by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate
CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury
The CPI-M letter said, “The absence of absolute unambiguous firm action seriously questions the ECI’s responsibility for ensuring a level playing field, not to speak of weeding out electoral malpractices with a heavy hand”
NEW DELHI — The CPI-M, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has asked the Election Commission of India (ECI) what action has been taken against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its failure to include the expenses spent on the campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections through NaMo TV, in its expenditure report to the Election Commission.
The party termed the non-declaration of these expenses as an “electoral offence”.
In a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora, CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury said the NaMo TV channel was launched during the election campaign and in violation of the law. The channel was wound up after the polls.
“The spokesperson of the ECI had acknowledged that the channel run by DTH platforms was paid for by the BJP,” the letter said, adding, “However, now it has been revealed that the BJP in its report to the ECI on its expenditure account has not shown this. This is an outright electoral offence. The immediate question that arises, has the ECI initiated any penal action against the BJP on this account? If not, why not?”
It added the “absence of absolute unambiguous firm action seriously questions the ECI’s responsibility for ensuring a level playing field, not to speak of weeding out electoral malpractices with a heavy hand”.
The letter also raised concern over the rule of digital-only campaign specified by the ECI for the Bihar assembly elections in view of the coronavirus scare. Yechury said his party opposed this rule pointing to the BJP’s “massive resources” to launch a digital campaign as compared to other parties.
“On the eve of the 2019 general elections, the then BJP President, Amit Shah, had publicly stated that the party, with its network of 32 lakh WhatsApp groups, can make any message, true or false, viral within hours… And now on the eve of the Bihar elections, the party has kicked off a virtual election campaign by putting up 72,000 LED TV monitors for Shah’s speech.
“After holding 60 virtual rallies, the BJP has claimed that its election campaign efforts would involve 9,500 IT Cell heads who will coordinate 72,000 WhatsApp groups, one for each polling booth, of which 50,000 have been formed in the last two months. The amount of expenditure that would be involved to put together such manpower for a technology-driven system is simply mind-boggling,” the letter reads.
“Even with figures for corporate contributions available in the public domain before the anonymous funding through electoral bonds came into vogue, it was clear that the gap between the BJP and all other parties added together in securing corporate poll funding has widened manifold. Obviously, with the anonymous corporate funds without any upper ceiling will certainly be the death knell for electoral democracy,” the CPI-M letter concluded.
Bihar’s opposition party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, and the Lok Janshakti Party, a constituent of the ruling National Democratic Alliance at the Centre, have also opposed virtual campaigns.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Blaming failure at the political level for increasing cases of mob violence, the CPI-M has said that communal and sectarian fault lines “which have opened up in our society lead to dehumanising and anarchic violence”.
“The unconscionable and brutal violence emanating from the child lifting scare reveals deep social pathologies,” said an editorial in “People’s Democracy”, the official organ of the Communist Party of India-Marxist.
It pointed out how in the last two months a spate of mob attacks and lynching in different parts of the country had led to the death of at least 30 innocent people in 10 states.
The mob attacks were mostly sparked off by rumours of ‘child lifting’ sent out through WhatsApp messaging service.
It said the most affected states were Jharkhand and Maharashtra which accounted for seven and nine deaths respectively.
The editorial said thia wave of violence began with the targeting of Muslims in the name of cow slaughter or eating beef in 2015.
“The atmosphere of hate built up by targeting Muslims and Dalits is now erupting in the form of the scare of ‘child-lifting’ and resultant mob violence.
“The BJP-run state governments and the RSS-BJP outfits sought to either justify or underplay the violence unleashed by the cow vigilantes. The constant hate campaign against `the other’ launched by the Hindutva forces have taken its toll.
“It is this which has encouraged the general atmosphere of impunity and breakdown of societal values.”
The editorial said that in all the affected states, the political leadership in the state government had not come out effectively rebutting the false propaganda and declaring their resolve to put down strongly such irrational mob violence.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, “who is adept at using the social media, has been conspicuously silent”, it added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, Corporate Jobs, Employment, News, Politics
New Delhi : Recruitment of officers from the private sector, corporates and multinational companies will pose a serious threat to the nature of public service in the bureaucracy, the CPI-M has warned.
“Such appointees would be prone to serve corporate interests disregarding the public interest,” said an editorial in the CPI-M journal “People’s Democracy”. “This would be the aping of the American model where corporate executives and posts in the administration are inter-changeable.”
The central government has advertised for 10 posts of joint secretary to be recruited by a committee headed by the cabinet secretary.
The applicants can be from either the public sector, universities or the private sector including those working in multinational companies. The requirement is that they should have 15 years experience in the job.
The lateral entry recruits will be on contract for three years which can be extended by another two years.
“This is just a thin end of the wedge,” the Communist Party of India-Marxist said.
“Lateral entry is being pushed by none other than the Prime Minister himself. It is part of the grand privatisation plan…
“The lateral entry policy comes in the background of a large cut in the recruitment of IAS officers – nearly one-third after liberalisation was ushered in. The shortage, thus, created is now sought to be filled up by recruitment from the private sector.
“The other notable feature is that the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), which is the constitutional body enjoined to select civil services cadre, is being bypassed.”
The editorial pointed out that in earlier times, lateral entry was restricted to a narrow band – mainly of economists who were appointed as economic advisors to the economic ministries, or, the chief economic advisor.
But now lateral entry at the key joint secretary level was being opened up for all the economic and infrastructure ministries.
“The lateral entry route will be utilized to infiltrate RSS-Hindutva minded personnel into the higher echelons of the civil service – a process which has been going on in other areas where the government makes direct appointments,” the editorial said.
It said the integrity of the civil services, particularly the IAS, must be protected. The democratic accountability of civil servants to the political authority should not be disturbed.
At the same time, provision for specialization and domain knowledge should be made.
“But the efforts to bypass the UPSC and directly recruit senior civil servants through the political authority of the day must be opposed. The lateral entry policy should be reversed,” it said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Sitaram Yechury
New Delhi : There is a “tremendous assault on reason and rationality” taking place in India today through a “rightward shift”, where the Indian philosophy of ages is being “truncated to Hindu theology”, CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury has said.
He said Marxism – the 200th birth anniversary of Karl Marx was marked worldwide on May 5 – is the most potent weapon to “bring back rationality and reason to the normal discourse” in the country.
As part of the “rightward shift”, Yechury said, “the entire control over the education system and research institutions has a purpose, which is to replace the study of Indian history with the study of Hindu mythology”.
He mentioned new Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb, who set social media aflame with his comment that internet was present during the times of Mahabharata, and also Prime Minister Narendra Modi for referring to “in-vitro fertilisation” as the reason for Karna’s birth.
“And the PM himself said this, in-vitro fertilisation, how was Karna born, artificial insemination, we had it then.
“The richness of Indian philosophy, which continues…we are the cradle of civilisational advances globally. This philosophy is being truncated into just Hindu theology.”
Addressing a talk on ‘The Relevance of Marxism in India and Asia’ by the Society for Policy Studies (SPS) think tank on Thursday evening at the India Habitat Centre, Yechury said: “The assault on reason, and irrationality taking over rationality, unreason taking over reason has led to dehumanising of society”.
He mentioned the rape in Kathua of an eight-year-old girl and the lawyers who came out in defence of the rapists.
In order to battle the “dehumanising taking place in our country” and “re-establish the supremacy of reason and rationality the relevance of Marx comes in”, he added.
Yechury mentioned three factors that should cause concern — economic exploitation through domination, hegemonism of the US, and the rise of fundamentalism and rise of unreason.
On the issue of the US’ “hegemonistic drive”, the Left leader said: “One thing India shares with rest of Asia is the question of such interventions (by the US) and being drawn into the geopolitical strategy of the US in order to establish its hegemony. Whether that is in the interest of each of the countries is the issue. And that is where, how to fight that as a political force, Marxism will come in.”
According to Yechury, with “the way things are moving in foreign policy” in India, there could be a likelihood of a “US-Israel-India axis”, which would have a tremendous impact on the Indians working in the Gulf countries and the millions they send back home in monetary repatriation.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions, Politics
Sitaram Yechury
By Amulya Ganguli,
Given the weakened position of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) at the national level, the uneasy truce between its two factions led, respectively, by the present and former General Secretary, will be of interest mainly to the party faithful.
Even then, what the other political parties will be looking at is the kind of “understanding”, as mandated by the party congress, which the CPI-M will be able to reach with the Congress and whether the opponents of this line — former General Secretary Prakash Karat and his comrades — will accept the formulation or wreck it.
The tussle between Karat and the present General Secretary, Sitaram Yechury, will be at its most intense in the three states where the CPI-M still has some influence — Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura.
Of these, it is in Kerala that the Yechury-Karat confrontation will be most fierce since the state is the home ground of Karat and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, both of whom are against any deal with the Congress.
Since communist “discipline” stipulates that once a political line has been accepted, everyone, including its critics, has to abide by it, the Kerala scene will be enlivened by the CPI-M’s pursuit at the ground level of an “understanding” with the party’s main rival, the Congress.
True, the arrangement will be only for the Lok Sabha elections when the two parties are expected to work together against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is known to be rather weak in the state.
Had there been a stronger opponent, there might have been a possibility, however faint, of the red flag and the tricolour fluttering together. In the present context, the distance between the CPI-M and the Congress is unlikely to be bridged, whatever the party line. All that can be expected is that their mutual recriminations will be put on hold.
Unlike Kerala, where the CPI-M and the Congress are evenly matched as can be seen from the way the two parties come out on top in alternate assembly elections, both are quite weak in West Bengal at present.
It is perhaps for this reason that the animus between them is not as strong as in Kerala, which is why they were able to fight the last assembly election jointly against the Trinamool Congress although to no avail.
The two parties will also know that they are losing ground to the BJP in West Bengal, which has pushed the CPI-M down to the third position in recent elections and the Congress to the fourth. The Trinamool Congress, of course, remains at the top. For the two “losers”, however, the setbacks may facilitate their coming together in a rescue act.
From this standpoint, there is unlikely to be any difficulty in reaching an understanding between the CPI-M and the Congress, except for the fact that it is not known what the ties will be between the Congress and the Trinamool Congress.
If the projected joint platform against the BJP advocated by Mamata Banerjee takes shape, then a threesome comprising the Trinamool Congress, the CPI-M and the Congress cannot be ruled out although such a combination will be a rerun of the hodge-podge anti-Congress Janata conglomerate of 1977 and may prove to be equally fragile.
In Tripura, the scene will be rather weird because the Congress has been politically assimilated by the BJP as the reversal of the vote shares of the two parties show. While the polling percentage of the Congress dropped precipitously from 36.5 in 2013 to 1.8 this year, that of the BJP rose from 1.5 per cent to 43, showing a wholesale migration of the Congress’s base of support to the BJP.
The CPI-M, on the other hand, managed to hold on to its base by securing 42.6 per cent of the votes compared to 48 in 2013. But, given the virtual disappearance of the Congress, the Marxists are unlikely to be interested in an understanding with a non-existent party. In Tripura, therefore, the CPI-M will be taking on the BJP on its own.
Of the other states, the CPI-M’s impressive performance in organising the week-long, 180 km “long march” of the farmers from Nashik to Mumbai last month has shown that the communists have retained some of their influence in Maharashtra although it is nowhere near what it was in the 1950s and 60s.
If there is a Congress-Nationalist Congress Party tie-up in the state, the CPI-M will not have any difficulty in joining the two. It is in cementing an alliance (the word is anathema to Karat) of this nature in Maharashtra and elsewhere that the amiable Yechury can play a crucial role even if the Marxists will have no option but to play second fiddle.
Even then, there is little doubt that as the electoral race gathers momentum, Yechury can be expected to be engaged in stitching the loose ends of the anti-BJP combination together, thereby gaining stature which his party’s position does not warrant. If he succeeds, it will put the final seal on his “victory” over Karat.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
