The Communist Party of India-Marxist on Wednesday termed the three years of the Narendra government a "total betrayal of electoral promises" amid anti-farmer policies, rise in unemployment, lack of coordination with states and attacks on media.
After its two-day meeting here, a statement released by the party's politburo sought to highlight failures of the Modi government including its policy on Kashmir, penalising of farmers while rich were allowed to go away scot-free, while people's miseries and hardships were mounting.
The party said BJP had promised Minimum Support Price to be one and half times the cost of inputs but it failed to do so.
"Succumbing to the debt burden the peasants' suicides in the country are alarmingly rising. The government has itself admitted to the apex court that in each of the last three years, 12,000 plus farmers have committed distress suicides due to debt burden, i.e. more than 36,000 during these three years," said the statement.
It further said the government considered providing relief to rich corporates who have looted the nationalised banks rather than to the farmers through loan waivers.
"While a poor peasant is penalised with property and cattle attached, the rich corporates go away scot-free. Under these circumstances of an economic slowdown, growing unemployment, rising prices and agrarian distress, there is no cause for celebration," the party said.
It also took a dig at the Environmment Ministry's decision to ban sale of cattle for slaughter.
"The Kerala Chief Minister has appealed to all the non-BJP Chief Ministers to jointly oppose this move on the ground of violation of the rights of the states. This is an issue on which we shall take the initiative and hold meetings with the major non-BJP Chief Ministers," it said.
The party said the attacks on institutions of parliamentary democracy under this government was a dangerous authoritarian trend that was growing.
"Among these attacks is the attacks on the media which seek to prevent the media from discharging its responsibility effectively. Freedom is an inviolable principle of our democracy. The law must prevail but harassment of media houses is not acceptable," it said.
On rising unemployment, the party said the government policies were leading to "an economic slowdown and rendering even those employed earlier into the ranks of the unemployed" as against the government's promise of generating additional employment of 2 crores per annum.
It also said the Kashmir policy of the BJP government had ended up in a dismal failure, with the main cause of the growing alienation being reneging on the promises made to the people of Jammu & Kashmir.
The party said it was determined to safeguard Tripura as the Left bastion in the wake of BJP making a "frantic effort" to make a serious inroad in the state by "seeking to stoke communal and ethnic strife".
--IANS
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