Support the Left, The Real Alternative Today

Abstract

The forthcoming assembly elections in West Bengal and Kerala are of crucial importance for not only the working class but also the ruling classes, the corporate employers and the landlords, obviously for different reasons. The results will have implications for the working people, not only of those two states, but of the entire country. These elections are also crucial for the sustenance of democratic institutions and democratic polity of the country as a whole.

These elections are not a routine periodic exercise to decide who will be forming the next state governments there but also to decide which direction the politico-economic events in the country will unfold. Behind the conflict surfaced by the assembly elections in these two states, is underlined the conflict of two distinct trends – the neoliberal's hell bent bid for a push toward more right-wing direction to ultimately jump into the bandwagon of the imperialist agencies on the one hand and the determined opposition by the Left and progressive forces to halt such a rightward shift. The one means surrender to imperialist forces and attendant erosion of the rights of the people in favour of the interests of big business, both domestic and foreign, the other means strengthening the opposition to the machinations for complete destruction of the concept of welfare, democracy and rights of the people and making them retreat.