Can anyone tell me what the CPI(M) stands for???

It is hard now, even for those familiar with the history of the communist movement in India, to make out what the CPI(M) stand is on a host of issues. If the Singur issue brought this confusion to the fore, it has only been confounded by the developments in Kerala where the Government has recently signed an agreement with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to avail of a loan of $221.2 Million for the Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project.

The project involves a total expenditure of $ 316.1 Million. While the bulk of this will be funded by the ADB loan, the State Government will contribute $59.8 Million, the five Municipal Corporations in the State (Kochi, Thiruvanthapuram, Thrissur, Kollam and Kozhikode), where most of the money will be spent will raise the remaining $ 35.1 Million. All this money will be spent to improve water supply, sewerage and drainage system, roads and transportion within these cities.

Now, unlike in Singur, the opposition to this agreement and the project has come from inside the party. The Chief Minister, V.S.Achudanandan found himself in a difficult situation when the Finance Minister of the State, T.M.Thomas Issac made it known that the terms of the loan agreement were not discussed by the State Cabinet. For those unfamiliar with the internal dynamics of the CPI(M) in Kerala, Achudanandan had sought disciplinary action against Issac at the last Congress of the party in Delhi.

The charge against Issac was that he had co-authored a study report on the decentralization experience in Kerala with Richard Franke, an American academic and this was done without obtaining sanction from the party! Well. There was no action taken because Issac too had positioned himself in the Pinarayi Vijayan faction of the party. This alignment, in the factional sense, also helped Issac land as the Finance Minister in Achudanandan’s cabinet after the CPI(M)-led LDF wrested power in the State in may 2006. It is another matter that Vijayan himself lost the race for the Chief Minister’s job.

It appears that Issac was only getting back at the Chief Minister in the case of the ADB loan agreement now. But then, the CPI(M) being a party made of cadres and the cadre too aligned behind one or another leader (and no longer blind followers of the faith), the spat between Issac and Achudanandan had its repercussions in Mohamma in Allepey district. The party’s cadre, owing allegiance to the two leaders, is reported to have got into some street fighting in Mohamma. Issac represents the constituency in the State Assembly and Achudanandan too belongs to that part of Kerala.

The issue here is not about some internal squabbles in the party. This is, after all, now a part and parcel of the political culture in India. The Congress party, for instance, is faction ridden in almost all the States and its ranks have taken the fights to the streets on many occasions. The BJP too is caught up with this malaise. The number of Janata Dals that we have across the country exemplifies this culture. It is a different matter that this culture has rendered the democratic edifice weaker than it was. And in many ways, the present state of things in Jharkhand, where we have an independent MLA, Manu Koda as Chief Minister supported by the Congress (the single largest party in the Assembly), is the culmination of this progressive weakening of the party system.

Be that as it may. The issue here is not just about a clash of personalities and faction feuds. The roots of this are to be found in the state of confusion that dominates the thinking of its leaders on whether they should be seen as representing the cause of the underdogs and the deprived sections of the people or as another integral part of the establishment. In other words, while one section of the leaders (like Budhadeb Bhattacharya) are determined to put their past behind them and position the party as the obvious choice before the large middle classes, there are other in the party who seem to be believe that the party must pretend to be standing up for the marginalized and hence persist with the façade of being anti-establishment.

The fallout of this state of confusion is at two levels. With the clout that the CPI(M) has in the dispensation (the UPA depends on the party’s goodwill for its survival), this state of confusion is causing several problems for the liberalization-privatisation agenda. And in this sense, the CPI(M) is seen as a bunch of wreckers. At a different level, Singur and the ADB loan agreement (which comes with obvious conditions) will alienate the poor and the marginalized from the party.

The ADB loan for the Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project comes with a condition that infrastructure projects are privatized, that all these services are taxed to the extent that the revenue generation is commensurate with the expenditure as well as repayment of the loan amount. This could mean higher charges for water, tolls for use of urban roads and other such public utilities. And all this will lead to popular anger against the dispensation of the same kind as it was seen against Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra Pradesh (in May 2004) and Digvijai Singh in Madhya Pradesh (in November 2003).

This could mean that the party losing its clout in parliament at some date. And when this happens, the party will cease to be an important player in the political discourse. In other words, the present state of confusion could lead the CPI(M) to fall between two stools.

The battle that is now raging in Nandigram is only a pointer to the shape of things in the days to come. And this is a battle whose course cannot be determined by the Politburo of the party and Budhadeb Bhattacharya who is more a poster-boy for Manmohan Singh.