Indian society is mired in the deepest crisis. All that is humane, healthy and pure in our society, along with its rich culture and traditions, is being suffocated and strangulated by the economic and political system. The rulers of our country are taking us on the path of disaster in the service of narrow vested interests.
It is no secret that the workers, peasants, women and youth of India do not agree with this course. They are showing this disagreement through the countless courageous struggles that they are waging today all over the country in defence of livelihood and rights. However, it must be recognised that without one common plan for the reconstruction and rebirth of India, without one common vision, and unity in action to realise this plan and vision, these struggles will lead nowhere. Without such a common plan and program, our rulers will continue to manipulate, divert, suppress and liquidate these struggles. India's workers and peasants need, as never before, unity in action around a common vision and a common program.
India needs a program for economic and political renewal suited to the needs of the workers, peasants and all the oppressed. A program that will become the focal point for the unity of all the fighting people of our land. A program that will assist in creating a mighty force that will sweep away all that is moribund and rotten in our society and enable the healthy core of Indian society to flourish. A program that will unleash the bottled-up creative energies of our people for the construction of a new society. A program that has emerged from the conditions of their lives, their strivings and their aspirations. A program whose implementation will give the working class and people confidence in their own ability to build the new society. The Indian working class, peasantry, urban petty-bourgeoisie and all the oppressed must adopt such a program to build India and must fight for its implementation.
The Communist Ghadar Party of India places before you an immediate program for the reorientation of the economy, for the political empowerment of the people and the democratic renewal of India.
This program is a plan of action for the thoroughgoing renewal of Indian society so that our workers and peasants, women and youth, children and the aged, can take control of their lives rather than remain passive victims of hunger and poverty, illiteracy and ill health, strife, terrorism and war. It is aimed at ensuring that the working people can control our enormous natural and human resources, and prevent them from being plundered by Indian and foreign capitalists.
This program is a plan of action to ensure that the workers, peasants, women and youth and all the oppressed can reorganise the political system and political process so that they have political power in their own hands. They will then use this power to deploy the economic resources in the interests of the toiling majority so as to ensure security of livelihood for all members of society and the future generations.
This program is a plan of action to ensure that the peoples of South Asia - of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives - overcome the legacy of distrust, strife and war sowed by the colonialists and their collaborators and together chart a course for the mutual benefit of all the peoples of the region. It is a plan of action to defend the peoples and countries of the world from the military aggression and economic blockade and interference by US imperialism and other imperialist powers. It is a plan of action to fight for a new world order based on equality between all countries, big or small, in which every country will have the right to have its own economic and political system.
The immediate program that the Communist Ghadar Party of India places before the workers, peasants, women and youth emerges from the conditions of India and the world on the eve of the twenty-first century. Its adoption will arm the people in battling the anti-social offensive of the Indian ruling class and world imperialism on all fronts. It will prepare the ground for the working class and people to launch the counter-offensive against the bourgeoisie and imperialism in the future, when the tide turns in favour of the revolution worldwide.
The implementation of this program will assist in developing the subjective factors so necessary for the fulfilment of the strategic aim. The strategic aim of the Communist Ghadar Party of India is the building of a humane, socialist and communist society free from exploitation of persons by persons. The fulfilment of this strategic aim will require the elimination of capitalism, remnants of feudalism, imperialism and the colonial legacy and the thoroughgoing reorganisation of the economic base and political superstructure of society. It will require the overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the setting up in its place of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a prelude to the creation of a classless society. There can be no illusions that the exploitation or oppression of the people can be ended or that society can be radically reorganised without the overthrow of capitalism. The forging of a revolutionary united front of workers and peasants and all the oppressed is a necessary condition for the triumph of this goal.
Therefore, it is the urgent necessity of the time that all communists and progressive forces, all those concerned with the fate and future of India, take up the task of rallying the workers, peasants, women, youth and the oppressed of all nationalities and tribes in a revolutionary united front to realise this program in practice.
The CGPI considers the eradication of the curse of hunger and poverty, illiteracy, homelessness, and lack of the most basic civic amenities as the highest priority task. India's workers and peasants produce enormous wealth through their labour, but the minority of exploiters appropriates this wealth. The program put forth by the Party on the front of the economy is aimed at redeploying the enormous natural resources and wealth produced by workers and peasants towards addressing the burning problems.
The Communist Ghadar Party of India proposes and demands:
The creation of a modern Public Distribution System that will ensure that all essentials of mass consumption - food grains, milk, cooking oil, fuel, pulses, vegetables - are available in adequate quantity, good quality and at affordable prices to all toilers. No one should have to go hungry or suffer from malnutrition. The wiping out of hunger from the face of India is the number one task confronting us.
The nationalisation of foreign trade and internal wholesale trade so as to eliminate any role for private middlemen in this sphere. This is the necessary condition for the creation of the above-mentioned supply system.
A secure roof, sanitation and safe drinking water for every person, in the cities, countryside and the hills. We cannot tolerate that in this day and age, people have to suffer the indignity of living on footpaths and overcrowded and unhygienic slums that millions of our urban poor are suffering in Mumbai, Calcutta, Delhi, Chennai and other cities. Likewise, we cannot tolerate that our hardworking peasant women have to go for miles in search of drinking water.
Livelihood for all. Everyone in the towns and villages must be provided work and a secure livelihood. It is unacceptable that the most precious productive force - the human being - is being relentlessly wasted and destroyed in this society through mass unemployment and underemployment.
Security of land holding be guaranteed in the hands of those who till it. All buying and selling of agricultural land between private parties must be immediately banned, so that no peasant family can be forced to part with its land. Special assistance and incentives be provided to the poor peasantry to pool together their land holdings and cooperativise, in order to increase productivity through the use of modern machinery and scientific techniques.
Security of livelihood to those who till the land. We cannot accept that those who feed the whole society and provide inputs to industry should be left to fend for themselves. Credit as well as assistance in the form of tractors and other technical services, fertilisers, water, electricity, seeds and other inputs at affordable prices must be provided to the toiling peasantry. Remunerative prices must be guaranteed for all agricultural produce meant for the market.
Free and uniform education up to the high school level for every child. Higher education must be subsidised for the sons and daughters of the working class and peasantry with selection based on merit.
Free and universal basic health care for all people.
Special assistance for those sections of our society who have suffered from social injustices. A portion of the surplus generated by the economy must be deployed to fulfill the claims of those disadvantaged physically or by historical social injustices based on caste, gender, nationality or on any other basis. Only this can ensure that these sections of our society can participate as equals in the polity.
A portion of the surplus generated by the economy to be deployed to look after the natural environment as an integral part of investing in the future of society.
To raise resources to finance all the above, the Communist Ghadar Party of India proposes and demands the following immediate emergency measures:
Surplus generated from nationalised wholesale trade and foreign trade be deployed for the above.
Moratorium on all payments of principal and interest to the financial monopolies, Indian and foreign.
Cutback on the huge expenditures on arms and the armed forces.
Immediate confiscation of all unaccounted wealth and black money in the economy.
All capitalist monopolies and private property owners who do not fall in line with the above measures must be expropriated without compensation.
Individual, collective and national rights are negated and violated on a daily basis by the present-day state of the Indian Union. We cannot tolerate such conditions where the authority uses force to suppress economic and political demands of the people. We cannot tolerate the situation where any nation, nationality and tribe within India does not find space to flourish. Defence and realisation of the modern definition of human rights must become the foundation of the new India we are setting out to build.
The working people are deprived of political power in the party system of governance that exists in India today. The party system of governance guarantees that the right to represent the people is confined to a small political elite. In order to take control of their destiny and deploy the resources of this land for their common benefit, the workers, peasants, and other toilers need to put an end to the party system of governance and put in place mechanisms that will ensure that they can govern themselves. Political parties will then play their rightful role as instruments to empower the people, instead of being electoral machines that keep people out of power. Sovereignty will then be transferred from the Parliament to the people; it will be transferred to the chawls, muhallas, and villages of India. It will be transferred to the various peoples who will then reconstitute the Indian Union on a voluntary basis.
The program that the Communist Ghadar Party of India places before the workers, peasants, women and youth of India is a program to realise these objectives. Simultaneously, it is a program to boldly confront the menace of state terrorism and defend the rights of the people.
The Communist Ghadar Party of India proposes and demands that:
The Constitution of India must explicitly establish that all Indians have rights by virtue of the fact that they are human beings; it must provide for enabling laws for the affirmation of rights and to make all violations justiciable. The right to conscience, to livelihood, education and health care must be guaranteed as inviolable human rights of every member of society.
Concrete mechanisms be established to ensure the harmonising of the interests of individuals and collectives with the general interests of society. All members of the polity will have equal rights and duties and all claims of minorities and other collectives which will enable them to fully participate in the affairs of the society will be fulfilled. The rights of nations, nationalities and tribes, the rights of women, of children and the old, the rights of the disabled, the rights of minorities - whether religious or linguistic or ethnic or tribal - must be inviolate. Mechanisms will be established to ensure equality of all members of the polity irrespective of caste, gender, property, lifestyle or any other consideration.
All draconian laws of preventive detention must be immediately revoked. The armed forces must not be deployed against the civilian population anywhere in the country. Forces presently deployed against the people in Kashmir, the north-east and other regions of India must be immediately withdrawn to their barracks. All those guilty of state terrorism, of organising of communal and fascist violence, caste atrocities and terrorist acts, must be speedily tried and punished.
Sovereign power must vest with the people. The present talk-shop parliament and talk-shop state assemblies must be replaced with bodies that combine executive and legislative functions. Mechanisms must be established to ensure that parliament and other organs of power will not be above the people but subordinate to the people. All residual powers must vest with the people through organs of power created at the base of society.
The right of every citizen to elect and be elected must be realised through enabling legislation to reform election financing and political party affiliation. The right to select candidates for any office must be taken out of the hands of political parties. Organisations of people at work places, in villages and mohallas, in educational institutions, etc., shall be empowered to select candidates from among their peers. Elected organs of power must be created at the base of society all across the country on the basis of universal franchise. These organs of people's power along with a reconstituted election commission must have the responsibility to oversee the selection of candidates for election to all levels of government. There will be no election without selection of candidates by the people. Power to ensure accountability of elected representatives and power to initiate recall of unsuitable representatives must vest in the organs of people's power. These organs must also have the power to initiate legislation for all levels of government. The limits of authority of the State organs at different levels must be strictly defined and all residual powers must vest in the organs of power at the base of society at all times. Power at the top and power at the base shall be organically linked, with power at the base controlling power at the top.
The Indian Union must be reconstituted as a free and equal union of all nations, nationalities and tribal peoples constituting today's India. An appropriate organ of power at the level of nations, nationalities and tribes must be constituted to fulfill the economic, political and cultural claims of the people. All the languages of the peoples shall have equal status in the polity. The unity of the peoples will be on the basis of mutual benefit and for mutual defence against the imperialist predators. The right to self-determination, up to and including secession, must be ensured through appropriate mechanisms for all the constituents of the union.
The election commission of India be constituted to oversee the selection and election process to the organs of people's power, to the organ of power for the nations and tribes as well as that of the country as a whole on the basis of universal suffrage. It must also ensure the right of all citizens to elect and be elected. It will also have responsibility to oversee the election of judges at all levels of the judicial system.
The legacy of colonialism, of the partition of the subcontinent, of strife, discord and war amongst the peoples of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and others, needs to be overcome. This bitter legacy is one of the biggest roadblocks today in the way of the economic and political renewal of the Indian and other peoples of the region. The present day ruling classes of India and Pakistan and some others deliberately stoke up the flames of strife and discord in pursuit of extremely narrow interests, in order to divide, paralyse, and disorient the workers, peasants, women and youth of our countries.
The international program of the Communist Ghadar Party of India is a program that will enable the working class and peasantry to overcome the colonial legacy. The international program of the CGPI will enable the workers, peasants, women and youth of India to build the unity of all the peoples of the subcontinent, including the peoples of South Asian origin abroad.
US imperialism is trying through military blackmail and aggression as well as economic blockade to force its dictate on all countries of the world. It is demanding that all countries abandon their own economic and political systems and accept the US prescriptions on how to run their country. Cuba, North Korea and Iraq are amongst the countries facing the brunt of US imperialism's aggression and blackmail. It is interfering in all parts of the globe - in Africa and Europe, in West Asia and South Asia - allegedly as a "peace maker", to impose its domination over the peoples. It is trying to turn the UN into an appendage of its imperialist foreign policy. In such conditions, the international program of the CGPI is a program for the democratisation of international relations. Its aim is to end the unequal relations that characterise international relations today and to establish the equality of all countries, big or small, in the international arena. It is a program to oppose imperialist interference anywhere and everywhere, and to uphold the right of all peoples to have their own economic and political systems free from external dictate.
The sovereignty of all peoples, nations and countries be respected, irrespective of their size, their political or economic system, or any other consideration. Every country has the right to its own economic and political system. US imperialism's blackmail of Cuba, Korea, Iraq and other countries must be vigorously condemned and opposed.
The United Nations be democratised and the special rights of the permanent members of the Security Council be abolished. The United Nations Security Council must be a fully elected body subordinate to the General Assembly of the United Nations.
All nuclear weapon powers disarm their nuclear arsenals.
A lasting and close relationship be forged with the peoples of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other neighbours. Imperialists must be kept out of the region and all imperialist war preparations must be opposed. All efforts of the ruling classes of India and Pakistan to whip up chauvinist hysteria and plunge our peoples into war must be vigorously exposed and opposed. A permanent mechanism should be created to resolve problems between the countries of South Asia through discussion and without the use of force or blackmail.
Solidarity be affirmed with all the peoples anywhere in the world who raise the banner of revolt against exploitation and injustice, for rights, for sovereignty, for peace and progress. All secret treaties with foreign countries be repudiated and all foreign policy issues be subjected to country-wide discussion and approval.
India's toiling masses have seen many manifestos for the eradication of poverty and hunger, homelessness, illiteracy and ill health, offered by parties of the status quo. However, the noble objectives stated in those programs have turned out to be mere wishful dreams, something dangled temptingly before the toilers, but always out of their reach. Why is this the case? This is because these manifestos do not have a plan to restrict and overthrow the capitalist relations of production and distribution that are responsible for the devastation of our people. They do not have a plan to transfer political power from the hands of the minority of exploiters and vested interests to the hands of workers and peasants, the labouring people of this country. Any plan for the eradication of poverty that does not base itself on restricting the market forces and capitalist relations in society, and empowering the workers and peasants will remain an unrealisable plan, a wishlist of good objectives meant at best to serve as opium for the oppressed masses.
The program that the Party is presenting is an eminently realisable program. It is realisable because it is based on an objective assessment of the existing level of development of the productive forces of our society. It reveals how hunger, poverty, illiteracy and ill health can be eradicated and what is preventing their eradication. It is realisable because it identifies the human force that will achieve this, namely: the workers, peasants, women and youth of our country. And recognising that they today lack the power to effect transformations in their own interests, it presents a plan for the empowerment of the people.
In other words, the program that the party is placing before the workers, peasants, women, youth and other oppressed people is a concrete plan of action to pave the way for the construction of the new society. Communism itself has been turned into a distant dream as a result of the lack of a program to realise the same in our country. The program that the Party is placing before the working class and peasantry is a program to ensure that communism is actually constructed in India.
India's workers, peasants, women and youth are the real India, the real producers of all the wealth. Any program for the renewal of India must necessarily put the concerns of workers and peasants, women and youth at the centre stage. The programs of the parties of the status quo do not do this. What is instead placed at the centre is the defence of the interests of a parasitic minority. These parties subordinate the concerns of workers, peasants, women and youth to those of the capitalists and moneylenders and other vested interests.
The program that the CGPI is placing before the people is one that puts the satisfaction of the basic needs of all as the primary task on the front of the economy. Our program is based wholly and solely on addressing these concerns; there is no other hidden agenda. Our program openly states that what is good for the workers, peasants, women and youth is what is good for the society at large. The CGPI openly declares that all other concerns must be subordinated to this overriding concern. Nothing and no one will be allowed to create a roadblock in the way of addressing these concerns. Whether it is hoarders or profiteers, middlemen or monopolists, arms merchants or moneylenders, the narrow interests of these sections will have to be subordinated to the task of providing for the basic needs of the people.
The CGPI openly states that if the workers, peasants, women and youth want to ensure that their basic needs are fulfilled, they cannot leave it to chance. They cannot leave it to the goodness of this or that political party in power. They must begin to establish mechanisms so that power comes into their own hands. The program that the CGPI places before the people is a program that does precisely that. It shows the way to the kind of changes that the people need to fight for in the political process in order to empower themselves.
The experience of the 20th century confirms that wherever party rule is established in the name of the people, it becomes in fact the rule of definite vested interests, the rule of the bourgeoisie. It is inevitable that a communist party that fights for power for itself will soon abandon communism and the interests of the working class. It will become indistinguishable from bourgeois parties. The CGPI openly declares that it will not fight for power for itself. The program put forth by the CGPI is a program that will enable the workers, peasants, women and youth to ensure that sovereignty in fact vests with them and them alone. It is a program to ensure that the real maliks of India - our workers, peasants, women and youth - take their rightful place at the head of society and guide its destiny.
There are only two possible programs emerging from the objective conditions of India today. One program is for the defence of the capitalist system and the status quo, the defence of the interests of those in power. The other program is for undermining the capitalist system, upsetting the status quo, and bringing the toiling masses to power. There can be no third program within the present conditions.
The parties of the status quo claim to have as many different programs as there are parties. The truth is different. It is objectively verifiable that all these apparently different programs are in fact the one program of enabling Indian capitalism to flourish and develop into a major imperialist power, of defending the system of exploitation and plunder of our people. The parties of the status quo use their programs as a weapon to divide the polity. The workers, peasants, women, youth, dalits, tribals, people of oppressed nationalities, the religious minorities and all other oppressed people are divided and disoriented on the basis of these programs.
The program that the CGPI places before the broad masses of Indian people is aimed at forging their political unity against the exisiting system. The aim is that the working masses unite in action to fight against the anti-social offensive of the ruling class with a clear perspective and vision of the future. The aim is to end the state of disunity and paralysis of the movement of the toiling masses. Our Party is using and will use this program as a weapon to forge the revolutionary united front of the toilers. We call upon communists and all others concerned about the fate and future of the toiling and oppressed masses to do the same.
The crisis of India's economic and political system is acute. The ruling class, its political parties and the political system stand in complete disrepute. The working masses are demanding an alternative to this system. A great opportunity exists for developing the revolutionary united front of the working class and all the oppressed, around the program for the renewal of India that the party has placed before the working masses.
The liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation drive of the Indian ruling class, submission to the demands of the WTO, the cutbacks on food security and government spending on higher education and public health, the cutbacks in investments on science and technology, the rising prices and job cuts, all these have opened up a huge arena for uniting the people around a common program. School and university teachers, college students, doctors, nurses and karmacharis of government hospitals, workers in private and public enterprises, rail and road transport workers, post and telegraph workers, workers in the telecom sector, workers in the banking and insurance sector, workers in the electricity boards and working people at large have been increasingly resisting the onslaught of the ruling class.
Peasants in large parts of the country are up in arms against the attacks on their livelihood. State investment has been declining in agricultural infrastructure, including irrigation works and rural electrification. The peasants are squeezed by the rising cost of seeds, fertilisers and other inputs. They are sinking into growing indebtedness to moneylenders, with government lending agencies cutting back on loans to the peasantry. The small and middle peasants are being forced to go in for cash crops with all the uncertainties of the market driven economy, and many are being ruined. On the other side, the big monopolies are being allowed entry into agriculture, agro-business and pisciculture on an unprecedented scale, destroying the natural environment as well as destroying the livelihood of millions of small farmers and fisherfolk.
In sum, the economic credo of the ruling class that only what is good for the bourgeoisie is good for the country, that the workers and peasants have only the duty to slave and no right to livelihood, is opening the eyes of vast masses of working people who were under the illusion of the mai-baap sarkar - of a state and a government above classes which would allegedly take care of the interests of all. A wide front has opened up to rally the people against the liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation offensive and the attacks on livelihood.
In the political arena, the party system of governance has become totally discredited. It is becoming increasingly clear that all the parliamentary parties have the single program of defending the rule of the bourgeoisie. It is becoming clear to many that the existing parliamentary democracy and the political process are mechanisms to deprive the working masses of political power to shape their own destiny. There is a huge space to develop the alternative to the party system of governance, an alternative in which power will vest, in fact, with the toiling masses.
A broad field has also opened up to unite the toiling and oppressed people around a modern definition of rights. India's nations, nationalities and tribal peoples are forcefully asserting their sovereignty through mass as well as armed struggles. Such movements are taking place in the entire north-east and in the north-west, in Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and many other regions of the country. The existing political and economic system denies the nations, nationalities and tribes their sovereignty. It denies people the right to food, clothing and shelter, to education and health services. It denies women their rights. It deprives children of their very childhood. It kills the girl child even as it is born. The right of peasants and tribal people over their common grazing lands and forest lands is denied. Religious and national minorities continue to be persecuted and made victims of organised violence. Diversion and disruption as well as state terrorism are being used to crush the struggle of people for their rights. In such a situation, the space exists to unite all the victims of state terrorism, all those deprived of rights in the battle against state terrorism for a new India in which the interests of individuals and collectives will be in harmony with the general interests of society.
In sum, the Indian people are yearning for a thoroughgoing economic and political renewal of society. The immediate program put forth by the Party is aimed at uniting all the Indian people around one common vision and plan of action.
The parties of the ruling class claim that there is no alternative to the capitalist system. The Communist Ghadar Party of India declares that there is an alternative to the capitalist system and that is the socialist system.
The parties of the bourgeoisie claim that there is no alternative to the party system of governance, in which one or the other party of the bourgeoisie rules on its behalf, while the workers and peasants are kept out of power. The Communist Ghadar Party of India declares that there is an alternative to the party system of governance and that is the system where people govern themselves and become masters of their own destiny.
The parties of the ruling class claim that there is no alternative to the course they are pursuing. The Communist Ghadar Party of India boldly declares that for the bourgeoisie there may be no alternative to this course, but for the working class and peasantry there is certainly an alternative! The program presented by the Communist Ghadar Party of India is the alternative in the immediate sense, just as socialism is the alternative to the capitalist system in the strategic sense.
Communists and all progressive people! Workers, peasants, women, youth and all the oppressed of all nationalities!
The times are demanding that we challenge the claims of the ruling class and their parties that there is no alternative to the present system and the present course being pursued. We have before us a plan of action to reorganise the economic and political life of our country in order that our concerns, our present and future, are taken care of.
Organise around this program wherever you work, whether in factories or fields, mines or the ports, universities or schools, hospitals or any other work place. Organise around this program wherever you live, whether in chawls or slums, on footpaths or in residential colonies. Discuss the program and elaborate your own views on the program. Demand that all those who are communists, all those who are for the emancipation of the toiling masses, deliberate seriously on the program so that all the people of India can take up one single program which is their own. Discuss this program in every collective you belong to - whether it be a political party, a trade union, a women's organisation, a youth or student organisation, or any other collective. Discuss how this program should be implemented. Let us create a situation wherein the crores of toiling people begin to realise that there is an alternative and get galvanised into action to implement that alternative.
This program is not the program of the Communist Ghadar Party of India alone. It belongs to all Indian communists. It belongs to India's workers, peasants, women, youth and all the deprived and disadvantaged. The challenge before us is to ensure that India's working masses discuss this program, make their own contributions to the program, take it up as their own, and unleash their creative genius in implementing it, in order to open the path to progress for our people.
Boldly take up this challenge!
Boldly build the revolutionary united front around the program for the renewal of India!
Disclaimer: The opinions presented on this website's event and discussion forums are those of readers from around the world and do not necessarily represent the views of CGPI, its members or any affiliated organisations.
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