Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat on Tuesday reached out to the people on issues of the region, including the talk of a ban on arecanut, assaults on women, and the “criminalisation of love”.
While campaigning for CPI(M) candidate K. Yadav Shetty from Dakshina Kannada Lok Sabha constituency, she referred to the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl near Ujire in October 2012. Ms. Karat said: “A person with mental disabilities was arrested to protect the actual culprits. Political parties go to police stations not with the victim, but to protect the accused. The criminalisation of politics affects women the most.”
Referring to the recent sexual assault of a woman councillor here allegedly by right wing activists, and assaults on inter-faith couples, she said there was a “criminalisation of love” where there was no safety in consensual relationships.
ADVERTISEMENT
She said the “tragedy” of Indian politics was that both the national parties were an “unholy alliance” that worked for the interest of the corporate sector. “There is no difference between the manifestos of the two parties... They want to remove the little labour laws there are to benefit the industries. The BJP uses tax terror in their manifesto. Terrorism implies attack on innocents. In the BJP’s language, this implies not price rise that affects the ordinary person, but taxes that are levied on corporates,” Ms. Karat said and added that in the process, the rights of health activists, beedi, anganwadi and midday meal workers were ignored.
She lambasted the ‘Gujarat model of development’ as having high malnutrition rates and the “worst” record in the public distribution system. The Left, she said, had consistently demanded a universal right to 35 kg of rice at Rs. 2 a kg.
ADVERTISEMENT
“The Hindutva agenda is sure to spread under Modi…,” said Ms. Karat.
With the Congress being “an army without soldiers”, she believed it was only the Left and regional parties that could defeat the BJP.
After the rally, speaking to presspersons, she said the concept of service for the people had been branded as “outdated”. “As far as the Congress is concerned, as the basic principles of policy, labour laws, corruption-free administration and jan seva have become outdated, no doubt their version of corporate seva will find us outdated.”
Terming the BJP manifesto as representing corporates and Hindutva, Ms. Karat said the three divisive points of the Hindutva agenda that had been “kept on the back burner” by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government in 1998 were now back in the “forefront”.
The exact nature of a political alternative to the Congress and the BJP would be decided after the polls, she said. However, a broad framework of secularism, protection of federal nature and pro-people governance had already been chalked up with non-Congress, non-BJP parties.