Vote Out the BJP! Convention in West Bengal
Workers’ Convention
Resolves to Vote Out the BJP!
- Atanu Chakravarty
Under the clarion call of AICCTU, the West Bengal State Committee organised a workers' convention on March 16, 2024, at Moulali Youth Centre, Kolkata. Workers from different sectors - jute industry, construction, scheme, public and private transport, brick kiln, textile, railways, ordnance factories, and contract workers from various industries, were present.
The convention paid homage to Comrade Raghupati Ganguly, a veteran comrade of Bally, Howrah, who breathed his last on the day, Comrade Amitabh Roy, AICCTU organiser who worked among scheme workers, and other departed comrades.
The convention started with an inaugural song by Nitish Roy. Basudev Bose, the state General Secretary of AICCTU, stressed upon the necessity to hold the convention as a part of AICCTU's all India campaign and presented the political resolution. The resolution stated that never in the post-independent India did the Constitution of India and the institutions of democracy faced such an unprecedented attacks as in Modi's fascist dispensation. The BJP, the official political party of the RSS - the rabid communal Hindutva force, has set the stage to build a Hindu Rashtra by 2025, the centenary year of the RSS.
The long cherished unity in diversity, the hallmark of India, is under peril with the minority population being persecuted and excluded. The CAA rules are notified with the aim to break the unity of the working class. The economy is in severe crisis. In this context, it is the task of the working class to save the country from this catastrophe.
The Labour Codes were adopted when the entire country was reeling under COVID -19 pandemic and even when the normal functioning of the parliament was disrupted. The hard won trade union rights, after century long struggles, have been snatched away. The Modi government has converted the 200 year old Ordnance Factory into a corporation in its unabating bid for privatisation. When the workers of the factory decided to go on an indefinite strike against the decision to dismantle the public sector unit, the Modi government promulgated Essential Defence Service Act (EDSA) and prohibited the strike. All forms of trade union agitations, even peaceful sit-in demonstrations, were declared illegal under the purview of the EDSA.
While India has become more unequal in terms of wealth concentration than in British colonial India, the real wage continue to be stagnated for the last ten years. In 2014-15 and 2021-22, the real wage of the working population declined to one percent, and for construction workers, the real wage entered into a negative territory at -0.2 per cent. 91 per cent of workers employed in unorganised sector are totally deprived of social security benefits. India is the only country among G-20 to have the highest number of informal workers.
Lakhs and lakhs of scheme workers, predominantly women, are not even recognised as workers and are without any minimum wages or social security. 9.5 crores of women are engaged in unpaid informal work. The ILO has mentioned that any employment without wages can not be considered as 'employment'. However, Modi government has officially recorded all these unpaid work as employment and as empowerment of women in labour market.
Indiscriminate privatisation, disinvestment of public sector, selling state property to corporates for a pittance, writing off 15 lakh crore rupees of corporate loans in the name of NPA are the ugliest examples of selling and surrendering national interest before the corporates.
CPIML State Secretary Com. Abhijit Mazumdar exposed the anti-people anti-worker policies of the Modi government and called upon the workers to defeat the BJP in the forthcoming parliament elections.
Nabendu Dasgupta, President, Bengal Chatkal Mazdoor Forum, Jayashree Das, leader of All India Scheme Workers Federation, Jaydev Dey, leader of Kashipur Gun & Shell factory also addressed the convention.
While concluding the convention, Atanu Chakravarty, president, state AICCTU, appealed to workers to rise above economic interests to fulfil their duty of defeating the BJP, the party that destroyed the constitution, the parliamentary democracy, the democratic rights and that pushed teeming millions to the brink of disaster.
The working class must rise to the occasion and emerge as vanguards of the society to lead the war of second independence from the clutches of Hindutva forces.and their political representative, the BJP.