Dear Shri SitaramYechury,
I read with a lot of interest your interview in the CPI(M) party paper Ganashakti on 13 Sep 2016. Your three targets of attack were Shri Narendra Modi, the BJP and the RSS.
You start with the problems in J&K and you speak of the students death and have faulted the Government for blaming it as a cross border issue. At the outset any death especially of a student where ever that might be is tragic and deplorable. Are you saying that the Kashmiri parents are keeping their children away from schools, to stand on the streets and throw stones while they hide behind? Or they are forced by the militants from across the border? Do these Kashmiris in the Valley, who are predominately, Muslims not know what the Holy Quran says about ‘TALIM’ and the importance given for education. You talk about dialogue with Pakistan, can you spell out with whom their elected PM, or the Army Chief or the ISI Chief? Could Shri Modi have created a better stage for dialogue than inviting to Nawaz Sharif to his oath taking and by visiting him at his home on his birthday?
The central theme of your attack, the 2.5 years of Modi Government. As per you it is pro-rich anti poor, a junior ally of the US and following the RSS agenda of making this secular country a Hindu Rashtra. You said that the term ‘ache din’ was used as an electoral cliché and with Modi’s lack of economic knowledge. Let me point out to you Shri Modi’s speech in the Lok Sabha reminding the Congress led opposition, including a handful of CPI(M) members that even after 60 years of Congress rule, the UPA had to bring a scheme for people to dig holes and fill them to make an earning. Surely as the leader of ‘largest’ Communist party in the country you cannot accept this plight of the toiling classes for whom you have always ‘fought’.
West Bengal was ruled from 1947 to 2011 by Congress and CPI(M) led Left Front and since then by TMC which is nothing but a Congress derivative party. Then why is the plight of the people in general and particularly the Muslims so poor? The so-called communal and anti-poor party BJP was nowhere there. How come the poorest Muslims live in West Bengal and their affluent brothers in Gujarat? Also one question on the Minorities issue – you seem to only recognize Muslims as minorities why not Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains? Is it because their numbers are far less and not a sizeable vote bank.
You have also charged the PM with giving a tax rebate of Rs 5.5 lac crs and a tax write-off of Rs 1.25 lac crs. You will re-collect that every year after budget you used to attack the Congress / UPA on the same two issues and each time I pointed it out to you that there was a basic fallacy in your argument and calculations. It seems you have simply replaced Congress with BJP with your line of fire remaining the same.
Now for your survival, you are holding the ‘black hand’ as you used to call earlier because of their pro-rich and anti poor policies.
You talk about the anti-poor policies of the Shri Modi, are Jan Dhan, Swach Bharat, Ujjwal Bharat anti-poor? The CPI(M) has a unit called the Kisan Sabha. Did they ever take up the issue of toilets in the villages? Did they think about the village women folks even in Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal and make toilets for them? How come the CPI(M) never thought of asking the affluent to give up subsidized LPG and save the needy women folks from being forced to inhale smoke equal to 40 cigarettes per day? I read an ADB report that said that in India many widows do not get compensation as they could not encash the cheques since they did not have bank accounts. Never did this thought cross the many thinking minds in CPI(M). Now introduction of Jan Dhan you call anti-poor. Please name one policy initiative of the Narendra Modi Government which is not ‘janamukhi / janamohini’.
I must confess that I have been reading with great amusement the difference in views being debated at the highest level between dictator and fascist, in the same way as earlier there used to be an unending discussion on the difference between Left and Democratic parties or forces and the occasion when the Central Committee debated for 2 days whether China is Communist or not and thankfully for China, voted in favour of calling it Communist.
Let me end by thanking you profusely for expecting the Modi Government to last in excess of 25 years, as you have termed the 2.5 years as a trailer.
With regards
Shishir Bajoria