West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, once the poster boy of development for the Communist Party of India-Marxist, has come under fire in the party's latest 'rectification' campaign.
The campaign, initiated by general secretary Prakash Karat after the party's debacle in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, is aimed at eradicating wrong trends and shortcomings and setting the house in order at every level.
As the party has finalised its rectification process and published the document, Bhattacharjee's "decry" over the bandh culture of the party and its loyal hawks of the trade union wing has come for scrutiny.
In a double blow for Bhattacharjee, Karat took the pen and quoted none other than Ashok Mitra, a comrade-turned-critic of the Left Front government in West Bengal, to say that 'the implementation of neo-liberal policies (by the Bhattacharjee government) was responsible for the party's alienation from the people.'
What may sting Bhattacharjee more is that the article by Karat (on Democratic Centralism) came along with the rectification document in the same issue of party mouthpiece The Marxist.
Bhattacharjee, meanwhile, put up a brave face on Sunday indicating that for him the battle within and without the party would be prolonged and hard fought. He refused to be drawn into the question of whether he has any difference of opinion with his party on the issue of calling general strikes.
The rectification document has not named Bhattacharjee or any other leader yet. It has identified the issues only. At a later stage, the party will hold individual leaders accountable for the "wrongdoings".
The rectification document has observed: "There are instances of leaders decrying working class struggles and strikes." This observation comes in context of West Bengal CM's famous war-cry against the bandh culture during an interaction with the Bengal Chamber of Commerce two years ago.
In front of industrialists and business barons, Bhattacharjee had said: "I am opposed to any kind of bandh, be it called by the Opposition or the ruling party. But unfortunately, I belong to a party and when my party calls a bandh, I keep mum. But I have decided I will open my mouth next time."
"We are trying to change the mindset of the trade unions and employees. It is changing. I can assure that gherao will never come back in West Bengal. At the national level, my colleagues in Delhi are also changing," he added.
On this issue, the rectification document now says, "There is an erosion in the primacy of the working class outlook of the party. This stems from a reformist outlook, parliamentarism and a tendency to adjust to bourgeois values."
As these observations come as a part of the rectification document or the guideline on how to conduct oneself in the party, in other words it means, Bhattacharjee needs to change his outlook. It may be recalled that after Bhattacharjee made those remarks in 2008, the party had swiftly moved to reject his ideas.
Till a few years ago, Karat and Bhattacharjee shared an excellent rapport but their relationship has turned sour in the recent times, especially after the Lok Sabha debacle of the party in 2009. CPI-M insiders claim that after Bhattacharjee walked out of the Jyoti Basu cabinet in 1993 terming it as a "cabinet of the thieves", Karat played a key role to reinstate him in the Bengal cabinet.
Significantly, in order to defend the democratic centralism of the party, Karat has now quoted Ashok Mitra's scathing observations to show that the electoral debacle in West Bengal is a result of local misrule. "As far as Ashok Mitra is concerned, he does not reject democratic centralism per se. He criticises its practice in the CPI(M) in West Bengal where, according to him, 'there is an excess of centralism with not even a wee bit of democracy'. This has led to the party getting cut off from the people."
Pointing out that Mitra had "strongly criticised the Left Front government's policy of industrialisation and land acquisition", Karat observed: "The setback suffered in West Bengal has its causes in the political, organisational and governmental plane."
Image: West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
