But for communists, India would have been a superpower

But for Communists India would have been a superpower
Dinanath Mishra (Pioneer, jJn. 21, 2008)

Had there been no Communist party in India, the country may have been a developed country, though not like France, Britain or the US but quite close.

The Communists are fundamentalists like Islamic jihadis in the economic sense of the word. By propaganda they create illusory truth, utopian reality and manufactured consent, thereby bringing a state of apathy in general public. Even Jawaharlal Nehru was carried away by their ideology, and adopted a part of it.

The slogan 'socialism' halted constructive thinking for 45 years. The Marxist variety of scientific socialism destroyed the natural course of economic development of the country for 50 years and of West Bengal for 30 years. Seventy to 80 per cent of the Communist movement history published by the CPM is either in praise of scientific socialism or against capitalism.

One can hardly forget that they destroyed the fourth industrially developed State resulting in migration of industries to other States. Obviously, they destroyed employment opportunities for Bengalis who went searching for jobs wherever these were available.

Up to the late 80s and even now, the slogan-shouting comrades ranting Tata-Birla murdabad while conducting gate meetings of factory employees and abusing owner and managers of the factories, was a regular feature. They instigate employees for work to rule, where work to rule was not prevalent. A friend of mine posted in West Bengal, often complained that the blue collar Bengali hardly ever do their duties and leave work incomplete which has to be done by managers. When the edifice of socialism crumbled and reforms came into being, generally our economy improved, more so during the BJP led NDA regime.

In West Bengal, two of its stalwarts have started praising capitalism in superlative terms. Recently, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said, "Socialism is not possible now. You want capital both from foreign and domestic. After all, we are working in the capitalist system. Socialism is our political agenda and was mentioned in our party documents. But capitalism would continue to be compulsion for the future."

Basu's comments in praise of capitalism are even more surprising. "We welcomed private capital for industrialisation. Socialism is a far cry. It will continue to be compulsion for future. We have learnt from the failure of socialism, we have learnt from the miracle of China. The same Basus and Bhattacharjees have used the word 'miracle of Soviet Union' in the past. Miracle of China, too, is a mixed bag. Western China suffers from abject poverty. Only the eastern coast can be described as a miracle, that, too with the help of Chinese from abroad and the US.

Hardcore fundamentalist Communist leadership of India has apparently become permissive capitalist. If only they could have woken up half a century earlier. But the Communist rhetoric had a tendency to live in the past. Take for example their negative attitude to disinvestments. It is a well known fact that if best public sector companies are allowed to disinvest without loosing control over the company, they could have gathered Rs 8 lakh crore, enough to take care of all infrastructure requirements, lack of which has a decelerative impact on our economy today. They want India to follow the same old confusing path. But for West Bengal, they are ready to welcome total capitalism leaving Marx behind. Not that this wisdom was not available to the first generation politicians; Chakravorty Rajgopalachari, Minoo Masani, Piloo Mody were ardent pleaders for doing away with quota, permit and licence-raj and confused concept of mixed economy.

The ideological dilemma of CPM and the Left is far more deep rooted than what meets the eye. In West Bengal the Forward Bloc and RSP have raised some fundamental questions towards the changed altitude of CPM stalwarts. Kerala Chief Minister VS Achyutanandan has diagonally opposed views on these issues openly. It is also a well known fact that the CITU continues to stick to ideological dogma as they are violently opposed to the red-carpet welcome to Tatas and other Indian companies.

The inhumanity has been perpetuated by party leaders in Nandigram and Singur with the help Government constabulary. Still the whole truth is yet to come out. Every now and then corpses are unearthered. There is no count as to how many persons lost their lives to this barbarism. Only an year back Bhattacharjee was at the peak of popularity. Today is he at the bottom. Notwithstanding continuous propaganda engineered against Narendra Modi the number of journalists from West Bengal praised the multifarious development of one term of Modi Government and hinted at its comparison to six-term rule of Communist Government in West Bengal.


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