People's Democracy

THE last three months have seen some important political developments in Maharashtra that throw glaring light on all the four major bourgeois parties in the state. In the wake of the BJP state government-sponsored Gujarat carnage and the hairbreadth BJP victory in the Goa assembly elections, the Shiv Sena-BJP made a determined effort to dislodge the INC-NCP-led Democratic Front (DF) state government in Maharashtra in a blatant bid to extend its sway over Western India. Paradoxically, the communal combine was assisted in its efforts by the opportunism, arrogance and anti-people nature of the INC-NCP regime itself.

The roots of the political crisis that recently rocked Maharashtra can be traced to the aftermath of the statewide local body elections that took place from December 2001 to February 2002. These included elections to municipal councils, municipal corporations, zilla parishads and panchayat samitis. While the Sena-BJP fought these elections largely in unison, the INC and the NCP fought them bitterly against each other. In a repeat performance of the 1999 Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections, this only benefited the Sena-BJP alliance. But this time the Sena-BJP was further helped by the anti-incumbency factor that worked against the INC-NCP regime and its dismal performance in office over the last two years.

The table below will give an idea of the mixed results of the local elections:

After the elections, either the INC or the NCP, in a thoroughly opportunistic bid to upstage and isolate each other, teamed up with the Sena-BJP in as many as 10 zilla parishads and in innumerable panchayat samitis for the elections to the posts of chairpersons that were held in mid-March. This exposed the hollowness of their secular credentials when it came to the brass tacks of gaining local power by hook or by crook. The national and state leaderships of both the INC and the NCP refused to intervene to prevent these dubious local alliances with communal forces. The stunning fact is that these unprincipled alliances were made in the immediate aftermath of the Gujarat communal holocaust that had shocked the entire country!

The worst case of such opportunism took place in Raigad district, which adjoins the capital city of Mumbai. It is in this district that the Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) has its strongest base. In order to keep the PWP out of power in the Raigad zilla parishad, all four bourgeois parties – INC, NCP, SS, BJP – shamelessly ganged up to ensure the victory of the SS candidate!

Stung by its defeat, the PWP immediately threatened to withdraw its support to, and all its three ministers from, the DF regime. The main architect of this unholy alliance was NCP leader Sunil Tatkare, who was also a minister in the DF regime. To placate the PWP, Tatkare was forced to resign as minister. The crisis was temporarily averted.

But within just two months, by the end of May, the arrogance of the INC-NCP regime was such that Tatkare was again re-inducted as minister, with the NCP claiming that an inner-party inquiry had given him a clean chit. With Tatkare’s reinstatement, the legitimately enraged PWP summarily withdrew all its three ministers from the state cabinet and also withdrew the support of its five MLAs to the DF regime.

The INC-NCP had taken this possibility into account and had even perhaps deliberately worked for it, since it was the PWP along with the CPI(M), CPI and JD(S) which had led a consistent statewide stir on Enron and other people’s issues that had put the state government on the mat. The DF leadership was not unduly perturbed since it felt it still had a working majority with the independent MLAs supporting it.

But what it had not bargained for was the exodus that began soon after the exit of the PWP. In a shocking development, half a dozen MLAs of the NCP, two MLAs of the INC and some independents promptly crossed over to the Sena-BJP camp, accusing the DF regime of all its sins of omission and commission. The turncoat MLAs were allegedly offered massive blandishments by the communal combine, ranging from monetary incentives to ministerial berths. The turncoats were even paraded before the pliant governor, P C Alexander. For nearly two weeks, the Sena-BJP MLAs along with the turncoats were herded together and lavishly entertained in a five-star club in Mumbai, while the INC-NCP MLAs were whisked away to equally lavish five-star hotels, first in Indore and then in Bangalore! Crores of rupees are said to have been involved, on both sides, in this sordid drama.

Meanwhile, disqualification proceedings were initiated against the floor-crossers by the assembly speaker and the High Court turned down their appeals. It was this that stopped any further exodus from INC-NCP ranks. One of the main reasons for the earlier exodus was precisely the growing mass discontent with the non-performance of the DF regime itself. The DF regime was now clearly on the brink, with the BJP-led government at the centre taking special interest in ensuring its demise.

It was in these circumstances that the CPI(M) had to take its stand. The CPI(M), which has two MLAs in the assembly, had already withdrawn support to the DF regime at its state conference held in December 2001, due to several important policy differences. The Party had further decided to base its future stand vis-à-vis the DF regime on an issue-to-issue basis, to demarcate itself from the anti-people policies and growing unpopularity of the INC-NCP government. At the same time, the Party state conference had also made it clear that the CPI(M) would maintain vigilance to ensure that the communal forces do not return to power.

Based on this understanding, in the face of this political crisis wherein a fall of the government would certainly lead to a take-over by the communal forces, the CPI(M) state secretariat decided to support the DF government in the confidence vote on June 13, while continuing to oppose its anti-people policies. This decision was announced by state secretary Prabhakar Sanzgiri, along with other state secretariat members and both the Party MLAs, at a widely attended press conference in Mumbai on June 10. In a political atmosphere that was thick with reports of murky horse-trading on both sides, this principled stand of the Party was not only prominently covered by all shades of the print and electronic media, but was also appreciated by wide sections of democratic and secular opinion. As against this, the PWP decided to abstain in the confidence vote, which was unfortunate; but it has steadfastly turned down all subsequent offers to rejoin the DF cabinet, which is a positive development. Finally, on June 13, the DF state government survived the confidence motion in the state assembly by 10 votes and the Sena-BJP plans of staging a coup were dashed to the ground.

But this entire episode exposed the corrupt and opportunist nature of all the four major bourgeois parties in Maharashtra as seldom before. Whatever little image the DF regime still managed to salvage by its victory was demolished a month later when it inducted four independent MLAs into the government to make a jumbo-sized ministry of 58! The remarkable aspect of this is that it was these very MLAs who had crossed over to the Sena-BJP camp during the political crisis a month earlier!

The fratricidal conflict between the INC and the NCP, and the endemic factionalism within both these parties, continues to intensify even after surviving this crisis by the skin of their teeth. Within the INC, there is a running feud between chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and MPCC president Govindrao Adik, with each trying for the other’s ouster. Within the NCP, the bad blood between deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal and his detractors Padmasinh Patil and Vijaysinh Mohite Patil continues unabated.

The intense rivalry between the NCP and the INC once again became evident last month when Sharad Pawar, in alliance with Bal Thackeray and Pramod Mahajan, got P C Alexander elected to the Rajya Sabha as a snub to Sonia Gandhi and Vilasrao Deshmukh. Equally dubious is the reported move by the NCP and the SP to contest all the seats in the ensuing crucial Gujarat assembly elections, although both parties have hardly any presence there. This can only result in splitting the secular vote and helping the BJP.

The NCP today is facing another crisis. This is the involvement of many of its stalwarts in the district co-operative banks scam of over Rs. 300 crore that has burst wide open. Top NCP leaders like Sunil Kedar and Pawanraje Nimbalkar have been arrested in this connection. Another corruption scandal that has been hitting the headlines is that involving the Maharashtra Public Services Commission (MPSC), whose former chairman Shashikant Karnik has also been arrested. It has now transpired that both the earlier Sena-BJP regime and the current INC-NCP regime were instrumental in giving rapid promotions to Karnik, who had even been elevated to the UPSC.

Taken together with the stinking petrol pump allotments scam and the Shivani Bhatnagar case, in which two top BJP leaders from Maharashtra – Ram Naik and Pramod Mahajan – are allegedly involved, these scams again paint all four major bourgeois players as birds of same feather when it comes to the question of corruption. This is further borne out by the glaring similarities in the extremely lavish wedding ceremonies of the offspring of NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal this year, and of BJP leader Gopinath Munde last year – in which crores of rupees are said to have been spent, at a time when Maharashtra is and was reeling under severe drought!

Within the Shiv Sena also, problems abound. The main flashpoint is the ill-concealed rivalry between Bal Thackeray’s son Uddhav and his nephew Raj for the Sena throne. Last month the Shiv Sena inaugurated its mass membership drive in the state with much fanfare, setting a target of enrolling 10 lakh members. But no sooner had the campaign begun, when reports started flowing in that Raj’s supporters were being sidelined in the membership drive. In a bid to test the waters for the anointment of his son, Thackeray announced plans of his impending retirement. This met with widespread opposition amongst the Sena ranks and he had to beat a hasty retreat last week.

The latest episode that has dented the Shiv Sena image is the forced and summary resignation of their nominee in the union cabinet - Suresh Prabhu on Thackeray’s orders. Prabhu is a relative newcomer to the Shiv Sena and he was earlier connected with the banking sector. One of the reasons for Prabhu’s unceremonious ouster is said to be his inability or unwillingness to pay up the required instalments of ‘protection money’ to his supremo! This forced an enraged Thackeray to recently declare that some central ministers of the Shiv Sena were trying to make a big virtue of presenting themselves as Mr. Clean!

Maharashtra being an adjoining state to Gujarat, the RSS-VHP-BJP combine had been making sustained efforts to stoke communal fires in the state in the wake of the Gujarat massacre. Thus, communal disturbances were incited in Kalyan and Nandurbar, but they were quickly brought under control. On June 18, just five days after the Sena-BJP conspiracy to usurp power in Maharashtra was defeated in the state assembly, a serious communal riot was incited at Jamner, a 35,000-population tehsil place in Jalgaon district in North Maharashtra. The distinctive feature of the riot was that the Sangh Parivar culprits were caught red-handed and were thoroughly exposed.

On June 7, a dead pig was thrown right in front of a masjid in Jamner. This began the communal tension, but the administration and the police did nothing to nab the culprits. This inaction emboldened the communal elements. A week later, the silver eyes of a Hanuman idol in a temple were gouged out and stolen. With this the rioting began, in which 5 people were killed, 24 were injured, 80 houses, 22 shops and 14 vehicles were burnt. Several Hindu families in Muslim-majority areas and Muslim families in Hindu-majority areas fled for their lives. The communal amity of decades was destroyed. Communal tension then spread to the surrounding villages. The VHP and Bajrang Dal called for a Jalgaon district bandh on June 20, and the call was promptly supported by the Sena-BJP.

It was after all this that the police belatedly swung into action. In the investigations, it transpired that both the above inciting acts of throwing a dead pig before the masjid and stealing the silver eyes of the Hanuman idol were the handiwork of two Sangh Parivar goons called Joshi and Sable, who admitted the fact to the police. From other evidence it emerged that the conspiracy had been cooked up under the leadership of the local BJP MLA Girish Mahajan! The cynical handiwork of the Sangh Parivar was exposed before the whole state.

While the Neros of all shades were thus fiddling in their own fashion, Maharashtra continued to burn. On August 1, 2002, for the first time in 30 years since 1972, the state government was forced to declare the whole state of Maharashtra as being drought-affected. After a good spell of rain in June, which however led to severely destructive floods in districts like Thane, the whole month of July went dry practically all over the state. This created serious problems of drinking water, loss of crops, shortage of fodder and lack of employment. With the monsoon reviving in several parts of the state in August, there is some improvement in the situation. But much damage has already occurred in several districts due to drought. And uncertainty about the prognosis of the monsoon still persists.

The recurrent spectre of drought that has been plaguing large parts of Maharashtra brings forth several vital issues of government policies relating to water, irrigation, food and employment. Not all these can be touched upon in this write-up. But a few salient facts and figures will serve to underline the gravity of the situation. For instance, the state finance minister recently admitted that although the state had spent a record sum of Rs. 35,000 crore during the last four decades on water and irrigation projects, the percentage of the gross cropped area under irrigation is still a measly 16 per cent! Corruption in the irrigation department is of astronomical proportions.

The population of Maharashtra increased from 3.95 crore in 1961 to 9.67 crore in 2001. The proportion of the urban population increased in the same period from 28 per cent to 42 per cent. This is creating increasing controversies over the use of water for rural versus urban areas, adversely affecting agriculture. Another question is that of grave regional imbalances in irrigation, with Vidarbha and Marathwada regions lagging far behind Western Maharashtra. This is also leading to severe tensions which are being used as arguments for breaking up the state. Again, nearly 60 per cent of the irrigation water goes to a single crop sugarcane, which covers less than 3 per cent of the gross cropped area. This discriminates against other crops and affects the balanced development of agriculture as a whole. On all these serious issues, successive state governments have never drawn up any plan, and this has greatly aggravated the drought situation every year.

The LPG policies of the BJP-led central government and the INC-NCP-led state government are heaping one attack after another on the people. This has been compounded by the precarious financial situation of the state government, which is the result of the profligacy of the previous Sena-BJP regime and of the unjust financial aspects of centre-state relations.

Thousands of mills and factories have closed down all over the state, driving lakhs of workers into the ranks of the unemployed. The state government has announced that government corporations and spinning mills running into a loss will be closed down. State government employees are being attacked with denial of bonus and freeze on dearness allowance already effected, and a further declaration of 20 per cent wage-cut and 15 per cent retrenchment.

The Monopoly Cotton Procurement Scheme (MCPS) and the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), both of which were begun under the pressure of mass struggles during the great drought of 1972-73 and which provided some relief to large sections of peasants and agricultural workers during the last three decades, are being gradually decimated as a result of liberalisation. Lakhs of cotton-growing peasants have not been paid their dues of last year, and for this year the state government has announced that no bonus to them will be paid over and above the central government’s minimum support price. The crisis has severely affected the powerful co-operative sector in Maharashtra as well, with 14 sugar factories being declared bankrupt last year and more to follow this year. This has had a disastrous effect on sugarcane-growing peasants, sugarcane-cutters and sugar factory workers.

As per the dictates of a World Bank team that visited Maharashtra in December 2001, a power tariff hike was imposed in January 2002 and moves are afoot for the trifurcation and privatisation of the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB). The theft of power has reached an incredible 39 per cent, but instead of stringent action against the culprits, who mainly comprise industrialists and sugar barons, the state government has levied a blanket 10 per cent surcharge on all power consumers to make up the revenue lost due to theft. Under pressure from vested interests, the state government is still trying to partially bail out the notorious Enron power plant at Dabhol, at considerable loss to itself, to the MSEB and to the people of the state at large. Apart from power, there have been hikes in water and irrigation rates, house rents, health services and education fees.

It is only a massive united struggle of the people against both globalisation and communalism that can stem the current rot in Maharashtra, for which all the four major bourgeois players are directly responsible.

The Party and the mass organisations in Maharashtra have led a number of mass actions during this period, most of which have been reported in these columns.

The actions held in the recent past are detailed below:

The August 19-24 campaign call of the National Assembly of Workers was observed jointly and independently by the CITU in all the major industrial centres of the state, with thousands of workers taking part.

On August 12, a demonstration of over 1,000 sugarcane-cutters was held in Mumbai on their demands under the banner of their CITU-affiliated union.

On August 9, the Maharashtra Rajya Shetkari Shetmajur Sangharsh Samiti, which comprises six left peasant and agricultural worker organisations including the AIKS and AIAWU, held large demonstrations at several district and tehsil centres on the issues of drought, power, demands of cotton and sugarcane-growing peasants, agricultural workers and sugarcane-cutters.

Over 25,000 peasants and agricultural workers took part in these actions.

On August 9, again, the SFI organised large demonstrations at university and district centres to protest against the fee rise, the donation and capitation fee system and the various other attacks on education. These and earlier actions by the SFI mobilised over 10,000 students in the state.

Four state-level study-camps have been held in this period. These include a 5-day camp for SFI cadres in which 169 comrades from 18 districts participated; a 2-day camp for DYFI cadres in which 105 comrades from 12 districts participated; a 2-day camp for transport cadres with an attendance of 80 comrades; and a 2-day camp for medical representative cadres with an attendance of 70 comrades.

The CPI(M), AIKS and AIAWU have given a call for a massive land struggle from October 2 (birth centenary of Comrade Shamrao Parulekar) to October 15 (birth centenary of Shri Dadasaheb Gaikwad) in which questions such as regularisation of encroachments on forest land, distribution of surplus land to the landless, the question of house-sites, the issue of urban hutment-dwellers, etc. will be taken up. The CPI(M) state committee has planned for 1 lakh people to court arrest in satyagraha actions throughout the state during this period. Preparations for this struggle are on in the districts.

Maharashtra has been identified as one of the five priority states by the CPI(M) central committee. In order to finalise its Annual Plan for Party Development, the state secretariat and state committee met at New Mumbai from August 6-8, 2002 in the presence of three Polit Bureau members E Balanandan, Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury. Now district committee meetings are being held in the presence of state secretariat members for the implementation of the plan finalised by the state committee.