People’s March to Parliament 14 March 2011

Ramlila Ground to Jantar mantar 10:00 am

against

Soaring Prices,

Unbridled Corruption, Repressive Rule....

UPA Govt, Quit Office!!

In May 2009 the UPA had returned to power promising food security for the hungry and ‘inclusive growth’ for all those who have never been invited to the celebrations of ‘economic growth’. But while food security and inclusive growth still remain cruel jokes, under UPA-II, the country has had no respite from soaring prices and mega scams. The government knows it has forfeited whatever confidence the electorate may have reposed in it, and therefore the UPA as well as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are now desperately trying to initiate a damage control exercise.

A couple of days back, soon after the Supreme Court struck down the appointment of the corrupt P.V. Thomas as the Central Vigilance Commissioner on March 3rd, Manmohan Singh told the Lok Sabha that the appointment was an “error of judgement” for which he was fully responsible. Earlier, last month ahead of the budget session of Parliament, where the opposition was expected to once more raise the issue of massive corruption and mega scams, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had a televised meeting with some select editors of television channels to defend the Congress and the UPA.

Such last ditch efforts to strike an attitude of ‘confidence’ and ‘I-have-nothing-to-hide’ however cannot fool the aam aadmi any more - the common people of the country can and will ask “Mr. Clean” Prime Minister why he continues to defend corruption, corporate loot and inflation. Let us have a look at some of Manmohan Singh’s atrocious claims:

· The Bogey of ‘Coalition Compulsions’: According to our Prime Minister, the UPA had no choice but to appoint corrupt and tainted Ministers like A Raja because of “coalition compulsions”. What is a ‘coalition compulsion’, Mr PM? And what you are saying is that you were willing to tolerate corrupt Ministers in order to stay in power – even if that meant that India’s public treasury and precious natural resources like spectrum were being looted wholesale!

· Moreover, the farce of the argument of ‘coalition compulsions’ is furthered exposed when Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal and Prime Minster Manmohan Singh shamefully claim that there was no scam at all involved in allotment of 2G spectrum!

· Loss Due to Corruption and Scams = Subsidies on Food, Kerosene and Fertilizers!!! Mr. Prime Minister compares the loss incurred in the 2G spectrum allocation policy to food, kerosene and fertilizer subsidies! By comparing the loot of 2G scam to subsidies to the poor, Manmohan Singh is admitting that the UPA believes it’s fine to give subsidies worth half the country’s fiscal deficit to the richest corporate profiteers, the ones whose names figure in the world’s list of billionaires! Mr. PM, giving subsidies and gifts of the country’s precious natural resources to the corporate rich is plunder plain and simple – the worst form of corruption, ushered in by your cherished policy of privatization and liberalization. You justify that plunder – while claiming scarcity of funds to ensure food, household fuel to each of India’s poor families!

· ‘Food Inflation is a Problem but Growth is Important’: Yet another gem from our World Bank returned Prime Minister. What kind of ‘growth’ makes the country’s people poorer and hungrier, Mr PM?! We’re not going to buy that lie anymore….Adding salt to the injury, Manmohan Singh has been shamefully stating that the present inflation is the result of increased consumption in the rural areas due to increased purchasing power. Isn’t this this the mirror image of the arguments offered by George Bush at the height of the global economic crisis – Bush had atrociously blamed the ‘over consumption’ of the poor across the world for the economic crisis! And Manmohan Singh, who has been faithfully implementing the US-dictated neo-liberal agenda since the early 1990s, is now copying the tactics of his imperialist masters! We have not forgotten that the very same Manmohan Singh, when he visited England, chose to praise the ‘good governance’ of British rule in India. The slavish kowtowing to US imperialism today after all goes hand in hand with a shameful obeisance to British colonialism!

The UPA Government and its Prime Minister can confess their ‘coalition compulsions’ – but the people and the country have no compulsion to tolerate a regime of scams, loot and repression! Similarly, on the issue of appointing a tainted and corrupt bureaucrat as the CVC, the Congress has been trying to defend itself through spurious arguments. At one stage Home Minister P Chidambaram, one of the three members of the High Power Committee alongside the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, even sought to argue that the government was not aware of Mr. Thomas being chargesheeted in the palmolein scam that had rocked Kerala in the early 1990s.

The Central Vigilance Commission is supposed to be the apex anti-corruption agency in the country and when the High Power Committee was dealing with the issue of appointment of the CVC, the question of corruption in high places had already acquired disturbing prominence in public discussion. Against such a backdrop the UPA government could think of appointing nobody as CVC other than PJ Thomas who is a named accused in the Kerala palmolein case pending in the Court of the Special Judge, Thiruvananthapuram, for offences under sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code. As food secretary of the Karunakaran government, in 1992 Thomas had signed the import order for 15,000 tonnes of palm oil from a Singapore-based Malaysian firm at a rate much higher than the prevailing international price.

The issue is not whether Thomas is personally corrupt – it is his role as a facilitator of corruption that should have made him eminently ineligible for the post of the CVC. Yet the UPA government chose to reward this loyal bureaucrat with the assignment of the country’s Chief Vigilance Commissioner! Given this track record of Mr. Thomas, his appointment as the CVC, defying a dissenting opinion within the HPC, could not possibly have been a simple ‘error of judgement’ as Manmohan Singh would now like us to believe. On the contrary, there is every reason to suspect that it was part of a larger design to have a loyal and suitable CVC to save the government when it finds itself under the cloud of massive scams.

The people will have to accept the challenge thrown up by Manmohan Singh. Beyond a mere change of government, the Indian people will have to rise for a change in the disastrous policies. The entire policy establishment of liberalization, privatization and globalization and its trademark products – economic crisis, megabuck scams and state-corporate assault on democracy – will have to be dismantled.

ADF appeals to the student community to join the People’s March to Parliament on 14 March called by All India Left Coordination to intensify the ongoing struggle against the anti-people, pro-corporate and corrupt UPA regime.