Rediff Logo
Star News banner
News
Citibank banner Find/Feedback/Site Index
HOME | NEWS | ELECTIONS '98 | REPORT
March 25, 1998

Citibank Banner
NEWS
VIEWS
INTERVIEWS
CAMPAIGN TRAIL
ISSUES '98
MANIFESTOS
OVERHEARD
POLLING BOOTH
INDIA SPEAKS!
YEH HAI INDIA
CHAT
ELECTIONS '96

RSS meet sounds an upbeat note on BJP's agenda

E-Mail this story to a friend

Madhuri V Krishnan in Bangalore

With a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government assuming office at the Centre, the mood among Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh activists is upbeat, even though the BJP's national agenda carefully eschews all the controversial issues that the RSS would like to see implemented.

At the meeting of the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha, the annual RSS executive conclave held near Bangalore recently, the delegates displayed a keen sense of elation over the saffron surge, and wasted little time in talking about the new government's priorities.

Mohan Das, joint general secretary of the RSS, member of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch's steering committee and formulator of the resolution to fight the World Trade Organisation, says: "We have already lost the patent on neem, and we should refuse to make amendments in our patent laws in the way the WTO tells us to do. We need to formulate our own laws and policies, especially a biodiversity law which protects farmers, seed patents, and conservation activities.''

Reflecting this upbeat mood, the meeting passed two resolutions, the first being against the Kerala bill that empowered the state government to control Hindu temples, and mutts and ashrams. V Nagraj, who is in charge of intellectual and ideological training, says: "Why should the government intervene in a temple's functioning? A trust comprising responsible people and local priests can take care of it.''

The second resolution is not to bow before the WTO's demands.

Apart from this, the participants are one in their denunciation of uncontrolled entry of multinationals. As RSS Sarsanghchalak Professor Rajendra Singh says: "They should be allowed only in core areas of science and technology, and not to sell Coke or Reebok. We Indians are fully capable of manufacturing our own products adapted to our country's conditions.''

Adds Nagraj: "When they offer some bit of technology for which we pay through our nose, why do they have a rider that we must also allow cereals into the country? It's like, take our microchips and we'll give you potato chips, which is unacceptable to us.''

And if they retaliate by not giving the country what it needs, "Then we make our own just like we built our own supercomputer when the US decided not to export Cray to us.''

This gung-ho attitude is reflected in their views on the country's nuclear option as well. "We must protect ourself, and if our neighbours like Pakistan and China have nuclear weapons why should we stay behind? We need to safeguard ourselves.''

According to some leaders, crucial issues that could dominate their agenda in the forthcoming months would be in areas of "industrialisation, reducing the number and role of foreign institutional investors, sit with other developing countries to formulate vigilant laws to conserve our biodiversity, finetuning the swadeshi movement with a modern touch, creating ideal bastis in more than 500,000 villages of India within a socio-cultural reformist set-up.''

EARLIER REPORT:
RSS calls the shots

Elections '98

Tell us what you think of this report

HOME | NEWS | BUSINESS | CRICKET | MOVIES | CHAT
INFOTECH | TRAVEL | LIFE/STYLE | FREEDOM | FEEDBACK