People's Democracy

Strengthen Secular, Democratic And Patriotic Forces

Massive DYFI Rally Call

  B Prasant

THE DYFI rally held on the Brigade Parade grounds in Kolkata saw the vast green of the venue overflowing with youth activists.  The principal slogans of the rally were: “Save the country, protect and promote secularism,” and “Get rid of BJP-Trinamul.”  DYFI workers from Kolkata and its vicinity attended the rally. 

Bengal chief minister and former DYFI leader, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Bengal Left Front chairman, Biman Basu, state LF government minister, Mohd Salim, DYFI general secretary, Tapas Sinha, DYFI state secretary, Asitanga Ganguly, among others, addressed the big rally. Present at the rally were CPI(M) leaders, Anil Biswas, Shyamal Chakraborti, Mohd Amin, Shyamali Gupta and Manab Mukherjee.

In his address, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee blasted the electioneering gimmicks adopted by the BJP, particularly its slogan of “feeling good” at a time when the country was deep amidst an economic crisis and when the nation was being sought to be cut up along lines of caste and religion.

Bhattacharjee said that the “feel good” factor was a reality for the small handful of the super rich who had benefited from the anti-people policies of the BJP-led NDA government.  “Perhaps,” said Bhattacharjee, “Vajpayee, Advani & Co were ‘feeling good’ even as the mass of the people were going through the worst of times.”

Bhattacharjee pointed out that the youth of the nation were being made to undergo sufferings under the BJP dispensation.  Unemployment has risen sharply. The welfare state or what remained of it was being systematically dismantled. Subsidies were being withdrawn from education and the public distribution system was under constant assault.

Bhattacharjee while flaying the BJP and its minders in the RSS for instigating communal feelings across the country, pointed out that in Bengal, the anti-communal tradition was being continually strengthened and the forces of religious fundamentalism found no place to strike roots here. 

The Bengal chief minister also outlined in brief the not-inconsiderable achievements of the pro-people, especially pro-poor left Front government.  In particular, he pointed to the growth of sunrise industries and drew the attention of the rally to the emphasis that the Left Front government had placed for some time now on the all-round generation of employment.

Biman Basu said that some of the “feel good” factors that the BJP was seen to try and din into the eyes and ears of the people of the country, had given birth to not just unemployment but to the sad spectacle of millions of the youth lining up for a few hundred jobs, and even fighting amongst themselves, egged on by the forces of regional chauvinism.

Biman Basu recalled how scams and scandals had long affected the Congress, and he pointed out that in its short stay in office for five years, the BJP had to its ‘credit’ many more instances of financial malfeasance at the highest level with ministers and senior BJP leaders getting caught in the act. Perhaps all this was a fall-out of their having “felt good” at some point of time or other, mused Biman Basu.

Mohd Salim said that by repeating the downright lie about ‘India shining,” the Vajpayee regime was bent on sweeping under the carpet the multifarious ills that the masses of the country, especially the nation’s youth, faced.  Tapas Sinha pointed out that even as the Indian kisans stood bereft of remunerative crop prices, the self-proclaimed “swadeshi” BJP government was engaged in exporting millions of tons of crops as animal feed to countries like the USA.  Asitanga Ganguly said that had the BJP government spent a fraction of the amount it has budgeted for the “feel good factor” ad campaign, innumerable self-employments projects could have been set up. 

DYFI leader Abdul Hai presided over the rally.   All the speakers called upon the youth to ensure that the BJP-Trinamul combine met with a massive defeat, come the Lok Sabha polls.