Communists want to paint Mumbai red

MUMBAI: Having tasted blood in Delhi, the Left now has its eyes set on Mumbai. The financial capital would play host to a string of protests the Left parties are planning to hold over a plethora of issues in the next couple of months. The Left clearly wants to paint Mumbai red.

Left parties and organisations have zeroed in on Mumbai as the temporary headquarters for their confrontation with the UPA government, senior Left leaders indicated. In fact, CPI general secretary AB Bardhan has marked out specific issues in Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra for the Left cadres to agitate on. Even CPI(M) general secretary and man-of-the-moment Prakash Karat has focused on Mumbai.

The Left parties reckon that bringing all issues under one banner of agitation would help them convey a larger image of themselves to the people beyond the nuclear deal. “We are concerned about all the issues on the Common Minimum Programme. The Left protest has never been only about the nuclear deal,” declared Mr Karat.

Both Karat and Bardhan have told the cadres what was expected of them in the months to come before the UPA government decides upon its line of action on the nuclear deal and the political situation gets more concrete. The Left parties hope to get a solid support from its affiliates operating in different sectors like education, railway commuters, labourers, Mathadi workers, small retailers, and of course, farmers. Mr Karat told a rally organised by the Left-sponsored Committee on Independent Foreign Policy last week that issues like banking reforms, insurance sector reforms, FDI in higher education and retail, and price-rise mattered most in cities like Mumbai.

“We would like to stress the point in Mumbai that only a minuscule minority of some 10% people, and I am being generous here, has benefited from the slogans like India Shining and the so-called economic boom. The rest 90% have been left in the lurch and our agitation would reach out to them,” Mr Karat said.

The CPI(M) general secretary attacked Wal-Mart’s retail foray in India through its tie-up with Bharti and prescribed for Maharashtra government a treatment the Left government in West Bengal had meted out to the retail giant. “The Wal-Mart chief had approached chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee with a proposal for a backdoor entry. Mr Bhattacharjee told him point blank that our government wouldn’t allow that. Let me declare on behalf of our cadres that we won’t allow Wal-Mart to set up a single shop anywhere in India,” Mr Karat said.

Mr Bardhan asked Left cadres to begin a stir in Mumbai and Maharashtra on two issues — the government-sponsored acquisition of farmland for special economic zones (SEZs) and the proposed repeal of the Urban Land Ceiling and Regulation Act (ULCRA).

The Left’s proposed agitation on these issues in Maharashtra is apparently drawing strength from West Bengal only — the ULCRA has not been repealed in Kolkata despite the Centre’s pressure and the Left government claims to have stopped acquisition of farmland for SEZs in the state after the Nandigram controversy. Mr Bardhan asked the cadres to hold protest meetings in all parts of Mumbai on these issues. He also referred to a large gathering of small retailers, farmers, hawkers, and Mathadi labourers held in Mumbai recently in protest against FDI in retail.