Elections - Once Again
Once again the trumpets of the general election drama has started blaring. Without wasting a single moment the principal actors and actresses of this drama have jumped on the stage and have started to pour out their lines. As usual the bourgeois press is doing its utmost to create the necessary tempo. The grand bandwagon has started to roll again.
The ensuing Loke Sabha Elections are going to take place earlier than the scheduled time. The reasons are quite well known. Fully buoyant by the favourable results of the Assembly elections of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh the think- tank of the Sangh Parivar and BJP have calculated that this is the ideal time. The wind is clearly in their favour and hence the general elections must be held now. It is not that someone needs a fertile brain to understand this calculations of Vajpayee,s and Advani's. These people have left nothing for doubt and have clearly made it known their calculations. All the bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties have always fought the elections with the sole motive of winning more and more seats so that they can gain a majority in the parliament and occupy the seat of the government Yet generally these parties do their best to hide this intention by putting on cloaks of principle, desire to serve the country and the people, etc.etc But the nakedness with which the leaders of BJP— right from the Prime Minister to the leaders who are not Government functionaries— have gone on expressing their lustful intension, is nauseating, to say the least. Now the emperors can afford to indulge in nakedly exhibiting themselves. Because they feel that the subjects are soundly defeated. Who, among the subjects, has the temerity now to ask the emperor—" Emperor, where are your clothes"?
The brazen nakedness of the parties in power is also evident in some other counts. On the eve of every bourgeois election all the bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties generously distribute goodies and promises among the people with the intention of hoodwinking and bribing them. And the party or parties in governmental power occupies the most favourable position in this respect. They fully utilise the governmental power in playing this role. This is the usual format of the bourgeois elections. But the generosities and promises, which the different ministers of the NDA government are showering on the Indian masses on the eve of the coming general elections, are quite staggering. The Finance Minister, the Railway Minister, the Coal Minister, etc. of the Central Government are competiting with each other in this issue and in this contest Finance Minister Jaswant Singh has outshone everybody. In the interim budget he has promised generosities for the Indian masses amounting to few millions of rupees Wherefrom this amount of money will come? Nobody knows. The Indian Government is already carrying the burden of huge fiscal deficit. If the amount of money promised in the interim budget is spent, then the fiscal deficit of the central government will surely be quite awesome. But then there will be no elections. And so what's the worry? All the 'necessary' steps can be taken then without any problem and the real budget can be placed.
But the main point to be noted in this respect is not the promises and the generosities of the central ministers. It is the openness with which some of the representatives of the ruling NDA are propagating these showering of promises and generosities just before the elections, as 'natural' part of the election politics. In different interviews these people have arrogantly argued that as they are engaged not in philanthropic work but in 'politics', so they see nothing wrong in these steps. So it seems that the representatives of the ruling classes have thrown away all scruples and acquired the 'lumpen' audacity to openly proclaim that their election 'politics' justifies any steps as long it is useful in hoodwinking the people and in securing more and more votes. What pristine nakedness!
And look at the logic that the Prime Minister has put forward in support of the advertisement spree of 'Shining India' in the electronic and print media at the cost of the government exchequer. Replying to the objection of the new Chief Election Commissioner about indulging in such advertisements just before the elections at the cost of the ordinary taxpayers the Prime Minister said that there was nothing wrong in such advertisements, because the application of the code of conduct of the election would start with the announcement of the dates of election. And of course, there was the incontestable logic of ' everybody does it', which he did not forget to add. So to the Prime Minister of the country the question is only of legality, not of principles! Principle can go with the wind. It has been reported the bourgeois papers the government is spending 500 crores of rupees to advertise how ' India is shining'. A question from the logic of common sense may appear quite pertinent in this respect. If the BJP-led government has done so much for the country and the people, then the people must have felt these achievements of the government in their daily lives and can not forget those within the short period between the announcement of the election dates and the actual commencement of the election. Then what is the necessity of such advertisements at the cost of such huge drainage of the government exchequer? But it is useless to raise such a question. Every game has particular sets of rules and one of the rules of the bourgeois election is that self-advertisement is a must. Ordinary common sense has no place in it.
But a close look will reveal that there is a strong ruling classes' sense behind all these. At which point India is shining most? It is at the Sensex and Foreign Exchange Reserve. The 'record' rise in these cannot, in any way, bring about an improvement in the lives of the workers, peasants and other sections of the common people and actually has not. On the other hand, it is the big bourgeoisie who are profited by these' record rises' and their prosperity is revealed in these rises. Another 'achievement' that is highlighted in these advertisements is the building of highways. It is obvious that this 'achievement' will mainly serve the interests of the big industrialists and big merchants by providing them the necessary infrastructure they need very badly. In the bag of sops held out by the Finance Minister provisions have been made for cheap loans for peasants and small entrepreneurs. In the present Indian agriculture the peasants who are in position to take loans from the government are mainly the rich peasants. The small and poor peasants and the majority of the middle peasants— the sections of the Indian peasantry that,, in combination with the agricultural labourers form the bulk of the Indian peasant population are in no position to take loans. So it can be well assumed that this 'gift' of the Finance Minister is meant for bringing delight mainly in the lives of the rich peasants. The direction of the generosities of the government granted to the agriculture sector can be understood from another measure. Jaswant Singh has promised to exempt acquisition of agricultural land from capital gains tax. This issue has been agitating the rich peasants of the states through which the Prime Minister's highway project passes. So by far the vast majority of the Indian peasant population gets nothing from the goodies sanctioned by the government. In the industrial sector the only beneficiaries of the governmental benevolence will be the industrialists and entrepreneurs. But what is going to be the fate of the workers? They are never mentioned in the bag of sops. In the meantime the rate of increase of the figure of unemployment for the year 2003 has reached it's highest since 1947 and the number of workers retrenched last year in the organised industry is suffocating. The number of closed factories is increasing day by day. Still ' India is shining'! Is it not apparent for whom India is shining?
Look at the hectic speed and nakedness with which all the established parliamentary parties are manoeuvring to be in an advantageous position in the mad scramble for gaining seats. BJP and the Congress are scouting the country to pick up allies and the smaller parties like Samajwadi Party, BSP, DMK,AIDMK, CPI(M),CPI etc. are trying their best to secure positions of king-makers after the elections. And in this hectic manoeuvring all questions of principles and scruples have been thrown out of the window. As soon as Karunanidhi's DMK came out of NDA the leaders of BJP rushed to Jayalalitha to coax and win her AIDMK to the side of NDA. And they have succeeded in their endeavour and Jayalalitha has joined hands with BJP. But still there are some hitches, because the pound of flesh is the only point in the bargain. Congress has promptly bagged DMK and desperately looking for other allies. Mulyam and Mayabati have preferred to remain enigmas and have kept everybody guessing. Within a few days after posing with Congress President Sonia Gandhi with a smiling face Mayabati suddenly remembered her identity as Atal Behari's second daughter! Mulyam is, on one side, keeping some sort of a clandestine rapport with the leaders of BJP (although it is an open secret now) and, on the other side, thundering now and then that his party will have no track with a communal party like BJP.And CPI (M) has declared that apart from West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura it will support the Congress against BJP in all other states. If your sole aim is to be in the governmental power within this system then you are bound to land in such absurd position. And lastly, look at the tug-of-war between the Congress and BJP to rope in film stars in their propaganda campaign.
Before the elections to the 4 th Duma in the pre-revolutionary Russia Lenin had said in the beginning of October, 1912: - " All elections in a bourgeois country are accompanied by rampant phrase-mongering and licentious promises. The main principle of Social-Democrats (in the sense of Communists) is not to trust words but go to the heart of the matter". [Lenin—C.W. Vol.36, p: -191, Emphasis is ours] The coming parliamentary election in India stands as a living testimony of the words of Lenin. The Indian communist revolutionaries must go to the heart of the matter and the first lesson they will have to learn is that as long the Indian proletariat as an organised political force remain absent in the election battle the brazen naked dance of the ruling class parties will continue unabated.
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