CPI(M) for immediate creation of Third Alternative,Indian Politics, News Analysis, India News Online

The 19th party congress of the CPI(M) ended in Coimbatore on Thursday, April 3, with a call for immediate creation of a third alternative “which can offer the people a policy platform dis¬tinct from that of the two mainstream political forces led by the Congress and the BJP.” Addressing the concluding session of the party congress, general secretary Prakash Karat, who was earlier re-elected for his second term at the head of the party, said a new front is required to combat the BJP and the Congress.

Attacking both the BJP and the Congress, Karat said there was a need to ideologically, politically and electorally counter “communal forces” and “the flag-bearers of pro-Americanism” in the economic and foreign policy arena.” Putting in prospective the party’s support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) at present, Karat said the CPI(M) had taken a tactical position after the last elections to support the Congress-led UPA as it was seen as an effective way to check the BJP’s forward movement. He said it is time now for a relook at this tactic.

Virtually trigerring the campaign for replacing the UPA government at the Centre by a third alternative, non-BJP, non-Congress, to be led by the Left, the CPI(M) general secretary said that the party leadership will resist the attempts to make India what he called “a junior ally” of the United States. A couple of days earlier, the leadership had informed the party congress that the party will under no conditions accept the Government wrapping up the India-specific safeguards agreement and approaching the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for a waiver - the two conditions India has to meet before the George Bush Administration takes the Indo-US nuclear deal to the US Congress.

CPI(M) to try for broad-based Third Alternative

Apart from collaborating with constituent parties of the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) on common man-oriented issues such as the price rise, observers say that the CPI(M) has also decided to open channels of communication with some of the UPA constituents like Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi’s DMK. The party’s thinking appears to be that some of the UPA constituents want to avoid the anti-incumbency factor resulting from their being constituents of the UPA gov¬ernment at the Centre. Observers say that elements in the CPI(M) believe that this will ensure that non-Congress and non-BJP parties have a larger role in the formation of the new government at the Centre after the Lok Sabha elections which have to be held by May next year at the latest. This may defeat the effort of the two main national parties, the Congress and the BJP, to be at the core of the alliance which will rule the coun¬try after the elections.

Old guard retire : Jyoti Basu, Surjeet out of the politburo

An era came to a close in the CPI(M) at Coimbatore with the party finally accepting the plea of two founding members of the politburo, Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Jyoti Basu, to be allowed to relinquish their membership of the body. The two leaders have been members of the politburo for 44 years since the party came into existence after a split in the then united Communist Party of India. Jyoti Basu will, however, continue as a special invi¬tee to the politburo while Surjeet will remain an invitee to the central committee.

Giving indications of the party’s changed priorities, two of the three new members of the politburo are from West Bengal, and the third from Kerala. For the first time, the party will not have any member from the northern states in the politburo. Apart from Jyoti Basu and Surjeet, R. Umanath has also been replaced in the politburo.

In what could mark the end of an era, the CPI(M) party con¬gress on Thursday acceded to the request of Jyoti Basu and Harkishan Singh Surjeet, the two Marxist stalwarts who built the CPI(M) since the CPI split of 1964, to be relieved of membership of the party’s highest decision making bodies. Prakash Karat was expectedly elected party general secretary for a second term.

Surjeet, 92, and Basu, 94, were made special invitees to the central committee and politburo, respectively. Basu would au¬tomatically be in the central committee, while Surjeet, now out of the politburo, would be among the six invitees to the central committee. The two leaders have been ailing for a long time. R Umanath, a veteran trade union leader from Tamil Nadu, has also retired from the PB. But he would continue to be in the CC.

Otherwise, observers say, the changes are on expected lines. The 15-member PB has three new members - CITU general secretary Mohammad Amin, West Bengal Industry Minister Nirupam Sen, and Kerala Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.

The party has also inducted 17 new CC members, including Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Issac and Rajya Sabha MP and CITU leader Tapan Sen. CC’s overall strength, including one vacancy, now is 87. It includes three new women members. The total strength of women in CC is 11, a dismal figure for a party at the forefront of demanding 33% reservation for women.

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Basu, Surjeet made CPI(M) a force

Ninety-two year-old Harkishan Singh Surjeet played an active role in the formation of the UPA government.

Now moving in and out of hospital, it is Jalandhar-born Surjeet who single handedly brought the CPI(M) into the national firmament and became an undisputed kingmaker whenever the Con¬gress and the BJP lacked the necessary numbers to form the government alone. Be it VP Singh’s government of 1989, the United Front government of 1996 or UPA of 2004, Surjeet was the archi¬tect.

If he had his way, the country would have seen the first Left Prime Minister in Jyoti Basu in 1996. But CPI(M)’s central committee and politburo opposed his proposal. Even Basu later said that the decision not to join the government was a “his¬toric blunder”.

While Surjeet was making waves in Delhi, Jyoti Basu was making news for different reasons. Repeated victories in assembly elections made Basu an enigma in Indian politics and a role model for the entire Left.

Successive victories in West Bengal, a trend that continues even now, provided the CPI(M) with an immense credibility. Credit goes to Basu, who after being part of two United Front governments of West Bengal in the 1960s was instrumental in the formation of the first Left Front government in the state in 1977.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee might view agriculture as a burden but it was Basu who carried out land reforms and ensured that rural Bengal never fails the Left. It is hard to imagine that Nandigram happened in the same state.

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No alliance with the Congress

The political resolution adopted by the CPI(M) party con¬gress said that there will be no alliance or united front with the Congress. At the same time, the party said that it is com¬mitted to isolating and defeating the BJP.

“The party differentiates between the BJP and the Congress, considering the latter as a secular bourgeois party, though it vacillates when the communal forces take the offensive. The party will continue to adopt tactics for isolating and defeating the BJP. It will not enter into any alliance or united front with the Congress,” the political resolution said.

Briefing the media, politburo member S Ramachandran Pillai said the tactical line will remain that the CPI(M) would only offer support and not get into any alliance in any state led by any regional party, of which the Congress is a part. “The al¬liances and understanding with regional parties are only to take care of certain electoral tasks,” Pillai added.

Obviously concerned about a 7.73 percent attrition rate among its members since the last party congress, and its continu¬ing failure to make any serious headway in states other than Kerala, West Bengal, Tripura, Tamil Nadu and Andhra, the politi¬cal resolution prescribed priority to “developing the party’s independent strength and expanding its political base”, by taking up “class and mass struggles to develop movements and struggles”.

The other points in the political resolution that was adopt¬ed included that the CPI(M) should take the initiative to form relationships with “all non-Congress secular parties” for “strug¬gles on common issues” that would help build the third alterna¬tive, and evolving a “clear perspective for building movements on the platforms of Left and Democratic forces”.

Pillai said the party was in the process of talking to regional parties with which it has good relations like the DMK in Tamil Nadu, TDP in Andhra Pradesh, the SP and the RJD to begin efforts to have the third alternative in place.

UPA unable to confront Hindutva forces

Through a resolution, the CPI(M) expressed resentment over the inability of the UPA Government to confront Hindutva forces. The party congress demanded legislation to deal with communal violence and to provide compensation to the victims and their rehabilitation.

A resolution adopted at the Congress observed: “It is most unfortunate, therefore, that the UPA government, whose formation was welcomed and made possible by secular forces, has been unable to confront the Hindutva forces and, on the contrary, has adopted a vacillating position.”

This position was seen in the government’s unwillingness to punish those guilty of complicity in communal rioting and carnage and to enable access to justice, rehabilitation and compensation for the victims. The government should draft a Bill and get it passed at the earliest to deal with communalism and ensure speedy delivery of compensation to the victims.

One of the four major areas of focus at the party congress was that of sparing no effort at isolating the BJP-RSS combine, general secretary Prakash Karat said while briefing reporters.

The failure of the Congress state governments had enabled the BJP to win the elections in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and retain power in Gujarat.

The resolution on Hindutva forces sought to draw a contrast between the approaches of the Centre and the Left front govern¬ments in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala in handling communalism. It said the party congress took pride in the record of these governments in maintaining communal harmony despite the fact that the communal and fundamentalist forces were actively engaged in fomenting tension.

At the same time, the BJP-ruled states witnessed attacks on religious minorities and government programmes were saffronised.

The resolution conveyed displeasure over the Maharashtra govern¬ment not punishing those held guilty by the Sri Krishna Commis¬sion in the 1992 and 1993 riots.

The resolution condemned that the attacks on the CPI(M) offices and family members of party leaders. The RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] has gone on a hate and murder campaign against CPI (M) cadres in Kerala. These attacks constitute nothing less than an attack on democracy itself and must be condemned and resisted by all democratic sections of our society,” the resolu¬tion said.

States should get more financial powers : CPI(M)

In a bid to win over regional parties to the third alterna¬tive platform, the CPI(M) demanded that the states should be given more financial powers. The party said that the states have been denied access to government market borrowings at a lower rate, resulting in reduction in the states’ share in total market borrowings from fifty per cent in the 1950s to 15 per cent at present. A resolution on Centre-State relations adopted at the Coimbatore congress said that the party pledges to reach out to states ruled by parties other than the Congress and the BJP to put pressure on the Centre to discuss these issues urgently keeping in mind the setting up of the 13th Finance Commission. Separately, the party congress gave a call for a mass movement across states in support of a radical restructuring of Centre- State relations.

In a bid to reach out to the political parties which are out of power like the Samajwadi Party, the Indian National Lok Dal and the Telugu Desam, the CPI(M) said that price rise will be on the top of its agenda. A resolution demanded that the UPA Gov¬ernment take four measures immediately to check the price rise. These are : (1) strengthen the public distribution system (PDS), take back the cut in grain allocation and include 15 essential commodities like pulses and edible oils in the PDS. (2) Ban futures trading in 25 agricultural commodities; (3) cut customs and excise duties on oil; and (4) take action against hoarders and strengthen the Essential Commodities Act.

The CPI(M) said that if its four demands to check the price rise were not met, it would launch a nation-wide agitation any time after April 15 on the issue. Briefing mediapersons on the party’s stand, politburo member Sitaram Yechury said UPA allies would be consulted while launching the nationwide agitation against the Government. He said several parties within the UPA are willing to speak out against what he called “the drift” in government policies, which led to the price rise. The CPI(M) congress said the price rise is a direct outcome of the policies of the Government including neglect of agriculture, weakening of the public procurement system, virtual destruction of the public distribution system and allowing domestic and foreign corporate players to freely procure and trade in foodgrains and other agricultural commodities.

Nuclear deal unacceptable

The CPI(M) made it clear at the Coimbatore congress that while the party is not seeking to destabilise the UPA Government, the nuclear deal with the United States is unacceptable to the Left. Politburo member Sitaram Yechury, addressing the Coimba¬tore Bar Association on Tuesday, April 1, said that the deal in all respects was not only dangerous, but also unacceptable and untenable.

Speaking to mediapersons on March 30, Yechury said the CPI(M) will take a definite call on the Indo-US nuclear deal by April-end when the UPA government will convey its considered position.

“We have asked them not to get the deal ratified by the IAEA board of governors because the deal will be on autopilot from the moment that is done. The government will be taking a risk if it goes ahead with it,” said Yechury.

Asked specifically if it meant that the Left would finally withdraw support to the government, Yechury said : “Akalmand ko ishara kaafi hai” (the wise can take a hint),

Praise for West Bengal industrial policy

The party congress praised the West Bengal government policy on industrialisation, but asked it to tread with caution. At the same time, the party described the UPA Government’s policy on special economic zones as “total madness”, saying that it would seek amendments to the SEZ Act of 2005 that it had earlier sup¬ported in Parliament.

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, who addressed the media on the fourth day of the congress, said : “The party congress has approved our industrialization policy, but with caution. It has been decided that while taking over agricultural land, compensation and rehabilitation should be in place so that the lives of those who are evicted become better and they do not suffer.”

The party congress said that UPA policies on SEZs are flawed. “The Government of India’s policy is madness. More than 400 SEZs have already been approved. There should be some restrictions,” Bhattacharjee said. The CPI(M) has held that the government needs to identify areas for SEZs on the basis of two criteria - areas that need advanced technologies and from where exports need to be promoted. SEZs are not for real estate developers or promoters,” he added. He said the CPI(M) also wants all labour laws to be followed in the SEZs.

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