Forty Years Since Emergency: Essential Lessons for the Working Class

- Rajesh Tyagi/ 26.6.2015

Forty years ago, the political crisis of the Indian bourgeoisie, spiraling over a decade, had climaxed into proclamation of Emergency in the country. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, imposed an authoritarian rule, suspended civil liberties and democratic rights, imposed censorship upon media and unleashed a reign of unspeakable terror and repression upon the masses.

The imposition of emergency was a response of the Indian ruling bourgeoisie to the acute global economic crisis that resulted in breakdown of the world economy at the start of the seventh decade of the last century. Withdrawal of gold backing by the US to the dollar, was the pinnacle of this economic breakdown. Huge escalation in prices of essential commodities, was precipitating the crisis among the poor masses, already beset by rising social inequality resulting into huge gap between living standards of the rich and the poor.