KV Prasad
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, October 31
Veteran CPI leader and former MP Gurudas Dasgupta was a lifelong Communist who remained a powerful voice of the workers and toiling masses until death took him away today.
Having cut his teeth in student politics, he made his mark early by becoming the elected general secretary of the Bengal Provincial Students Federation in 1954, a year after he joined the Communist Party of India.
Nine years later, when the party split with the formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Dasgupta preferred to stay with the parent organisation and became a strong voice within the state unit as a representative of the students and farm workers.
Dasgupta came into national focus after he entered the Rajya Sabha in 1985 and soon made his mark with scorching questions on the issues dogging labour and trade union related matters as the country embarked on the path of economic reforms.
Along with CPI leaders Indrajit Gupta, AB Bardhan, Marxist leaders Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Jyoti Basu and other Left leaders, Dasgupta worked to organise a massive labour rally at the Boat Club close to Parliament House.
The collective Left was protesting the dawn of what was then dubbed as the LPG (Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation) policy of reforms introduced by Finance Minister Manmohan Singh in the PV Narasimha Rao government.
His presence in the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Securities Scam involving Harshad Mehta and others helped the panel scoop out intricate layers of transactions and dealings in a subject that was technical that even specialists took time to decipher.
As a Member of Parliament, in the Rajya Sabha for three terms(1985-2000)and in the Lok Sabha for two terms (2004-2014), Dasgupta remained committed to the cause of workers and was always leading the brigade for the just treatment of labour and the continuation of public sector undertakings without any dilution.
As a member of the Consultative Committee of Labour, he was steadfast in standing up for labour and remained doubtful of the intentions of the government eager to change labour laws.
He along with others Left leaders prevented the Manmohan Singh government from disinvesting some prime public sector undertakings in the UPA-I government.
For the sake of labour, Dasgupta worked with unions of all hues and after his election as the general secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), walked the extra mile to bring in unions owing allegiance to various political parties on a single platform for the cause.
Taking on the UPA-II government, in 2009 he brought together different unions to organise an all India strike in 2009 and did not shy away from taking up the cause of workers in the private sector to organise themselves.
AITUC general secretary Amarjit Kaur in her homage today said, “He was respected by all for his effective interventions in the parliamentary debates. He raised the issues of working class, of the rural poor masses, the farmers in distress and special intervention made by him on the plight of working women. His forthright struggle in defence of the public sector and natural resources in the national interest can never be forgotten.”
Ironically, Dasgupta breathed his last three days short of what would have been his 83rd birthday but on a day the AITUC was formed in 1920 and observing its centenary.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/34iEvAa
via Today’s News Headlines
No comments: