23.05.2007

Comrade S Ramachandran Pillai

PB Member of CPI(M).

Dear Comrade SRP,

This is in response to your article on the result of UP Election, published in the Desabhimani of 16th May, titled Towards a Third Alternative. Your article took note of the poor performance of the left and called for remedying the weaknesses by learning from the election results. However, it did not mention the nature of weaknesses nor of the specific lessons to be learnt. Permit me to dwell on these, with regard to certain more obvious basics.

Let us examine first, some of the relevant observations from the Report on Implementation of Organizational Tasks, adopted by the Central Committee of CPI(M) at its meeting held between September 24 and 26, 2006 : QUOTE: While implementing the decisions of the 17th Congress, the Central Committee meeting held in May 2002 selected Assam, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra as priority states to concentrate efforts for expansion. The 18th Congress reviewed the work in priority states and decided that efforts should be continued seriously. After the Party Congress, the Central Committee again selected these states as priority states. In order to prepare one-year plan in priority states, a team of PB members and CC members participated in the meetings of the secretariats and state committees. Due to assembly elections, local body elections and floods, the date of finalization of one-year plans and the beginning of implementation of the plans differed from state to state. Among the priority states, Assam finalised the one-year plan in September 2005, Jharkhand in December 2005, Bihar in May 2005, Uttar Pradesh in September 2005 and Maharashtra in October 2005. Due to assembly and local body elections, the implementation of the plan in Bihar got delayed. Due to personal difficulties of S. Ramachandran Pillai, Party Centre was not able to give adequate attention to the organizational matters in Bihar. The review of the implementation of the one-year plans is yet to be done by the state committees. UNQUOTE: This is then followed by a fairly impressive review of the steps taken in each state, including UP, under the guidance of PBMs and CCMs in charge.

This sort of elaborate narration is indicative of the seriousness with which the PB and CC of CPI(M) were addressing the organizational weaknesses of the movement in UP. Despite such well planned organizational initiatives, Mayavati and Mulayan Singh turned out to be the hot favorites of UP people and they gained from the marginalization of Congress as well as BJP. Fortunes of the Left and CPI(M) are on the decline, despite our planned efforts, well drafted party programs, historical understanding of society, and superior theories based on Marxism-Leninism. Class and mass organizations led by CPI(M) and other left parties are doing good work at the national, as well as state level. Proof of this good work is the outright rejection of imperialist globalisation and related policies by the people. However, the real beneficiaries of rejection of central policies were the BSP and other regional parties in UP. In other states, BJP had succeeded in converting this rejection of central government policies into popular votes in their favor, thanks to their plane and simple anti-congress politics. Left and CPI(M) paid the penalty for the virtually unconditional support extended to the Delhi regime, which has even lost its patriotic character.

I remember you (?), warning the Congress leadership some two years ago: Left support to UPA should not be taken for a blank cheque! But there is a proliferation of blank cheques now; issued by almost every PB member of CPI(M) including the General Secretary, and the CMP has turned a political joke of the century. Not even on a single occasion, the Left parties had tried to win over the support of regional parties and other minor constituents of UPA, on policy issues: Left leaders discuss only with Congress and preferably, Sonia Gandhi or Manmohan. Left parties and the leaders of CPI(M), are seen as the guarantors of stability for the UPA regime. They even extend a helping hand to solve the inter-party and intra-party problems of UPA and do everything possible, not to upset the Applecart. UPA regime in Delhi is sinking on its own weight, and the process has now accelerated under the impact of the recent elections. CPI(M) and the Left keep on updating their blank cheques, in order to compensate for the rapid erosion of the mass base of Congress.

You have brought out the inevitability or possibility of a third alternative (you have avoided the usage of the word front), consisting of the Left and the regional parties, and aligned against Congress and BJP. However, you have mentioned two difficulties in this regard : (1) the meager resources of left parties and (2) regional parties continuing their allegiance to imperialist globalisation. Working among the followers of the regional parties, and winning them over is suggested as the only possible solution. But CPI(M) was supposedly doing the very same thing all these years, and the target population had included masses belonging to not only regional parties but also Congress and BJP, and there is nothing special to learn about this, from UP elections. And, the two inhibiting factors identified by you are, in my view, grossly exaggerated, mainly to justify the current opportunist policies of near-total support to the UPA regime.

This disgusting drama of UPA+ continues with no end in sight, in the name of preempting a BJP-RSS takeover of the country. Even the RSS is not immutable, nor remain immune to historical processes. Such fears are utterly irrational. It has nothing to do with Marxian understanding of history, Leninist organizational principles or Stalin's historic fight against fascism. BJP, RSS and their ideologies need to be fought, and they are best fought when they are in power. This is true even with regard to Modi and his Gujarat. Blind and irrational opposition to RSS and BJP based on abstract and global theories, continue to be a real handicap in fighting Modi on specific issues, from within Gujarat. Campaigns and criticisms by Left and CPI(M) are simply brushed aside today, as exaggerated, prejudiced and motivated. Even the limited success of BJP and RSS in globalising the Ramajanma Bhumi Issue springs from the failure on the part of the Left, in mobilizing local people, the Hindus and Muslims living in Ayodhya for several centuries.

Both BJP and Congress play communal cards and they share the hegemonic visions of India's ruling elite, the bourgeoisie landlord alliance, led by the big bourgeois who has now compromised with the imperialists and lost all their patriotic credentials. Indian people have rejected, beyond all reasonable doubts, lock stock and barrel, the program of imperialist globalisation, administered by the Central Government from Delhi. Reforms have drastically eroded into the financial and administrative autonomy of the member states of the Union Republic, and imperialist globalisation is severely blocking the natural development of its diverse nationalities. People's resistance against the policies of the Central Government is gathering momentum on several fronts, and all over the country: Not only the regional political parties, but even governments at the state and lower levels are bound to play a decisive role in the very near future, in resisting and defeating this neo-colonial aggression. The Delhi regime is rattled by these developments, and the results of the recent mid-term elections have forced it to swing into action, by appointing a commission for redesigning the central-state relation in an altogether reactionary direction: The politically weak Central Government is proposed to be provided with draconian powers, far beyond its moral entitlements. This is a well calculated move and forms part of a conspiracy by the ruling clique, who are in hand and glove with their imperial masters. So far, only CPI(M) has protested against this surprise move of the ruling clique in Delhi, and this protest need to be urgently strengthened and further substantiated into a national campaign for pushing the reform process in the opposite direction, in the best interests of unity and development of the Indian people. In fact, some of the regional parties like DMK and AIDMK has already put in their demands for re-designing the Central-State relations on an altogether different line.

India's Peoples Democratic Revolution has, in my humble view, already entered a critical stage and CPI(M) and other working class parties could play a decisive role in advancing it further, provided the three left ruled states take the initiatives, in re-ordering the central-state relations, in cooperation with other state governments. I had attempted a paper titled Central State Relations and the Indian Left, based on this perspective. Malayalam translation of this paper was published in part by the last issue of Marxist Samvadam, and the full paper in English is attached for your kind perusal. Central State relations continue to be a key live issue for CPI(M), as might be judged from the recent party resolutions, CC resolutions, as well as the recent article by Com Prakash in the Samvadam. It is a key issue of Peoples Democracy in which all regional parties will have a natural interest. Even the rank and file of BJP and Congress and even large sections of their leadership, will be interested in this bourgeoisie democratic reform. In fact, it could serve as the very foundations for the Third Alternative or a Third Front, you have tried to theorize in your article: By its very class character, it has to be anti-BJP and and anti-Congress United Front of our farming communities, small businessmen, working people and the intelligentsia at the state level, to be federated into a political force at the all-India level by the modern proletarians, committed to the development of an alternative state structure for the country as visualized in article 63 the program of CPI(M).

This part of the CPI(M) program remains unchanged, even after the its redrafting at Thiruvananthapuram and was inherited from the original program of CPI. Even for the other Left parties and regional political formations, these perspectives would be acceptable because of their basic democratic tenor. It is the right time for taking these perspectives on Peoples Democratic Government as described in Chapter VI of the program of CPI(M) to a much wider audience and campaign for it, as the federal and democratic alternative to the present bourgeoisie-landlord regime operating from Delhi as the agents for neo-colonialism. In fact, CPI(M) and the Left could do it, with the help of regional parties and it will necessarily mean toppling of the UDF Government. But, the leaders seem to be afraid of upsetting the Applecart.

Let me close this communication here: I will copy it to Com Prakash, and I believe it deserves a wider audience.

With warm greetings from Kochi,

K Vijayachandran.

Copy: Comrade Prakash Karat

General Secretary of CPI(M).