CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Sunday said that the country is facing the challenge of the BJP Government’s neo-liberal economic policies, communal polarisation and undermining of democratic institutions. Terming these three challenges as ‘trimurti’, Yechury said Modi-led Government was simply running on the hidden agenda of RSS and destroying the very idea.
“The challenge before us is to stop this ‘trimurti’ from converting into a ‘trishul’ (trident) which will rupture the interests of the people,” said Yechury. On how to check this trend, he said, “We are in talks with other left parties, while mass organisations like Kisan Sabha and trade unions are independently working out agitational programmes on these issues.”
Briefing reporters on the deliberations of the two-day Politburo meeting, Yechury said the latest 21st Party Congress had noted the three trends being pursued by the BJP Government. These are the “aggressive pursuit” of the neo-liberal economic reforms, “relentless onslaughts” on the secular-democratic foundations of the country by “sharpening communal polarisation” and the “movement towards an authoritarian rule through the erosion of democratic institutions”.
These trends “are all getting aggravated,” Yechury said, adding that a united Opposition has been able to check the BJP plans in Parliament. The BJP Government “is backtracking on many issues that it had opposed during the UPA Government like FDI in retail trade. It’s backtracking on the land Acquisition Bill is a classic case,” he said.
It was “only due to the combined Opposition in the Rajya Sabha” that the Government was forced to send this (land) Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee. The way, the Modi Government was “undermining parliamentary democracy, is unprecedented. It has passed nearly 50 legislations (over 90 per cent) in the lok Sabha without allowing parliamentary scrutiny by referring them to the respective Parliamentary Standing Committees, during the course its first year in office,” he said.
“It is only due to the strength of the combined Opposition parties that it was forced to refer seven Bills it passed in the lok Sabha using its ‘tyranny of majority’, to Select Committees in the Rajya Sabha,” Yechury said.
CPI(M) Politburo said the BJP Government has sought to systematically implement the RSS agenda. “It has infiltrated known RSS men into higher educational institutions; commuanlise curriculum etc. The latest incident is the so-called overhauling of the Indian Council of Historical Research where internationally reputed Indian historians have been forced to quit.
“The Government has refused to take action against its Ministers and MPs who have through hate speeches sought to incite people and communally polarise them. Growing incidents of communal clashes and riots are being reported from various parts of the country,” said the statement issued by Politburo.