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11^th International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties

20 – 22 November, 2009, New Delhi, India

Welcome Address by Pallab Sengupta, Member, National Executive, Secretary, International Department of CPI

Dear Comrades,

It gives me immense pleasure to extend warm greetings and hearty welcome on behalf of the leadership of the Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India(Marxist) as well as over two million members of the two Indian Communist parties and millions of their supporters to all of you, the representatives of the Communist and Workers Parties from the five continents of the world who are delegates to this eleventh Conference.

The Conference assumes special significance as it is being held for the first time in Asia and that too in the historic National Capital of India, Delhi. The venue of this Conference, is one of the ancient cities of India, and has a long and rich history going back to nearly three thousand years. In the medieval period, Delhi often and on remained the capital of the ruling dynasties: from Anangpal and Chauhans to the Mughals, the last Indian dynasty. Seven cities of Delhi are famous in Medieval Indian history. Various dynasties kept on changing the site of capital in Delhi, each Delhi bearing a different name, from Indraprastha of the Mahabharata epic to the Shajahanabad of Mughal period. No other city in India has so many archeological monuments as Delhi has.

As Delhi has remained the seat of power for centuries, it had always been the centre of our political activities. It was here that the people rose in revolt against the British colonizers in 1857, which Karl Marx himself has termed as the First war of Independence. During our freedom struggle Delhi played significant role and continues to be hub of our political activities.

Dear Comrades,

Like billions of working people the world over suffering from the miseries heaped by the capitalist system, the Indian people too will be watching the deliberations of this august gathering of the Communist and Workers parties that share a common ideology, the ideology of socialism, of Marxism-Leninism. Indian people very well realize and appreciate the persistent endeavor, the relentless struggles which they pursue through immense sacrifices and lead militant mass struggles to end the rule of exploitation and to establish a just economic and social order. It was in India that the people elected to power the Communists as long back as 1957 through the ballot box, exercising the adult franchise. Still, in three of the Indian states, Communists have been elected to rule. In one of them they have been continuously elected for the past three decades.

Dear Comrades,

This important event is taking place against the background of volatile international situation where people at large are the victims of imperialist aggression, occupation, subjugation as well as crisis-ridden capitalist economy which is jeopardising the life of common people the world over. We are meeting at a time when world is under the grip of the unprecedented economic crisis, an inevitable outcome of the policies imposed on the countries under the garb of imperialist globalization. Capitalism breeds crisis and the current global recession is a systemic crisis of capitalism demonstrating its historic limits. It is acute and all encompassing as .the policies imposed in the name of economic neo-liberalism are basically the most naked and barbarous expression of capitalist exploitation. It has demonstrated the sharpening of the main contradiction of capitalism between its social nature of production and individual capitalist appropriation. Now hundreds of thousands of factories are closed. Agrarian and rural economies are under distress. About half a million Indian farmers have been forced to commit suicide since the bourgeois dispensation in our country swallowed the bait of economic neo-liberalism.

Millions of the people have been thrown out of job. Unemployment is growing to unprecedented levels. Inequalities are increasing across the world--- rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. One sixth of the world population is suffering from hunger pangs. Democratic rights of the people are under severe attack.

Despite the propaganda barrage of bourgeoisie that there is no alternative to economic neo-liberalism and imperialist globalization, people do realize that everything is not lost. Today, the most powerful people’s movement in the world is the one aimed against the capitalist system and for a better world, a world of social and economic justice and socialism. More and more people and forces are coming together to fight the capitalist onslaught. New ways and means are being devised to intensify the struggle for change, for a better world order. “There is an alternative to capitalism” is the battle cry world over.

Dear Comrades,

Our gathering, the gathering of the parties committed to Socialism provides a ray of hope. People will definitely watch the outcome of this conference with interest and hopes for more intensified struggle by the Communist and Workers parties. Present situation demand the best co-ordination and unity in actions of communist and workers parties of the world. The joint initiative of hosting this conference by our two communist parties signifies the urge of our toiling masses for much more cohesion, more fraternal closeness for the intensified struggle for a Change.

Once again I extend fraternal greetings and heartiest welcome to all.