SIXTEENTH Madhya Pradesh state conference of the CPI(M) was held in Bhopal on January 16, 17, 18. It set the goals of new campaigns, movements and struggles and re-elected Jaswinder Singh as the state secretary.

In his concluding speech at the conference, Party general secretary Sitaram Yechury, giving many examples from the country and the world, said that the struggles of the people have been in the most despotic rules and have won them.

The working people know how to make sacrifices to get rid of their troubles and on the basis of that, they can reach the destination of success. Clearing the myth that the Left is weak, he said parliamentary power cannot be the only measure of the strength of the CPI(M) or the Left. The real question is the struggle to be fought without any pause over the questions of relations with the people and their lives, and the Left is at the forefront of it. The role of the Left in the recent historic peasant movement and the fourth national strike in four years is enough to explain this. It is to be accelerated further in the coming days. He expressed the hope that in Madhya Pradesh too, the CPI(M) would move ahead with a spurt in agitation and struggle on the local questions of the people. He said that it is clear from the stories of struggle and achievements narrated in the discussions for three days that the party of Madhya Pradesh has that capability. It needs to be used systematically.

Speaking on the second day of the conference, former MP and Polit Bureau Member, Subhashini Ali highlighted the very worrying rapid growth of social injustice under the BJP rule. She said that this is part of the conspiracy to restore Manuvaad. Such incidents are more in Madhya Pradesh because it has been kept as their laboratory by the RSS-BJP. The CPI(M) and the Left also have to fight against this social form of exploitation as it is also a part of class exploitation. Ali also spoke about the divisive communalism conspiracies being done by the Modi government to hide its failures and called for making the public aware of them. Sharing her experiences related to Madhya Pradesh, she also gave many suggestions and called for expansion of movement and organisation among all sections and communities of the people.

State secretary Jaswinder Singh laid the political organisational report. In this, the state’s political situation and the condition of the economy, agriculture, farm labour, industry, employment and healthcare facilities were described. The main issues of the struggles to be carried out in the coming days were determined with details of the implementation of Manusmriti and the plight of women, dalits, tribals in the social status, attacks on the secular structure. The organisational portion of the report framed experiences with a critical review of the conflicts, movements and multifaceted activities of the last four years. The Party organisation and the working of the committees were reviewed on the basis of the guidelines of the Kolkata Plenum and the expansion targets were identified by identifying the reforms to be done in the coming days.

INAUGURATION

Inaugurating the conference, Sitaram Yechury gave detailed information about the current conditions of the country and the world in his speech. He said that "the rich countries of the world are endangering the humanity of the world for the sake of their own and their companies’ covert profits. In the era of the Corona pandemic, instead of reducing the patent royalty from the vaccine, they are making it so expensive.” Many poor countries are not able to buy it. As a result, poverty and unemployment have increased unbridled in the era of this pandemic, while there has been a huge increase in the wealth of the world's billionaires including in India. He said the situation is such that the relief package which the governments are announcing to come out of the economy, is also going directly into the vault of these billionaires, due to which hunger and deaths are increasing on one side and on the other hand the speculative market is touching the sky.

He said that the imperialist countries led by America are conspiring to take over the post-Corona world. The socialist countries that protected their people by overcoming this disaster and keeping the economy under control, efforts are being made to lay siege to them. The Indian government led by Modi has come to be known around the world as an American puppet these days. It has become a hanger of America in such military alliances which are threatening the security and sovereignty of India itself. Due to this pro-American foreign policy, India is sitting in bad relations with all its neighbouring countries.

Speaking about the situation in the country, Sitaram Yechury said that after coming to power again in 2019, PM Modi has attacked and weakened the federal structure associated with secular democracy, economic sovereignty, social justice and centre-state relations. Illegal arrests, restrictions on democracy have increased. Journalists are also being charged with sedition. Atrocities on women, dalits have intensified, tribals are being driven out of their settlements by handing over land to the corporates. The wealth of the country has been plundered. Indiscriminate privatisation is being done. Modi has waived the loans of his loved ones worth Rs 11 lakh crore. Those who ran away after eating the loans of banks are also being let off. The work of the state governments is being interfered with by making RSS people sit in the raj bhavans. A conspiracy is being hatched to make the country a Hindutva based nation, which has been decisively rejected by the people of India in the freedom struggle.

He said that the central government rejected the tableau based on Sree Narayana Guru sent by the Kerala government for the Republic Day parade and asked the state government to make a tableau on Adi Shankaracharya. The entire narrative of the country is being made communal, in the celebrations of the 75th year of independence, all the symbols are being decided accordingly.

Sitaram Yechury said that all this is happening at a time when poverty, unemployment and hunger are rising in India. Inflation has made life difficult. The Modi government has failed on all these fronts. In the meantime, people's agitations and struggles have also increased, he said. In the last four years, the workers have conducted three nationwide strikes. The farmers have won the historic movement that lasted for a year. Women, students and youth have all fought together. The CPI(M) will take forward these struggles to save the country and its people. He said that in the coming days, his party will form a front that will have a common opinion in all these matters and will liberate the people of the country from the corporate Hindutva rule of Modi.

Chhattisgarh CPI(M) state secretary, Sanjay Parate extended his best wishes to the conference. Badal Saroj, Sandhya Shaili, J K Pippal, A T Padmanabhan, Budhsen Singh Gond and Zahoor Khan presided over the three-day conference.

The state conference began with the hoisting of the flag by senior leader J K Pippal and paying homage to the martyrs and the departed. Ramprakash Tripathi welcomed everyone with his address.

Despite the rapidly spreading infection of Coronavirus in the state, 90 per cent of the representatives participated. Altogether 197 delegates/observers participated, of whom 58 participated in the discussion on the report. The report was passed unanimously after the secretary's address. The conference elected a 30-member state committee in the last session. It re-elected outgoing state secretary Jaswinder Singh as its secretary. The 11-member state secretariat including the secretary and the delegates for the Party Congress were also elected.

In a resolution against the new education policy, the state government was criticised for making Madhya Pradesh the first state to implement it. This education policy has been described as a means of increasing the commercialisation of education and depriving the majority of families of education. At the conference, resolutions were passed on issues affecting various sections of society.