Resolutions passed in the All India Committee meeting of Lok Raj Sangathan on July 12, 2009

 

1.      Resolution on mass campaign to recruit members, build LRS and Lok Raj Samitis 

2.      Resolution on holding Convention

3.      Resolution opposing expropriation of land and sources of livelihood of peasant, adivasis, fisherfolk, hill peoples – coastal regulation rules, SEZ act, land acquisition act etc, and just struggle of people on these issues.

4.      Mumbai – BEST workers

5.      Mumbai – Resident Doctors

6.      Airport employees

7.      Resolution on International Centenary Year of Women

8.      Resolution to demand Making public Pradhan Committee report November 26/11 and Liberhan Commission reports

9.      Operation Bluestar

10. Resolution to demand Repeal of AFSPA

 

 

This meeting of AIC LRS held on July 12 2009 in New Delhi notes:

 

·         That the economy and political system in our country is controlled by the minority of wealthy business houses

·         That parties like the Congress and BJP work strictly for the interests of the ruling class while pretending to care for the working masses

·         The masses of workers and peasants and working people, women and youth, are marginalized in this system.

·         Our role is restricted to voting for one or the other of the parties of the exploiters

 

This meeting further notes that as per the decision of the AIC of March 1, 2009

 

·         LRS activists went vigorously amongst the masses in different states we are active in, as part of the campaign for the General Elections

·         The manifesto of the LRS was distributed in different languages to activists.

·         Where candidates supported by LRS contested the elections, the manifestos of these candidates were distributed in lakhs amongst the people of the respective constituencies. Through these manifestos, the economic and political alternative proposed by LRS was taken to the people

·         The people of the country were engaged in vigorous discussion on the economic and political alternative we have proposed.

·         There was positive response from people. Everywhere, working people expressed their concerns, and their lack of political empowerment in the present system

·         The people looked at our work with hope. The nonsectarian politics of LRS and of the candidates we supported – that we stood for empowerment of all the exploited, oppressed and marginalized people of our country, independent of religion, language, caste, gender and region— appealed to the people. This was reflected in the votes that candidates supported by LRS got in the different regions.

 

This meeting further notes

 

·         In various areas, the mass campaign amongst people has continued after the elections. LRS has taken up the concerns of the people of the particular areas. Thanking the electorate for their support, we have organized several public meetings

·         The fact that a political organization goes back to the people immediately after the elections, and does not wait for the next elections, has been a revelation for people

·         This shows to people that LRS is not an electoral machine unlike the parties like Congress and BJP.

 

This meeting resolves that:

 

·         There is an excellent situation in the country to organize the people around their concerns, for their political empowerment

·         We must relentlessly step up the mass campaign in the constituencies we have been working and expand it to new areas.

·         In the course of this campaign, we must expose the Manmohan Singh Governments anti people and pro capitalist agenda. We must also discuss with the people what we — the people organized in LRS — will do if political power is in our hands.

·         We must resolutely build the mass membership of LRS, so that the exploited and oppressed people become organized into a political force for their empowerment.

·         The building of LRS as a fighting political organization of the toiling and oppressed and marginalized people of our country which actually challenges the bourgeoisie and its political power, is the demand of the time.  

 

This meeting of the LRS AIC held on July 12^th

 

Resolves

 

As per the provisions of the LRS Constitution

 

To hold the next Convention of the LRS on November 7-8 2009

 

 

This meeting of the LRS AIC of July 12^th having noted that:

 

·         All over the country, our people — tribals and forest dwellers, peasants, fisherfolk, hill people, — are waging a valiant struggle against the state and marauding capitalist companies, Indian and foreign. They are fighting to defend their means of livelihood, and to preserve the natural environment. LRS is one with this entirely just struggle.

·         The colonialists plundered our country and established various laws through which they justified this plunder. The present Indian state has continued and further perfected these laws in the service of the plunder of our country by the Indian and foreign capitalists. In recent decades, this plunder has greatly intensified.

·         The privatization of rivers and lakes in various states, and the establishment of giant hydel projects in the hill states of Uttarakhand and Himachal are being vigorously opposed by the peoples, as they are leading to destruction of livelihood and environment.

·         The people of India are the collective maaliks of these resources — not the state, which has no right either to deprive people of their livelihood or hand over these assets for exploitation to private corporate interests.

 

·         Millions of our peasants have suffered under this act wherein their lands have been and are seized for airports, defence establishments, power projects, housing, etc .

 

Demands:

 

·         the scrapping of the colonial Land Acquisition Act under which the state seizes the land of peasantry in the name of “public good” for various state projects under the name of development..

·         the immediate scrapping of the new Coastal Management Zone notification. This notification attacks the rights of fishworkers, and is aimed at justifying the intensified exploitation of the coastline by private corporate groups. LRS demands that the rights of fishworkers be at the center of any new law on the use of coastline.

·         the scrapping of the SEZ Act and the R&R Act. These acts, which have been continuously modified as a result of the powerful struggle against SEZ’s and displacement, gives the state and the private corporate parties the “right” to take over the land and means of livelihood of the peasantry through buyout as well as force. Both are unacceptable.

 

And resolves:

 

·         to fully support this struggle. 

·         to fights to create an economic and political system wherein this becomes a reality.

The BEST Bus Service is the lifeline of Mumbai. 40 lakh passengers use its services daily. India. Since July 2008, the salaries of 35,000 BEST workers have been reduced by Rs 1,000 p.m. This vicious anti worker move of the BEST management is being opposed by the workers. 

 

The Industrial Court of Mumbai, in January 2009, ordered the BEST Management to immediately increase the salaries by Rs 1,000/ per month. However the BEST Management is refusing to implement this directive of the court! In addition to this the BEST management has refused to sign a new wage agreement for the period 2006-2011 with the workers unions. This means that while the workers are not being compensated for the rising costs of living, with a revised wage agreement, on the contrary, their salary has been reduced in this period!

Strongly denounces these anti worker moves of the BEST Management. It demands immediate payment with interest of the entire sum of money which was unjustly cut from the salaries of the BEST workers since July 2008. This meeting demands the immediate signing of a fresh wage revision agreement which will look after the legitimate requirements of the BEST workers.

 

 

Having noted that:

 

4500 resident doctors all over Maharashtra, working in the State Govt and Municipal Corporation hospitals, along with 3000 interns have been on strike since July 7^th 2009. These doctors are protesting their miserable working and living conditions. Though they are students, they are forced to bear the brunt of the work of running the public hospitals. They are on call 24 hours a day, are denied sick leave and other benefits and are paid a very measly stipend. The condition of the hostels in which they live are poor, with many doctors sharing a room. It is in these conditions that they are expected to complete their graduate and postgraduate studies as well.

The State Govt. has threatened the striking doctors with termination notices.

 

Resolves to support the just struggle of the striking Doctors of Maharashtra and demands that the Govt. immediately settle their demands.

 

·         On April 27^th 2009, 2100 workers of Mumbai and 2300 workers in New Delhi were served notices stating that their services with the Private companies, GVK and GMR, operating Mumbai and New Delhi Airports, respectively had been terminated. Simultaneously, Airports Authority of India, a Central Govt. undertaking, the original employers of these workers, issued transfer orders to these workers to report within two days, by April 30^th to various Airports in the Western Region and Northern Region, respectively. For example, airport staff in Mumbai was asked to report to 28 airports in Western Region, which includes Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. Similarly, workers in New Delhi were asked to report to various airports in the Northern Region.

·         The workers have opposed this, as it is clear that the Airports Authority of India was trying to use transfer as a method to smash their unity. The workers are daily demonstrating in front of the Airport Management demanding their reinstatement in Mumbai and New Delhi.

·         Three years ago, when the government handed over the running of Delhi and Mumbai airports to private parties, there was an agreement with the workers union that the new employers will not dismiss them for three years, As soon as the three year period passed, these capitalists threw the workers out, and have replaced them with contract labour. The workers are naturally enraged and are targeting their struggle at the Airports Authority of India as well as the private capitalists.  

 

Strongly denounces these cruel anti worker moves of the private monopoly capitalists in collusion with the Central Govt. It demands immediate reinstatement of the workers in both the Airports.

·         March 8 2010 will mark the 100th anniversary of the decision of Socialist women fighting for ending all exploitation of persons by persons, to celebrate International Working Womens Day.

·         the empowerment of the whole of society is not possible without the empowerment of women.

·         the struggle of Indian women against all forms of exploitation and oppression as an important part of the struggle to build a new India wherein the workers, peasants, women and youth will be the maaliks; and that

·         LRS has been working together with PMS in the Centenary Committee formed to organize the events of the year and making all efforts to build principled unity amongst the different forces that have come together.

take further proactive steps to actively take up the issue of political empowerment among the broad masses of women.

 

This meeting of the AIC of LRS held on 12 July, 2009 notes that:

 

·         in the last one month, two official commissions of enquiry into two major events in the life of the country – the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai – have submitted their reports. However, the contents of both reports are, in a most undemocratic manner, being withheld from the knowledge of the public, and are not even being tabled on the floor of the Parliament and the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

 

·         The deliberate destruction of the Babri Masjid, a fifteenth century historical monument, in a carefully orchestrated climate of communal frenzy, had shocked the Indian people. It was the prelude to the unleashing of an orgy of communal violence, particularly in Mumbai.   It was no mystery that this event, conducted in broad daylight and fully recorded by TV cameras, was organised by the Central government and the UP state government, and the BJP and Congress, acting in collusion. However, it took 17 years for the report of the Liberhan inquiry commission to be submitted. This was because successive governments over the years connived to delay the process of inquiry, to whitewash their own crimes and of those who were responsible for the event.

 

·         The equally shocking terror attacks in Mumbai on November 26 of last year were part of a series of terrorist crimes against the masses of people in cities all over India over the last few years. These crimes have raised serious questions in the minds of the Indian people about who is really responsible for these, why they have occurred again and again, and how these can be prevented in the future. The stories put out by the police and other official agencies have been shown time and again to be full of loopholes and contradictions. The people are fed up, and demand to know the truth!

 

·         Now the refusal of the Union government and the Maharashtra government to reveal the contents of the Liberhan and Pradhan reports is a slap in the face of the Indian people who want to know the full truth behind such dastardly events and are demanding punishment of the guilty. The people are not prepared to tolerate commissions of inquiry which result in the guilty being let off the hook, the evidence being destroyed, and such crimes being repeated again and again. 

 

This meeting demands that

 

the reports of the Liberhan Commission and Pradhan Committee be tabled in the legislature and placed fully in the public domain without any further delay. 

 

This meeting of the LRS AIC having noted that:

 

·         June 6, 2009 marked the 25^th anniversary of the Indian Army’s assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar. In this brutal assault on the most sacred shrine of the people of the Sikh faith, the Indian army blasted its way into the temple in the name of flushing out terrorists. In the bloody Operation that ensued, 4,712 people were declared killed, according to the White Paper issued by the government on Operation Bluestar.

 

·         Operation Bluestar was a deliberate provocation against the people of the Sikh faith. It was a declaration by the Indian state that it would stop at nothing to humiliate as well as target Sikhs through a reign of terror, to terrorise and pacify them, divide the people of Punjab and India on communal lines, and crush any challenge to its authority. In the decade that followed, tens of thousands of Sikhs were massacred by the state forces in Punjab in fake encounters, as well as in the state organized genocide in Delhi and other states that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi.

 

·         In the 25 years since Operation Bluestar, state terrorism has become a preferred method of rule, an adjunct of parliamentary democracy. It is used by the ruling class to divide the unity of the toilers, paralyse and marginalise them in the polity, and justify and push through its own agenda. State terrorism is used to turn political problems demanding political solutions into “law and order problems”.

 

·         Operation Bluestar was a massive assault on not only the people of the Sikh faith, but all Indian people who are fighting to end their marginalization, for their real empowerment. The last twentyfive years have shown that no matter which party or coalition has come to power in center, none has bothered to punish those responsible for Operation Bluestar, as well as all the other acts of state terror against the people of India.

 

declares that

 

state terrorism, in all its forms, must be exposed and consistently opposed no matter who the immediate target is.

 

and resolves to

 

strive to unite all the resistance forces under one banner against state terrorism, and fight for a political solution to political problems.