Stakeholders:
Any individual who believe in the above values are stakeholders in this effort. Consolidation of various forces with the above values working for a common goal to capture power through an alliance.
There is very little time before the BBMP election. Thus, we urgently need to identify individuals, groups, associations, organizations who also uphold these values and take them into confidence and invite them to be stakeholders in this alliance.
This effort is advocated under a specific challenge. The deeper effort to consider ideological differences and similarities, to analyze and review these, develop the touchstone by which we will judge these stands can be done later. It is possible to devote time to this exercise later even as we take action and move forward now to intervene in BBMP election process.
At this critical point, this is a serious effort to inspire an optimistic outlook. Our vision, stand, decision, intervening strategy, process of identifying allies should be reviewed after the BBMP elections. Without compromising our concern, seriousness and active participation, we should immediately prepare to participate in the BBMP election. Open, deeper and extensive discussions should follow on our experience of participation in the BBMP elections. Based on these, we can review our model of political participation.
Ours is not just a social movement; nor a mere process of uniting social movements. We don¿t want to fall prey to the foolishness of the meaningless divisions and separation of issues and narrow definitions and approaches as based solely on socialism, or Marxism based economic justice, social democracy etc., Let us not be carried away with the ideas of any one thinker be it Buddha, Basava, Marx, Phule, Gandhi, Periyar, Ambedkar, Lohia. While we say this, also let not ours become a hotchpotch of different ideas. Let this not be a directionless journey without a critical search that is relevant to the current context, time and situation.
We are committed to create a conducive environment to initiate a democratic discussion in which ideas of every stakeholder would be equally respected irrespective of their education, background, caste, color etc. to evolve a new political theory that emerges from the experiences of the exploited.
The three major state political parties in the State BJP, Congress and Janata Dal (S) will contest in the BBMP elections. Under the present circumstances, it is sensible for us to stay away from them. The other parties such as BSP, CPI, CPM, Sarvodaya Karnataka and others do not have their base in the BBMP jurisdiction and some of them lack transparency and internal democracy. Thus, as an experiment, the effort to seriously and independently intervene in the BBMP election is the right option.