[Reader-list] Fwd: Delhi Declaration [ All India Left Coordination: 11 Aug 2010]

[Venugopalan K M]

Delhi Declaration
All India Left Coordination

(Adopted at All-India Left Convention sponsored by
CPI(ML)(Liberation), CPM Punjab,  Lal Nishan Party (Leninist)
Maharashtra, and Left Coordination Committee, Kerala, and
held at Constitution Club, New Delhi on 11 August 2010)


Recent years have been witness to an aggressive US imperialism pushing
the world into renewed war and occupation as well as an unprecedented
financial crisis. In the name of globalisation, imperialism has
intensified attempts to appropriate and exploit the natural and human
resources of the developing world, but while accentuating exploitation
and disparities, globalisation has also led to intensification of all
the inherent contradictions of global capitalism and new waves of
popular anti-imperialist resistance the world over.
The Indian ruling classes have adopted a strategy of integrating India
into this US-led imperialist order on economic as well as strategic
plane. Reckless implementation of pro-imperialist, pro-corporate
policies – coupled with the pro-landlord agrarian strategy being
pursued since Independence – by the Indian ruling classes has pushed
the country into alarming depths of an all-round crisis marked by
relentless rise in prices, chronic mass hunger, widespread
unemployment and rampant corruption. Even as tens of millions of the
country’s poorest people reel under starvation, the debt-trap-turned
death-trap continues to claim the lives of crisis-ridden peasants in
their hundreds and thousands. Amidst systematic loot and siphoning of
the country’s wealth and precious resources, the working people are
being relentlessly exploited, displaced and dispossessed in the name
of ‘development’.

The recent farcical verdict on the world’s biggest industrial genocide
which happened a quarter century ago in Bhopal has unmasked a most
reprehensible and thoroughly corrupt nexus among state power and
corporate power undermining every principle of justice and human and
national dignity. Meanwhile, the growing incidence of oppression of
dalits and women and the shocking spectacle of ‘honour killings’ in
the National Capital Region and its surroundings point to an ugly
social reality beneath the gloss of glamourised and globalised
development.

While the Indian people are seeking answers to these maladies and
alternatives to these disastrous anti-people policies and the corrupt
and criminalized political culture, the ruling classes and their
parties, whether in power or in opposition, are making a clamour for
greater liberalization to give more concessions to capital and a
harder state to unleash more repression and restrictions on the
people.

Against this backdrop, four fighting organizations of the Left, viz.,
CPI(ML)(Liberation), CPM Punjab, Lal Nishan Party (Leninist)
Maharashtra, and Left Coordination Committee, Kerala, have resolved to
come together and form an All-India Left Coordination with a view to
strengthening the Left movement in the country.
While pursuing the goal of a countrywide Left resurgence, the AILC
will focus on the following key areas of a democratic agenda:

(i) Resisting the whole gamut of neo-liberal pro-corporate
pro-imperialist policies being followed almost without exception by
all governments at the Centre and in the states, and fighting for an
immediate halt to the ongoing spree of disinvestment/privatization
measures and for curbing penetration of FDI in key sectors of our
national economy and other sectors of strategic/national importance,
(ii) Opposing Indo-US strategic partnership and growing subordination
of Indian foreign policy to the global hegemony of imperialist forces,
US imperialism in particular; promoting friendly relations, especially
people-to-people ties, with neighbouring countries, and uniting with
the struggles of the peoples of the world against globalisation, war
and imperialist machinations,

(iii) Fighting for an alternative path of self-reliant and
people-centred development as against the present
imperialist-dictated, corporate-driven and big capital-led
‘profit-centred development’ resulting in relentless rise in prices,
growing hunger and unemployment, sharp regional and social
inequalities, landgrab, displacement, resources-grab/deprivation and
serious environmental degradation – an alternative that would promote
relatively more egalitarian and employment-intensive and less energy-,
resources- and capital-intensive path of development,

(iv) Fighting for a comprehensive policy regime ensuring fundamental
rights to food, shelter, education, healthcare, basic amenities, work
and social security for all,

(v) Fighting against every facet of agrarian crisis, for adequate
protection of Indian agriculture from the adverse WTO diktats, for
scrapping of SEZ Act 2005 and Land Acquisition Act, 1894, for
thorough-going implementation of land reforms and promotion of small
peasant-centred agricultural development,

(vi) Launching struggles for the nationalisation of wholesale trade of
foodgrains and for creation and strengthening of a Universal Public
Distribution System (PDS) for essential commodities of daily use as
well as for subsidised agricultural inputs and automatic inclusion of
all agricultural and other rural workers, small peasants, artisans,
unorganised and contract workers in the BPL category,

(vii)Resisting the growing state-led assault on democracy, fighting
for a democratic political solution of the long-standing problems of
Kashmir, North-East and the Maoist insurgency, for scrapping of
draconian laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act and Unlawful
Activities Prevention Act, disbanding of Salwa Judum, and halt to
Operation Green Hunt and anti-minority witch-hunt in the name of
combating terrorism,

(viii)Resisting communal violence, and caste and gender oppression and
fighting for minority rights and affirmative action for development of
deprived sections within minority communities, and the rights and
dignity of dalits, adivasis, women and all marginalized sections,

(ix) Fighting for labour rights for all sections of workers,
especially the right to living wages, job security, universal health
and social insurance, trade union rights including mandatory
recognition through secret ballot and democratization of the
workplace/industrial relations, adequate protection for migrant
workers and unorganized workers including agricultural labour, and
against contractualisation, outsourcing, hire-and-fire, and
indiscriminate privatisation which are hallmarks of the neoliberal
offensive;

(x) Promoting the women’s movement against patriarchy and oppression,
to struggle for gender equality, justice, and women’s dignity, as well
as equal rights and opportunities in society as well as in the
workplace; resisting violence both within and outside the home;
challenging obscurantist practices that demean women; resisting all
attempts to curb women’s freedom in the name of upholding tradition or
culture; demanding speedy legislation against sexual harassment in
workplaces, ‘honour’ killings and sexual violence, as well as for 33%
reservation in Assemblies and Parliament.

(xi) Promoting the student-youth movement to secure ‘right to
education and employment’, demand a Common School System to ensure
schooling of high quality for all, and resist commercialization and
pro-imperialist restructuring of education and denial of democratic
rights to the student community,

(xii) Promoting people’s cultural awakening against the corporate
cultural invasion that denigrates women and working people, the feudal
culture of ‘honour killing’ and various retrograde social and cultural
practices that seek legitimacy in the name of tradition, fighting for
democratization of social, professional and inter-personal life and
supporting the progressive democratic aspirations of the
intelligentsia.

The AILC will strive to build a countrywide movement over these issues
while also fighting for the resolution of various pressing local
problems.

The AILC rejects all kinds of fundamentalism, terrorism and
national/sub-national chauvinism and upholds the values of democracy,
secularism and social progress in every sphere of national life

Within the Left movement, AILC will fight against the trend of class
collaboration and rightward drift and degeneration while rejecting the
line of Left adventurism/anarcho-militarism.

To advance the Left-democratic agenda and strengthen the Left and
democratic movement, the AILC will work consistently for broader Left
unity and seek cooperation with various democratic forces including
individual activists.
The formation of the AILC marks only a modest beginning and we appeal
to all activists and well-wishers of the Left and democratic movement
to join and help us in this endeavour.

* * * * *


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You cannot build anything on the foundations of caste. You cannot
build up a nation, you cannot build up a morality. Anything that you
will build on the foundations of caste will crack and will never be a
whole.
-AMBEDKAR



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