UNITE AND FIGHT AGAINST PRICE-RISE, SCAMS AND STATE TERROR!

Press Release
January 15, 2011
UNITE AND FIGHT AGAINST PRICE-RISE, SCAMS AND STATE TERROR!
Make Success Country-wide Protests From 4 to 6 February And Bharat Bandh on February 7
The latest addition to the already long-list of sufferings of the people of our country is the new rise in food inflation to 18.5 percent with prices touching the sky. On top of this petrol prices have been hiked (Rs 2.50 per litre) from the midnight of 15 January which would again lead to more price-rise in all items particularly in food items. The life of 'Aam Aadmi' would become even more miserable with the prices of onion, mirchi, atta, pulses, vegetables soaring. Though price-rises have become an integral part of our life since decades, this kind of price-rise in the conditions where more than 90 percent of the workforce is employed in unorganized sector and where 83 percent of the people live on less than 20 rupees daily income, the connotations are grave and disturbing. Add to it the continuous loss of employment of even white collar jobs of the middle classes due to the world wide economic crisis and the picture which emerges is even bleaker.
It is one thing to put up with this. But how should one also put up with the most inhuman, cruel, insensitive and callous statement of the person in the highest post in our country, that too a person who is supposed to administer this country efficiently so that the lives of the people turn for better? While the people and particularly the children of this country are dying in their lakhs each year just due to lack of food and nutrition, this person had the audacity to declare that the present price-rise is due to the increase in food consumption of the poor people! This is the zenith of shamelessness one can ever reach. It is not our fault if this sounds like an echo of what an equally if not a more barefaced person named Mr. Bush (Junior) said some days back accusing the people of countries like China and India of consuming more, leading to a crisis! At least one could understand the contempt a President of the imperialist country (US), the number one enemy of the world people, would have for the people of third world countries. But Mr. Manmohan Singh! You have out stepped all the limits of decency and humanity in expressing such contempt for the people of the country you are supposed to lead. The blood of every patriot boils and the face of every citizen burns with indignity to hear this from the high offices of this country. Surely our beloved country and its dignified people do not deserve this shabby treatment.
It is under the aegis of this Prime Minister that a Mukesh Ambani builds a Mahal worth 3,500 crores, ministers function on a daily basis from five-star hotels, trillions of rupees are guzzled in scams by every single person who is even a bit of somebody in his parliament or his administrative mechanism and army/police/forest services (the 1,76,000 crore 2G Spectrum scam is still fresh in public memory) not to mention their billions of dollars stacked away safely in Swiss banks! All the future trading, hoarding, black marketing, faulty PDS which have become the trademark of the 'independent' India have all been brazenly pushed aside as the possible reasons for this appalling inflation rate and the poor people who are breaking their backs in conditions which can be compared to the medieval times (again a fallout of the LPG policies gifted to us since 1991 by this reliable servant of IMF and World Bank) and are not even able to have one square meal in a day have become the culprits. Wah ! Great Economics indeed, worth a Nobel Prize! This is not just a cruel joke on the poor people of our country (whom he doesn't represent at all) but also an unabashed attempt to cover up the scams and hoarding of the richie rich people of our country and the imperialist countries (whom he represents so well) and to divert the attention of the people from the actual causes of inflation and burning problems at present.
What is the actual condition prevailing? On the one hand, people are tragically suffering with this price-rise while on the other hand a new scam is rising on the horizon along with the sun every day. The price-rise is closely linked with the scam-rises of the ministers and high-rises of the comprador bureaucratic
bourgeoisie along with the rise in their bank accounts in the Swiss banks. (Remember? India refuses to reveal the names of those persons who have amassed billion of dollars in these banks?) The recent 2G Spectrum scam has exposed the back door deals of the big players of the corporate world, ministers and hi-fi media people while the series of scams which came to light have uncovered the brash pillage by all the parliamentary parties of the resources rightfully belonging to the people. The BJP which had stalled the proceedings of the Parliament for a whole session with the demand of instituting a JPC on 2G Spectrum scam is desperately trying to masquerade as a 'clean party' hiding its own set of scams, one of the major of these happening in Karnataka under BJP Chief Minister Yedyurappa. The close relations which Congress and BJP, including the leader of opposition Ms. Sushma Swaraj have with the notorious mining mafia bosses Reddy brothers are well documented. There is another purpose too. With Aseemanand singing in police custody and the unearthing of other evidences, the direct involvement of the saffron terrorists in the Samjhauta Express, Malegaon and Mecca Masjid blasts stands exposed and the JPC probe demand and the uproar about price-rise are aimed at diverting the attention of the people from the heinous criminals involved in those blasts. The UPA government dumped A. Raja, of course after lot of hullabaloo due to inescapable evidence implicating him, in the 2G spectrum scam in order to save the skin of the Prime Minister and Sonia who are the directors of this sky-scraping scam and without whose involvement such a spectacle would be impossible. The names of highest level ranking generals in the army have also come up in scams not to mention the bureaucrats. The mother of all scams but which is not so visible is the stockpiling of thousands of crores of rupees by the likes of Naveen Patnaik, Raman Singh, YSR (now dead), Yedyurappa, Nitish Kumar, Narendra Modi, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Ashok Chavan in the form of commissions earned through the MoUs they are signing with the MNCs and imperialists. YSR had alone earned nearly 60,000 crores of rupees in his term as CM and one can imagine how many billions of rupees of the hard earned money of the common people is filling the coffers of all these super gangsters.
The people of our country are not sitting quite while these scamsters and gangsters are pillaging our wealth. In every corner of our country people are agitating at various levels and in different forms against corruption, all kinds of anti-people policies, price-rise and loot of natural resources. Of all these resistances, the most organized and militant struggle is waged by our party the CPI (Maoist). That is why it was named the biggest internal security threat by the Sonia-Manmohan-Chidabaram gang and an unprecedented countrywide multi-pronged offensive was launched on it in the name of Operation Green Hunt (OGH). The intensification of the anti-people, pro-imperialist policies which give rise to scams and price-rise and the repression on CPI (Maoist) are directly proportional and this became particularly obvious in the past two months. The Prime Minister and Home Minister are conducting series of meetings to crush the Maoist movement and in the latest meeting held in January first week with higher level officers of police and paramilitary forces of six states, they laid emphasis on synergy between intelligence agencies, paramilitary and the police. This insistence on synergy is not an innocent proposal but is aimed at perpetrating more massacres, mopping up campaigns and clearing the adivasis and Maoists from the forests. Some more billions of rupees were allotted for this War on People.
In West Bengal, the social fascist CPM in collusion with the central government has increased the number of camps to 140 in Jangal Mahal and Lalgarh and filled them with police, paramilitary and its own counter-revolutionary Harmad Bahini goons, with an eye on the upcoming elections. That the ongoing atrocities and repression on the people of these areas would increase is anybody's guess and the massacre by CPM/Harmad cadres of eight people and injuring many more in Lalgarh area in the first week of January are an indication of the terrible things in store. On December 3, 2010, the police arrested the West Bengal state secretary of our party Com. Sudeep Chongdar, state committee members Kalpana Maiti, Barun Sur, Anil Ghosh and some other comrades while another state committee member Com. Dwijen Hembram was arrested earlier. They were cruelly tortured and false cases were foisted on them. Particularly, the insulting and inhuman treatment meted out to Com. Kalpana is denigrating the dignity of a woman.
In Bihar and Jharkhand arrests, tortures, barbarous attacks and murders of Maoist cadres are continuing. In Andhra Pradesh despite the claims of the ruling classes that they have suppressed the Maoists, fake encounters and attacks on the people haven't stopped. On 17 December, 2010, in an encounter in Visakhapatnam district four comrades including three women were killed. People fighting against seizure of their lands for SEZs, thermal power plants and for a separate Telangana state are being fired upon indiscriminately.
In an unprecedented severe offensive on Maoist areas in Odisha in the past two months nearly 25 Maoist cadres and ordinary people were killed and most of these 'encounters' were fake. Five Maoists in Kalinganagar area on January 2, nine Maoists in Niyamgiri area on January 9 and two Maoists in Keonjhar area on January 12 were killed in so-called encounters. Right in the beginning of this year two villagers were killed in cold-blood in Bargarh district and the police claimed it was an encounter.
On 8 October, in Savargaon of Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra (Dandakaranya), the ITBP forces had fired mortars shells on a school leading to the death of 6 people including two school children and injuries to eight more. On the next day on 9 October, in a fierce encounter in Mahasamund district of Chhattisgarh (CG) six comrades were martyred and the police killed two innocent villagers mercilessly in the same incident. On 23 November, the CRPF had massacred nine villagers near Jegurugonda in Dantewada district. The CG
government is suppressing dissent in the most reactionary manner by arresting democratic intellectuals, putting them in jails and pronouncing harsh punishments on them. The recent conviction of CPI (Maoist) Politburo member Narayan Sanyal, Human Rights activist Dr. Binayak Sen, trader Piyush Guha and editor-writer Asit Sengupta is a blatant example of this. Though this offensive is obviously directed against the Maoists, in reality this is directed against all those individuals and organizations that are resisting the policies of the government.
Beloved people of India!
This is not the time to cry over the depths of despair and degradation the ruling classes are forcing us into. The need of the hour is for all the people to come together and fight back the anti-people, repressive and pro-imperialist policies of the state and to direct our fight against scamsters, hoarders, black marketeers and forces of the repressive state.
Our Central Committee appeals to all the people to observe protests from 4 to 5 February and one-day Bharat bandh on 7 February against price-rise, scams and state terror. We are making it clear that there would be no bandh during the protest days and that Bharat bandh would be observed in six states – West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and three districts in Maharashtra – Gadchiroli, Gondia, Chandrapur and one district in Madhya Pradesh – Balaghat. Medical services and people attending examinations and interviews will be excluded from the bandh activities.
(Abhay)
Spokesperson,
Central Committee,
CPI (Maoist)