Gandhi's new crackdown
Socialist Press1980 1980-10-01Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 2 →
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The National Security Ordinance brought in last week by the government of Mrs Gandhi in India is very similar to the Maintenance of Internal Security Act introduced when she was last in government.
This Act was so dictatorial that the Congress Party was overwhelmingly voted out in the But the alternative presented was the Popular Front Janata coalition which while calling for democratic reforms, continued with a capitalist India.
The Janata, made up of both right-wing and workers parties soon broke up-leading to the reelection of Gandhi eight months ago.
The economies of countries such as India, like Turkey, are so much in debt to imperialism with so much of their income tied to interest payments that they are doubly affected by the world economic crisis.
That a democratic India can only be established by a socialist revolution is shown by the way that there are continuous moves to dictatorship.
The latest moves are ostensibly attributed to recent communal riots, a factor in which is a shortage of jobs and falling living standards.
In reality, as several of the statements of Mrs Gandhi have rising prices. The dictatorship is aimed at depressing the living standards of the working class.
One of the provisions of the National Security Ordinance is imprisonment without charge for up to twelve months. stoppage The newly formed National Confederațion of free trade unions in Poland has called a one-hour strike for this Friday.
The importance of the action is that it shows the new unions being driven into united action in the face of the moves by the ruling bureaucracy to prevent groups of workers joining the unions.
This united fight is important. The bureaucracy would have liked to separate out the sections of workers and pick them off one by one.
The fact that Gdansk and Silesia workers are now coming to the aid of others is vital-not least for their own defence.
The decision of the new confederation to publish their own national daily paper is also an important challenge to the Stalinist bureaucracy.
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hinted at recently, the aim is to suppress strikes and riots over