How Maoists stunned India on polling day

From Maoist Revoluton elist  a report on the first day of India’s multi-day election.

How Maoists stunned India on polling day

April 17, 2009

Krishnakumar P reports on how Thursday’s attacks revealed that the Maoists have far better military training and superior firepower than believed earlier.

• Rebels used people’s militia comprising well-trained youngsters from the forests and border districts for Thursday’s attacks.

• Security forces did not have enough time to change tactics employed with great success in November and thus lost the edge to the rebels.

Indian Maoist Leader: Election Boycott and the Fight for People’s Democracy

 Thanks to Ka Frank and Maoist Revolution for making it available. This Interview is taken from the Maoist Information Bulletin-7 that is scheduled to be released on April 15.

Interview with Azad on the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in India

Azad is the spokesperson for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). The interview was conducted on April 10, 2009 by the the Maoist Information Bulletin[MIB]. The larger interview covers topics ranging from the elections in India, the global economic crisis, its impact on India, the G20 Summit, etc. The excerpt focuses on the Lok Sabha elections to be held in April-May 2009. 

* * * * * * * *

MIB: Election-2009 in India has been hailed as the biggest election ever held in the world with almost a billion voters participating. Does the increasing hype over the elections show the growing faith of the people on ‘parliamentary democracy’?

A: Certainly not. The claim that there has been an increase in the faith of the people on ‘parliamentary democracy’ is a hollow, concocted and outright false claim. The very fact that every day the media, the central and state governments, and all the contesting ruling class parties are dinning into the ears of the people to exercise their so-called holy vote, shows the desperation of the reactionary ruling classes to refurbish the debilitated image of their so-called parliamentary democracy. Thousands of crores are being spent on this propaganda alone.

So scared are these bandicoots that they can never imagine allowing the voters the minimum democratic right to reject the parties and candidates contesting the election. They fear that if the option of rejecting the candidates was given, then those who had been hitherto indifferent to the elections—who actually constitute the majority in any election—would perhaps vote against everyone and prove in categorical terms the futility of parliamentary democracy. But even otherwise, if you look beyond the 24-hour non-stop screening of election by hundreds of so-called news channels (I say so-called since hardly any of the news channels provides anything worth calling as real news), and go to the grass-roots level you can see the apathy, disillusionment, even hatred and anger against the parliamentary system and the parliamentary parties. Both have lost their credibility as never before and the more the people lose faith in the parliamentary parties and institutions, the greater is the noise generated by the media and the ruling classes through every means at their disposal calling upon the people to cast their vote.