The RSS Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha (ABPS) was held on March 14-16 and the current issue of Organiser carries the text of the annual report presented by Sarkaryavah Mohan Bhagwat, detailing the activities of the Sangh. It also takes stock of larger developments.

It is sceptical about the economic outlook of the country and says: “Besides this our food security is also gradually threatened due to this lopsided development policy. There is no abatement in rising unemployment, rising inflation and suicides by the farmers. Villages are being uprooted and concrete jungles in the name of towns and industrial areas are coming up on their vast agricultural lands. Retail traders are increasingly facing threats in a number of product areas. Big business houses are depriving the livelihood of even vegetable vendors. People are increasingly becoming victims of all those evils that accrue from a blind imitation of the economic development model that is in vogue in the west — including the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few...”

The report further says, “In their quest for power and their arrogance, party leaders fail to realise that they are inviting threats to the nation’s integrity and security also. Recent incidents against our own countrymen residing in Maharashtra and the kind of language used against them are clearly indicative of this. How far this dangerous tendency to subvert our national interest can go can be ascertained from an incident in the Northeast, where infiltrators from Bangladesh, who had been pushed out by the Arunachal Pradesh government, found shelter in neighbouring Assam, and have been rehabilitated by the government of Assam. It was this warped mindset that had been responsible in the past for providing safe passage to foreign aggressors coming to loot and destroy the Somnath Temple on our north western frontiers.”

... contd.