Electoral tactics alone cannot defeat BJP: CPI-M

It will be wrong to underestimate the pan-India strength of the BJP and to think that electoral tactics alone will be enough to defeat it, the CPI-M has said.

"The key link at this juncture is to gather the growing discontent against the BJP rule, especially due to the worsening conditions and threats to the livelihood of the people," said the CPI-M organ "People's Democracy" in an editorial.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist pointed out that the Modi government was observing its completion of four years in office under the shadow of the debacle the Bharatiya Janata Party suffered in Karnataka.

"The image of the BJP and its top leaders, Narendara Modi and Amit Shah, has been badly dented in the way they tried to form a government in Karnataka by suborning the Governor and using other unscrupulous means to lure defectors from the Congress and the Janata Dal-Secular," said the editorial.

"The whole country got an object lesson of how the Modi-Shah duo are bent upon subverting all institutions in their drive to establish total supremacy."

But it was time to have a clear-eyed view of the way the fight against the BJP-RSS forces can be carried forward, the editorial said.

It said that while the BJP has emerged as the dominant political party at the national level, the Gujarat and Karnataka Assembly elections had shown its weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

"After four years of BJP rule, the economic situation has further deteriorated. The farmers' distress due to falling prices and growing indebtedness has grown; there is a fall in the real wages of agricultural workers; the rate of industrial production continues to decline; there is shrinking employment prospects and on top of all this, there is a sharp increase in the prices of petrol and diesel which, in turn, is fuelling price rise of all commodities."

At such a time, the Modi government has sharply reduced the jobs available under the MNREG scheme and cut allocations in education, health and social sectors.

"Therefore, the situation is ripe for intensifying the struggles of different sections of the people - workers, farmers, agricultural workers, dalits, adivasis, women, youth and students.

"It is the struggles which have developed on economic and social issues which are undercutting the support garnered by the BJP," the editorial said.

--IANS

mr/vd