Socialist Party’s Pledge at 4th
National Convention, Lucknow (14-15 November 2016)
The policies of globalisation,
liberalisation and privatisation being implemented in the country over the last
more than two decades have pushed the Indian economy into a deep external and
internal crisis. The external debt of the country has crossed a record $480
billion. To entice foreign investors into the country, the 'swadeshi' BJP is
surrendering to their conditionalities. Even defence and railways are being thrown
open to foreign investors; it has quietly dropped its opposition to FDI in
retail sector, which will destroy the livelihoods of crores of small retailers;
steps are being taken to privatise the financial sector and hand over control
of lakhs of crores of rupees of people's savings to speculators; it is bending
over backwards to meet US objections to India's nuclear liability law. Even our
independent defence policy is being jettisoned and military agreements are
being signed with the US that will make India into a subordinate military ally
of the Americans.
The country is now being run only
for the profiteering of giant foreign and Indian corporations. On the one hand,
the government is giving tax concessions to the rich and writing of their bank
loans to the tune of lakhs of crores of rupees, as well as handing over control
of our infrastructural and financial sectors and our mineral resources to big
private foreign and Indian corporations for their plunder. Throwing all
democratic norms to the winds, laws are being modified to enable state
governments to drive out people from their lands and forests, and hand them
over to big corporations for exploiting mineral resources, or for building
giant infrastructural projects, big dams, elite housing projects and so on.
And on the other hand, the
government is implementing policies that have drastically affected the
livelihoods of crores of common people. As it is, the employment situation in
the country was precarious, with less than 10% of the total jobs available in
the economy being formal jobs where workers have some legal rights and job
security. To enable corporations to maximise their profits, the government is
now demolishing labour laws so that businesses can eliminate even these limited
formal workers and replace them with contract workers, hire and fire them at
will, pay them rock bottom wages and force them to work for 10-14 hours without
paying overtime wages. Even in the unorganised sector, job creation has considerably
slowed down. Livelihood of workers in each and every sector, from fish-workers
to farmers, from weavers to garbage workers to daily wage labourers, is being
adversely affected by neoliberal policies. Thus, in agriculture, public
investment is falling; both input subsidies and output support to farmers are
being drastically cut; farmers are finding it difficult to access loans from
banks at subsidised rates, pushing them into clutches of moneylenders – all
these policies have pushed the farming sector into such deep crisis that more than
3 lakh farmers have committed suicide over the past two decades. It is this
worsening of the unemployment crisis due to two decades of globalisation
policies that is at the root of the massive mobilisation of Jats in Haryana,
Patels in Gujarat and now the Marathas in Maharashtra.
As it is, the Indian government's
social sector expenditures were very low; as a part of the neoliberal reforms
the present government is now further reducing them. It is because of these low
welfare expenditures of the government that the majority of the people in the
cities are forced to live in subhuman conditions in slums. The sharp cuts being
made in government spending on education, and the resulting privatisation and
commercialisation of education, has led to school and college fees going
through the roof, pushing education beyond the reach of the vast majority of
the population. The destruction of our public health system has made India the
disease capital of the world. Steps are being taken to even eliminate our
ration system (PDS) whose aim was to keep food prices in check and provide
essential food grains to the country's starving millions at subsidised prices.
Taking advantage of the worsening
economic crisis, the BJP had launched a huge propaganda campaign during elections
to the 16th Lok Sabha held in April-May 2014, promising the people ‘acche
din’, and swept the elections. However, after coming to power, the Modi
government is implementing the very same policies of capitalist globalisation,
only at a much faster pace and in a blind manner. What is new, and of even more
serious concern, is that the RSS/BJP are simultaneously implementing a regressive
communal fascist agenda to transform the secular India into a ‘Hindu Rashtra’ of
their dream.
In order to promote unscientific, obscurantist
mentality even in the field of education and research persons with RSS leanings
are being appointed as heads of all important academic-cultural-research
institutions. Education is being communalised. Simultaneously, the RSS/BJP have
launched a vicious offensive to attack all ideologies and progressive forces
that can challenge their fanatic Hindutva agenda in the name of a false
nationalism. Even more serious and divisive are pronouncements by RSS/BJP
leaders valorising Nathuram Godse, the killer of Mahatma Gandhi. There is no
doubt that it is this atmosphere of hatred and intolerance being created by the
RSS/BJP that have given birth to the fanatic goons who are responsible for the
cowardly killings of Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, Comrade Govind Pansare and Prof.
M.M. Kalburgi.
The present spectre in the country
proves that neo-liberalism and fascism are twin brothers; the former creates
the ground for the latter, and the latter by its rejection of the principles of
democracy, makes it possible for corporate houses to continue with their
accelerated profit accumulation despite the worsening economic crisis. This global
capitalist model of development is pushing underdeveloped countries like India
into deep economic and social crisis and also the world towards an
unprecedented global ecological crisis.
It is at this critical juncture,
when:
^ Policies of capitalist
globalisation have pushed the country into an unprecedented economic crisis;
^ RSS/BJP are threatening the very
conception of India as a socialist, secular and democratic republic as
enshrined in the Constitution of India; and
^ Earth is facing an environmental
emergency that is endangering most species on the planet, including our own -
We,
the delegates to the 4th National Convention of the Socialist Party (India)
resolve to
*Establish an alternative socialist
model of development focussing on village level agro-industries and small scale
industries which provides decent and well paid jobs to unemployed youth;
*Local people's control over
resources and planning under the doctrine of Chaukhamba Raj (Four Pillar State)
propounded by Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia;
*Defend agriculture from
capitalist-imperialist onslaught and promotion of innovative methods of
agriculture based on sustainable and environment friendly approach/policies; we
oppose GM foods;
*Fight
against privatisation and commercialisation of education; we stand for an
education system that provides compulsory, common, equitable and truly good
quality education to all children/students from KG to PG by the state; we stand
for an education policy that promotes scientific and secular approach in order
to inculcate values of democracy, secularism, gender equality and elimination
of caste in students;
* Oppose FDI in the Defence and
pursue an independent defence policy in order to combat neo-imperialism;
*Fight against the ongoing
privatisation of public sector corporations and public sector financial
corporations and pension funds;
*Support the ongoing struggles of
the workers unions against government attempts to weaken labour laws and extend
our support to their 12 point charter of demands including decent minimum wage,
inflation-indexed minimum wage and abolition of contractualisation of labour as
voiced during the recent all-India strike on September 2, 2016;
*Extend support to all peoples’
struggles taking place across the country, whether it be people fighting
against destructive nuclear and coal fired power plants, or people fighting
against land acquisition for industrial corridors or giant infrastructural
projects without their consent and without adequate compensation and
rehabilitation, or farmers fighting for more government support for agriculture,
or people fighting against violation of human rights and civil liberties, or
people fighting against the atrocities on vulnerable sections such as dalits,
tribals, minorities, women, children;
*Struggle for a health care policy
that reverses the present privatisation of health care and provide easily affordable
and good quality health care to all people as a right;
*Put pressure on the Indian
government to renegotiate its external debt with earlier colonial powers and
demand that it be written off, and instead demand compensation for 200 years of
British colonial rule that has crippled our economy;
*Work for building a casteless and
genuinely secular society;
*Struggle for building a society
wherein women and men are genuinely equal.
Thus
Stands the Socialist Party
Upholding
Brotherhood and Equality
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