Boiled down to the basics, there is as yet little proof that all the reviews, analyses, reports and discussions of why the CPI(M) did so spectacularly badly in the 2011 West Bengal Assembly election will galvanise the comrades into rebuilding the organisation from almost scratch and work to decrease the distance that has developed between it and the masses.
However sensible may be the elusive Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s appeal to the comrades to get on with the work of reconstruction, once the deliberations at the 23rd State party congress are over, there is no guarantee that the comrades will be able to rise above personality clashes, cult worship and the complicated liturgies that have piled up, obscuring their faith.
That the CPI(M) is far from transforming itself into a lean mean fighting machine is evident from the leaked versions of the groans, moans, snarls and swipes by various comrades against specific leaders, their policies and the performance of the CPI(M) Government before its downfall. As yet, there is no admission that the failure was collective even though some individuals were more responsible for the final phase of the election disaster than others.
Blaming Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee for the industrial policy and the necessary land acquisition that produced the Singur fiasco or blaming Gautam Deb for his aggressive almost desperate last stand, including his “body language” is typical misdirected venom to divert attention and associated responsibility from the failures, laziness, complacency, corruption, abuse, of leaders down the line. With easy targets like Mr Bhattacharjee and Mr Deb available, some comrades seem to have made up their minds to show off target shooting skills that they do not in fact possess.
That the CPI(M) has lost its nerve is obvious from the fact that in recent months its role as the Opposition has been limited to statements, local meetings and few organised protests. The various mass fronts of the party have turned dormant; one example is the shocking revelation by West Bengal Commission for Women chairperson Sunanda Mukherjee, of a woman raped inside a police station by the Officer in Charge in Krishnanagar town of Nadia district within the past three months.
So traumatised is the Left party that the incident failed to move the district leadership into organising support for the victim, protesting the crime committed by the police and generally mobilising people against violence.
Instead of working at the grass roots, the delegates to the 23rd State party conference in Kolkata have been busy in a hugely lazy way by using Mr Bhattacharjee and Mr Deb as large and easy targets to practice their shooting skills. In doing so the comrades are revealing themselves as mindless as lynch mobs intoxicated by blood lust. The various draft resolutions that have been placed before the delegates contained honest admissions of weakness and failure on organisational and political matters.
By isolating some persons and claiming cult status for them, the weak-minded comrades have obviously failed to face the situation, both analytically and practically. Attacking a personality like Mr Bhattacharjee by investing him with cult status is an attempt by some of the comrades to shield themselves from blame and shirk responsibility.
Thus, the ‘supporters’ of Mr Anil Basu of Hooghly have talked about how he has been slighted by being dropped as a delegate from the State party conference and the district leadership. Others have waved the flag for their patrons within the district. In other words, the organisation of the CPI(M) remains riddled with cadres who prefer to be hangers on rather than self-respecting foot soldiers of a depleted fighting force.
The liturgies of the lynch mob are a garbled list of confused complaints and illiterate orthodoxies. The policy of land acquisition for industry has been attacked. The outspoken advocacy of the market by Mr Bhattacharjee as the only alternative in the Indian context has been attacked. Demands for a policy of appeasement of misled peasants have been raised by comrades who have no new ideas, insights or alternatives to the mumbo jumbo that passes for ideology within the ranks of the CPI(M).
The complacency that paralysed the party’s capacity to anticipate problems within its own organisation because it failed to keep alive its connections via peasant and labour mass front organisations has been conveniently overlooked by critics of the top leadership of the State party. The fact that the trade union leadership of the CPI(M) has wasted away with no visible infusion of new blood has not been acknowledged.
The weakness of the trade union movement has been blamed on Mr Bhattacharjee’s hostility to organised demonstrations and protests. The fact that the trade union front failed to assert its position has been conveniently forgotten.
With so much wrong in the CPI(M), it is difficult to gauge how it will handle the worst crisis it has faced ever since the 1964 split. Facing facts has to be the first task of the CPI(M) in West Bengal. From that, other changes will follow.
