Alarming levels of communal polarization destroy the very foundation of PM’s G-20 declaration: Sitaram Yechury

“The economic slowdown is creating another set of inequalities with growing levels of unemployment and poverty”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s declaration that India’s G20 Presidency will work to promote the “universal sense of one-ness” can only be realized if the current alarming trends, of increased polarisation and economic downslide which are creating deep inequalities in India, are arrested, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said during the all-party meeting on Monday evening. 

Mr. Modi announced a domestic political campaign program around the theme ‘One Earth-One Family-One Future’ and declared that “India’s G20 Presidency will work to promote the universal sense of one-ness.

“The realization of the theme announced by the government will be determined by correcting these current alarming trends in social, political, and economic spheres and strictly adhering to our constitutional foundations of liberty, equality, and fraternity that define the character of our secular democratic republic,” Mr. Yechury said. 

The credibility of the theme announced by the PM, Mr. Yechury stressed is crucially dependent upon creating a society and a political structure that is based on equality for all as the Constitution of India declares “irrespective of caste, creed or sex”. It is premised on the delivery of justice – social, political, and economic to all citizens.

Mr. Yechury added that the concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam does not mean imposing uniformity but is the recognition of a global family where social pluralities are celebrated by treating all diversity on the basis of equality and dignity. Such a global family is premised on such societies established domestically in every country.

Sounding a word of caution, Mr. Yechury said, “The current alarming levels of communal polarization based on vicious campaigns of hate, terror, and violence destroy the foundations of the declaration announced by the PM.” The economic slowdown is creating another set of inequalities with growing levels of unemployment and poverty. He added, “Social injustices against women, Dalits, Adivasis, and marginal sections are multiplying. Constitutional guarantees of democratic rights and civil liberties are severely circumscribed by treating all expressions of dissent as ‘anti-national.’”

It also underlined the fact that the G-20 Presidency is a rotating Presidency, where every member country automatically gets to host the others. It has little to do with domestic economy or socio-political situation.