People’s Wishes in 2016

Subhendu Das Gupta

Workers will occupy all closed down mills and factories this year, 2016. Workers organized in cooperatives will establish small-scale factories, small health centers, and small schools, clear out junkyards and illegally occupied spaces for play fields, cultural activities including concert, drama, screening of cinema and gossiping in free hours, and construct houses for poor families within the premises of the locked out mills and factories. Workers will construct their permanent residential facilities by replacing old labour lines. Government will provide electricity and supply water to these labour residential facilities.

All surplus lands in the rural areas will be occupied. Those lands will be distributed among the landless farmers. Farmers organized in cooperatives will produce their food.

Urban centers will be constructed and beautified for the poor instead of only for the rich. Residential facilities, schools, play grounds, medical facilities for the poor will be constructed. There shouldn't be anyone without shelter, there shouldn't be a single person sleeping on pavements, sleeping by street side. Porters, labourers, rickshaw pullers, vagabonds, all will have a living place in these urban centers.

All schools, in rural areas, in distant, small urban centers, in towns and cities, will be for those having not a penny. Those schools should not be only for the rich.

In this year, there will be a shift in attitude and psychology that will not treat women as an object for rape.
We will get rid of the mechanism to shape our ideas, opinions and articulations through cacophony of the group of persons, who know all and everything in the universe, and talk and talk in TV shows.

Transfer of farmers' lands, forest dwellers' forests, fishers' waters and coasts, aborigines' homes, hill dwellers' hills to the nouveau and old capital owners will be ceased.

In this year, uprooting the urban poor by demolishing and burning slums will be ceased.

Society will take respectful measures in the areas of transport, education, shelter and work for the physically retarded persons.

The employers of child labour will be convinced that employing children isn't fair. Measures will be taken for these children.

Safe drinking water, clean toilet, cheap nutritious food and clean environment will be provided so that many persons don't need to take medical treatment.

Legal rights will be restored for the Third Gender and the LGBT persons.

We will meet together, talk and write to each other, pass time and gossip together despite having cell phone and other electronic means of virtual social communication.

We will allow the younger generation to pass more time in play ground.

We will fix a proper rate for the persons helping us in our domestic chores. We will consider extending them the facilities that we enjoy.

Either trials of the poor persons having no earning member in respective families, having no money to engage a lawyer and languishing in jails in the name of trial will be concluded or they be freed as early as possible.

Persons behind bars simply for their political activism, simply for asserting their right to dissent will be freed.
Special powers to the army will be abolished in Kashmir and Manipur.

We will organize, build up, and construct in any elements of our life with our initiative instead of handing over those to government and to the owners of capital.

This year will find a proliferation of tea stalls in communities, a bubbling of gossips in the tea stalls, a lot of talks in the gossips, a widening of mutual acquaintance, a stronger solidarity during times of trouble and hardship of anyone among us.

We like to know a more about, like to talk a more about, like to think a more about, like to do a more about injustices, immoralities, exploitation, dominance, and we will know, talk, think, do about these.

[The article is translated by Farooque Chowdhury]

Frontier
Vol. 48, No. 30, Jan 31 - Feb 6, 2016