PRAGOTI

Comrade Patnaiks' pertinent article has gained wide relevance amidst Left and Progressive circles most particularly during this grave hour of reactionary onslaughts when the Left has been massively trounced upon and has reached to the verge of a politically irrelevant force simply for it's persisting with the petty bourgeoisie reformist policies in its' very own bastion. A wide range of repercussions are being generated both in favour & against Com. Patnaik's timely outstanding article. The article is just like catching the pulse in order to diagnose the actual disease. The splendid article holds an invaluable asset to all Comrades who are well acquainted with the grass-root level circumstances. Those basic concrete ground-level situations can be listed as follows :-
1. The LF govt. led by the CPI(Marxist) in WB had inarguably carried out some genuinely leftist programmes for both urban and rural toiling classes which enhanced its' prestige & leftist character immensely to an unparallel dimension. Alongwith this, the Party leadership organised regular Party classes and other forums to educate the masses that for the complete elimination & eradication of the poverty and miseries of all kinds its' mandatory to overthrow this capitalist social system inherently based on exploitation of labour. But the utter negligency in implementing all these policy matters and party education programmes began during the second half of the 1990s. Moreover, the new industrialization policy of the WB LF govt. of 1994 had been wrongly viewed & implemented in a completely deviated manner eversince the year 2000-2001 which showed tremendous signs of social-democratic reformist tendencies. There was a simmering discontent and debates within the Party and mass organizations itself. Party Comrades were at immense pains to convince the masses at various levels that how the industrialization policy of the WB LF govt. was different and pro-working class oriented when it was acting on similar lines as that of the capitalist Central govts. Party Comrades were often hurled with realistic queries that at the central level the CPI(Marxist) advocated pro-Working class' policies as its' in opposition, but at the provincial level the LF govt. followed a pro-capitalist line. More frequently there were severe disagreements between the CITU and the LF govt. Even the more, the outgoing beleaguered CM had difficult times in unconvincingly clarifying that how and in what way his govt. was following a Leftist programme. The over-enthusiasm of the former WB CM for the massive but hastily managed capitalistic mode of industrialization was so palpable and flagrant that even in the Party meets he used to stress a purely social-democratic agenda that when the Left in Latin America has been following a resurgence and revival mode by compromising with the imperialist globalised economic order then lots of lessons need to be learnt from those & the "socialist market economy" concept in China by the Communists all over the world, and in that context he quite often used to quote that socialism in the era of imperialist globalised economy is just like traversing an untreaded path and hence under the newer evolving circumstances of the domination of imperialist & aggressive capitalist world order the Left must have to adjust itself by making concessions and compromises with the imperialist world order in order to bring new investments of transnational monopoly conglomerates into the state. The oppressive SEZ concept giving way for the rampant imperialist capital to be pumped into the state had been blatantly taken care of without even guaranteeing the basic democratic rights of the working class. And all these were being blindly followed just to find a hold amongst the urban educated middle class population comprising of the bulk of the effervescent young generation. The Party leadership completely neglected the interests of the toiling,labouring classes, which are its' backbone and base, both in rural and urban areas during that suffocating period of 2004 to 2007. Under those turbulent circumstances the shameful incident of Nandigram occurred which just sprayed hateful blots into the otherwise glorious command of the Left. All these deviations of severe nature allowed the reactionaries of both the right and ultra-left spectrum funded by their imperialist masters under a common umbrella. If the concept of private capital investment is the TINA factor for the LF govt. in WB then why didn't it go forward pressingly with the nandigram,singur,nayachar projects despite of all adversities? Why the Party and Left ha been singing songs of its' blunders,mistakes and high-handedness attached with the policy of industrialization by acquisition of lands from the small land-owners in the rural areas? No left supporter with a little-bit of common sense will ever believe that the characters of the leaders and cadres of the Party has massively stooped down to the extent of derogatory criminal arrogance from the victory of 2006 to the repeated thrashings of 2008 to 2011.
2. All Party Comrades will very well know that how the Party leadership criticized and gave stern and covert warnings to the state-level leadership for making it indirectly but squarely responsible for the nandigram like painful incidents and instructed the state party to make a full-stop to all kinds of SEZ and land-acquisition projects and programmes - as those nastiest activities were projecting the Party to the category of "capitalist invaders" before the common masses. [ 19th Congress Pol.-Org Report, Part-II : On Left-led govts. The Experience & their role in the present situation, April 2008].
3. Comrade Biman Basu in one of his statements while reviewing the massive drubbing in a meeting at the Purulia District CPI(Marxist) Office commented that the Party leadership has completely failed to understand and recognize that the extent of alienation & isolation of the Party from the common masses and Toiling population has become so much massive that its' earlier considered most-reliable organizational machinery even terribly failed to report properly about the actual grass-root level situation and gauge the tangible mentality of the people as those have lost the inherent connection with the common masses. [source Aajkaal - a leftist bengali newspaper]. And any Comrade working in the grass-root level situation will better know that the connection of the organization with the masses gets detached massively as a ground-level manifestation of its' wrong policies which are basically anti-people , and that can not be attributed merely to the arrogant hostile behaviours of a few handful of members of such a big family as the CPI(Marxist).

Sincerely ever,

Kuntal Chatterjee