Title: WEST BENGAL CPI-M:
Obsolete Ideas Cover For Corruption
Author: Manash Ghosh
Publication: The Statesman
Date: March 12, 2000
ISSUING a showcause to
a former central committee member and one-time depu-ty parliamentary party
leader thrice in two months is an unprecedented event in the an-nals of
the West Bengal CPI-M. It happened to Saifuddin Chowdhury who has incurred
the wrath of the party leadership for becoming a rallying point by demanding
inner-party democracy and transparency in organisational functioning.
The harsh response not
only indicates the leadership's nervousness about the issues raised by
Saifuddin and others like him including Subhas Chakraborty, the state transport
minister, but also attempting to stone-wall reforms so that the party status
quo is maintained without which, the leaders are afraid, the party may
collapse just as in the Soviet Union.
The nervousness is understandable
since the demands for reforms have been made at a time when Jyoti Basu,
the tallest leader and the Left Front government's pillar of stability,
chose to reduce his administrative and political responsibilities and the
new state leadership or the triumvirate - Anil Biswas, Biman Bose and Buddhadev
Bhattacharya - is still striving to have an overriding say in party or
government affairs.
BASU FACTOR
The demands are viewed
as a challenge to their leadership since the kind of reforms being talked
about may endanger their primacy in the party. But changes must come considering
the fast moving socio-economic scenario which Jyoti Basu too has been emphasising
of late. It is his "quiet support" to poli-tical reforms that has emboldened
Saifuddin and Subhas to say that there is no atmosphere for free discussion
or scope for local committees to put questions to the party's highest policy
making bodies - the politburo and the central committee and that the policy
of democratic centralism has been used as an effective tool to impose the
views of the leadership without giving others a chance to express theirs.
This is unalloyed authoritarianism and professed to be against communist
values. Apart from Saifuddin and Subhas, countless others, including many
MPs, want the organisation to be democratised and become transparent so
as to remain politically relevant.
Not even Jyoti Basu was
allowed to have his full say at the politburo and central committee meetings
when he disagreed with the party's decision to deny him the office of Prime
Minister. At subsequent meetings his silence on the issue was taken for
granted, so heavy-handed was the leadership's stonewalling efforts. He
has told his close friends how fed up and suffocated he feels in this atmosphere.
It was not so frustrating when he was the undivided party's state general
secretary in far more difficult times. He is beginning to lose interest
in party politics. Soon after the leadership rejected the prime ministership
offer to Jyoti Basu, they manoeuvred to scuttle the strident demand at
the state committee meeting that the issue be discussed threadbare. Those
who knew the leadership's intentions had warned that the consequence of
denial of free thought and expression would be disastrous but the leadership
managed to postpone the discussion by a month to quell mounting criticism
which had left them cornered. In the process however, was exposed the deep
sense of insecurity that afflicts the new leadership. The criticism snowballed
into a major controversy and the leadership did not want a free discussion
which could percolate to the grassroots. The time gained was utilised to
dilute the issue and put it on the backburner.
When the issue was raked
up later, the leadership defended its decision by quoting the infallibility
theory. The same line was taken when Nepaldev Bhattacharya, a former CPI-M
MP, was expelled on a show of hands. No investigations were conducted,
nor the expelled MP given a chance to defend himself. In the Lok Sabha,
Som-nath Chatterjee, leader of the CPI-M in the House, has to carry out
orders, conveyed on phone, by politburo members Karat and Yechury. Any
failure on his part draws severe reprimand.
OLD MINDSET
Amal Datta (Jyoti Basu's
nephew) who was the party MP for four terms and once the chairman of the
public acc-ounts committee, has been denied nomination since 1996 as he
declined to pay obeisance to the two politburo members and once questioned
the diktat of Buddhadev Bhattacharya. But what sealed his fate was his
questioning the leadership about the identity of the recipients of gas
connections from his MP's quota.
He was never told the
reason for having been denied nomination. To pro-reformers this is authoritarianism
at its worst and meant that Left fundamentalists could run riot in the
party destroying its vitality. The people's party cannot survive authoritarianism.
"Those who cannot see
the beginning of the end are making a grievous mistake. True Marxists must
mend their ways by seeing the writing on the wall," warn Saifuddin and
Subhas who by articulating the reform demands, considered taboo in the
CPI-M, have achieved the impossible. They have triggered a debate which
the party's dogmatic leaders are trying to scuttle in the name of party
discipline, unity and democratic centralism. But the "Jyoti Basu factor"
has provided some leeway. "To save the party we have taken the issues to
the people and want a serious open discussion to take place. The party
can not survive with old mindsets and empty slogans," the two rebel leaders
argue.
The critical questions
of the current debate are: does the leading role of the party mean the
leading role of a few leaders? Does commitment to party mean blind subservience
and unquestioned loyalty to top leaders? Can the ills afflicting the CPI-M
be cured by quickfix solutions that are contemptuous of democratic norms?
Can practices which have brought opacity in organisational functioning,
bred corruption, factionalism and coterie rule be allowed to prevail? Can
the party survive its growing alienation from people because of overdependence
on administrative machinery? Finally, will party members watch and wait
while the leadership's proletarian character is replaced by elitism? Even
the party slogan - dictatorship of the proletariat - is considered outmoded
by the pro-reformers as it runs counter to the principle of democracy.
The problem of the CPI-M
is that the mindset of even its new leaders is steeped in the past when
parliamentary de-mocracy had not struck roots.
CHEATING PARTY
Armed struggle was recommended
for any change of government when the CPI-M was founded in 1964. Nothing
wrong was found in the seizure of power theory. In fact the party went
about achieving this goal through class struggle and by initiating the
land grab movement.
Yet it was through the
ballot that CPI-M won, which should have rendered its seizure of power
theory redundant. Marxist rigidity became more pronounced after the collapse
of the Soviet Union, with the leadership convinced that it came about because
of reforms introduced by the CPSU. Even constructive criticism is viewed
as a "conspiracy" to undermine their authority. If one dares to talk of
justice he is dubbed a "minority" element and is either expelled or rendered
inactive.
On the one hand, the
leadership's political understanding of issues is obsolete. On the other
is their government-oriented activity which accepts the parliamentary system
and through which it wants to bring change. Unlike the CPI which at its
1953 Amritsar party congress accepted peaceful parliamentary struggle as
a means for bringing change, the Marxists are yet to make such a frank
admission. In fact matters of principle have become redundant except to
exercise authority.
And such authoritarianism
can only mean coterie rule and corruption which have become hallmarks of
the CPI-M leadership. At election time the leaders are unable to see when
comrades cheat on the party. Not only in Dum Dum but in Midnapore as well
comrades voted for the BJP although they wore red party badges and campaigned
for the Left Front.
