GUWAHATI, the capital city of poll-bound Assam, witnessed a massive and inspiring rally on February 21 on the call of CPI(M) Assam State Committee. The sprawling and picturesque bank of the mighty Brahmaputra River, where the rally was held, turned red and was crowded by about fifteen thousand people who came from different corners of the state. It was an inspiring spectacle of the fighting unity of the toiling and democratic people irrespective of language, religion and caste in a state which is otherwise plagued by activities of divisive and communal forces. Addressing the rally which virtually launched the campaign of the CPI(M) and the Left for the impending assembly election, Party general secretary Sitaram Yechury called upon the people of the state to resist the attempts of BJP to pose as an alternative to the Congress misrule. Describing Assam as a state where unity reigns among immense diversities, he cautioned that this unity would be gravely imperilled if BJP could somehow come to power in the state. Explaining why BJP cannot be an alternative to Congress, he said the experiences of the last 20 months have amply confirmed that the Modi government at the Centre have been pursuing the same anti-people neo-liberal economic policies of the previous Congress-led UPA government, rather more aggressively. The Modi government has gone back on all the promises it made to the people, he said. This government had been pursuing policies that made the rich richer and the poor poorer. Yechury said that all sectors of the economy, including the strategically important defence, have been opened up to the predatory foreign capital. Prime Minister Narendra Modi created a record in undertaking foreign tour. In eight months, he went to 38 countries, i.e. three times a month he went abroad. In a jocular vein, he said the Prime Minister could not bring the black money from abroad and put fifteen lakh rupees in every Indian’s bank account as he promised in the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha poll. But now we have to raise the demand of bringing back our Prime Minister from abroad so that he could pay attention to the issues at home, he said. Terming the Prime Minister and his party as ‘Merchant of Dreams’, the CPI(M) general secretary said the country’s economy is passing through a grim situation. Industrial production, including that in the manufacturing sector that creates most of the employment, has gone down and is in the negative range. Agrarian distress has increased manifold and peasants’ suicides went up by 26 per cent, he said. India has immense possibilities as three-fourths of the country’s population are below forty years of age. If they are given access to education, health and employment, the country would register tremendous progress and growth, he said. But the moot question is why the government has been failing to provide these three essential things. The argument of the government that it lacked resources did not hold good as this government had been doling out five lakh crores of rupees every year to big corporate houses. If this amount of money was spent for the development of an economically backward state like Assam and well-being of the common people, massive employment could have been generated. This, in turn, would have boosted demand in the market and pave the way for robust economic growth. This was the alternative held out by the CPI(M) and the Left, he said. On the increasing inequality and disparity, he said that today only one hundred people in this country who are dollar billionaires owned half of the country’s wealth while 90 per cent of Indian families live on a monthly income of less then Rs 10,000. India accounts for the largest contingent of hungry people in the world. Out of every five deaths due to hunger in the world, three belonged to India. Despite all such slogans as ‘Make in India’, ‘Digital India’ etc., coined by the present ruling dispensation, poverty has been on rise. In order to distract attention of the people from real issues of lives and livings and such a deteriorating economic scenario vis-à-vis abysmal failure of the Modi government, the RSS-BJP have been whipping up the communal provocation and divide, he underlined. Referring to the recent incidents in JNU, Yechury unmasked the design of the RSS and its affiliated organisations that included its political arm BJP also, to foist on the centres of higher education their project of medieval and authoritarian ‘Hindu Rasthra’. Anybody who differed with that project is being termed as ‘anti-national’. Pointing out that RSS, born in 1925, kept itself away from the Freedom Movement and helped British imperialist by dividing Indian people on the basis of religion, Yechury asserted that Indians and the Left need not learn nationalism from such organisation. RSS glorifies and eulogises Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. Such brand of nationalism bred fascism in Germany in 1930s and would destroy the ‘unity in diversity’ which is the hallmark of India. He said the CPI(M) and the Left always stood in the front rank in defending the unity and integrity of the country. Many of its leaders and cadres sacrificed their lives for this cause. In this regard, he referred to the sacrifice of Niranjan Talukdar, an activist of SFI who were cut to pieces by the divisive elements during the Assam agitation in 1980s. Yet he did not surrender the flag of unity. Cautioning that today India has been heading for another kind of Emergency rule which will be worse than that of Indira Gandhi, Yechury called upon the people to defeat BJP and Congress in the ensuing assembly election and strengthen the Left and the CPI(M) which alone has been a consistent and principled fighter against neo-liberalism and communalism. The Left alone can be a voice of the common working masses in the assembly and fight for the utilisation of Assam’s wealth for the welfare of the people of the state. Concluding his speech, Yechury said the Modi government has three faces or “Trimurti’ -- neo-liberal economic policy, politics of communal divide and authoritarian proclivities. He made a clarion call to the people to come forward unitedly to resist the ‘Trimurti’ before it turned into a ‘Trishul’ and destroyed the unity of the people and rend the heart of ‘Mother India’. CPI(M) Assam state secretary Deben Bhattacharjee, addressing the rally, flayed the Congress government in the state for its misrule. The Congress ruled the state for 15 years at a stretch and the end results have been deepening economic backwardness of the state, explosive unemployment, collapse of public distribution system, absence of industrialisation, agrarian distress, and rising onslaughts on the working class, peasantry and all sections of working people. He asserted that BJP cannot be an alternative to Congress as the former pursued more aggressively the same policies of the latter. He called for strengthening of the Left and democratic forces in the state. CPI(M) Central Committee member Uddhab Barman congratulated the people who came to the rally on their own resources despite many difficulties. He laid bare the widespread agrarian distress in the state engendered by the policies pursued by the Congress government. Even after 68 years of Independence, only five per cent of Assam’s arable land stood irrigated. Overwhelming majority of peasants did not have land pattas and consequently they were being disabled to have any access to whatever institutional credit was there. Peasants’ suicides were rising alarmingly in the state. Barman called upon the people to overthrow the Congress rule, defeat BJP and strengthen the Left and democratic forces in the coming assembly election. Veteran Communist leader Hemen Das presided over the rally. In his presidential speech, Das said under the Congress rule the right to hold public rallies even in capital city of Guwahati became difficult as the fields were being denied to political parties like CPI(M). Hence this rally had to be held on the bank of the Brahmaputra River. Only one thing flourished under the Congress rule and that was widespread corruption. BJP was no different as it embraced the most corrupt minister in the Congress government of Assam, who has now become its spokesperson and a leader. Strongly criticising the politics of communal divide unleashed by BJP-RSS, Das said people would surely defeat their nefarious politics. This was amply demonstrated in the state assembly elections of Delhi and Bihar, he said. The rally, in a resolution, strongly condemned the arrest of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar on sedition charge and the RSS-BJP’s design to foist their divisive project on various centres of higher education of thecCountry terming all other who opposed that project as ‘anti-national’. The resolution expressed its all-out solidarity to the struggles of students and teachers of JNU and other educational institutions against the divisive design of RSS-BJP and demanded immediate and unconditional release of Kanhaiya Kumar. In Assam also, ABVP-Bajrang Dal goons pounced upon a peaceful rally of SFI in Silchar in solidarity with JNU students. Several peaceful rallyists were injured in the attack. (END)