Indian workers need revolutionary socialist program to combat social devastation and political reaction

 

Indian workers need revolutionary socialist program to combat social devastation and political reaction

By
Deepal Jayesekera and Keith Jones

8 January 2019

Tens of millions of workers and young people will participate in this Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s 48-hour, all-India strike against the socially destructive, “pro-investor” economic policies of the BJP-led government—that is, against savage austerity, privatization, the promotion of precarious contract jobs, the shredding of environmental and workplace safety standards, lavish tax cuts for big business and the rich, and onerous tax rises for workers and the rural poor.

The World Socialist Web Site welcomes workers’ readiness to make financial sacrifices and risk reprisals and even firing, to fight the BJP government.

Anil and Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani and other billionaire oligarchs propelled Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP to power in order to intensify the class war assault on the working class and more aggressively pursue the Indian bourgeoisie’s great power ambitions. And they have done just that. The four-and-a-half-year old BJP government has stoked communal reaction, strengthened the repressive apparatus of the state (including arrogating the right to spy on all electronic communications and data), greatly expanded India’s military-strategic alliance with US imperialism, and accelerated the ruling-class drive to make India the premier cheap-labor haven for global capitalism.

But workers must beware.

The Jan. 8–9 protest strike is politically led by trade unions and political parties that are an integral part of the Indian establishment, and that have played a pivotal role in implementing, and suppressing opposition to, the Indian capitalist elite’s now more than a…

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