When the Left becomes Bereft of Pro-people Ideology and Conduct

COMMUNICATION

Prof Prabhat Patnaik’s piece “Why the Left Matters†in The Indian Express, reproduced by Mainstream (March 26, 2011), is a mix of the serious and the comic. In the portion in which he presents an expose of the practitioners of “neo-liberalism†, he is at his passionate best. One has to readily agree with him that those who are leading India up the garden path of market economy, pro-MNC liberalisation, pro-finance capital globalisation are indeed plunging the majority of Indians into the depths of poverty while pretending to take India to the precincts of global superpower status. They are super-hypocrites and they pretend that mitigating measures like the MGNREGS and loan waivers can offset neo-liberalism’s hurtling downward systemic pull. To fend off criticisms, they paint the “Left parties†as saboteurs of their “great Indian dream†.

When India’s Prime Minister Manmohan functions more like America-mohan by signing the mother of scams, the Indo-US nuclear deal; when the government led by him allows US influence on India’s strategic affairs, economic thinking and foreign policy; when, in the name of defence co-operation, the US is allowed access to India’s bureaucracy, military and intelligence at various levels, it is the Left parties which have consistently remained vocal critics.

But Prof Patnaik has failed to ask what happens when the “Left†, after coming to power in a certain State, accepts Deng Xiaoping’s philosophy and deserts the pro-people ideology and becomes the dalal of deshi and videshi industrial groups? How should we assess the CPM’s role in West Bengal when it was pushing the Indonesian Selim group’s interest in establishing a chemical hub at Nandigram/Nayachar, defying the people’s protests? In capitalist economies seeking militarism, chemical industries have a crucial role. How important is a chemical hub for people’s welfare economies? Was the CPM’s move to invite the Jindals to set up a large steel plant at Salboni in West Midnapore, dislodging the tribals, an index of “egalitarian Leftism†? Was the acquisition of fertile, multi-cropping lands at Singur by the State at cheap rates, to be able to offer these to the Tatas for manufacturing greenhouse gas emitting cars cheap for the elite, a progressive act of the “Left†? Was the clothing of party cadres in police uniform and letting them fire on unarmed protestors a qualification for “Leftism†? Since Prof Patnaik says that episodes of Nandigram and Singur were not shifts from Leftism, and that these did not constitute any abridgement of people’s democratic rights, he makes us run to find the meaning of Leftism.

I have been a critic of the anti-people policies of both the NDA and UPA governments. Still I would not call them fascist governments, which Patnaik does. If he had not been blinded by party loyalty, he would have called the CPM-led Left Front Government in West Bengal fascist, red in its teeth and claws. Most Communists of yester-years, who had held high the cause, are among the Left’s bitterest critics today. The Left’s acceptance of the pro-capitalist path at the State level, in utter self-contradiction, has helped the “neo-liberals†at the federal level to have a free run.

April 10, 2011

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Editor’s Note: Prof Prabhat Patnaik is a highly respected Leftist economist who also happens to be a CPI-M member. He may not be aware of Sailendra Nath Ghosh’s political credentials. Before he left the undivided CPI following the Soviet intervention in Hungary (1956), Ghosh was leading the Economic Unit of the party’s Central Committee at the Centre. Even earlier he was one of the chief organisers of the CPI in West Bengal’s South 24-Parganas at a time when being a party wholetimer was not as fashionable as it is today; indeed it was then a badge of honour, dedication and sacrifice. So the criticism from such a person must be given due consideration and not dismissed offhand.

One does not like to pass any judgement on the renowned scholar’s political opinion with regard to the Congress-led UPA Government. One would only like to ask him: how could the Left in general, and the CPI-M in particular, back a “non-communal-fascist bourgeois government†at the Centre for more than four years (2004-08)? If Patnaik can describe that government as ‘fascist’, why should the Buddhadeb dispensation in West Bengal escape such a characterisation?