CPI(M) Election Manifesto

Sitaram Yechury

True to their class nature, major national dailies reacted to the CPI(M) manifesto in a characteristic anti-communist manner. The virulence of the attack can be seen by the bombastic editorials the editors have chosen to give. Pathology of states the Indian Express, while Times of India followed by describing the manifesto as “Sound and Fury” and the Hindustan Times termed it as a “Non-Manifesto”. The contents of the editorials however do not justify the virulence of this attack. Nevertheless, the compulsions of pathological anti-communism seems to ride supreme.

Much of these editorial comments reflect the refusal to accept the role and position that the CPI(M) is commanding in the Indian political situation today. Apart from the unblemished and untarnished image in the morass of corruption and degeneration, the CPI(M) through its consistent positions has been in the forefront on all major issues that has confronted our country and the people. Unable to stomach this role, the bourgeois papers have sought the next best course available to them that of an attempt at ridicule. Let us consider the substantive issues that they have raised.

The first relates to the CPI(M)’s critique of the new economic policies pursued by the Rao government during the last five years. Apart from calling this critique anti-imperialist rhetoric etc etc not one of the editorials has chosen to look at the hard facts. During these five years, on the one hand our economy has been dramatically mortgaged with growing debts that amounts to a staggering four-fifths of our GDP for 1995-96. On the other hand, the vast majority of Indians have seen a deterioration in their standards of livelihood. Notwithstanding the government’s statistical fledgling, the planning commission itself in its mid-term appraisal revealed that the percentage of population below the poverty line has increased, price rise, growing unemployment etc have all eaten into the real earnings of millions of Indians while the minuscule minority and their drummer boys including the journalist fraternity have benefited.

The deliberate confusion that these editorials seek to convey that the CPI(M) argues for a return to the license-permit system of the past needs to be cleared once again. The CPI(M) has neither argued for either a return to the past nor for the “insulation” or “isolation” of India from the global economy. The CPI(M) critique has been on the terms on which this interaction of the global economy has been taking place under Rao-Manmohan Singh. These terms instead of strengthening India’s self-reliant basis and granting greater prosperity to the Indian people have been bartering away India’s economic sovereignty and impoverishing the poor millions.

In a strange coincidence, the Confederation of Indian Industries, considered so far to be the most prestigious and brazen supporter of the new economic policies had come out strongly against what it called unbridled entry of multinationals and warned the country against an MNC takeover. For what has been happening during the last five years has been that the foreign investment (however little that has flown into the country) has not augmented or added to the existing productive capacity of our country. It has come in to either take over the already existing capacities by buying up Indian firms or for fast and easy profits in the speculation market. Such a strategy is the safest way to ensure that our country’s assets cease to be our sovereign possession while no part of the profit that the MNCs accumulate goes for improving the welfare of the Indian people. The CII may be reacting to this trend from the compulsions of protecting the interests of domestic capital but it nevertheless accepted one of the fundamental elements of the CPI(M) critique. Notwithstanding the fact that there can be a political motive behind the timing of the CII’s pronouncements of brazenly acting in favour of “Swadeshi”, its exposure has an element of truth that the people will have to reckon with in the coming elections.

Another issue that these venerable editors mock at is the CPI(M)-led Left Front’s uninterrupted rule in West Bengal for the last two decades. Even the worst critics of the CPI(M) cannot deny that if there is one state in the country where land reforms have been implemented even within the constraints of the present Constitution, it has been in West Bengal. Land reforms is a measure directed not only at the improvement of the welfare of the vast millions of our peasantry, it is also a measure that expands the domestic market laying the basis for larger industrial production. Apart from this it also increases the levels of productivity in agriculture which is reflected in the fact that in terms of rate of growth of rice production in the country, West Bengal has transformed from a rice deficit state to the one with the highest production. To a large extent i is this growth of the rural market that today propels that very private capital which during the last two decades was prevented by the centre’s discriminatory policies to go to West Bengal, to seek a fresh entry. This reality is sought to be camouflaged in the oft repeated canard by the venerable editors that Jyoti Basu is endorsing the policies of Narasimha Rao. It is the same Jyoti Basu and the CPI(M) who since 1985 particularly that have been inviting private capital to augment West Bengal’s industrialisation. The same private capital that chose to ignore Bengal then has today reversed its attitude. Why? Precisely because of the enlarged domestic market and the withdrawal of the discriminatory measures imposed by the central government during the last four decades. It is not the CPI(M) which changed its line and tuned with Rao’s economic policies but the circumstances that have changed propelling private capital to go to West Bengal. The boot is on the wrong foot, Editor Sir.

The venerable editors also chose to ignore the fact if anywhere in the country there has been a decentralisation of democracy to the grassroots it has been in the Left ruled states of West Bengal and Kerala (formerly ruled). And this decentralisation has not been in the form of mere rhetoric that is practiced in other states. In West Bengal today more than 50 percent of the financial allocations is done by the local panchayats giving them greater equality, freedom and the capacity to provide relief to the people. If these are not achievements to be underlined would the editors please tell us what are the issues? Possibly hawala, scams, tandoor etc.

The editorials ofcourse all have one common theme and this is to portray the Left, democratic and secular which the CPI(M) is seeking to forge against both the Congress(I) and the BJP as a non-starter. Any prognosis on this score would be unnecessary as within a month the results of the 11th general elections would be there fore all to see. With the alienation of the mass of the people from the ruling Congress due to its economic policies and is disenchanted with the BJP whose every attempt to project itself as a non-communal responsible opposition has fallen flat on its face. The people today are seeking an alternative to safeguard the fundamental pillars of modern India — democracy, secularism, social justice and federalism. They are seeking an alternative that will improve their conditions of life, arrest the alarming degeneration of morality that has taken place under Rao’s regime. The CPI(M) manifesto reflects this sentiment of the majority of Indian patriots who want to save the country today in order to change it for the better tomorrow.