalists.

Central and state governments have forcibly taken over the land of peasants and tribal peoples, so as to hand them over to capitalist companies. Water, needed desperately for farming, has been diverted to supply big capitalist projects. Private insurance companies are carrying out daylight robbery of peasants in the name of providing them “insurance against crop failure”.

For the past three decades, one government after another has been pursuing the same so-called reform program of globalization, liberalization and privatization. Workers and peasants have been subjected to super-exploitation, heightened insecurity and poverty, so that the Tatas, Birlas, Ambanis and other monopoly capitalists can achieve their imperialist global ambitions.

The Congress-led UPA Government promised “reforms with a human face”. The BJP-led NDA Government has been promising “development for all”. The results on the ground show that capitalism is an inhuman system that cannot provide for the people. Capitalist development brings prosperity only for a wealthy minority, at the expense of the toiling majority of people as well as the natural and social environment.

As long as the principal means of social production remain the private property of a greedy capitalist minority, economic growth is not going to fulfill the needs of the toiling majority of people. Capitalist growth cannot provide jobs for all. Capitalism cannot assure a living wage for workers. It cannot provide secure livelihood for peasants. Capitalism at its present stage can only bring repeated crises leading to widespread death and destruction of the productive forces.

Political power is being wielded by the capitalist class, headed by the monopoly houses. Central and state governments act strictly in their interest. The existing system of democracy is designed to legitimize the dictatorship of the capitalist class, headed by the monopoly houses.

We workers and peasants are the creators of India’s wealth. We together make up more than 90 per cent of the population. We must organise to take political power in our hands so that we can reorient the economy to fulfill all the people’s needs.

The Indian economy is today geared to fulfill the greed of monopoly capitalists for maximum profits. Under workers’ and peasants’ rule, it can and will be reoriented to fulfill the needs of all the human beings in our country. Providing for all workers, peasants, women and youth and constantly raising their living standards will become the motive force of social production.

We workers and peasants will use political power to immediately halt the privatization and liberalization program. We will nationalise foreign trade and domestic large-scale trade. The State will guarantee reliable supply of inputs to the peasants. It will to create a modern universal public distribution system covering all essential articles of household consumption, linked to a universal public procurement system that guarantees stable and remunerative prices for all crops cultivated.

Banking and insurance will be immediately nationalised and oriented towards fulfilling social needs rather than private capitalist greed. All outstanding farm loans will be waived. Banking and insurance will be organised to provide social security for all those who need it.

The workers’ and peasants’ State will ensure a living wage as the absolute minimum for all workers without exception. It will guarantee secure possession of cultivable land in the hands of those who till it and block capitalist land acquisition.

We workers and peasants will build a superior system of democracy in which decision-making power is vested in the people. All adults will not only have the right to vote but also the right to select candidates prior to any election. They will have the right to recall representatives who do not carry out their duty. They will have the right to initiate laws and policies, and to approve or reject major public decisions through referendums.

For workers and peasants to organise to become the rulers of India means to raise our level of organisation and political unity to a higher level.

We must defeat all attempts to divide us on the basis of religion, caste or party affiliation.

We must strengthen workers’ unity committees, worker-peasant committees and people’s struggle committees, to advance the united struggle against our common enemies. We must build these organisations with the perspective of developing them into organs of workers’ and peasants’ power.

Let us build and strengthen unity around the aim and program of establishing workers’ and peasants’ rule and reorienting the economy so as to guarantee prosperity and protection for all!

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