A clear case of double speak

Just a few days before Manmohan Singh delivered his annual Independence Day speech from the Red Fort, officials of his government had inked the first-ever agreement on nuclear cooperation with US imperialism, the most ruthless and dangerous superpower known to mankind. The UPA government has set the greatest store by this deal, and Manmohan Singh has even declared that he is willing to risk his government on it. But in his speech which dealt with various “achievements” of his government, the Prime Minister maintained a total silence about this deal. Why did he do that? This is because he knew very well that the “strategic partnership” with US imperialism has aroused great opposition and anger among Indian people. So he chose to keep quiet about it and utter many platitudes about his supposed concern for the “aam aadmi” and his “new vision of a caring India” instead.

Manmohan Singh's speech on August 15 this year was in fact a typical example of the method employed by the bourgeois politicians of this country – which is to say what the people want to hear, even while going ahead and doing the exact opposite. This is the hallmark of his government and his Congress Party. The UPA government came to power three years ago talking about providing a “human face” to the policy of liberalisation and privatisation. In other words it came to power promoting the great delusion that these capitalist reforms can be carried out in such a way that the ordinary people will not suffer and can in fact gain. In these three years, tens of thousands of farmers across the country have been driven to suicide, lakhs of people in the countryside and cities have been displaced, soaring inflation has driven the prices of basic necessities beyond people's reach – all this while public assets, land, water and other resources are being gobbled up by private capitalists on an unprecedented scale with the active assistance of the state. The peoples of the North East and Jammu & Kashmir, as well as large parts of central India, continue to be victims of repressive laws and barbaric state terrorism. Bomb blasts continue to terrorise people in different towns of India. People of the Muslim faith continue to be specially targeted as “terrorists”, even while calls are given by the government that “all Muslims are not terrorists”. While talking about the record of his government in his speech, Manmohan Singh refused to own up responsibility for any of this. Instead he dwelt on various “schemes” of the government which, as everyone knows, will not even make a dent in the deep crises and problems in which the people are mired. He spoke about a “new deal” for the country's struggling cultivators, and said “I reassure our farmers that their welfare lie at the core of all our concerns.” At the same time, this government has pushed ahead with reforms to speed up the pace of capitalist development of agriculture which is pushing crores upon crores of farmers closer to ruination and bankruptcy every day.

Manmohan Singh boasted about how much his government had done for “social and human development”. He laid particular stress on how much public money had been allocated for the social sector, especially in education. However, the thrust of the government spending on education indicates that the aim is not so much to rectify the serious shortcomings in the existing system of education as to provide the skilled manpower needed by the big capitalists to sustain their economic growth. This is seen in the emphasis he laid on vocational education and on setting up new “high quality” schools and institutes around the country, such as IITs and IIMs. For all the talk about concern for the “aam aadmi”, the speech made it clear that the government was determined to continue with its current economic policies in the direction of “rapid industrialisation”, even if, as he admitted, masses of people would face difficulties in the process.

In his speech, the Prime Minister did not fail to say “Those who profess hatred and extremism, those who spread the virus of communalism and those who believe in violence and terrorism have no place in our society. We must all fight these anti-democratic, anti-social and anti-national forces….. the government is

firm in its resolve to fight all forms of extremism and terrorism.” The Indian peole know very well what the government’s “fight against terrorism and extremism and communalism” really means. It means more powers to the state, which has proven itself to be the biggest terrorist and communal to the core, to intensify its terrorist attacks on the people opposing this vision of the big bourgeoisie and step up its communal division of the people. In other words, all those opposed to Manmohan Singh’s bourgeoisie imperialist vision will be branded as extremists and terrorists. Terrorism and state terrorism, communalism and communal violence will continue to be preferred tools of the government. There will be more bomb blasts and terrorist strikes, more attacks on people of the Muslim faith, more attempts to divide society along lines of caste, creed and region. This is what the future holds for Indian people if one goes by Manmohan Singh’s vision.

The Indian bourgeoisie is pulling all stops to emerge as a world class imperialist power. For this it needs among other things that the workers and peasants, women and youth of India are befuddled into giving up their resistance struggle to its course. Its carrot is this: support liberalization, privatization and globalization for ten years, and something will trickle down to the poor. This is an old fraud, that the flourishing of capitalism will end poverty, whereas the reality is that the more capitalism flourishes, the more the poor will grow poorer. Its stick is that terrorism and sectarian violence will be unleashed against the people to keep them diverted, divided and disoriented. Manmohan Singh sought to present the vision of the ruling big bourgeoisie, to become even bigger through the increased exploitation of the land and labour of the Indian people, as the vision for the country as a whole. The working class and people of India reject this vision. We fight for a vision of an India where the working class and people will have political power to shape their own destiny, where the wealth produced by thelabour and resources of the people will go towards raising the well-being of the working people and not towards filling the pockets of the biggest Indian and foreign monopolies.