Make It the Biggest Ever Militant Class Mobilisation!
Tapan Sen
THERE is continuing systemic crisis of the capitalist order and its retrograde reflections are visible on all spheres – social, political, economic and in governance. The authoritarian and divisive onslaughts of the ruling classes powered by the corporate-communal nexus with clear fascistic intent are felt on all fronts. And at the same time the voice of disapproval and unrest of working people is becoming louder and widespread, bringing forth the reality of determined organised combat. We must vigorously work to heighten this combat by intensifying the united struggles both at sectoral and national level consistently. The response of the toiling people to the calls of united struggles – sectoral or national – has been quite encouraging.
In this context, the CITU has been adopting three pronged approach of developing united struggles for a determined combat – first, to strengthen independent actions and interventions of CITU; second, to step up the joint trade union movement, both sectoral and general; and third, to widen and deepen the worker-peasant class unity by intensifying their joint countrywide movement up to the grassroots level on basic issues as a fulcrum to rally the wider masses to take on the offensives of ruling class.
The worker-peasant-agricultural worker unity in action is the most crucial necessity of the time, which has a tremendous potential of being instrumental in drawing the entire people into a determined combat against the anti-people policies of the governments and the diversionary game plan of the ruling class. This has already attained a new height, and has to be heightened further. The united struggles on their respective demands and mutual supportive actions by each of the segments in support of one another’s struggles have already attained a common point of culmination. All of them are confronting the onslaughts of the anti-people governance together with communal divisive machinations affecting the lives and livelihood of the people and the society as a whole.
In this direction, CITU has been taking the initiative since long to regularly hold joint consultations among CITU-AIKS-AIAWU to develop joint campaign on issues, and carrying that initiative to grassroots level. This initiative got a major breakthrough in 2018 when a massive country wide jail bharo movement was organised on August 9 by these organisations which could reach the majority of the districts. It was followed by ‘Mazdoor-Kishan Sangharsh Rally’ on September 5, 2018, which was the biggest ever worker-peasant militant mobilisation in the national capital in the post- independence period.
The decades’ long working class actions and interventions against the neoliberal onslaughts continued even after the outbreak of Covid pandemic, resulting in a series of successful all India general strikes even during 2020, and 2022 along with umpteen numbers of sectoral struggles and strikes which witnessed massive countrywide active support from peasantry. And around the same period, different peasant organisations were also active in cementing deepened unity-in-action to assert more joint actions and interventions against the neoliberal policy regime, which has already been aggravating agrarian crisis to an alarming level. In that context, we witnessed countrywide combative joint struggles by farmers, agricultural workers with the active support of working class movement which could make the RSS-BJP dispensation to kneel and compelled the government to shelve the retrograde Land Acquisition Ordinance and anti-farmer farm laws.
The historic general strike by the working class on November 26, 2020 also coincided with the beginning of historic more than a year long farmers struggle against the farm laws, brought in by the RSS-BJP government by bulldozing the parliament. Now repealed, these farm laws were enacted targeting the destruction of livelihood of peasants, and of the entire agricultural production to ultimately facilitate complete corporate takeover of the entire agricultural economy. The valiant protracted farmers struggle also demanded withdrawal of Electricity Amendment Bill (2020), designed to put an end to public sector power distribution system and large scale privatisation.
The historic more than a year long farmers struggle also witnessed massive active support and solidarity actions by the working class movements across the country with CITU in the frontline. All the programmes of sit-in demonstrations, agitations, bandhs, spearheaded by the SKM were pro-actively as well as physically supported by the entire working class movement. CITU played a crucial role in solidarity with these struggles. In this process, on all subsequent occasions, the SKM also extended their unfettered support to the struggles and agitations organised by the joint platform of trade unions. These struggles and agitations by the two producing classes further consolidated the worker-peasant unity in action against their common enemy – the corporate-communal nexus in the government. Every piece of struggle exhibited durable visibility.
In this background, the Mazdoor Kisan Adhikar Mahadiveshan held on September 5, 2022 decided to organise the largest-ever Mazdoor Kisan Sangarsh Rally on April 5, 2023, to fight back and resist the barbaric regime of loot and plunder on the people that is reflected in the relentless rise in prices, job losses, unemployment, worsening working and living conditions, rampant privatisation to hand over our national assets to the private corporates, commercialisation of education, health and all other services, to throw our peasants and workers to the mercy of the monopoly multinational companies, the attacks on the democratic and workplace rights, violation of constitutional and parliamentary norms and practices, the cruel oppression of minorities, dalits, adivasis and women. Each and every one of these is linked to the neoliberal policies being adamantly and aggressively carried on by this BJP government; all in a desperate bid to protect the profits and wealth of its corporate masters.
While we make efforts to heighten united struggles against neoliberalism, we have to simultaneously expose the poisonous divisive and diversionary designs of the corporate-communal nexus behind the present regime and mobilise all sections of the working class and toiling people against this. Hence, the worker-peasant joint struggle-initiatives, the united assertion of the two main producing classes of the society, must confront head-on the poisonous Hindutva project, premised on majoritarian communalism, politically and ideologically, at all levels upto the grassroots level. The April 5th Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Rally will be a culmination of such countrywide grassroots level campaign and mobilisation, paving the way for further heightened struggles against the corporate-communal nexus in governance. Let us make this Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Rally, the biggest ever militant class mobilisation in the history of Independent India.
