A CONGRESS OF NO CONSEQUENCE

The recent congress of the CPI(M) in Hyderabad has not helped clarify its position vis-à-vis the Congress Party. Even though the party general secretary Sitaram Yechury succeeded in getting a second consecutive term, his line of an electoral alliance with the Congress to defeat the BJP did not get a full endorsement. The party seems divided on this vital issue, with the Kerala and Tripura units deadest against any truck with the Congress while the West Bengal unit seeks it. The fact that the CPI(M) despite ruling West Bengal for over three decades has now been pushed to the third position, behind the ruling Trinamool Congress and the fast-growing BJP, might explain its need for an external crutch to retain relevance. Of course, the Congress too desperately needs an alliance with the CPI(M), given its shrinking influence in the State which seems to be getting polarised between Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool and the pro-Hindu BJP. The shrinking space for others obliges them to look for alliances. Yet, the Hyderabad meeting seemed to have left the decision on such alliances vague, though the sheer survival would eventually ensure that wherever convenient these will be struck by the local units. The party congress further magnified the divisions between Yechury’s and the former general secretary Prakash Karat’s factions. Neither was willing to resile from his known position for achieving unity. As it is, the relevance of the CPI(M), for that matter, of its much smaller cousin, the CPI, remains in doubt. These parties have shrunk with each successive national and assembly election. In fact, the CPI(M) itself is now a regional party with its following limited to Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal, whereas there is hardly a region where the CPI counts for much. Despite the lack of an electoral following, the CPI(M) manages to hog a disproportionately high media space due to its articulate leadership. Yet neither Yechury nor Karat is a grassroots leader. Old-style ideologues distant from the ground-level realities but still spewing the shibboleths of the failed Marxism-Leninism cannot hope to revive the fortunes of the CPI(M). Championing industrial workers’ rights aggressively made sense at a time when capitalism was a bad word in the lexicon of the working classes. Post-liberalisation, the lot of the working classes has seen a marked improvement and they too now aspire for a better life. Slogans rooted in the early 50s and 60s remain relevant only in the CPI(M) meetings while working classes negotiate better terms and conditions from the corporates who too have been obliged to play by the rule-book due to the growing regulatory constraints. In fact, it was in the hey-day of samajwad that money-bags exploited the working class with impunity in collusion with the ruling politicians. Now, growing awareness about their rights and the enactment of welfare safeguards have equally empowered the working class. As for the other constituency that the Communists pointedly tried to woo, the fact is that despite widespread agrarian distress, the peasantry by and large has remained indifferent to the Communist parties. It is so because the economic factors are largely cancelled out by the strong pulls of caste, religion, region and other tribal and local affinities.

Besides, the CPI (M) has wasted itself trying to preserve its ideological purity. When the opportunity came, it vetoed Jyoti Basu’s ascent to the prime minister’s office, which the then West Bengal Chief Minister himself dubbed ‘a historical blunder’. Again, it refused to join the UPA government in the pursuit of the same ideological virginity in 2004. And again committed a huge blunder by breaking away from the UPA on the question of the civil nuclear deal with the US. With such self-goals, it is not hard to fathom the reason for the growing irrelevance of the Communist movement in a country which still has one-third of its population living below the poverty line. The party’s dogged refusal to take a leaf from the book of the Communist parties of China and Russia, which have changed over the years to become economically most pragmatic, is bound to push it further into the margins of Indian politics. Besides, it has no popular leader. Both Yechury and Karat hardly have a following outside the small factions within the CPI(M). Unless the party inducts fresh blood, which will depend on it shedding its obsession with bookish communism, there is little hope of the CPI(M) regaining any traction in any part of the country. Yes, Karat and Yechury can keep on sparring till kingdom come on the pros and cons of ideological untouchability to the satisfaction of the tiny pockets of sympathizers in the academic and media worlds. But that is it. The party cannot grow unless it changes itself first.