:: Balbir Punj

A day of reckoning for the Marxists

Balbir K. Punj

Nov.20 : After reading reports about the discussion that took place in the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo following the Left's defeat in October, close on the heels of its poor show in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, it seems that the CPI(M) is refusing to accept the reality.

The party leadership seems convinced that the wipe-out it faced in two of its three states of influence (West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura) in the October bypolls was due to peripheral reasons, and not a fallout of the irrelevance of Communism in a fast-changing world.

The CPI(M) in West Bengal is challenged by the Trinamul Congress (TMC) and Mamata Banerjee on the one hand and armed Maoists on the other. Also, it is well known that small landholders and farmers of West Bengal perceive a threat to their land and livelihood in chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's rapid industrialisation programme.

It was farmers' support on a massive scale, symbolised by what happened in Singur, that enabled Ms Banerjee to resist the onslaught of the Marxist cadres who had kept the countryside under their grip for a long time.

The armed Maoists on the other side are seeing the Marxists weakening in the face of this shift of the countryside's loyalty, from the CPI(M) to the TMC, and are striking using their armed cadres to telling effect.

Between Ms Banerjee and Maoist leader Koteswara Rao, alias Kishenji, the Marxists found their red shirt stolen and were made victims of their own age-old slogan of proletarian revolution.

The Communists have also lost the support of the urban middle class on which they were banking heavily.

MR BHATTACHARJEE confessed to the mistake the Left made of driving out entrepreneurs and enterprise from West Bengal even as the people of Bengal watched projects after projects going to states like Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

In Kerala - the other pocket of Left's influence - a similar story is being played out. The Marxists, who are leading the ruling Left Front, have been routed in all the three byelections to the state Assembly, repeating what happened to them in the 2009 general elections.

More galling was the bypoll in Kannur where Marxist renegade P.K. Abdullakutty, a former Marxist member of Parliament, won as a Congress candidate defeating the Marxists in the land of the birth of Communism. Kannur was the native place of several Communist leaders, including A.K. Gopalan. This is a place where the Marxists had imposed their diktat using armed cadres, and where a murder every day and that too in broad daylight is a common occurrence.

Mr Abdullakutty's victory in Kannur is to be read in the background of key defeats for the Marxists in several local body elections, in some of which their own dissidents have scored over the official party candidates.

The Kerala pattern of downfall for the Communists closely follows what is happening to the comrades in West Bengal.

THIS YEAR marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall that signalled the end of Communism in Europe, including the former Soviet Union. The symbolism of the doubly fortified Wall, that prevented many people from reaching out to their brethren, falling down one fine evening has been played out in a plethora of articles on the 20th anniversary of the event.

When the then US President Ronald Reagan stood in West Berlin in 1987 and challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to pull down the Wall, most people dismissed it as a mere Cold War rhetoric. Two years later, the Wall did fall. East Berliners virtually brought down the Wall as a demonstration of their pent-up anger. The Berlin Wall was the Communist prison that was sought to be sold to them as a utopia.

It was a similar imprisonment of lies that the Marxist government in West Bengal sought to feed the people of West Bengal.

Historically, West Bengal was at the top of India's industrialisation. The Tata Steel Co, Imperial Tobacco Company (now ITC), Garden Reach Workshop, Dunlop, Braithwaite & Co, several engineering firms and jute companies had their headquarters in Calcutta (now Kolkata).

While the industrial climate was vitiated by gheraos, educational institutions were debased by politics. Communist cadres sat over school principals and commanded them how to run their schools. The unionised teachers played truant from their spot of duty. Most industries fell sick.

In the 32 years of the Left Front rule, West Bengal's ranking in human development index among Indian states has slipped and is now just above Bihar.

This is no surprise. The impoverishment of the people under Communist dispensation was one of the main reasons why overnight the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern Europe collapsed without a shot being fired.

The Indian Communists were seeking to mislead people by claiming that in the Soviet Union food was the cheapest and food prices had remained constant for decades. The fact was that food was quite scarce and people had to queue for even ordinary items like eggs. With shop fronts empty, wages became worthless wads of notes. "They pretended to pay and we pretended to work", was the joke that was going round in the Communist heaven.

After 75 years under the Communist network of lies, the Russian people liberated themselves in 1991, and the people of Eastern Europe even earlier. The time it seems has now come for the people of West Bengal to do a "Berlin Wall" on their 32 year rulers.

If the Left Front is ousted from power, as it is most likely to happen in 2011 or even earlier, for the Indian Communists it would be political nemesis catching up with them.

Balbir K. Punj can be contacted at punjbk@gmail.com