THE Draft Political Resolution for the 21st Congress sets out the political-tactical line to be pursued by the Party in the coming period. The draft analyses the international and national situation prevailing at present in order to formulate the current political-tactical line and the tasks to be undertaken by the Party. RIGHTWING OFFENSIVE The focus of the resolution is on the new political situation which developed in India after the May 2014 Lok Sabha election. The advent of the Modi government with the BJP getting a majority in the Lok Sabha has set the stage for a rightwing offensive. This offensive is characterised by two features. First, an aggressive thrust to push through neo-liberal policies, and second, the multi-pronged activities of the Hindutva communal forces. Two aspects of the international situation have a direct bearing on this rightward shift. There has been only a tenuous and uncertain recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. This has led to international finance capital and imperialism pushing for more neo-liberal measures to be adopted worldwide. The Indian ruling classes are also seeking to overcome the difficult economic situation by pursuing such measures. The US pivot to Asia and the re-balancing towards the Asia-Pacific region is meant to contain the growing power of China. In this US strategy, India is expected to play a key role. The closer strategic entanglement with the United States is also providing an impetus to the rightward shift. RECORD OF MODI GOVT The ten-month record of the Modi government confirms that it will act at the behest of its main backer, the big bourgeoisie. The policies of opening up more on FDI in various sectors; greater privatisation such as the denationalisation of the coal industry and helping the corporates to grab more land by amending the Land Acquisition law are all clear indications of the neo-liberal thrust. The Modi government also believes in the neo-liberal prescription of austerity for the many in order to ensure the prosperity of a few. The squeeze on public expenditure and the cuts in the budgets on health, education and the social sector constitute a direct assault on the people’s livelihood and well-being. The MGNREGA is being curtailed and the ICDS budget has been halved. Even the limited rights provided in the Food Security Act and other legislations like the Forest Rights Act are being undermined. The Modi regime is moving to curtail the rights of workers by amending the labour laws. The ordinance raj that is unleashed by the Modi government is an early warning of the authoritarian bent of the government. In this ten-month period, there has been widespread increase in the distress of farmers. There has been no respite for the common people from the price rise of food items and there has been an increase in unemployment for both the rural and urban poor. The other feature of the rightwing offensive is the multi-pronged effort to advance the Hindutva project. There has been a qualitative change in the situation as the BJP government works in close coordination with the RSS. It is the RSS agenda which is sought to be introduced in the educational system in institutions of research and cultural bodies. At the ground level, the RSS and its various outfits are taking up issues such as cow slaughter, the so-called `love jihad’ and Bangladeshi infiltration in order to create communal tensions and provoke communal polarisation. The rightward shift is manifested in the foreign policy of the Modi government too. The move away from non-alignment and the pro-US orientation in foreign policy has been unfolding since the phase of liberalisation began in the early 1990s. The Modi government is carrying forward more vigorously the strategic ties forged by the UPA government with the United States. The Indo-US Defence Framework Agreement is being extended for another ten years. During Obama’s visit in India, a Joint Vision Statement on the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean region was issued which explicitly aligns India’s “Act East” policy with the US pivot to Asia. Modi has sought to build and strengthen military cooperation with Japan and Australia. This ties in with the US approach for a quadrilateral alliance involving the US, India, Japan and Australia. CENTRAL THEME The draft resolution’s central theme is how to counter the rightwing offensive and the tactical line to be pursued in this regard. The tactical line emphasises the need to develop mass struggles and movements by the Party and the mass organisations on the problems and issues affecting different sections of the people. The draft resolution provides direction for the development of the struggles and movements in the various mass fronts, working class, kisan, agricultural workers, women, youth, students, dalits and adivasis. FIGHTING COMMUNALISM The draft gives importance to the fight against the Hindutva forces and communalism. The Review of the Political-Tactical Line had pointed out the need for concretising the tactics to combat the communal forces in various spheres – social, cultural, ideological and educational fields. Based on this, the draft resolution sets out five tasks in these spheres to be undertaken by the Party and the class and mass organisations. They include mobilisation of the intellectual and cultural resources of the Party for the ideological fight against communal forces; intervention in the educational system to protect democratic secular education; organising social and cultural activities particularly in the working class residential areas; developing cultural and social activities to counter the pernicious casteist and obscurantist values purveyed by the communal forces and finally developing the organisational work in the adivasi areas and among the dalits to counter the work of the RSS outfits. POLITICAL LINE The political line sets out as the main task, the fight against the BJP and Modi government’s policies. It calls for an integrated struggle against the neo-liberal policies and in defence of the people’s livelihood which should be combined with the fight against communalism and the political-ideological struggle against the BJP-RSS combine. While the main direction of the struggle is against the BJP, the Party will continue to oppose the Congress as it pursues neo-liberal policies. It is the Congress-led UPA government’s anti-people policies and corruption which helped the BJP to come to power. Therefore, the political line precludes having any understanding or electoral alliance with the Congress. The political line has added a new direction, ie, the struggle against neo-liberal policies being pursued by the state governments including those run by the regional parties. The line also entails opposing the bourgeois-landlord politics and policies of the regional parties in order to organise the working people and mobilise them around the CPI(M) and the Left and democratic platform. This is an outcome of the review of the political-tactical line pursued so far. The political line entails giving maximum importance to developing and building the independent strength of the Party. In the present situation where the Party and Left forces have suffered reverses, it is of crucial importance to restore and expand the independent strength of the Party. United struggles and joint movements are a necessary component of the endeavour to increase the independent strength of the Party. Such united platforms and mass movements on people’s issues, defence of national sovereignty, states’ rights and against imperialism should be conducted with other democratic forces and non-Congress secular parties. The purpose of united actions of the class and mass organisations is to seek to draw the masses following the Congress, BJP and other bourgeois parties into joint action. The political line requires work to rally the Left and democratic forces and to realise the Left and democratic front step by step. The electoral tactics of the Party should be guided by the interests of strengthening the Party and rallying the Left and democratic forces. Increasing the independent strength of the Party, widening and strengthening Left unity and working to forge the Left and democratic alliance constitutes the core of the political-tactical line. INDEPENDENT STRENGTH OF PARTY Independent expansion of the Party requires the emphasis on developing the class and mass movements. The development of sustained struggles on local issues provides the links with the struggle against the neo-liberal policies. The Party must directly intervene and take up struggles on social issues. The expansion of the independent strength of the Party also means the overcoming of the reverses suffered in West Bengal and the erosion in mass support. The Party has to overcome the adverse situation by struggling for the defence of democracy and resisting the violence by the TMC, mobilising the people on the issues of their livelihood and countering the rising threat of the communal forces. The Party also has to consolidate its mass base in Kerala and strengthen the LDF. In Tripura, the Party has expanded its mass base and the good work done by the Left Front government has helped to expand the influence of the Party. Steps should be taken to consolidate this influence and there should be vigilance to defend the Left Front government from the attacks by the BJP government at the centre. LEFT UNITY The strengthening of Left unity is the other task set out in the draft resolution. This necessitates the widening the ambit of the Left united platform by bringing all the Left parties, groups and individuals on to a common Left platform. At present, six Left parties have come together for joint actions. This needs to be taken forward to forge a broad Left platform. LEFT AND DEMOCRATIC FRONT The draft resolution has spelt out the contours of the Left and democratic front that has to be forged. The draft resolution, for the first time since the 10th Congress, has spelt this out as follows: “At present, the nucleus of the forces that can be drawn into the Left and Democratic Front are of the Left parties and their class and mass organisations; Left groups and intellectuals; socialists scattered in various parties and democratic sections within the non-Congress secular parties; democratic organisations of the adivasis, dalits, women and minorities and social movements which are taking up the issues of the oppressed sections. Only by drawing all these forces on to a joint platform based on a programme that is distinct and opposed to the policies of the bourgeois-landlord parties can the movement towards the Left and Democratic Front take a concrete shape. A step in this direction would be to build a common platform with all the various class and mass organisations with a common charter of demands.” The struggle for building Left and democratic unity will proceed differently in different states. Various types of Left and democratic combinations will emerge in the states but they will contribute to the building of the Left and democratic front at the all India level. The resolution spells out the Left and democratic programme which includes the immediate demands of the working class, peasantry, agricultural workers, rural labour, middle classes and the intelligentsia. The Party and the Left should be able to conduct struggles and movements around these demands to rally the various classes and socially oppressed sections. BUILD STRONG CPI(M) The draft resolution concludes with eight tasks to tackle the rightwing offensive and to advance the struggle against the neo-liberal policies, communalism and imperialism. The resolution calls for reorienting and strengthening the organisation to fulfill the tasks set out. A strong CPI(M) should be built by strengthening the Marxist-Leninist ideological foundations.