: Neo-liberal policies had weakened the position of women in the country, said CPI(M) leader Subhashini Ali.
She was speaking on the topic ‘Aspects of Gender status’ at the two-day ‘EMS Smrithi,’ organised in the Kerala Sahitya Akademi auditorium on Sunday.
“Corporate forces promoted patriarchy as they needed cheap women labour. The neo-liberal regime wanted under-paid women workers such as ASHA and ICDS workers to conduct their projects. For that, they need to keep the women as second class citizens,” she said.
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The declining sex ratio had increased violence against women, Ms. Ali said. Left parties should take up the issue of women oppression. Women should be empowered to weaken the neo-liberal regime, she added.
Earlier, while speaking on ‘Left Alternative: Policies and Practices,’ CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury called for consolidation of parties and mass movements with left orientation against the economic, social and political crisis faced by the country under the Narendra Modi government.
He said the economic policies of the Modi government reflected only the interests of capitalist forces. “Mr. Mody claimed that he had brought luck to the country. The rate of farmers’ suicide had risen to 26 per cent in the last year. The total area under cultivation had decreased for the first time in the county. Subsidies and grants had been cut. There was 60 per cent cut in jobs under the MGNREGS scheme. There had been signs of shrinkage in the services sector too.”
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However, the wealthy sections in the country were getting wealthier. He said 1 per cent of the population in the country enjoyed 49 per cent of the country’s assets.
“The attack was not only on the economic front, but also on the country’s secular democratic nature. History lessons were being replaced by Hindu mythology. When 54 per cent of the children in the country were suffering from malnutrition and 194 million people were starving, the Modi government was calling the people to practise Yoga for better life,” he said.
The Left parties should be able to channelise the distress of the common man over the current socio-political crisis towards forming a political alternative, Mr. Yechuri said.
He called for uniting disparate Left forces, mass movements, marginal groups, tribals, intellectuals and farmers to fight the crisis.
While taking about ‘New Directions for Class Struggles for a Political Alternative,’ the former CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat highlighted the need for change of strategy in mobilising class struggles and mass movements.
He highlighted the need for advance of class-based struggles and popular mass movements to build up a political alternative such as a Left and democratic alternative.
However, the structure and composition of the working class had been changed in the country. The main challenge to the working class movements was how to organise the huge mass of contract labours and workers in the unorganised structure. So strategies and slogans had to be formed to address the increasing complex structure of the urban and rural working class, he said. CPI (M) Polit Bureau member M.A. Baby called up on the communist workers to fight social evils such as superstitions.
Modi’s policies attack on secular values: Yechury
Strengthen mass movements: Karat