On Central Information Commission order

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) cannot accept the order of the Central Information Commission that political parties are to be treated as “public authorities” and brought under the purview of the Right to Information Act. This decision is based on a fundamental misconception about the role of political parties in a parliamentary democracy.

The CIC order states that “six national parties are substantially financed by the Central Government and therefore they are held to be public authorities under the Act”. This is untrue because the bulk of the funding and finances for the parties do not come from the government or any State institution. In fact, the CPI(M) does not even accept funds from the corporates which is legally permissible.

One of the concerns of the CIC seems to be transparency of the funding and finances of political parties. At present according to the law all political parties are required to submit their accounts to the Income Tax department and the Election Commission. Already under the RTI, the statement of accounts and the finances of the parties are accessible to anyone from the Election Commission. Any more details of the financing of the Party can be sought for and has to be given. The CPI(M) has from the outset taken the stand that the financial statements and accounts of a party should be publicly available.

But this does not mean that a political party has to be treated as a public authority. This will interfere with and hamper the functioning of a political party. A political party is a voluntary association of citizens who believe in the ideology, programme and leadership of the party. That party is accountable to its membership. To apply the Right to Information Act and demand access to the internal deliberations of the party whether it be on policy matters, organisational decisions or selection of candidates will constitute a serious infringement of the inner-party functioning, confidentiality of discussions and undermine the political party system itself. Opponents of a political party can utilise the RTI as an instrument to destabilise a party.

Given the serious implications of this order of the CIC for the political party system and parliamentary democracy, the matter should be discussed by the Government with all political parties so that suitable steps can be taken to preserve the integrity and the role of political parties in a democratic political system.

AIDWA PAYS HOMAGE TO DR. VINA MAZUMDAR.

 

From India News Network (INN)

New Delhi, May 30: AIDWA deeply mourns the passing away of Dr. Vina Mazumdar, our beloved Vinadi on May 30th, 2013.Vinadi was a symbol of much that was of value and worthy of emulation in the generation to which she belonged. A generation of many ‘firsts’ for women like her – a generation born in colonial India that lived through the halcyon days of the freedom movement and grew to adulthood in free India; a generation that breathed and lived on the words and deeds of Rabindranath Tagore, the revolutionaries of Bengal and Punjab, Mahatma Gandhi, dedicated teachers and family elders who had newly imbibed the joys of education and enlightenment.  It was a generation fired with the desire to serve a newly independent nation using all the tools that a modern education could provide.  Above all, Vinadi, represented the first generation of Indian women who had not only accessed the hitherto forbidden delights of all that a first class education in an Indian metropolis and a foreign university could provide, but also enjoyed the freedom to enter into a profession, determined to make a difference and leave a mark.

Very soon, she became an educationist who trained young minds to think and question wherever she went.  She herself always remained open to new sources of knowledge, always aware of what she did not know but also unflinching in her clear-headed commitment to a socialist vision of emancipation.  In 1971, she was appointed Member Secretary of the Committee to study the Status of Women in India set up by the Government.  This was another turning point in her eventful life.  The work of the Committee that went around the country listening to women in villages, cities in towns who belonged to every strata and class and what they heard brought home the unequal status of the mass of Indian women for whom little had changed and for whom Independence was a word that mocked their own reality.  Always a crusader for social change, Vinadi focused on the struggle for womens’ equality once the work of the Commission had been completed. As she herself has said, she became, more than ever ‘activist and critic, academic and mobiliser, publicist and propogandist’. Along with colleagues like Lotika Sarkar, she founded the Center for Women’s Development Studies and dedicated the rest of her life to providing a unique bridge between womens’ movements, of which she was an important participant, and womens’ studies, of which she was a pioneer.

AIDWA is proud of the close relationship we shared with Vinadi.  She inaugurated the first and founding conference of the organization in l981 in Madras and remained a source of inspiration, advice and unbounding love and affection.

Today we salute the memory of a great woman, a great academic, a great path breaker and a great comrade without whom the womens movement will be much the poorer.  A line from Rabindranath Tagore was very dear to her – “The wonder of it all makes me sing”.  A life like Vinadi’s has brought much wondrous music into the lives of innumerable women in so many corners of our country.

AIDWA mourns her passing and offers heartfelt condolences to all her children and grandchildren, so many of whom are treading the paths down which she was among the first to venture.

CPI(M) dharna to press their demands in Manipur

CPI (M) Manipur State Committee staged a demonstration raising 10 demands in front of FCI Godown of Imphal West on 30th May.  Besides the members, the protest was participated by sympathisers, workers and students. According to State Secretary of the party’s CPI (M) committee, they are calling for among others the execution of land reforms policies and distribution of free lands to landless people.

The other demands included provision of 35 kg of rice to each household at a rate of Rs two per kg, rectification of the wrong insertions in APL and BPL families, restriction of wrongful trading in food items and other essential items, prohibition to entry of private parties in health and education sectors, augmentation in budget for health and education and implementation of  Right to Education Act.

With regards to opening of more employment opportunities, the CPI (M) has called for enticing more private investment and lifting of ban on recruitment of state employees and immediate filling up of existing posts including htose of ST, SC and OBC, and calculation of minimum wages based on price indexes. The demonstration further called for repeal of AFSPA and other draconian laws, regulation of extortion and abduction cases along the national highways connected to Manipur and free access to movement of freight trucks and passenger buses there and establishment of a highway protection force. The left party further reiterated the demands for reservation of seats for women at both the Parliament and State Assemblies.