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Bhattacharjee at the state committee meeting on Saturday. (Pradip Sanyal)
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Calcutta, Feb. 18: The comrades of a beleaguered party are banking on a new Brand Buddha — launched during the CPM’s state committee meeting yesterday — to energise the party in Bengal.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s 35-minute speech has become the talking point in the CPM as he surprised his party comrades with a new approach.
“Buddhada’s speech was different from what he used to say earlier and that’s one of the most significant developments of this state conference,” a CPM leader said.
The former chief minister — who once got applause from chambers of commerce for saying “reform or perish” — got a standing ovation from over 800 delegates at the party conference as he made a U-turn to return to the CPM’s core principles.
In doing so, Bhattacharjee made a departure from the resolution — class struggle through development — that the party had adopted during an extended state committee meeting in 2002. Although the resolution, adopted in successive state committee meetings till last year, came under attack from a section of the party’s Delhi and Bengal units, Bhattacharjee, a self-confessed follower of Deng Xiaoping, and his supporters held that development was a higher form of class struggle.
“This is not Marxist understanding,” Bhattacharjee said yesterday when he got his chance to speak after sitting through sessions during which the policies adopted by the government headed by him came under attack.
Several delegates tore apart the policies of Bhattacharjee’s government, from the administration’s “haste” in acquiring land for the Tata Nano project to his penchant for private capital for development.
The former chief minister was much mellower in his defence and stuck to the basics of Marxism. “We never said development can replace class struggle. What we stressed was the need for development as it can create opportunities to wage class struggle,” Bhattacharjee said.
Not just the content of his speech, the way of presentation — in which Bhattacharjee quoted party secretary Prakash Karat — too has become a highlight of the meeting.
The former chief minister, criticised in the party for giving the go-ahead to land acquisition in Singur, said how Karat had “rightly” spoken about “neo-liberal land-grab” across the country.
Explaining what the CPM’s position should be on land acquisition, Karat had reminded his party colleagues that 40 districts in seven states had erupted on the issue of land acquisition.
“It is an open secret that the views of Buddhada and Karat differ on several issues…. Now that Buddhada has cited from Karat’s speech, it means there is a convergence in their views and that’s a positive development,” a senior CPM leader said.
Bhattacharjee’s views were not different from those of Karat even while charting the future of the party as he made it clear that returning to power in Bengal should not be on the immediate agenda.
The Bengal unit of the CPM has often drawn criticism from the Delhi unit for its overemphasis, and often compromises, on electoral outcomes. During his speech, Bhattacharjee hinted that his priorities were different as he said it was time to work for the working people, which constitutes 67 per cent of Bengal.
“Buddhada was not talking about the working class alone, which covers only the people in the organised sector. He stressed the need for expanding the movement and gave the call for a class mobilisation to rejuvenate the party,” a veteran CPM leader said, explaining how Bhattacharjee had aligned himself with the core principles of the party.
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