Marching on with Sangharsh Sandesh

THE CPI(M) has embarked upon a massive outreach programme. Titled, Sangharsh Sandesh,

it has undertaken to cover the entire length and breadth of the country through four jathas. To ensure maximum publicity to these jathas, the party is not only depending on the 'mainstream' media, but for the first time officially put to use social media. It had opened a page on the Facebook. It had brushed up its website, loaded with photos and video gallery, which are being updated at fairly regular intervals, . All these efforts only show the importance the party is attaching to these jathas.

Not surprisingly, these jathas are led by the top most leadership of the party. Sub-jathas were organised in various states that merged with the main jathas. One of the sub-jathas that started from Guwahati was flagged off by Manik Sarkar, the Chief Minister of Tripura, who led the party to a historic win in Tripura.

The first of these jathas – the Southern jatha – started on February 24, flagged off by Prakash Karat from Kanyakumari. The longest of all the jathas, it is led by the oldest member in the Polit Bureau – S. Ramachandran Pillai. It had already covered three states and entered the last of the Southern states, Andhra Pradesh. On March 1, the Eastern jatha was flagged off by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the former Chief Minister of West Bengal. It had completed its first leg and entered Jharkand from West Bengal. The Northern jatha has been flagged off from the historic Jallianwalabagh, Amritsar on March 4. The Western Jatha would start from Mumbai on March 8.

Huge Response

As expected, the jatha attracted huge crowds in Kerala and West Bengal, both the citadels of the CPI(M), though the party is now not in power. According to reports, the suffering India has responded well to the jathas. Peasants who are staring at distress, weavers who are unsure of their future and people who are displaced due to the mindless industrial policies all met the leaders of the jatha and shared their agonies. There were many others who wanted ration cards, house sites and concerned with the rising prices.

In Tamilnadu, the jatha was well received in Dharmapuri where the infamous Vachati incident took place in 1992. Vachati as we are aware, is a small tribal hamlet. The police and forest officials descended on the village to enquire about illegal sandalwood smuggling and started to harass the tribals. They had kidnapped 18 tribal women from the village and had gang-raped them. It is the sustained pressure mounted on the State by the CPI(M) that led to the conviction of 215 accused by the Supreme Court in 2011. All of them were sentenced to imprisonment ranging from one to ten years. Their experience of this struggle had taught them the virtues of the struggle, the message that the Party wants to now spread countrywide. Today, the people of Dharmapuri are once again in the fight against a planned gas pipeline that connects Cochin to Bangalore, which if allowed to materialise will lead to the displacement of thousands of farmers from their lands.

The same is the plight of adivasis in Jharkand. They are in the midst of a fight against the land grabbing by Hindalco in Muri. If this is allowed to take place, they would be losing around 12,000 acres of land. The impunity with which the rights of adivasis, the most downtrodden sections in the society are trampled can be easily discerned.

It is these sections of the people that the CPI(M) intends to inspire and call upon them to join the struggles it intends to launch. The CPI(M) hopes that the Jatha's slogans for food security, land to the landless and house sites to the homeless, employment, education and health and its call for an alternative to the present set of neo-liberal policies would catch the imagination of the people.

Unlike the BJP which had undertaken many rath yatras – all with a divisive agenda, the CPI(M) has embarked on a jatha for highlighting people's issues. CPI(M) is rightly projecting these jathas as, jathas with a difference. The jathas it appears, have succeeded in galvanising the entire rank and file of the party. It only hopes that this will also translate to ushering an alternative set of policies.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author's personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Newsclick