PRAGOTI

Mr. Anonymous,
I guess, you must be joking otherwise you could have put your name while making gross factually incorrect statements! Firstly, Prof. Amartya Sen has repeatedly argued that the Left in India is more mature to utilize the multi-party parliamentary democracy in a federal system as ours and never said that it has become ‘social democratic’. And if you have read Lenin well and have seen Jyoti Babu’s interviews then you must remember that parliament can be used as a site of ‘class struggle’ and a number of Leftwing movements including Nepali Maoists and Latin America are also following that path. We cannot have a people’s democratic revolution in the long run without addressing the questions of both formalistic/instrumentalist and substantive democracy.

Jyoti Babu was spearheading the national oppositional politics from mid-1970s right from the days of JP movement and later on during early 1980s. You must know that Ashok Mitra has pointed out that if Mrs. Gandhi was not assassinated in 1984, Jyoti Babu could have well become the PM while the Left could have emerged victoriously. Then where was BJP in 1970s and early 1980s? On your extremely ridiculous question of giving legitimacy to BJP, I suppose you have only make fun of yourself as we all know that Jyoti Babu was a person, who was uncompromising on the question of fight against communalism. You should have seen NDTVs ‘walk the talk’ interview of Jyoti Babu with Shekhar Gupta, where even in May 2004, he was maintaining that it was a ‘barbaric party’. If you remember after curing your selective amnesia, then in 1996, all these Lalu, Mulayam, Mayavati, Kanshiram, Paswan, Karunanidhi, Devegowda representing both North and South India actually wanted Jyoti Babu to be the PM. Now, it is another matter that he could not become the PM because of lack of consensus among the party to join a government where it would be solely dependent on the whims of the Congress and might not provide a stable government as it was providing in the then red bastions of Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. And by the way, CPI(M) did not play the ‘bad game parliamentary democracy’.

In the first three general elections of 1952, 1957 and 1962 the CPI was the second largest party in Parliament and was the principal opposition with increasing vote share in every election getting almost 10% votes in 1962. In 1967—CPI & CPM totaling 42 seats (3rd largest party formation) and in 1971, the CPI(M) was again the principal opposition party, while in 1977, it became the third largest party. In 1980, the Left Front again became the principal opposition and in 1984, it also became the second largest formation. In 1989 and 1991, it became the fourth largest front. In 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004, it successfully became the third largest party in the parliament and during 2004-2008 with highest ever number of total 61 seats for the Left. Thus, Left has not performed so badly in terms of Parliamentary democratic elections in a bourgeois democracy by consistently becoming either the principal opposition or the third largest formation in most of the time. In 2009, it suffered a huge loss with its worst ever performance because of a number of factors which has been discussed both inside-outside the party and the Left need to rectify its mistakes to again perform better in next 2014 election. The nature of coalition politics in fact gives more scope for the Left to become an important political player in near future.

Now, if you are arguing that ‘parliamentary democracy’ in itself is a bad game then I am afraid, you are taking the Maoist line, which cannot be dealt with charitably/sympathetically precisely for the following reasons: 1) The Maoists have only become an internal security threat for the bourgeois-landlord state controlled by the alliance of ruling classes and nothing more. The Maoist revolution in India is still a distant dream, and you never know, before which it can be completely demolished by state repression. 2) The ruling political establishment is happy, and I repeat, ‘happy’ by using both the parliamentary Left ala CPI(M) and Naxalism ala Maoists to have fratricidal fight against each other so that a Leftwing space of opposition to neoliberalism is further shrinked. 3) Political violence of Trinamul-Naxalite terror against innocent victims comprising of ordinary party members of CPI(M), farmers, Tribals and school teachers are only heinous/condemnable acts since it is targeted on one set of ‘common people’ against the ‘other’ than killing members of the ruling classes. This is not to argue in favour of politics of violence ála classic Naxalite formulation of ‘annihilation of class enemy’ but only to expose the hypocrisies of a politics that claims to stand for the ‘people’ in the guise of rightwing brand of Trinamuli populism and Naxalism. The politics of violence is essentially the crisis of a political hegemony. A politics which cannot democratically mobilise ‘people’ behind its project, takes refuge to violence. Politics as an art of transforming the impossible to possible is thus connected to the art of hegemonising. This is the precise challenge of contemporary politics: how to mobilise ‘people’ via democratic means? 4) The Naxalite opposition to mainstream parliamentary Left often aligning with bourgeois populism only sustains the neoliberal status quo by dividing the Left movement on sectarian lines. By contrast, it would have been a much fruitful idea, if the Naxalites could think of becoming a part of Left Front to widen the scope of united Leftwing resistance to neoliberal power bloc. By becoming a partner in the Left Front, it can also make constructive criticisms of certain policies of mainstream Left, which in turn can also put the mainstream Left within democratic scrutiny. This democratic engagement of dialogue than mutual hatred and undemocratic culture of violent politics is more helpful for self-introspection for both CPI(M) and Naxalism. This can make them rectify their own respective mistakes to open up a possibility for rebuilding relationship in near future.

Yes, on education and health, West Bengal has not been doing so well and I would also add in the case of job opportunities and proportional representation of weaker sections like working classes, peasantry, Dalits, Tribals, minorities, women and lower OBCs in the party and government intricately linked to the question of empowerment due to the monopolisation of upper caste Bengali Bhadrolok middle class in these sectors. In fact, the present crisis of the Left is much to do with these issues along with its inability to formulate an alternative vision of development in a world marked by neoliberal consensus. This is neither to say that the Left has not tried to fulfil those democratic demands nor to say that it has deliberately ignored these issues of socio-economic development and political marginalization of excluded groups in Bengal. Jyoti Babu was willing to overcome these hindrances and tried a lot but yes, more could have been done. Without the development of the people, the Left Front could not have managed to win seven successive elections. It would be rather foolish to argue that the ‘people’ in Left citadels is completely unaware of its interests when it has been participating in historic struggles under Left’s mobilization and thus gained a consciousness that can detect a difference between its self-interests and its ‘other’ antagonistic one. The Left would never have the high table dinner with neoliberal power bloc for it prefers to stay in the common tables because it represents the ‘commons’ and would rather think to formulate a radical alternative to neoliberalism. Politics is a never ending game, my dear friend! So, don’t be impatient, and rather wait and watch about the new radical avatar of CPI(M) in the long run. If you tell me any other Leftwing party, which is ‘successfully’ fighting neoliberalism and have a say in state policy making in favour of the people given the limitations of a bourgeois democracy, please inform me.

Regarding the very personal attacks on this sad occasion was completely unwelcome on your part. Anyways, your allegations seem to be against Jyoti Babu’s daughter-in-law or it can be also directed against his son, but how come Jyoti Babu is responsible for the actions of his family members, who stay separately! Left ideology is not dynastic like Brahmanism and monarchy! And after all, Jyoti Babu’s daughter-in-law has only opened up a ‘school’ in his old house and not a museum or zoo where funny creatures like you should be kept in, neither she has opened up the Great Indian Comic show or some kind of a circus, where you would entertain the audience with your hilarious jokes!

an "alternate model of development" of what? to what end?

- creating a party-society [which eats away civil society] in WB and employing rural youths into "party-business"? [ref: D. Bhattacharya in this issue of EPW]
-creating an reservoir of unskilled labourers in WB to be supplied to other states? oh! of commercial sex workers, too.
- proliferation of the informal sector in WB which offers abysmally low wages? [ref: Pranab Bardhan's recent article in EPW]
- a sorry state of implementation of NREGA [because LCs are run by the middle farmers?] in WB?
- Brahmin Anuj Pandey's beautiful bunglow amidst poverty-stricken ST Lalgarh?
- almost no SC and ST CPM leaders in WB, a state whose almost 27-30% population is composed of them?
- perhaps the only state where Brahmins-Baidyas-Kulin Kayatshas fully dominate?
- no women leaders?
- dismal condition of Muslims?
- converting Universities into fiefdoms of mediocres like Anil Biswas et al?
- a CPM without any intellectual Bengali leader or a theoretician?
- creating a lame administration?
- an army of cadre-cum-contractor & promoter?

JB's short sightedness ? - no computer, no English, promoting mediocre sycophants in every sphere of public life.