Even Cuba does it

I have known Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee long enough to be able to guess how emotionally charged he must have been. For three days he sat, almost in the dock, listening to his comrades in the Calcutta district committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) bashing him for his ?capital-friendly? policies.

The irony is that this was just a few days after the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, recalled Azim Premji?s fulsome praise of Bhattacharjee and called him the ?best chief minister in the country?. And here was the same man being taken to task by his very own people.

Then, on the last day of the committee?s meeting, he rose to defend himself against the charges. Since the media are not allowed inside such party meetings, we had only fragmented versions of his defence. A detailed version appeared in the party?s Bengali organ, Ganashakti, and it gives an idea of how impatient, even angry Bhattacharjee was with having to defend policies which he thinks are sound.

Those who have some idea of the debates within the CPI(M) would not be surprised at the episode. When he led the Left Front to its sixth successive victory in the assembly elections in 2001 on the new slogan of development, I had written that his biggest battle still remained with his party.

Not that the party as a whole had not debated the issue before. Jyoti Basu too had battled hardline party ideologues on the same issue even before his government introduced a new industrial policy in 1994. In fact, the CPI(M) has been debating the issue of the state government?s role vis-?-vis finance capital ? domestic and foreign ? ever since its 12th party congress in Calcutta in 1983. Basu won the battle in some areas and lost in some others.

Sometimes the debates could take absurd forms. One example was how the party hardliners led by Prakash Karat shot down Basu?s proposal to allot a plot of land to Warner Brothers at Salt Lake, where it wanted to set up an amusement park. By then, the party had come to accept the need for capital. But American investment, and that too for mere entertainment? That was going too far. Basu had to give in to the hardliners and call off the project.

True, the CPI(M) has come a long way from that. But the party still has enough people in its ranks who continue to frown at too close an embrace with capital. Such are the people who put Bhattacharjee on the dock, not just in the Calcutta meeting, but in many other district conferences that have taken place in the past few weeks, prior to the state conference next month.

The charges are as follows:

Bhattacharjee?s ?overemphasis? on capital-intensive development, especially on the new-age industries such as information technology, and his plans to improve Calcutta?s infrastructure to attract such investments, may please the likes of Premji but would not help the masses. An investment-gathering overdrive may create little islands of prosperity for the rich and a tiny section of the middle class, but will leave the masses in the lurch. And, this could be politically suicidal because, no matter how much development takes place in the city, the wealthier people will still vote against the left.

This development drive is also taking its toll on the lives of the industrial workers and the peasants. No matter whether they are getting their wages or other dues regularly, the workers are being told not to protest too much and not to strike work so that potential investors do not get a wrong signal.

The farmers are being told to sell their land to facilitate development plans ? a complete turnaround from the time when the party distributed land to the landless. If the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, the party?s labour front, is being reined in to prevent workers from protesting too much, the Kishan Sabha, its peasants? wing, is being used to force poor farmer to part with his land and the farm labour to accept declining daily wages.

For school and college teachers, government employees and other sections of salaried employees, the party-affiliated organizations are being used to keep mouths shut, even if the salaries are late or the right working conditions are not there. In short, the critics charged Bhattacharjee with getting too carried away with his new-found love of capital and thereby negating much of what the party had stood for in the eyes of the common people. This, the critics feared, was causing a rift between the party and the people and therefore could create problems for the party?s electoral bases.

The charges are not exactly new. The opposition parties have hurled them time and again. What is surprising is that they dominated the debates in so many district conferences of the party. It shows how much of the battle with the party Bhattacharjee still has to win.

It is not as though the chief minister has any doubts about his policies. In fact, these are policies that the party has debated over a long period and accepted as correct. That this is indeed so has once again been made clear by Anil Biswas, the secretary of the CPI(M)?s West Bengal unit. Biswas spoke on the same day from the same platform and Ganashakti carried a long report of his speech simultaneously with Bhattacharjee?s.

However, it is the chief minister?s response to the criticism that was pointed, passionate and almost devastating in its counter-attack on the critics. Do I turn away the offers, he asked them, that domestic and foreign investors are now making for Bengal? ?Even Cuba can?t say no to such offers. Don?t we know that Vietnam is getting the highest FDI (in Asia)?? He then went on to put the critics in their place, ?You work for the party. I work for the party too but I have to run a government as well.? And, he was confident that his policies would lift the overall economy of the state and therefore help the common people.

The real worry in all this is whether ? or how much ? the party sceptics can derail the chief minister?s development plans. If there is still so much confusion in the party about what he is trying to do, it may delay, if not deter, much of the development schemes he is anxious to put in place quickly. Even if the senior leaders agree with him, the differences with the middle-level leaders and the confusion in the lower ranks could pose a major problem for him.

Some of the points the critics made have their merit. Nobody can deny that large sections of the people are frustrated and even angry with the government and the left for the lack of economic opportunities. The oppressive weight of the CPI(M) in day-to-day lives of the people is a constant source of irritation for an increasing number of people.

Most politically unaffiliated college teachers would tell you how the West Bengal College and University Teachers? Association tyrannizes their lives. Most schoolteachers know that they need not come to school if only they are members of the All Bengal Teachers? Association. It is most people?s experience that you need the local party boss?s help to get the police to listen to, let alone work on, your complaint. Party-backed criminals are now as much a feature of most localities as they used to be during the Congress regime.

You could make a long list of such complaints. One could hold Bhattacharjee accountable for a whole lot of these problems and failures. But if there is one thing that he deserves to be credited for, it is his tireless effort to correct Bengal?s image as an anti-industry, pro-strike state where work is the devil?s worship. If investors are finally coming to the state, it is largely because Bhattacharjee has been able to substantially change that image. It is amazing that so many of his partymen still do not realize the importance of the new investments ? and the new, hard-won trust ? in Bengal.

There is just a glimmer of hope that things could, after all, improve in Bengal. True, the brand-new multiplexes, high-rise apartment blocks and the shining IT offices do not add up to much in terms of the state?s overall development. The vast army of the state?s unemployed will need many more new industrial units and a radical transformation of the farm sector. That will need more, and not less, capital. The last thing that Bengal needs today is a revival of the old Marxist rhetoric.