 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Parliamentary elections in India are scheduled to begin on April 11th and nearly 900 million voters will determine the fate of the far-right Varendra Modi government. The past five years of this government have seen a massive attack on the democratic institutions of the country on the marginalized sections as well as on the rights and the livelihoods of workers. To talk more about this assault by the far-right wing government and the resistance to it, we are joined today by Comrade Brindakarath, Politburo members of the CPIM. Hello Comrade, thank you for joining us. Could you first talk about the last five years especially and across the world you've seen this resurgence of the right and what would you define as the key characteristics of this resurgence in India and with especially the Varendra Modi government? Well in 2014 when this government got elected and came to power, we had said that this was a qualitative change in India's political scenario because here we have a government led by a ruling party which does not believe in the constitution or the basic principles of secularism, democracy, at least in name and in word which are there in the constitution. Of course under capitalism we know how they are violated every day but the constitutional framework which guarantees equality for our citizens, we have a government which is linked to an organization called the RSS, the Rashtrasvayamsevak Sangatan, which is a sort of a copycat organization of what the Nazis had and they take their inspiration also from Hitler and Mussolini, that is how they first started, that is their history. So that is the kind of organization and the BJP is a political front of that organization. When the government got elected and we said this was the qualitative difference, there were four major areas which became clear very very soon. The first was the attack on the constitution itself, the principles of secularism, the principles of pluralist cultures. Now in a country like India which has large minorities, this is a very very dangerous way not only for the security of India which is one aspect but more than that to fight against neoliberal policies you need people's unity and the use of religion as an instrument to divide people obviously has very very serious consequences. So that was the first, the attack on the constitutional secularism, the attack on minorities. Secondly this entire attack is based on a specific ideology and that ideology calls itself Hindutva and it is based on what is considered an important religious and legal text in India called the Manusmiti which basically upholds the importance of the caste system and division of society on the basis of caste. It has a subordinate role for women. So this is the ideological framework of the attack. So it's not just this or that policy, it's a wider thing of going to the people using state power to go among the people with an ideology which is so retrogressive, retrogressive, divisive, whatever you have it that's it. So that was the second ideological, the third is the attack on all institutions, every single institution. Fourth of course is foreign policy. I mean if the previous governments were equally keen to be junior partners of the whole US imperialist blueprint for the world well this government has gone overboard with it. I mean for example now I think where Israel is probably the second arms supplier to India. So our relations with the US, the imposition or you know the understanding of the US's world view becoming India's you know virtually world view these are things which are deeply disturbing, which affect our sovereignty, which affect our democracy and which affect our day to day lives and therefore this government and these elections are not ordinary elections because we're really fighting a very strong authoritarian right-wing government which has huge corporate support. And the point you mentioned about the attack on democracy itself, could you elaborate a bit more on that especially in the context of how the vulnerable sections in society are being attacked? When we talk about democracy there are two or three aspects. One of course is democratic rights that is my right to unionize, my right to speak out, my freedom of expression. So this is one aspect of democracy which has been very strongly attacked and there's been very strong resistance also and I think it is important to speak about that resistance of intellectuals being arrested and intellectuals still coming out in strong support of their colleagues joining movements to fight against this government. So that is the attack on the use of the most colonial laws, you know laws which the British used against our freedom fighters, laws that the Modi government is using against activists today. I mean think of this in one state of Jharkhand where Adivasis have been fighting for their land and their land rights and the right to decide according to the law their own projects in their areas, Adivasis are what we call what is known in the rest of the world as indigenous communities. So they have certain constitutional garrity. Now when they fought for it today thousands of Adivasis are being threatened under the anti sedition law in India. I mean tell me how is a fight for land an anti sedition law because a sedition law is such a bad law because it says anything which affects public order. So you and I speaking here today they can decide this is public order being challenged. So one is democratic rights. The other as you very rightly point out is a wider concept of democracy and that is the share of the people of India, the poor of India, the working classes and peasants of India in national resources. That is an equal democratic right which is really spoken about. Today well I don't know if you can call it neoliberal anymore because the neoliberals themselves are you know wanting to give up neoliberal policies and have a much more authoritarian imposition but in any case this set of economic policies which is the domination of the market and finance capital still that has been very aggressively pursued by this government because it has a single party majority. It's not curved by you know sensitivities of other regional parties who may have been a little more sensitive. So they're a single so they're bulldozing everything. So whatever the earlier government wanted to do and couldn't do because they didn't have the power this government has a power and they're just bulldozing everything. So that is a very serious concern which is the huge growth in inequalities in India you know with 1% of the richest population in India owning something like 70 or 68% of household wealth and the profit margins etc. So these are the twin attacks. One is on democratic rights and the other is on my democratic right to have a share in national resources.