The CPM’s Last Hurrah

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Perhaps we need not be surprised that the CPM is being driven by a death-wish. Perhaps the CPM should die away so that a genuine, progressive Left movement can take shape in India. It is written that destruction precedes creation.

Kerala, more than West Bengal, demonstrates the lethal certainty of the death-wish. For it is in Kerala that the CPM has turned against itself with devastating effect. In Bengal it is the people who turned against the CPM – the result of three decades of terror rule. That it was indeed rule by terror, the world is only now beginning to learn. Not only was the police, the schools, the civic services filled with party cadres, the CPM had set up armed squads of its own in the rural areas to ensure that not a mouse moved without their permission.

In Bengal, clearly, it was arrogance of power that undid the CPM. In Kerala it was the greed for power. Party boss Pinarayi Vijayan (PV) saw himself as a Vladimir Putin whose writ would run even if another man sat in the President’s chair naam ke vastay. Veteran V.S. Achutanandan (VS) was a stumbling block. The entire history of Kerala in recent years can be seen in terms of PV’s manoeuvres to make mincemeat of VS.

Unfortunately for PV, VS has the reputation of a clean man who lives a simple life. He is therefore immensely popular with the people. By contrast, PV’s image is that of a jet-setter with interests in Dubai and Singapore. Under him the CPM in Kerala has become a successful corporate enterprise with big buildings and businesses. He is feared as a tough nut who will stop at nothing to have his way. When he was chargesheeted by the CBI recently in a corruption case, public opinion hardened against him.

Who cares about public opinion? Not Vladimir Putin. What matters is opinion in the CPM Politburo. And that buro is obviously amenable to pressure. It is widely known that the CPM lost the parliamentary elections in May (the Left Front got only four seats out of 20 as against 18 in 2004) largely because of PV’s unilateral decisions, from alienating alliance partners to sharing platforms with known communal leaders. But PV succeeded in giving the impression to the Politburo that it was all due to VS’s anti-party activities.

In a final showdown in the party’s highest forums in Delhi, PV clinched his Pyrrhic victory. Powerful voices were raised within the party that both PV and VS deserved to be punished for the party’s miserable showing in Kerala. But the Secretary General, the equivalent of Josef Stalin, stood firmly on the side of PV and insisted that only VS should be punished. Since communist tradition is to yield to Stalin’s wishes, VS was ousted from the Politburo. In an extra-judicial pronouncement, the Karat group also proclaimed that PV was not guilty in the corruption case. (What can the courts do now!)

The immediate effect of these decisions was to increase VS’s popularity and further alienate the CPM and its victorious Vijayan. The likely consequences of the party’s actions were best summed up by Justice Krishna Iyer (who, let it be remembered, was a minister in Kerala’s first communist government in the 1950s). Said the eminent jurist-politician: “The ultimate result of the Politburo’s decisions will be to wipe out the Left from Kerala. If factionalism continues as now, the next elections will mark the end of the CPM”.

So be it. The old must be destroyed to make way for the new. Destruction is redemption. Inquilab zindabad!

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Time to say: BJP-CPM Bhai-bhai

It’s incredible but true. In their hour of defeat sworn enemies BJP and CPM act like identical twins. Both make much noise about introspection and analysis. Yet both refuse to face the facts that stare them in the face. They play with self-serving justifications which fool no one but themselves.

The overwhelming difference between this election and every previous election is the change in the character of the electorate. Times have changed and people have changed for a variety of reasons – economic liberalisation, the emergence of an affluent middle class, the spread of internet and the civilisational shifts in attitudes it has brought about, the rise of youth power, popular disgust with political corruption, a growing tendency to hold rulers accountable. Yes, the India of 2009 is very different from the India of even 2004, not to mention the India of Indira Gandhi, Narasimha Rao and A.B. Vajpayee.

But the BJP and the CPM either didn’t see the change or, more likely, did not have the leadership to know what to do about it. The first thing the BJP should have realised was that strident communal posturing would not sit well with the temper of the changed times. Using religion for political ends does nothing to help a country compete in this competitive world or to raise the quality of life which is what the vast majority of even god-fearing people want.

If the BJP leadership had grasped this truth, they would have instantly taken action against that badly brought-up brat, Varun Gandhi, for speaking in the fundamentalist idiom of the Taliban. In retrospect, that speech should be seen as the single most ruinous blow the BJP suffered during the election run-up. Consider also that wherever Narendra Modi campaigned, the BJP did not do well. It is clear that India is moving forward and the BJP is standing still.

The CPM is actually moving backward. A party whose leaders and cadres were known for simple living today accepts luxury as a norm at the top. From P.C.Joshi to Harkishensingh Surjeet, not one Communist leader was considered corrupt. Today the supreme leader of the party in Kerala is an accused in a major corruption case the CBI is pursuing. In West Bengal anti-communist politicians have succeeded in turning the state into a war zone. For the first time in three decades the CPM-led Government is unsure of its survival.

Much of this could have been averted if the CPM’s central leadership were capable of feeling the pulse of the people. When the highhandedness of the party boss in Kerala alienated party cadres, coalition partners and large sections of the general pubic, the Karat-Yechury leadership did not intervene with corrective measures. In fact it sided with the errant state leader leading to suspicious about its own bonafides.

In Bengal the Singur agitation going out of control was clear indication that popular goodwill for the party was slipping. But the Politburo was unwilling and/or unable to check strong-arm tactics by the state leadership which alienated its own traditional supporters. It is reasonable to conclude that the Communist movement in India has never had a weaker leadership than today.
Perhaps it is not such a bad thing that two parties with extremist ideologies are in a fading phase. But it will indeed be a bad thing if that leaves India at the mercy of a dynastic party. The least our country deserves is a rightist party, a leftist party and a centrist party in perennial competition. The collapsing dreams of today should lead to such a triangular model tomorrow.

Watch out: The country is churning

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Two factors have led to the enviable position the Congress is in today – and its popularity is not one of them. The real factors are that (a) the BJP has lost its acceptability in the imagination of the general public and (b) the Left has collapsed as an ideological platform. The prominence the Congress has achieved as a consequence is sure to be a passing phase. India is in the midst of a vast churning process. Uncertainties, shifting alignments and ad hoc patchups are part of such a transition. Two or three more game-changing elections like this and we will have moved from a dynastic system closer to a mature democracy.

That BJP’s sun was setting was clear towards the end of Vajpayee’s term. With hindsight even his critics would now agree that it was Vajpayee who made BJP acceptable to people outside the Hindutva core. He was politically moderate besides being personally popular as writer and poet. By contrast Advani was inextricably identified with hardline Hindutva. He was perhaps the first to recognise this as a liability. Hence his attempt to soften his image with stratagems like the Jinnah-was-secular speech. But it boomeranged.

The spectre raised during this campaign, that Narendra Modi is the one to follow Advani, will have scared more people away from the BJP. The fundamental reality remains that India, which of course is a Hindu-majority country, has not given the BJP blanket victory at any time other than during the Vajpayee interlude. This is because the majority of the people the BJP claims to represent obviously do not subscribe to the Hindutva brand of intolerance. That is the best guarantee of India’s future as a democracy.

For the BJP to regain public confidence, it will have to re-invent itself. This will require visionary leaders of the kind the BJP is not currently blessed with. Those it has are unable to think beyond the likes of Modi. Unfortunately this proclivity prevents the BJP from developing into a balanced right-of-centre party for which a need exists in India.

The need exists for a truly left-of-centre party as well. It is one of the tragedies of India that from the time of the Congress Socialist Party, the leftwing in the country has always lacked coherent, farsighted leadership. With the 1948 Communist Party policy of “armed revolution now”, the Left lost ground across the country. The base it retained in Bengal and Kerala have been steadily eroded. In three decades of unchallenged power, the Left Front Government in Bengal was unable to address basic issues like poverty and infrastructure. When it finally made an effort towards industrial progress, it was so heavy-handed that it only took an eccentrically led formulation like Trinamool Congress to prick its balloon.

The CPM in Kerala for its part turned into an unabashed corporate enterprise with mafia squads to enforce its power over others, including other leftwing groups. The infighting between the party leader and the party’s chief minister had reached obscene proportions. The party’s arrogant and dictatorial ways were causing perceptible disgust among the people. But the Politburo had no eyes to see what all others could see. The result is that Prakash Karat can no longer save India from the clutches of America.

Can Manmohan Singh? The Congress is in danger of getting entrenched in its dynastic ways and the dealmaking for which its managers are famous. This time it will be directly accountable for its commissions and omissions. To that extent it is on the firing line. By giving a fairly clear mandate to one party, the people have won this election. Whether that party will win remains to be seen.

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