2008-06-07
'Despite many crests and ebbs people will finally emerge victorious and go in for a classless society free from exploitation of any form', Jyoti Basu wrote recently. The long winding path towards socialism is not without defeats, which are ideally taken as opportunities to deeply introspect and learn from mistakes.
The setback suffered by the CPI(M) in the recently held Panchayat elections in West Bengal have thrown up a plethora of reasons that call for introspection. If we consider the grand alliance of the opposition starting from the ultra-left to the religious fundamentalists including the media on the issue of Nandigram, there is a striking similarity to the build up to the fall of the first communist led state ministry in Kerala under EMS way back in the 1959. The Goebbelsian propaganda funded by imperialists, neo-fascists and petro-dollars demonizing Communism that has reached a fervent pitch in West Bengal is neither unfamiliar, nor unexpected. The political machinations around the Mandal Commission successfully reinforced the foundation of caste-based politics in the Hindi heartland, and the Left is still trying to struggle and find ways to address this question. Similarly the propaganda around the Sachar committee report has the potential to become the bedrock of identity politics in many areas. While standing up firmly for affirmative action, the CPI(M) in West Bengal has successfully demonstrated its resilience in upholding the class agenda through its struggles and movements. These struggles made people conscious enough not to surrender to either caste-based or religion-based politics so far, though such forces are constantly at play.
Two new features emerged from the Panchayat elections. Admitted and discussed openly, these were the questions around land acquisition for the industrialization drive and the erosion of communist values with dilution of politics. These admissions are the results of initial discussion and brainstorming, and the detailed analysis will come only after these are validated by the activists and organizers at the grassroots level, directly interfacing with the people. Our aim is to try to go deeper and see why these two features surfaced as important factors.
Question of Land Acquisition for Industrialization Drive
The poor results in the Purba (East) Medinipur and South 24 Paraganas districts, and also[1] Singur region can partially be ascribed to this question. We shall see why the question appeared, and see what the party had in mind while going forward with the
industrialization drive.
The Pol-org report document On Left-Led Governments: The Experience and their Role in the Present Situation Part II adopted in the last CPI(M) congress argues, "The people of the three Left bastions cannot be told to wait indefinitely for their problems to be addressed till a change takes place at the all-India level." (Para 17)
The 22nd West Bengal State Conference of the CPI (M) adopted a resolution, Left Front Government, Panchayats, Municipalities and Our Tasks, which lays out the reason for the industrialization drive by asserting, "The last two State conferences emphasized the need to increase industrial investments in order to generate employment. With the objective of increasing employment opportunities, greater initiatives towards industrialization were called for on the basis of the industrial policy document of the LF government adopted in 1994." (Para 1.7)
It is amply clear that the understanding of the CPI(M) on industrialization drive in West Bengal was primarily to derive employment, a rightful growing aspiration of the people over the last couple of decades. But we would like to point to two fundamental occlusions in the ways in which this question has been addressed.
Under the neo-liberal regime the prices of agricultural inputs have gone up, with simultaneous decrease in the prices of agricultural products due to cuts in subsidies, dwindling public investment in agriculture, systematic destruction of the Public Distribution System, opening up of the economy and import of agricultural products from the so called advanced countries where subsidies in agriculture are still the rule in practice; though these same countries preach otherwise. As a result, peasants are getting squeezed from both ends, and for many, agriculture is becoming an increasingly unviable occupation.
With the success of land reforms which released huge amount of productive power a couple of decades back, the land holding patterns in West Bengal got skewed towards small land possessions historically. West Bengal's agriculture is based on small peasant ownership of land. Small and marginal households have ownership holdings which account for 84 per cent of the area owned. They account for 97.8 per cent of the households. With the number of family members dependent on the same piece of land rising, agriculture is becoming further unviable for the small and marginal peasants and farm labourers in West Bengal. All of these have led to surplus labour in the rural agrarian economy and industrialization was arguably conceived primarily to shift this surplus labour out of agriculture into industry. This was substantially argued in the theoretical quarterly of the CPI(M) from West Bengal, Marxbadi Path (November 2004, Bamfront Sarkarer Kajer Obhimukh (Direction of the Tasks in Front of the Left Front Government) by Nirupam Sen) and the daily organ of the CPI(M) Ganashakti (21 June, 2005, Bikolper Sandhane (In Search of Alternative) by Nirupam Sen).
The communist led West Bengal government did try to tread a left alternative path due to which West Bengal has a significant share of small and tiny enterprises in the country. According to the latest data, the number of unorganized small manufacturing units in the state is 27,50,000 which is the highest in the country and accounts for over 15 per cent of the total number of such units nationwide. But this is evidently not enough to absorb the surplus labour out of agriculture.
The first occlusion lies in the fact that this primary reason for the industrialization drive was never mentioned in the political resolutions of the CPI(M). The resolutions did mention generating employment as the reason for industrialization, but never mentioned specifically that the need for industrialization was to absorb the surplus labour in the rural agrarian economy, and that industrialization needs to benefit this class of people. This led to blurring of the objective of industrialization in the consciousness of the cadre base, leading to confusion and fundamentally wrong understanding and conclusions. Thus the class outlook of the party on this aspect of industrialization got transformed into rhetorical arguments, which was evident from the assertion, "The possibility of becoming an industry-driven economy from an agriculture-driven one emerged in the State." (Para 1.11 of the 22nd West Bengal State Conference of CPI (M) adopted a resolution, Left Front Government, Panchayats, Municipalities and Our Tasks). The drive for industrialization was thought of as a revolutionary task for the CPI(M), without taking on board the specific purpose and limitations of the kind of industrialization that is being attempted. This leads to the other aspect of the incorrect understanding.
The concepts of industrialization that seem to have dominated the understanding within the CPI(M) are the two distinct kinds of industrialization that happened in Bengal. The first was in colonial Bengal and the second was a part of post-independent India's initial phase of planned public sector led development. In colonial Bengal, pockets of primarily jute and engineering sector industries developed. These were quite labour intensive, and absorbed a certain amount of surplus labour in that period from the hinterland. This led to the formation of the industrial proletariat and formed the basis of trade union movements. The contradictions and problems of colonial industrialization are well documented and we need not go into that here except to point out that these industries were in the nature of' enclaves'. The second example is of the development of Durgapur Steel Plant and the subsequent development of the Durgapur industrial belt which not only absorbed surplus labour from agriculture but also created a huge social infrastructure that included several large townships, hospitals, health centers, schools, colleges and even an engineering college. At some point in time the total number of direct employees in Durgapur Steel Plant itself was hovering above 33,000, which became less than half with phases of "modernizations" in technology to remain "market competitive". In spite of its limits, in the long period of post independence deindustrialization in West Bengal, Durgapur stood out as an exemplar in many ways. This exemplar informs the perceived benefits of industrialization reflected in the CPI(M)'s West Bengal State Conference documents, which does not seem to have come to terms with the diametrically opposite scenario now – the question of industrialization in an overall paradigm of neoliberalism. The Haldia Petrochemicals initiative, though with a large government stake, should have made this matter clear to some extent, but it seemed to have failed to drive in the point into the collective consciousness.
The policy documents of the CPI(M) did not address the basic observation that the form of industrialization possible under the neoliberal order can create very little direct employment. The jobless character of this kind of industrialization is evident from the fact that between 1991 and now, the number of persons employed in organized manufacturing has remained constant in absolute terms, notwithstanding a nearly 8 percent annual growth rate in manufacturing output. In China in the post-TVE period, despite a phenomenal twelve percent growth rate in industrial output, the total industrial employment has hardly increased at all. To quote Prof. Prabhat Patnaik (In the aftermath of Nandigram), "Proponents of grande industry typically point to 'downstream employment generation', i.e. to the fact that while not much direct employment may be generated by such industry, the indirect employment created in activities spawned by such industry is considerable. But this argument is no more than a pie in the sky for the dispossessed peasants. Besides, there are two problems with this argument: first, it does not take into account the fact that even while employment is created directly and indirectly by grande industry, there is a simultaneous destruction of employment in activities supplanted by such industry and its off-shoots.
Unless the output of such industry is exported or substitutes for imports, or unless real wages can increase sufficiently with labour productivity to expand aggregate demand, a possibility ruled out by the very existence of large labour reserves, the net employment generated through the creation of grande industry may well be negative. Secondly, we have to look at the effects not just of a one-shot shift from traditional to grande industry, but of a sequence of shifts, of technological progress over time. When we do so, the direct and indirect employment creating capacity of the grande industry sector as a whole appears even more negligible."
The ideological documents glossed over these plain facts. Even more alarming was the failure to mention that this kind of industrialization is not by choice but because of compulsions. This second fundamental error in understanding led to high handedness in the land acquisition processes, as the emerged consciousness inside the party took the task of industrialization as a part of revolutionary class struggle to transform the agrarian society into an industrial one. The argument for industrialization from a tactical domain got transformed into an argument in the strategic domain. The affected peasants, who are not homogenous in terms of class background and political affiliations, did have some kind of consciousness about the nature of jobless industrialization, and naturally they resisted.
Moreover one reason why the compensation, especially for Singur, was resisted lay in the uncertainty and volatility of financial instruments in the current economic scenario that by default would emerge as alternative source of income because of the nature of monetary compensation that was offered. In a scenario where even speculators are shifting operations from the financial market to commodities, it is a gross mistake to force the peasants to accept financial instruments in lieu of their land which even predatory speculators find unreliable. This indicates a distinct disconnect between the consciousness of the peasants and the mass leaders who work among them. This disconnection leads to deeper questions of eroding communist values and dilution of class-based politics.
Question of Eroding Communist Values and Dilution of Politics
The Central Committee of the CPI(M) adopted a resolution in 1994, "On the Role of the West Bengal Left Front Government in the Context of the New Economic Policies" which clearly points out, "The existence of the Left Front government over a long period in a stable manner after winning successive elections also posed the question of how this government must address the issue of economic and industrial development.
While projecting alternative policies and mobilizing the people for the same, the Left Front government is also responsible to the people to provide them with the minimum needs with regard to their livelihood and standards of living. It has to deliver results as compared to other state governments working within the capitalist system. It cannot ignore the questions of development. But when we pursue policies for development/industrialization, the priorities set out by a Left-led government for serving the interests of the working people and the poorest sections must be evident in our implementation, whatever be the constraints. That shows the difference between governments run by us and other bourgeois party governments." (Authors' emphasis)
As we have seen and experienced, the ideological documents were very well defined, but could not get transformed into the praxis because of some fundamental errors in understanding as we have seen earlier.
It is also important to note the current resolution of the state party conference (Left Front Government, Panchayats, Municipalities and Our Tasks) has missed this emphasis on the class orientation of the drive for industrialization. The priority sectors of course were correctly identified, "If adequate attention is not paid to the spheres of education, health, provisioning of drinking water and nutrition, the class orientation of our work is bound to get disrupted." (Para 1.12 of the 22nd West Bengal State Conference of CPI (M) adopted a resolution, Left Front Government, Panchayats, Municipalities and Our Tasks) The task of course is a daunting challenge posed to the state, succinctly put by Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, "As the tax-gross domestic product ratio of the Centre declined over the 1990s (the States did much better in this regard), the Centre not only cut back its own expenditure, especially rural development expenditure, but passed on the burden of its fiscal crisis to the shoulders of the State governments, through reduced transfers to the States and exorbitant interest rates (even exceeding the rate of growth of Net State Domestic Products) on its loans to the States. States thus became the victims of this fiscal squeeze, and West Bengal was no exception. The Centre used this fiscal squeeze in turn to force the States to fall in line behind its pursuit of a neoliberal agenda." (Frontline Cover Story, Left in government) The document of the West Bengal state conference continues, "The importance of considering the fight against poverty as a political struggle in order to achieve human development is not being appreciated at every level. Our negligence or weaknesses in this regard will only help the reactionary conspiracy of alienating the poorer sections in urban and rural areas from us. In today's circumstances and given the nature of the political attacks we are facing, this task has assumed immense importance." (Para 1.12 of the 22nd West Bengal State Conference of CPI (M) adopted a resolution, Left Front Government, Panchayats, Municipalities and Our Tasks). It is also evident that the leadership is aware of not only the negligence and weakness in this regard, but also the possible threat of alienating the class allies.
This process of alienation started long back and was demonstrated by the analysis of 2006 assembly election results by Yogendra Yadav in "How West Bengal Voted":
Shifting social base of the Left:
"If there is one reason this election will be remembered in political terms, it is for the significant shift in the social base of political preferences. This election showed the first signs of a major shift in the support of the Left, form the 'old Left' support base of the rural poor and urban working classes to that the 'new Left' support among the rural well-to-do and the urban middle and upper classes. Popular media saw it as a shift from the rural to the urban voters. The final results do not support such a simple reading. The Left Front did gain among the urban constituencies, especially among the towns outside Greater Kolkata region, but its vote share did not decline in the rural areas. We begin to understand the changing social base better if we divide the urban and the rural areas into various social classes. The urban areas show overall increase in Left vote but most impressive gains come from the professional salaried classes including all kinds of white collar workers. In the rural areas the Left has suffered most serious losses among the agricultural and allied workers, barely maintained its position among the farmers and tenants and made massive gains among the rural salaried class. In this election the Left seems to have contained its losses among its old vote while gaining new social groups. But this move towards a 'catch all' party is likely to strain the Left's core votes in the future elections.
There are other changes too that indicate that the left is moving towards a 'catch all' profile. It used to enjoy a big lead among women voters. That has been significantly reduced this time. The Left vote, like those of most parties supported by the poor, used to have a pyramid like shape for different educational groups: wide support among the least educated and narrow support among the highly educated. This profile has given way to a more flat support this time as the Left has gained more among the educated and lost among the illiterate voters of the state. Similarly the Left has gained among the upper caste voters, while retaining its support among the OBCs and the dalits. The only worrisome news for the Left here is the loss of more than 10 percentage points among the Muslim voters, largely to the Congress. The good news for the Left comes from the analysis of different age groups. The new Left is the favourite of the young voters". This worrisome phenomenon had a silver lining with Yogendra Yadav arguing, "The Left made impressive gains among the young, mainly at the expense of the Trinamul Congress" as there was a 11.3% swing towards left in the age group of 18-25 years. The chances of retaining this gain seems to be difficult as this age group has been the primary force demanding employment, and the government has been luring them with the carrot ofindustrialization for last two decades, and it is only for the first time now that this age group has tasted the carrot, which has turned out to be not as sweet as they hadexpected!
Prof. Prabhat Patnaik analyzed this shift in support base of the Left in 2006, "The overall neoliberal dispensation in the country thus forces a sharpening of the contradiction between the urban middle classes and the basic classes of the Left (peasants and workers)." (Frontline Cover Story, Left in government) On the contrary, the CPI(M) State Conference resolution took the mandate as a vindication of their programme, which had a clear accent on industrialization, "The massive electoral success of the Left Front in the 14th Assembly elections held in June 2006 vindicated the policy direction of the Left Front government and the positive impact it had in eliciting mass support."(Para 1.3) In the context of the sharpened contradictions, the Left needed to ideally be dictated by the policy and programme of the CPI(M), and not the state government. While government has little choice, the CPI(M) needed to assume a role to go back to masses to raise their collective consciousness about the limitations of this kind of parliamentary democracy and ruling state governments. The dialectical relation of the party and the government it is participating in, needed to come to fore. Long back, the Central Committee of the CPI(M) adopted a resolution in 1994, "On the Role of the West Bengal Left Front Government in the Context of the New Economic Policies, "….the people should constantly be told that such industrialization and expansion of the private sector cannot solve the basic problems and class exploitation will continue and increase with the overall liberalisation policy of the Centre".
While enumerating the experience of the fall of the first Communist led state government in Kerala, the then General Secretary of the undivided CPI, Ajoy Ghosh pointed out the identical primary motive behind the participation in governance. "Frankly placing before the people the difficulties and limitations under which it had to work, the Kerala government proclaimed that it could not build socialism in Kerala, nor even lay the basis for it, but would strive to carry out what the Congress Party itself had always declared but had not implemented. In other words, its effort would be to carry out those democratic reforms which the national movement as a whole had accepted as desirable and necessary". Ajoy Ghosh makes the point very clear: "the formation of the Communist Ministry, headed by Comrade E.M.S.Namboodiripad, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of India, was hailed with joy by workers and peasants all over the country. Democratic-minded people in all parties, including those in the Congress, welcomed it, hoping that the measures taken by the Kerala government would be emulated by other State Ministries and that the movement for democratic reforms would receive a powerful impetus....".
The difficulties and limitations under neoliberalism and the overall direction of center-state relationships have only increased. It is important to recognize this and place it before the people as an ongoing exercise, so as to achieve the stated objectives of participating in governments mentioned above.
A fresh look at the changes in the party programme and the recent state conference and Party congress resolutions demonstrate another crucial difference in understanding.
Para 112 of the previous party programme stated, "the Party will utilise all the opportunities that present themselves of bringing into existence governments pledged to carry out a modest programme of giving immediate relief to the people. (authors' emphasis) The formation of such governments will give great fillip to the revolutionary movement of the working people and thus help the process of building the democratic front. It, however, would not solve the economic and political problems of the nation in any fundamental manner. The party, therefore, will continue to educate the mass of the people on the need for replacing the present bourgeois-landlord state and government headed by the big bourgeoisie even while utilising all opportunities for forming such governments of a transitional character which give immediate relief to the people and thus strengthen the mass movement."
Para 7.17 of the updated party programme has to say, "the Party will utilise the opportunities that present themselves of bringing into existence governments pledged to carry out a programme of providing relief to the people and strive to project and implement alternative policies within the existing limitations. (authors' emphasis) The formation of such governments will strengthen the revolutionary movement of the working people and thus help the process of building the people's democratic front. It, however, would not solve the economic and political problems of the nation in any fundamental manner. The Party, therefore, will continue to educate the mass of the people on the need for replacing the present bourgeois-landlord State and government headed by the big bourgeoisie even while utilizing opportunities for forming such governments in the states or the Centre, depending on the concrete situation, and thus strengthen the mass movement."
The crucial difference in tactical line was, in addition to the relief the state governments led by the communists were expected to project and implement alternative governance within the existing limitations; whereas the recent party documents point out the infeasibility of this argument substantially.
The party documents reiterate the point made by Prof. Prabhat Patnaik of sharpened contradictions, and increased limitations of the state governments the communists are participating in. To cite a few examples, "Economic liberalization is leading to the erosion of State Government's autonomy in newer ways"(Para 1.5 of the 22nd West Bengal State Conference of CPI (M) adopted a resolution, Left Front Government, Panchayats, Municipalities and Our Tasks). "The Central government's policies have led to further erosion of states' autonomy and capacity to raise resources. The debt burden is mounting.
The highly unequal share of resources between the Centre and the states and the
squeeze imposed on public investment and allocation of resources had an adverse impact on our state governments." (Para 38 On Left-Led Governments: The Experience and their Role in the Present Situation Part II). "In the present situation, the reality is that the state governments are severely handicapped as far as social sector expenditure and welfare measures are concerned. In West Bengal we are struggling to provide adequate resources for expansion and upgrading of educational and health systems." (Para 40 On Left-Led Governments: The Experience and their Role in the Present Situation Part II).
The dilution of politics at the grassroots level can be traced to this failure to identify the correct tactical line for the state governments, where the communists are participating. The concrete conditions were contrary to the policy formulation at the programmatic level at the top. This ultimately led to the now famous slogan in Bengal left circles, "Bamfront sarkar juge juge dorkar" (The Left Front Government is needed in every era).
The existence and continuation of the Left Front Government in West Bengal became a revolutionary task for the CPI(M), and almost became the objective of all party activism. Once again the tactical line got transformed into a strategic objective at the grassroots level consciousness. Industrialization initiatives to NGO-ization of politics by a section of the left – everything was geared towards an objective to achieve the slogan, relegating the extra parliamentary struggle towards PDR in the back burner for a long time now. Without a revolutionary objective or the class agenda in the forefront, the CPI(M) activists were left in a peculiar situation and the revolutionary zeal was replaced by a zeal to remain in governance of the state for ever. The role and agenda of the government got transformed into the role and agenda of the party activists, and the CPI(M) as a party gradually gave the control away to the government. There can be organizational dynamics inside the state party playing a decisive role helping this transformation, which is beyond the scope of this article, but it is clearly evident that the contradictory policy orientation at the highest level did play a role in this too.
The role of the party as defined by the Pol-org report document On Left-Led Governments: The Experience and their Role in the Present Situation Part II adopted in the last CPI(M) congress, "The Party has to constantly devise ways by which the government can pursue pro-people policies and undertake measures which can meet the minimum needs of the people while also helping the Party to project alternative policies at the national level."(Para 50). (Authors' emphasis) There is an immediate need to critically examine the role of the Left Front government on this count, as the expectation of a ripple effect of left democratic alternative to help build mass movements elsewhere did not materialize even after three decades of its existence.
The role of the party here to use the government as an instrument towards the PDR with innovative left agenda also needs to be examined, while the introspection is on. The question of what would constitute a vision of 'Left alternative governance' is crucial. As ardent CPI (M) supporters, we feel that these questions need to be raised and addressed. The idea of this exposition, while analyzing the major questions that have surfaced after the setback in the recently concluded Panchayat elections, was primarily to define what might be termed as revisionist tendencies in the current context, and the source of such revisionist tendencies. The CPI (M) had successfully fought against these deviations since its birth, and the battle is clearly not over. We are hopeful that we shall again successfully wage struggle against revisionist tendencies and social democratic and social liberal paradigms. We hope a course correction by the state government is already on. We also repose our trust in the party leadership to lead the struggle against dilution of our political agenda in the face of the neoliberal onslaught.
"Before the final victory of the proletariat there will be defeats...and again there will be victories.... followed by consecutive victories and defeats...till the working class learns how to be a ruling class."(Mao Tse-Tung)
References:
Jyoti Basu, 2008, Letter to Comrade Surjeet, People's Democracy
Ajay Ghosh, 2007, Kerala, The Marxist
Prabhat Patnaik, 2006, The Left in Government, Frontline
Prabhat Patnaik, 2007, In the Aftermath of Nandigram, Pragoti
Yogendra Yadav, 2006, How West Bengal Voted
CPI (M) Documents:
Left Front Government, Panchayats, Municipalities and Our Tasks [Document adopted at the 22nd West Bengal State Conference of CPI (M)]
On Left-Led Governments: The Experience and their Role in the Present Situation [Pol-org Report adopted at the 19th Congress of the CPI (M)]
Communist Party of India (Marxist), Programme, (Updated At The Special Conference At Thiruvananthapuram in October 2000)
Communist Party of India (Marxist), Programme, (Adopted at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of India in November 1964)
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