Around 20,000 people from around the state of Bihar braved torrential rains to march to Parliament Street in Delhi on August 23. The march and rally were organised by the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) to support demands for an economic development package.
There are considerable disparities in wealth and economic development between different regions of India. Bihar is the second most populous and second poorest of the states.
Addressing the rally, CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said that Bihar has virtually been reduced to an abandoned territory. The state had been left in the lurch, and the toiling millions were suffering the worst kind of poverty and economic deprivation.
Bhattacharya said that if the powers that be in New Delhi and the Bihar capital, Patna, do not change their policies and come up with an urgent package for Bihar's development, the people would wage a do-or-die battle to secure economic justice.
Bhattacharya accused both the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress coalition that governs Bihar and the federal National Democratic Alliance coalition government of being responsible for Bihar's backwardness and said that the fight was not merely for a few billion rupees but for formulation and implementation of appropriate policies.
The CPI(ML) is calling for a five-point package for Bihar's development:
- declaring Bihar a special category state and waiving all its outstanding debts;
- formation of a special task force for flood control and immediate implementation of all pending flood-control projects;
- revamping of the state's beleaguered education system and setting up of centres of specialised higher education including IT and software technology centres to stop a brain drain away from the state;
- large public investment in key infrastructural sectors including irrigation, power, roads and transportation; and
- revival of ailing and closed industrial units and setting up of agriculturally based industries.
Other CPI(ML) leaders to address the rally included the Bihar state secretary Ram Jatan Sharma, K.D. Yadav and legislators Satyadev Ram, Mehboob Alam and Arun Kumar Singh.
All lambasted the central government for perpetrating a fraud on the people of Bihar and accused the RJD government of patronising corrupt and mafia elements who are stumbling blocks to Bihar's progress.
The speakers congratulated the people of Jharkhand on the creation of a separate Jharkhand state.
[Based on a report in ML Update, a CPI(ML) online news magazine.]