Not Buddha but Stalin

Indian Communist’s old shibboleths are now haunting them in Nandigram

Fifteen years ago, when the economic reforms were just taking off in India, then-finance minister Manmohan Singh, pointing to the hard days ahead, called for a bit of belt-tightening. Leading Left parliamentarian of the day Indrajit Gupta countered Singh with the poser: “What about people with no belt to talk of?”
I was reminded of this while reading the accounts of the shocking police atrocities in Nandigram, where farmers, deprived of their land by the Communist-led government to make way for industry, were shot dead in cold blood when they protested.
India’s main Communist party, the CPM, till recently has been bad-mouthing the economic reforms. The reasons for this are not difficult to fathom. The CPM is more worried about the reforms impacting its biggest vote bank – organised labour. The party has historically used the street-fighting prowess of its unions and its misguided student’s movements to derail any law or initiative that goes against its interests.
This ruinous policy, in force for over the past 20 years, has rendered the southern state of Kerala a basket case. The CPM, whether in the government or in the opposition, made sure private capital never prospered in the states they run. In Bengal, too, the results of this flawed approach showed. Industry is moribund, while states such as Gujarat, which welcomed private capital with both arms, prospered.
Thankfully, at least some CPM leaders have realised that his policy has run its course. The CPM is no party of fools. They know rhetoric has its uses but also that it can’t be stretched to eternity. Therefore, came Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s reform plans for Bengal where he is chief minister. His moves had the blessings from the apparatchiks in AKG Bhavan, the party headquarters in New Delhi.
Budda’s policies came as a whiff of fresh air after the stifling 25-plus years rule of Jyothi Basu, during which the industry was on the back foot and militant labour on the front foot. The beauty of Budda’s new policy was that it fits seamlessly into the framework laid down by the federal government, which allowed Special Economic Zones to allow for faster growth.
As this policy was a big success in China and also since the federal government was being propped up by the Left, with an exclusive ‘veto’ power, the CPM had reasons to be smug about it. But, as usual, the CPM blew its chance. And how.
The way the government went ahead with its plans was appalling. The party’s motto of inclusive governance was thrown to the winds; instead the brute force of the state was unleashed in full force on the poor, including their women and children, clearly quite unconscionable for a party which swears by the proletariat. What happened in Nandigram was less of Buddha and more of Stalin and Pol Pot.
In the process of trampling over the poor, the party has given reforms a bad name, which by their reckoning should have a human face! Managing contradictions was one of the strongest points of the CPM. Their Bible and its interpretation depended on the party’s views at any given point of time and that could change contours any which way the party felt. Kerala’s Communists famously rejected the tractor in the 1970s and the computer in the 1980 as anti-labour. Now IT firms are being chased for investment with liberal incentives. In Kerala, the Tata conglomerate is untouchable, but in Bengal they are to be welcomed with a red carpet. The poor be damned.
Another instance of the party’s perfidy is the manner in which its state government in Kerala signed a loan agreement with the Asian Development Bank. While in the opposition, the CPM had opposed the deal tooth and nail but once in government the party decided to sign loan agreement, only to be done behind its own chief minister back, who was bitterly opposed to it.
But in Nandigram, the CPM finally got it in the eye. This time they had no cover nor could they find any of their favourite whipping boys to save face – globalisation, America, Bush or even the federal government. The day after the atrocity, even the Left allies of the party in Bengal were feasting on the mangled corpse of the party so used to taking the pulpit to lecture all and sundry on the leadership of the proletariat. The party never looked so pathetic, never so exposed.
For the CPM leaders, their old shibboleths have come to haunt them. The party should realise that the ideological hide it developed over the years cannot be jettisoned one fine morning. This party dictatorship will not go down well with the proletariat, and Nandigram is the best example. The party has to change with the times, slowly but surely. But the risk of atavistic mantras and ideas getting a second lease of life is more real now, post-Nandigram. Call it the revenge of the proletariat led astray by the party.

This article was published in Oman Tribune