Rectified Spirit?

• Poor governmental record in social welfare programmes such as NREGA in both West Bengal and Kerala
• Alienation of minorities in West Bengal, factionalism in Kerala
• Post-Nandigram, suspicion among the Bengal peasantry about Left Front’s attitude to land acquisition
• An image that the CPI(M) cadres are high on corruption and arrogance
• CPI(M)’s problem in evolving an alternate economic policy

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If there’s one thing the Left is good at, it’s self-criticism. At last month’s two-day meeting in Delhi, the CPI(M)’s central committee, reviewing its worst-ever electoral performance in three decades, detailed its shortcomings in a 29-page-long document. These ranged from its failure to spot the Congress’s revival to its misplaced ambition in projecting the possibility of a non-Congress, non-BJP government, to the admission that it had lost touch with the people, alienated the minorities and was itself riven by factionalism.

With the party in self-flagellatory mode, the buzzword these days is deliciously Communist—“rectification”, just short of a “purge”, that other word dearly beloved of the Left. Not because it wants to but because it can’t afford not to, with critical assembly elections in West Bengal and Kerala due in two years. For, however much the Left parties may say that ideology trumps electoral performance, it was their parliamentary strength—hovering in the 40-60 range for the last 30 years—that gave it an influence in the national political arena, often quite disproportionate to their numbers. Today, it is down to just 24 MPs, ironically at a time when the neo-liberal economic agenda, which it has opposed so strenuously, has been discredited around the world.

Which way? Bengal CM Buddhadeb, Biman Bose at a politburo meet in Delhi

But the CPI(M)’s efforts to regroup and “reconnect” with the people is proving harder than it had imagined. The electoral downslide in Bengal is ominous. If the cracks in the Left citadel first showed up in last year’s panchayat polls, the Lok Sabha elections paved the way for the recent rout in the municipalities. Worse, the Left Front government found itself coping with two disasters, one natural and one man-made, the aftermath of the Aila cyclone and the Lalgarh conflagration. CPI(M) activists even found themselves fending off physical attacks on their person and homes by Maoists; their leaders faced the wrath of the people while distributing post-Aila relief.

In its review, the CPI(M) has acknowledged that in Bengal, it has learnt no lessons after the panchayat polls. It urges comrades to “study the nature of class relations, particularly in the countryside, and the changes that have come about” so that they can “adopt the correct tactics and organisational steps to mobilise the support of the basic classes and the urban and rural poor”. It cites “increasing inactivity of some members, malpractices and bureaucratic attitude and arrogance”, a “continuing lack of firmness in dealing with those elements who have degenerated” and the fact that the party has all but given up mass mobilisation among the peasantry, the rural poor and workers in the unorganised sector. As a follow-up, the state committee will hold two more meetings on August 1-2 on governance and the organisation.

But all this is easier said than done: in the recent elections, for instance, the party’s national and state leadership wanted to drop Lakshman Seth, the notorious ex-MP from Tamluk, whose actions led to the Nandigram imbroglio, but he was renominated because the district committee insisted he get the ticket again. Seth not only lost, but worse, the message that went out was that the CPI(M), despite its public pronouncements, was not sorry about what had happened in Nandigram.

In Kerala, the bitter, over two-year-long battle between chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan and state CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, the main accused in the SNC Lavalin scam, rages on. The party leadership has tried everything—two years ago, it suspended both men from the politburo for three months, hoping the battle would not be fought publicly. But party veteran Achuthanandan has been unrelenting in his attacks. The party’s dilemma can be summed up in its most recent action—it has expelled Achuthanandan from the politburo for “violating” party discipline but has exhorted him to continue his responsibilities as chief minister. The party can’t afford to do more because he is both a widely respected and popular figure and also a member of the backward and numerically strong Ezhava community.

For the moment, the CM is lying low. His official residence, Cliff House, in Thiruvananthapuram, is nearly deserted. Aides have been told not to encourage graffiti or protest marches that could attract the wrath of the party leadership again. But the CPI(M) has not touched Pinarayi, repeating that the party will fight the case against him politically and legally, stressing that in its view, he is innocent. Former chairperson of the Indian Council of Historical Research, M.G.S. Narayanan, is caustic, “This may suit the cadre, who have to heed to party directives, but not the public...they believe the whistle-blower has been punished and the culprit let off.”

It’s the same in West Bengal where the party, after toying with the idea of changing CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, decided against it. In both instances, the party seems to have realised that there is no percentage in changing chief ministers mid-stream. As the party swings between despair at the work ahead and hope that TMC leader Mamata Banerjee in Bengal and the Congress in Kerala will eventually make mistakes, many leaders believe the comrades should close ranks and target the “class enemies” and the media. Party MP Ramchandra Dome, re-elected from Bengal (but from a new seat, Bolpur, earlier held by Somnath Chatterjee) told Outlook, “We may have made mistakes, but the vicious campaign against us by the media and opposition parties is what has harmed us most.” Privately, most Left leaders acknowledge that rebuilding the party, while remaining rooted to its ideological moorings, will be an uphill task. Conversations with a cross-section of party leaders reveal that violence is so much a part of their lives (the euphemism used is “resistance”) that they don’t see anything wrong in it.

And then they still have to grapple with what central committee member Nilotpal Basu calls the “paradox presented by the recent election results—that the Congress got the votes of both corporate India and the aam aadmi. But this is only a temporary reconciliation—it cannot last. There will be a conflict between the two sooner or later.” Or so the Left hopes, for only that will create the political space it needs to regroup and end its current political isolation.

By Smita Gupta with John Mary in Thiruvananthapuram