[Reader-list] Clash of Marxist perceptions

[Sanjay Khak]

*Clash of Marxist perceptions*

*Shikha Mukerjee*
*The Daily Pioneer*

*While Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee continues to believe that Socialism and
market economy are not incompatible, Prakash Karat and other influential
Marxists blame his ‘wrong policies’ for the CPM’s declining electoral
fortune*

Cricket teams that struggle to scrub out the taint of match fixing know that
poor performances trigger nasty suspicions about match fixing. The
unconfirmed but real slur on the game of cricket is because of a mentality —
to sell out is better because the effort to fight is considered a waste. By
that reckoning embracing martyrdom has its attractions, for some. Engaging
in a difficult and challenging fight to survive has its attractions for some
others.

The headlong rush within the Communist Party of India (Marxist) as well as
the united Left Front to embrace defeat as inevitable in West Bengal, led by
the big man Mr Prakash Karat, backed by various influential leaders at the
national and state level, is much like the idea of match fixing. By deciding
the outcome before the event, the CPI(M)’s leadership is not only being
pragmatic but is selling Mr Bhattacharjee, other optimists and the party
itself down the drain.

The conflict between Mr Karat’s magisterial summarisation of what is wrong
with West Bengal and the rest of India — namely “wrong policies” — and the
agenda pursued by the Government headed by Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has a
longish history. During Mr Bhattacharjee’s first full term as Chief Minister
the first chapter in the conflict was written. It provoked Mr Bhattacharjee
to tell off Mr Karat, quoting Deng Xiaoping: Seek truth from facts. The
context of this was Mr Karat questioning on what authority had Mr
Bhattacharjee gone ahead with a policy of industrialisation that not only
embraced liberalisation, but proactively pursued international investors
offering them projects as diverse as infrastructure to manufacturing.

The bone of contention then as it is now was Mr Bhattacharjee’s
industrialisation policy. The issue of land acquisition has become a proxy
for that fight and it now seems that Mr Bhattacharjee must lose in order for
Mr Karat and his cohorts to emerge as politically correct. Therefore it is
not surprising that there is a fresh outbreak of fighting between Mr Karat
and Mr Bhattacharjee even though yet another substitute has been found for
the long-standing differences over economic policies

The abrupt early exit of Mr Bhattacharjee from the recent Polit Bureau
meeting was only yet one more instance of the distance that separates the
orthodox from the pragmatists within the CPI(M). Somewhere between 2004 and
2006, Mr Bhattacharjee and Mr Karat had a fight; the Chief Minister told Mr
Karat that the choice facing West Bengal was stark; it could model itself on
either North Korea and isolate itself from the global transformation or it
could pursue the model adopted by China — “poverty is not socialism. To be
rich is glorious” and so create “one country, two systems”.

Since, to many within the CPI(M) and the Left Front, the policies of
economic liberalisation and globalisation are wrong policies, it is
axiomatic that Mr Karat, many influential leaders of the CPI(M) and of
course the marvellously negative Bengali cadres of the party also believe
that the vision ought to be opposed and defeated at whatever cost. If the
cost be the loss of CPI(M)’s presence in West Bengal, then so be it, because
in fixing matches nobody is finicky about losing.

Mr Bhattacharjee’s ‘vision’ has been a subject of agonising within the
CPI(M) for most the first decade of the new millennium. The vision is really
an economic model that is in no way a significantly different “alternative”
to the liberalisation-globalisation policies of the rest of India, where
unemployed Bengalis and those who want a better opportunity flock,
contributing through their labour to the prosperity of regions other than
West Bengal. For Mr Bhattacharjee ignoring the expectations of a burgeoning
middle class and a working class desperate for employment opportunities made
little sense. He certainly managed to win a decisive mandate for change in
2006 State Assembly elections. What was missing after that was the political
will within the CPI(M) for taking this mandate and the model of reviving
West Bengal’s economic fortunes to its natural conclusion.

Therefore, it is unsurprising that Polit Bureau members from West Bengal
other than Mr Bhattacharjee have all energetically embraced the
inevitability of defeat. West Bengal Industries Minister Nirupam Sen, State
party boss Mr Biman Bose, Land Reforms Minister Abdur Razzak Mollah,
State-level leaders from the trade unions, the kisan front, State Government
employees organisations have all more or less endorsed the Karat thesis —
wrong policies. In order to substantiate how wrong the policies are, the
leadership has added poor governance and abuse of power by party members who
were tempted into transgressions and corruption because of the “wrong
policies”. The argument is that because of liberalisation, the “market”
created the conditions for party members to use their clout to help
investors. In the beginning were the small time local promoters who brokered
small land deals; post-Mr Bhattacharjee’s vision, the size of the deals
changed, the pace changed and the party sold itself to the market.

Whereas Mr Bhattacharjee continues to believe like Deng Xiaoping that
“Socialism and market economy are not incompatible” and is clearly harassed
by what the Chinese leader had warned against: “We should be concerned about
Right-wing deviations” his greatest challenge comes from the difference in
understanding within the CPI(M) on what constitutes “Left-wing deviations”.