The CPI and the CPI(M) should unite over the next 4-5 years as there is a feeling that the Left movement is in "difficulty

The CPI and the CPI(M) should unite over the next 4-5 years as there is a feeling that the Left movement is in "difficulty

The entire opposition today boycotted the proceedings of the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly over GST implementatio

Prakash Ambedkar, a former MP and grandson of B R Ambedkar, is emerging as the top pick of Left parties for the presidenti

Ruling LDF and opposition UDF in Kerala joined hands in the assembly today to resist the Centre's ban on sale of cattle fo

The wedding ceremony of Kerala CPI legislator Geetha Gopi's daughter on Tuesday attracted attention for all wrong reasons.

CPI today alleged the Central notification banning sale of cattle for slaughter was part of the Sangh Parivar conspiracy f

Left along with other democratic parties like Congress should unite to fight growing communal forces in the country, said

Accusing NDA government of "sabotaging the Constitution", the CPI today said people should "fight to defend the Constituti

Maintaining the CPI(M)-led LDF government's stand against bringing cabinet decisions under the RTI, Kerala Chief Minister

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Kolkata, Jul 24 (PTI) The TMC leadership in West Bengal is keenly watching the deve

Kolkata, Jul 24 (PTI) The TMC leadership in West Bengal is keenly watching the developments in the opposition camp and is

New Delhi, Jul 24 (PTI) Opposition members today created a ruckus in the Lok Sabha, tearing papers and raising slogans in

Kolkata, July 21 (PTI) West Bengal CPI(M) secretary Surya Kanta Mishra today accused Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of not

Chhailengta (Tripura) July 21 (PTI) A school teacher has been killed and five others have been injured in separate clashes

Kolkata, July 20 (PTI) The ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition Congress and CPI(M) were today engaged in a blame

New Delhi, Jul 19 (PTI) The government today assured Parliament that it was not trying impose any language "on anybody" in

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New Delhi, Jul 18 (PTI) China's stand on the recent Dokalam

panel

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New Delhi, Jul 18 (PTI) China's stand on the recent Dokalam

New Delhi, Jul 12 (PTI) The CPI today stressed the need for "reunification" of the country's Communist movement on the bas

I think Right and Left have always been a very inadequate description even of political activity.

...The right wing and the left wing, as many will know, were descriptions first defined by the way members sat in the French National Assembly of 1789-91: the nobles in the wing to the right, the common people to the left, of the president of the Assembly. In course of time, as parliamentary democracy unfolded, the left wing came to be referred to as “a group or party favouring radical, reforming or socialist views”, as the Oxford Dictionary succinctly tried to put it...

...But from all I can surmise from a distance, for many among the intelligentsia, the bonding with manush (human being), to use the more modern term for Tagore’s janagana (people), has not been lost.

I cannot make out how exactly today’s manush, in turn, relates to Calcutta’s intelligentsia. But one can see how the state’s political apparatchiki can take on the teachers, the doctors, the poets, the artists on the assumption that connections between such people and Manush have simply vanished.

...the Right-Left dichotomy is old and difficult to dislodge — but why not redefine Right and Wrong from the standpoint of social justice and responsibility, and in that light redefine Crime and Punishment in the Indian Penal Code? That may yet set the cat among the pigeons — of all colours.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee in the Telegraph:

In 1964, when the CPI split and the CPI(M) was born, the latter, at least in West Bengal, got the giant share of the party’s resources save the intellectual ones. The intellectual cream remained with the CPI. The CPI(M) was born under the sign of mediocrity. Its leadership promoted anti-intellectualism and the cult of mediocrity. This, it was assumed, would bring the CPI(M) closer to the people. Promode Dasgupta, the redoubtable head of the party apparatus in West Bengal, was the driving force behind this kind of thinking. Under his successor, Anil Biswas, this tendency was aggravated. Biswas personally controlled educational institutions and intellectual organizations. This brand of nepotism alienated real talent. Many came under the flag of the CPI(M) lured by the loaves and fishes of office, but numbers did not make for quality. The moral and intellectual high ground that communists had once enjoyed in West Bengal gradually came to be eroded. Today, the CPI(M) stares at a moral and intellectual vacuum....

...The transformation of society will never occur through the brutal use of State power and the deployment of terror through cadre. It demands a more sensitive handling by a leadership that is confident enough to be broadminded and open.

Read the full piece: Cult of Mediocrity. And staying with West Bengal,  MJ Akbar has a word of caution:

Nature, and political nature, abhors a vacuum. The space vacated by the CPI(M) retreat is being visibly occupied: those who vote are with Mamata Banerjee; those who don't vote in rural Bengal are gravitating around the Maoists...

...It would also be unwise to forget the game-changer of the 1960s, the riots. Violence is an infectious plague, and demographic tensions always have a fuse in the tail. Bengalis believe that they are not communal. No one is communal, except in that brief moment of madness when the civilized mind crumbles.

The drama of Bengal is full of actors making powerful speeches. We need a plot, very quickly.