Left plans series of protests against government policies

New Delhi: CPI(M) will take to the streets to protest the "dilution" of the rural employment guarantee scheme later this month as a precursor to nationwide agitation by all Left parties in December against the Narendra Modi government's "anti-people" policies.

With new entrants like CPI(ML)- Liberation and Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist) joining the four Left parties at the centre, several other parties and groups in states like West Bengal and Punjab, have recently united for holding week-long protests from December 8-14 in different parts of the country.

It is also significant that the Left parties are gradually coming together in states to contest elections jointly as was recently witnessed in Bihar where CPI(M) and CPI aligned with CPI(ML)-Liberation. The issues to be highlighted in the December protests include government's moves to "dilute" labour laws, price rise, "exorbitant" prices of essential medicines, against hike in FDI in insurance and unearthing of black money.

Growing communal menace, the "so-called 'love jihad' hate campaign" and other forms of communal propaganda, besides atrocities against women, Dalits and downtrodden sections would also highlighted in the week-long campaign.

On November 26, CPI(M) would organise a day-long sit-in here to protest against government's moves to "dilute" the national rural employment guarantee scheme, which would be led by Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar. The government has itself acknowledged in its official statistics that Tripura has been the best performing state on MGNREGA but its allocations have been "arbitrarily and drastically" slashed by the Modi government, CPI(M) has said.

The number of workdays has already come down due to lack of funds, directly affecting the livelihood and family incomes of thousands of job card holders, the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes and other sections of the rural poor who have been the beneficiaries, it said.