By IANS,
Kolkata : Asserting that the country was going through a crisis, veteran Communist Party of India (CPI) leader A.B. Bardhan Tuesday called for bringing all Left forces together as a step towards building up a broad-based democratic unity to face the challenges.
Laying stress on Left unity, he said no single Left party – be it the CPI, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), the Forward Bloc or the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) – was in a position to change the country.
“To face the challenges before the nation, a greater Left unity has to be built up. It can then help in forging a broad-based democratic unity. And unless such a grouping is of secular-minded parties, it will neither be progressive nor democratic,” he said.
Bardhan said the broad-based democratic force should work against those who divide the country.
“But my priority is Left unity. Because the democratic unity has to be Left-oriented,” he said speaking at the condolence meeting of CPI leader and former West Bengal minister Nandagopal Bhattacharya.
Attacking the United Progressive Alliance government, he said: “At the national level we are going through a crisis. While the manufacturing sector has grown by less than three percent, there is a grave agrarian crisis. Peasants are committing suicide.”
He said while unemployment was rising, there are job losses, and prices had touched the roof.
Speaking at the programme, CPI-M politburo member and state left Front chairman Biman Bose said: “We have to implement lot of policies to build a broader unity of Left and democratic forces”.
State Forward Bloc’s West Bengal secretary Ashok Ghosh said the Left movement was going through a critical phase. “We need Left unity, unity of democratic people.”
“Due to our mistakes, power has passed on to the reactionary forces in the state. They are preparing the ground for an autocratic rule.”
“We need to unify all Left forces. All Left and democratic forces should be brought together at the national level to start a mass struggle,” he added.