Chandra, Pratyush | Whose Media | Edited by Saswat Pattanayak

The Constituent Assembly for Stable ‘Democracy’ or for uninterrupted Democratisation? :: Pratyush Chandra

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 17:43:55 -0400

A substantial portion of the following reflections on Nepal was jotted down several days ago, but they seem still relevant.

Stable democracy is the end of democratisation. This statement is ambiguous - on the one hand, it means that democratisation leads to stable democracy, but on the other it also means that the latter actually ends the process of democratisation. Isn’t it true that all stable formal democracies are realisation of particular processes of democratisation? Isn’t it also true that the stability of these democracies depends on how much the ritual of elections and the cacophony of parliamentary halls and senates are able to control the popular assertion on the streets and in every walk of life?

In Nepal, this tussle between democracy and democratisation is very intensive. Till recently especially during the phase of the people’s war the forces representing each of them were easily identifiable since they were generally mutually exclusive, but after April 2006 both are on the same turf trying to overpower one another. The only consistent forces are the royalty and the imperialists - the former is waging an existential struggle, while the latter have to make best out of the worst situation. And all others are inconsistent in varying degrees. The non-communist forces of democracy are evidently still afraid of any drastic break from the past - the royalty and their own past practices. The royal nostalgia looms heavily on the election manifestos of the Nepali Congress and UML, even when they officially declare themselves as republicans. They are afraid of any radical change in the legitimation process. They are unable to give away the ritualism and ceremonialism that characterised the polity which they profess to challenge. They still need a ceremonial patriarch in whose name they will rule.

Everybody knows that it was the mass agitation that forced the royalty and foreign interests on defensive. Even after the restoration of the old parliament it was the continued presence of masses on the streets that coerced the restored leadership to inch forward to further democracy.

By becoming part of the government that is non-committal to any radical change unless forced, the Maoists perhaps became vulnerable to all the pitfalls of power politics in a competitive set-up. However the greatest strength or safeguard for them is their recognition and commitment to two-line struggle within their own ranks - between the tendencies of compromise and of uninterrupted transformation. They are aware that their radicalism lies in intensifying this struggle at every level. If we find today an apparent inconsistency between the Maoists in the government and those on the streets, it is the open realisation of this two-line struggle, which tempers one another not allowing the former to settle with status quoism. Recent statements by Prachanda, Baburam Bhattarai and Mohan Baidya, where they stressed on the need for giving “top priority to the street struggle at this juncture”, reflect the Maoists’ resolution to remain as forces of democratisation, rather than a stability factor for a democracy of an elitist minority and the depoliticised majority.

Definitely, this does not go well with the scheme for democracy as visualised by the hegemonic forces. They need stability; democracy too is needed just to have a stable environment, as a scheme to bribe away the representatives of those who shout on the streets. If democracy goes beyond this scheme, it is an aberration and anarchy - if workers assert themselves on their workplace or the landless demand their share on the resources, they are harming the property rights of the individuals. Democracy is a privilege, which must not be practiced everyday and everywhere. It is in this sense we can understand the conflict between the forces of democracy and those of democratisation. Democratisation in this regard can be understood as perpetual expansion of democracy beyond the confines of established institutions.

It was expected that after locking up the arms of the Maoist army, the Maoists would be “disarmed” and locked up in barracks. It is forgotten that a revolutionary army is first and foremost politically armed and always on watch out. The recent controversies on the activities of the Young Communist League are symptomatic of the impossible demands posed by the status quo on the revolutionary forces. Another controversy that has come up is regarding the issue of returning land to the deposed landlords. It is part of the hegemonic expectations, which seek to do away with any impact of the previous parallel revolutionary government on the future political economy of Nepal. Even if the Maoists officially may agree to it, the popular energy that they have unleashed in their decade-long people’s war will obviously reassert itself, despite all odds. This popular energy is evident in various self-determination movements, which have startled all the political forces in the country with their vigour.

Among these movements, the Madheshi (Terai) struggle clearly stands out, not only for its vigour but also for its peculiar constitution. Evidently, the various Madheshi identities have long been oppressed and suppressed in the overall Nepali set-up. But the recent attempt to homogenize Madheshi as a singular regional identity beyond divisions - caste and class - is a phenomenon that can only be understood by revealing the interplay of class, national and international forces behind it.

The Madheshi (Terai) region is agriculturally the most productive region in the country. Historically there has been a strong section of landed and propertied gentry in this region which has continued to oppose any systematic land redistribution efforts. Until now this section has been able to preclude such possibility through their opportunist lobbying and support to various political formations. It has time and again resisted any efforts to decrease the land ceilings. Unsurprisingly, it will see the Maoists with their commitment to radical land reforms as a grave threat. With the genuine federalist self-determination movements rising throughout the country to hasten and shape up the future Nepal, this section along with other Indo-Nepali businessmen with evident backing from the mellowed down monarchy supporters utilized sections of the Terai movement to turn anti-Maoist. In order to homogenise the Madheshi sentiment against the Maoists, the Terai ruling class and political elites have been utilising the apprehension that the radical land reforms might relocate non-Terai landless into the region. The following quote from Sarita Giri of Nepal Sadbhawana Party (Anandi Devi), one of the political parties claiming to fight for the Madheshi rights reveals much of the class-fear among the leadership of the Madheshis:

“As a consequence of [the] 1990 movement, Communists (led by hill elites) emerged as a formidable new force. [The] Revolutionary land reform agenda has been now their political agenda. But it would be naive to say that it was no more the agenda of Nepali Congress. Prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba ha[d] agreed to reduce the ceiling to 4 to 5 bighas from 11 bighas in Madhesh. It was due to the movement led by Nepal Sadbhawana Party and supported by madheshi elites across parties that the government dropped its agenda. And now in 2007 they are the Maoists who have designed to march ahead with their agenda of revolutionary land reform. It has explicitly been mentioned in the Interim Constitution. This time too, Nepal Sadbhawana Party (Anandi Devi) has written note of dissent against the revolutionary land reform program. The aim behind such an agenda is obviously to enhance the control of hill centric state over madhesh. This is the context against which the current Madheshi movement and its demands of republicanism, autonomy, self determination and federalism should be understood.”

Even Jwala Singh, a militant Madhesi leader demanded that, “The land of Madheshis captured by Maoists should be given back”.

Obviously these sections of the Terai leadership will be all the more anxious, as the Maoists have already included the demand for ‘land to the tiller’ in their Commitment Document for the Constituent Assembly elections.

Furthermore, the Terai region being geographically, culturally and economically closer to the only immediate imperialist force and agency in the region, India, is also open to various kinds of imperialist manipulation. In recent years, India with its rising economic interests beyond its territory has used all sorts of “identities” to assert a diasporic homogeny under the garb of which it can support its cross-border political economic expansion. It is not very surprising that this expansionist tenor was firmly and vocally established by the Rightist forces in India. It can in fact be comfortably said that the rightists became a legitimate force in India only with the rise of neoliberalism, when Indian capital found Indianness, Hinduism etc to be effective in its “free” market consolidation and operation globally. One needs to cursorily go through the widely circulated weekly of Hindu fascists, Organiser and its chatterbox journalism to grasp the confident obscenity of Indian expansionism in its extreme. Recently it invented “The Western-Christian agenda in Kathmandu” and “the Christian leadership of the Maoists”, lamenting the threat to the “Hindu civilisation”:

“The bells are tolling, not just for the Nepalese monarchy, but also for the Hindu culture and civilisation of the nation.”

It is a known fact that the Hindu rightists in India have been outspoken against the republican and democratisation processes in Nepal, and have been very active recently in the Terai region. It is this transnational unity among Hindu fascists with its base in India, which acts as a major weapon of active imperialist intervention, besides the usual economic threat of the flight of capital and the diplomatic diatribes.

It is evident that delays that marred the implementation of the anti-royalist agenda to which various democratic forces agreed have given a significant time for the reactionary forces to consolidate. It will be interesting to observe the various political realignments before, during and after the Constituent Assembly elections.

The Maoists claim that the main basis of the new constitution will be “the mandate of the 10 years People’s War and 19 days people’s Movement”. They see, as Maoist leader Badal explains, the Constituent Assembly as “the process of building new Nepal. We are advancing through the Constituent Assembly as the process of institutionalising new Nepal by the representatives elected directly in the participation of the people.[sic!] We raised the agenda of the CA through revolt and movement; institutionalized it and we are in the stage of its implementation. The process has been advanced ahead to carry out movement up to conclusion.” Obviously this reinterpretation of the CA as a process, if legitimised through elections and if the Maoists continue to adher to it, will be a death knell for the reactionary forces in and around Nepal.

A Review of "Labour Bondage in West India" :: Pratyush Chandra

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:01:43 -0400

Jan Breman, Labour Bondage in West India: From Past to Present , Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2007, ISBN:9-780195-685213, pp. xii+216, Price (HB) Rs. 525.

The combined socio-economic development in India has been an enigma for the political economists. It defies any strict characterization in terms of a single mode of production. Any alternative analysis needs to provide a coherent semantics of the capitalist adoption and oft-times perpetuation of the 'outmoded' modes of exploitation. Jan Breman's contribution in unfolding the political economy behind the dynamic persistence of labour bondage and other 'non-capitalist' forms of subordination of rural labour has been widely recognized. His conceptualization of 'footloose labour' substantiated by his empirical studies of the phenomenon of rural-to-rural migration and non-agricultural occupations in rural Gujarat provides a formidable picture of how (post)modernity perpetuates informal sector and "neo-bondage" in the age of neoliberalism.

The present book complements Breman's other works by focusing "on the historical antecedents of the ongoing subordination of rural labour in what has come to be hailed as a booming economy".(x) It provides a historical survey of the changing nature of land rights, rural bondage and conflicts, embedded within the wider political economicBreman Labour Bondage transformation since pre-colonial times. The book also contains a couple of very interesting chapters giving a class analysis of the agrarian unrest and anti-colonial struggle in South Gujarat, while exposing the cyclic subaltern and open assertion of rural labour within these movements.

The book begins with an analysis of the structure of the traditional rural economy, how the domestication of indigenous population and their allocation within the Hindu social hierarchy took place, how all these socio-cultural changes had a direct link with "the advent of sedentary agriculture". Breman succeeds in demonstrating a continuous dynamic reshuffling within this supposedly rigid structuring, at least among the landed castes. Political changes, changes in tax regime, and the changing linkages of the rural economy with the wider economy all affected the local socio-economic relations and even caste-class nexus. In fact, "[t]he peasantry continued to be highly mobile until deep into the second half of the nineteenth century, and the situation stabilized only when, with the twentieth century in sight, all land fit for agriculture had been taken up for cultivation and the colonial administration had restricted the power of landlords".(12) Also, Breman "contradicts the assumption that the village economy was a closed circuit that functioned solely to meet the needs of the inhabitants".(28) He recognizes the limited, yet definite role of monetization in connecting the local economy with the outside world. The most important role of the British colonization was that it completed the process of land and labour enclosures, putting an end to the frontier nature of the agricultural economy in the region, sedentarizing every nomadic community and its activity, thus permanently allocating the local communities in the dominant economic structure.

The second chapter deals with the standpoints of various relevant social and class forces on halipratha or the system of bonded labour - masters, servants, the colonial and legal views, etc. The chapter begins with providing a glimpse of the basic hegemonic ideological make-up that justified the system of bondage and patronage - how masters and servants both had their own logic to exist in these relations. The colonial administrators and reporters, well-versed in western capitalist liberalism, saw this system essentially as transitory labour arrangement, which would eventually give way to free labour. Breman discusses a prominent historian Gyan Prakash's critique of the colonial view. According to Prakash, the colonial view reduced the system of bondage - a "manifestation of social hierarchy" - to an economic transaction, classifying it as a form of debt bondage. Prakash concludes that this bondage "was constructed by the colonial discourse of freedom", thus disconnecting it from its "pre-modern" roots. Breman though sympathetic to the idea of halipratha as a patron-client relationship, strongly departs from the postmodern tendency, evident in Prakash, of reducing various levels of determinations of this relationship into a single horizontal level, of discourse. Breman stresses that there was an "awareness on the part of both landowners and landless that the unequal relationship between them was clearly given an extra dimension by the subjugation that secured a far-reaching and permanent claim on the labour power of the hali".(46-47) Also, Breman, as noted above, does not take the pre-colonial local economy as a closed one. Thus he finds debt-bondage in the time of the British as a continuity - a means of permanent claiming of labour power. However, there was definitely a radical intensification in this relationship during the colonial period, a decisive factor being "the gradual increase in production for the market, and the monetization of economic exchange that inevitably accompanied it".(59)

The third chapter deals with the Bardoli movement (1922-28), which has been posed as the success story of peasant mobilization and struggle under the Gandhian nationalist leadership of the Indian National Congress. It shows how this leadership remained loyal to the ruling classes, becoming an agency to vocalize the landed class interests, while policing and crushing the assertion of the landless and halis. Even at the level of discourse, leaders like Sardar Patel used outrageous casteist rhetoric to encourage the unity and assertion of the landed gentry, while alienating and silencing the subaltern, in the name of homogeneous nationalism. The issues of land reforms and bondage were effectively sidelined.

The next chapter completes the canvas of class struggle that marked rural Gujarat, correcting the hegemonic perceptions within the nationalist movement. The landless, Dublas, halis were not "as passive and docile as these perceptions seem to suggest". In fact, they have long practiced passive resistance by indulging in so-called 'indiscipline' and insubordination. Even in the Bardoli campaign of 1928, the vertical solidarity was not so much prominent as professed by the campaigners and chroniclers. There were voices even among Gandhians who were aware of the upper caste-class orientation of the movement and tried to resist it.

The nationalist voices concerned with tenancy rights and anti-landlordism united to form the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) at the country level in 1936. Despite a stress over an all-peasant unity evident in the name of the organization, it was a tremendous leap towards uniting the forces conscious of the need for a radical reconstruction of the rural society. At least in the ryotwari areas like Gujarat, where the AIKS was formed under the leadership of Indulal Yagnik and Dinkar Mehta, its programmes were directly translated into the mobilization and agitation of the poor peasantry and the landless including the bonded labour, the halis. Breman notes the clarity of the AIKS leadership in its understanding of the hali system especially for its conception of the halis' masters as capitalist farmers! Despite a tremendous resistance on the part of the capitalist farmers and their nationalist leadership, the AIKS in Gujarat succeeded in posing the halipratha, landlessness and poverty as material issues rather than issues for "self-improvement" and spiritual development of the rural poor as Gandhians and upper caste-class biased leadership posed. Even the Congress leadership had to address the issue, even though reluctantly. On January 26, 1939 Sardar Patel announced the formal end of the halipratha system on the terms agreed upon by the landowners, which tilted very much on their side, especially with regard to wages etc. But the subsequent events showed the intensification of conflicts on the issue of implementation. Remarkably, despite the fact that the Congress was running the government in Bombay Province since 1937, the leadership did not insist on a government order or legislation banning bonded labour, thus allowing the landowners freedom to sabotage the agreement.

The final chapter deals with whatever happened to the various legislative measures taken for land redistribution and the continued presence of landlessness and unfree labour after independence. Ultimately, "[t]he halpatis benefited in no way at all from the land reforms. The few tenant farmers among them generally lost the land that they had sharecropped on an informal basis". In fact, even with regard to the uncultivated land not under private ownership to which everyone had free access, "this access would be increasingly restricted as a result of the widespread trend to privatize the land".(166) Breman thus concludes his review of land reforms in post-colonial India: "they were designed and implemented in such a way that social classes like the Halpatis were denied access to agrarian landownership.... Increasing the share of land owned by landpoor farmers was given priority above allocating plots of land to the landless masses".(167-68) The mechanical notion widespread among the leadership with regard to the transition from agriculture to industrial development - that the rural poor has to be shifted ultimately to the urban centres - also weakened the voice for formulating and implementing any radical measure for land reform.

With regard to unfree labour too, the tremendous resistance to any abolition of the hali system at the ground level on the part of the landowners, along with the impotent nationalist leadership which was more subservient to the landed interests, broke every resolution to gain freedom for and by the landless. With the repression and disappearance of the AIKS activists from the scene, the Gandhian reformers were the only ones left to 'represent' the interests of the halpatis, and they had no concrete strategy for serving them except to act as middlemen using the tactics of persuasion. "The halis had no other choice than to go back to work under the old regime".(169) Despite the announcements to the effect, even after Independence, "getting rid of unfree labour was not seen as a government responsibility but, as in 1938, was once again left to the free play of social forces. These forces were represented, on the one hand, by a class of farmers who had not only consolidated their power base at the local level during the process of independence but had further reinforced it, and on the other hand by a large mass of landless labourers whose labour power was only required in full strength for certain parts of the year." (175) Ultimately the effect for the landless was either more indebtedness, or they had to seek employment outside agriculture. The hegemonic social forces including their political representatives were free from any responsibility in this "free play of social forces". Breman discusses how the one-sided class struggle over the legislative measures like the fixing of minimum wages too were effectively emasculated, leaving the rural poor unrepresented.

The book goes on to discuss how the tools of repression were utilized to deradicalize the rural poor. In fact, "[t]he Congress party, which had come to power after Independence both at the central level and in the separate states, put an end to the pressure that had been placed on the leaders of the nationalist movement for decades to pursue a rural policy in the interests of the landless and landpoor peasants."(180) Breman narrates how the halis and tribals fared when they were "henceforth [placed] under the protection of the Gandhian reformers". Even the moderate and conciliatory measures of these reformers were resisted by the landed classes.

In the end, the book elaborates on the reasons behind the gradual disappearance of bondage, discussing the seminal contributions of Daniel Thorner, "who portrayed the development of the underclass in the agricultural economy of South Asia in the 1950s and 1960s".(188) With the gradual capitalist development in the region and the intensification of local class struggle, the bondage as practiced till then became both economically and politically untenable. "Bonded labour came to an end not because of government intervention but because employers and employees, for different reasons, wanted it that way...The disintegration of the halipratha system was an expression of the resistance of the landless underclass to the ideology and practice of inequality".(193)

In my view, the most important contribution of the present book has been to trace the trajectory of class struggle over the issue of bondage. In this process, Breman is able to deconstruct the anti-colonial politics, legal, legislative and social reforms before and after independence as expressions of multi-level struggles between various classes. Nothing is conceded by anyone without resistance from others. Even the chronicling of these struggles has been sharply influenced by the conflicts of interests, and this book succeeds in presenting a holistic picture of these discursive conflicts from the standpoint of the exploited and downtrodden.

"Neoliberal" Leninism in India and its Class Character :: Pratyush Chandra

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 17:55:13 -0500

"Criticism - the most keen, ruthless and uncompromising criticism - should be directed, not against parliamentarianism or parliamentary activities, but against those leaders who are unable - and still more against those who are unwilling - to utilise parliamentary elections and the parliamentary rostrum in a revolutionary and communist manner. Only such criticism-combined, of course, with the dismissal of incapable leaders and their replacement by capable ones-will constitute useful and fruitful revolutionary work that will simultaneously train the "leaders" to be worthy of the working class and of all working people, and train the masses to be able properly to understand the political situation and the often very complicated and intricate tasks that spring from that situation." (V.I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, Chapter 7)

1. Lenin and the CPIM's Leninism

he Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPIM)-led Left Front government in its endeavour to industrialise West Bengal, admittedly within the larger neoliberal framework of the Indian state's economic policies, is ready to scuttle every act of popular vigilance in the manner which Lenin would have called "bureaucratic harassment" of workers-peasants' self-organisation. India's official left position on neoliberal industrialisation and its potentiality to generate employment is very akin to what Lenin characterised "Narodism melted into Liberalism", as the official left "gloss[es] over [the] contradictions [of industrialisation] and try to damp down the class struggle inherent in it."(1)

In fact, the mass organisations of the official left in West Bengal have for a long time been the main bulwarks of the state government to pre-empt any systematic upsurge of the workers and peasants. They have become increasingly what can be called the ideological state apparatuses to drug the masses and keep them in line. And in this, Leninism has been reduced to an ideology, an apologia for the Left Front's convergence with other mainstream forces on the neoliberal path, giving its "steps backwards" a scriptural validity and promoting an image that in fact this is the path towards revolution - all in the name of consolidation and creating objective conditions for revolution. For justifying their compromises locally in West Bengal, CPIM leaders have found handy innumerable quotations from Lenin, and sometimes from Marx too. Contradictory principles and doctrines can easily be derived from their statements, if read as scriptures and taken out of contexts. Hence, as a popular saying in India confirms, baabaa vaakyam pramaanam, which loosely means, you can prove anything on the basis of scriptures.

Of course, this can be a variety of Leninism, as there are varieties mushrooming like religious sects, but such was not Lenin. Lenin himself never treated Marx's writings as scriptural for justifying his every tactical move. Furthermore, especially after the defeat of other European revolutions, on many occasions he was ready to acknowledge Russia's "steps backwards", even during the formulation and implementation of the New Economic Policy. His defence of the independence of working class organisation and power beyond state formation in his attack on Trotsky's advocacy of the regimentation of trade unions was especially for countering the counter-revolutionary potential in the Russian state's "steps backwards" by ever-stronger working class vigilance. Lenin had the guts to say, "We now have a state under which it is the business of the massively organised proletariat to protect itself, while we, for our part, must use these workers' organisations to protect the workers from their state, and to get them to protect our state. Both forms of protection are achieved through the peculiar interweaving of our state measures and our agreeing or "coalescing" with our trade unions."(2; emphasis mine)

Such was Lenin even as the leader of the Soviet State, unlike the CPIM-led Left Front's leadership, which seeks to stabilise its rule in a tiny part of India, where, it admits, its government can have no sovereignty.

The CPIM's energetic peasant leader Benoy Konar (who rails against Naxal conspiracy in every disturbance in West Bengal), a major stalwart in the present debate on repression and agitation in the state, says, "West Bengal is a federal state in a capitalist feudal country. What its government has done is just a miniscule step compared to what Lenin was forced to do, even after the revolution. If this is what upsets these "true" Marxists so much, we request them to stop living in their imaginations and step into the real world."(3) This logic is very instructive, indeed. It is precisely the case - Lenin could afford to do what he was forced to do because the revolution had taken place. Also, the "steps backwards" were essentially for the sustainability of the state, without changing its basic character - workers-peasants state, taking the risk of further bureaucratisation and distortion, which he thought the independent assertion of the working class would weed out eventually. If Konar and his gurus are forcing themselves to do the same in a "capitalist feudal country", then it is for whose sustainability - of the "capitalist feudal" state?

2. CPIM and its Self-Criticisms

Throughout its thirty years of continuous rule, the West Bengal government's main concern has been to stabilise its local rule within the parameters set by India's state formation, and the hegemonic political economic set-up in the country. It boasts of its successes, but at what cost? The exigencies of the parliamentarist integration reinforced the accommodation and consolidation of a "supra-class" ideology within the communist political habits imbibed during its appendage to the nationalist movement, throughout India in general, and West Bengal in particular. This explains a less radical approach towards land reforms in the region.(4) The CPI-CPIM's role became limited to controlling and policing the radicalisation of its own mass base, as in the 1960s-70s, especially with regard to the Naxal movement. It is interesting to note today how every attempt to form an organisation of the rural proletarians and small peasantry, independent of the rich and middle peasant (who benefited from the movements on tenancy rights and against the Bargadari system) dominated Kisan Sabhas, is systematically repressed by Bengal's state machinery and party.

When the CPIM capitulated to electoral politics resorting to tactical measures and strategic sloganeering, because of the so-called popular mandate in its parliamentarist pursuit, militancy became a thing to be repeated only in speeches and slogans as its practice can alienate few votes, precious votes. This is not to say that it was only a subjective transition or a matter of conscious choice, rather, it represented the latent politics of the party leadership's class character. In fact, the only thing lacking was a conscious and consistent opposition within, despite the fact that the party was aware of this from the very beginning. In one of its early documents, it noted:

"The struggle against revisionism inside the Indian Communist movement will neither be fruitful nor effective unless the alien class orientation and work among the peasantry are completely discarded. No doubt, this is not an easy task, since it is deep-rooted and long-accumulated and also because the bulk of our leading kisan activists come from rich and middle peasant origin, rather than from agricultural labourers and poor peasants. Their class origin, social links and the long training given to them give a reformist ideological-political orientation which is alien to proletarian class point and prevent them from actively working among the agricultural labourers, poor and middle peasants with the zeal and crusading spirit demanded of Communists. Hence the need and urgency to rectify and remould the entire outlook and work of our Party in the kisan movement."(5)

To this P. Sundarayya adds in 1973 (when he was the party's general secretary), "the same old reformist deviation is still persisting in our understanding and practice", which frequently leads to "the repudiation of the Party Programme formulations." (6)

This was all before the concern for stabilising its rule and building social corporatism - "peace", "harmony", etc., in West Bengal became the party's prime agenda. Today, the state government's industrialisation and urbanisation policies express the needs of the neo-rich gentry, a considerable section of which is the class of absentee landowners, dominating the bureaucratic apparatuses and service sector, who legitimately want a share in India's corporate development. When the Kolkata session of the All India Kisan Council held on January 5-6, 2007 asks "the state government to forge ahead on the path of industrialisation based on the success of land reforms and impressive agricultural growth" (7), it is simply expressing the interests of all those who have benefited the most from the success of limited agrarian reforms.

The party is aware that if they alienate these class forces, it will not be possible to remain in power in "a constitutional set-up that is not federal in nature" and which reproduces their ideological hegemony through various identitarian and legal relations influencing the voting pattern of the electorate. As the present party general secretary Prakash Karat, notes:

"It was clear then as now that the policies implemented by Left-led governments would always be circumscribed by the fact that State power vests with the centre while state governments have very limited powers and resources. This is the reality of a constitutional set-up that is not federal in nature. This understanding was further clarified when Left-led governments began to rule in the three states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura for longer periods of time. Within all the constraints and limitations of office, these governments have to take steps to fulfil their commitments to the people and offer relief to the working people. While there are urgent issues before Left-led governments, including those of protecting livelihoods in agriculture, creating jobs by means of industrial development, and improving the quality of people's lives, alternative policies in certain spheres can be implemented only within the constraints imposed by the system."(8)

If this is not the Third Way, the there-is-no-alternative (TINA) syndrome, then one wonders what it can be. Zizek defines the Third Way as "simply global capitalism with a human face, that is, an attempt to minimize the human costs of the global capitalist machinery, whose functioning is left undisturbed."(9) It is an old disease that inflicts all social democratic parties, once they start talking about consolidation within the bourgeois framework. Compare:

"Let no one misunderstand us"; we don't want "to relinquish our party and our programme but in our opinion we shall have enough to do for years to come if we concentrate our whole strength, our entire energies, on the attainment of certain immediate objectives which must in any case be won before there can be any thought of realising more ambitious aspirations."

To this Marx and Engels answered back in 1879:

"The programme is not to be relinquished, but merely postponed - for some unspecified period. They accept it - not for themselves in their own lifetime but posthumously, as an heirloom for their children and their children's children. Meanwhile they devote their "whole strength and energies" to all sorts of trifles, tinkering away at the capitalist social order so that at least something should appear to be done without at the same time alarming the bourgeoisie."(10; emphasis original)

This is the state of a self-acclaimed "revolutionary" party caught up in an existential struggle - "tinkering away at the capitalist social order"! Why not, "the journey towards socialism would begin only after the accomplishment of the task of the bourgeoisie democratic revolution. If the bourgeois did not join the democratic revolution, it would be easier for the working class to establish its leadership in it which would help in the next stage of socialist revolution."(11) So friends, nothing to worry about, on behalf of the working class, the CPIM is actually taking a time out for accomplishing the 'democratic revolutionary' tasks. If the working classes - rural and urban - are being forced to shut up, it is all for ensuring their leadership! So, "the programme is not to be relinquished, but merely postponed - for some unspecified period..."

The CPI(M)'s capitulation to an alien class-ideological orientation is stark in its continuous effort to de-radicalise the left trade union politics. Parallel to Sundarayya's self-criticism, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya too has been time and again indulging in his own variety of self-criticism. His statements are very straight-forward, as he seldom minces words in his pandering to corporate interests. In one of his interviews to The Hindu (November 16, 2005), he says: "We did commit certain wrong things in the past. There were investors really afraid of trade unions here. But things have changed... I am in constant touch with our senior trade union leaders and keep telling them that it is now a different situation. ...I tell [trade union leaders] they must behave. If you do not behave companies will close, you will lose your jobs."(12)

The combination of subjective and objective factors determines the tenor of the official left politics everywhere in India today. So the repression of strikers at the Kanoria jute mill in 1993-94 and Singur/Nandigram incidents are not something unexpected. They are expressions of the Left Front's stable rule in West Bengal for thirty years. These are the imperatives rising from the limitations, about which the Front and CPIM never tire to talk, and in which their existential politics is embedded. They do so, as there-is-no-alternative.

3. No "Doublespeak", but the "Narodnik-like Bourgeois" speaks

Unsurprisingly, the CPIM's present general secretary Prakash Karat whom some of us used to admire for his strong positions uncomfortable for the parliamentarian lobbies within the party has come out strongly in defence of the same parliamentarianism. His general secretaryship demands that. In India, the days are gone when within these communist parties, a general secretary used to be the voice of a particular programmatic tendency. The designation has been increasingly reduced to a 'post' in the permanent hierarchy, where the post-holder like a civil servant voices whichever tendency dominates in the party.

Prakash Karat accuses the 'left opposition' to the Left Front's industrialisation policies of Narodism, which too is not very surprising. It is one of our standard abuses, along with 'infantile disorder', 'revisionism', etc... However, Karat in his defence really means it, when he says: "The CPIM will continue to refute the modern-day Narodniks who claim to champion the cause of the peasantry", as he appends this with a note on the Narodniks.(13)

It seems Karat is ignorant - either he feigns it, or it is real - about Lenin's analysis of Narodism. Lenin's criticism of the Narodnik revolutionaries was mainly centred on their faulty understanding of Russian reality; unlike the Narodniks he saw a slow, but definite evolution of capitalism and capitalist market. He stressed strategising on the basis of this new reality. On the other hand, the Narodniks saw capitalism still simply as a possibility, and thus like true petty bourgeois revolutionaries dreamt of evading the ruthlessness of capitalist accumulation, while often lauding bourgeois freedom and democracy. Lenin in his diatribes obviously underlined the utopianism of this programme, but only on the basis of a critique of the political economy of capitalism in Russia. His fundamental stress was to describe the processes of capitalist accumulation, the ruthlessness of which was compounded by its impurity, its 'incompleteness'. Definitely, an important component of Lenin's programme was embedding the democratic struggle against feudal remnants in the unfolding of the socialist revolution:

"Thus the red banner of the class-conscious workers means, first, that we support with all our might the peasants' struggle for full freedom and all the land; secondly, it means that we do not stop at this, but go on further. We are waging, besides the struggle for freedom and land, a fight for socialism. The fight for socialism is a fight against the rule of capital. It is being carried on first and foremost by the wage-workers, who are directly and wholly dependent on capital. As for the small farmers, some of them own capital themselves, and often themselves exploit workers. Hence not all small peasants join the ranks of fighters for socialism; only those do so who resolutely and consciously side with the workers against capital, with public property against private property."(14; emphasis mine)

Lenin's analysis of capitalism in agriculture showed a growing peasant differentiation. This led him to stress on the heterogeneity of proletarian attitude towards diverse peasant classes. He criticised the populism of the Narodniks and also the liberals who put forward a homogenised notion of "narod" (people). The same notion is found in the Indian official left's attitude towards the peasantry and its assessment of the land reform efforts in the left-ruled states. When it calls upon consolidating the gains from land reforms achieved in a "capitalist feudal" society and pursuing industrialisation on their basis, it consistently evades the question of peasant differentiation. Such evasion is a reflection of the consolidation, within the left leadership, of the hegemonic interests that necessarily rose after the limited land reforms measures. As Sundarayya indicated, this lobby had already congealed within the CPIM and been affecting its work in the rural areas, much before it enjoyed the cosiness of the state power. Its consistent success in undermining the rise of the rural proletarians and their organisation in West Bengal is indicative of the strength of this lobby. When Benoy Konar and the All India Kisan Sabha speak for industrialisation based on the gains in agriculture, they speak on the behalf of the rising kulaks and upper middle class in West Bengal who would like to invest and profit on the peripheries and as local agencies of the neoliberal industrialisation - in real estate, in outsourcing and other businesses which are concomitant appendages to the neoliberal expansion.

While differentiating the agrarian programme of the Social Democrats (when the revolutionary Marxists still identified themselves with this name) from that of the liberals, Lenin criticised the latter's "distraught Narodism" - "Narodism melting into Liberalism", which represented the Narodnik-like bourgeoisie, and explained:

"Firstly, the Social-Democrats want to effect the abolition of the remnants of feudalism (which both programmes directly advance as the aim) by revolutionary means and with revolutionary determination, the liberals - by reformist means and half-heartedly. Secondly, the Social-Democrats stress that the system to be purged of the remnants of feudalism is a bourgeois system; they already now, in advance, expose all its contradictions, and strive immediately to extend and render more conscious the class struggle that is inherent in this new system and is already coming to the surface. The liberals ignore the bourgeois character of the system purged of feudalism, gloss over its contradictions and try to damp down the class struggle inherent in it."(15; emphasis mine)

Here Lenin clearly states that "distraught Narodism" lies, firstly, in its reformist means, and secondly, in not recognising that the system is already a bourgeois system, hence the basic struggle is against the rule of capital. As Lenin indicated and as it is clear in the case of the CPIM in West Bengal, the ideology of "distraught Narodism" is an ideology of the class of Narodnik-like local bourgeoisie, which is necessarily Janus-headed. On the one hand, it feels insecure before its established competitors and their 'bigness', thus consistently calls upon the state to protect its interests. On the other, it is mortified when it feels the presence of its impoverished twin - the growing number of proletarians - as a result of capitalism in agriculture and also due to neoliberal "primitive accumulation". Most dangerous is the faithlessness and weariness that this class of rural and urban proletarians displays towards the neoliberal euphoria - since it has already experienced more than 150 years of ups and downs of capitalist industrialisation, and its increasingly moribund nature. The Bengali political elites' "doublespeak" vocalised by the CPIM is actually the reflection of the "Narodnik-like" character of the local bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, torn between the ecstatic possibility of their neoliberal integration, on the one hand, and the rising competition and class struggle, on the other. However, the ideology of homogeneous Bengali interests, along with the "communist" organisations and pretensions come handy in controlling these volatile segments, at least temporarily. It is interesting to note, how the CPIM leadership evades recognising the class character of "land reforms", "impressive agricultural growth" and industrialisation as far as possible in its discourse, while overstressing their virtues. It is similar to the discursive habits of the Russian liberals - "distraught Narodniks", which Lenin thus noted, while criticising "Mr L.":

"Depicting the beneficent effect of the French Revolution on the French peasantry, Mr. L. speaks glowingly of the disappearance of famines and the improvement and progress of agriculture; but about the fact that this was bourgeois progress, based on the formation of a "stable" class of agricultural wage-labourers and on chronic pauperism of the mass of the lower strata of the peasantry, this Narodnik-like bourgeois, of course, says never a word."(16)

4. Conclusion

When enthusiasm for neoliberal industrialisation is not well received, as a last resort in defence of the neoliberal policies in West Bengal, 'vanguards' like Prakash Karat and his associates have a ready apologia that "in a constitutional set-up that is not federal in nature", the left government policies "would always be circumscribed by the fact that State power vests with the centre while state governments have very limited powers and resources." (It does not matter that the CPIM's other leader, Benoy Konar, talks of the same constraints by admitting West Bengal as "a federal state in a capitalist feudal country.")

It is tempting to interpret this demand for more federalism in India as representative of "the demand made in certain circles that local self-governing institutions should also be given the autonomy to borrow and to negotiate investment projects with capitalists, including multinational banks and corporations", as Prabhat Patnaik, a foremost Indian political economist, known for his allegiance to the CPIM and who has been lately appointed as Kerala's State Planning Board Vice-Chairman, puts it. He continues, "this will further increase the mismatch in bargaining strength between the capitalists and the state organ engaged in negotiating with them, and will further intensify the competitive struggle among the aspirants for investment... This can have only one possible result which is to raise the scale of social 'bribes' for capitalists' investment. This increase in the scale of social "bribes" is an important feature of neo-liberalism."(17)

Particularly relevant in this regard are the CPIM leadership's and the West Bengal government's statements on Singur, in which they consistently fetishise the Left Front's ability to win away the Tata project from a poorer state of Uttarakhand - an example of its competency in 'social bribery'! Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya again and again with all his frankness defended his Singur sale to Tata - "We showed them various sites, but they settled for Singur. We could not say no to such a project, otherwise it would have gone to Uttarakhand."(18)

This is symptomatic of the extent to which the official Indian left has re-trained itself in the competitive culture of neoliberal industrialisation. Of course, it does not have any parliamentary stake in Uttarakhand. Or does the party leadership want to entice the Uttarakhand people to choose CPIM, for its efficiency in negotiating or 'bribing' for neoliberal projects? It is obvious that in order to remain the sole contender of the nationalising and globalising interests of the West Bengal hegemonic classes, the CPIM leadership has been giving vent to Bengali parochialism of the local "Narodnik-like bourgeoisie".

Notes:

(1) V.I. Lenin, The Narodnik-Like Bourgeoisie and Distraught Narodism, 1903. http://www.marxists.org.uk/archive/lenin/works/1903/nov/05a.htm

(2) V.I. Lenin, The Trade Unions. The Present Situation and Trotsky's Mistakes, 1920. http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TUTM20.html

(3) Benoy Konar, Left Front Govt And Bengal's Industrialisation, People's Democracy, October 08, 2006. http://pd.cpim.org/2006/1008/10082006_benoy%20konar.htm

(4) See Dipankar Basu, Political Economy of 'Middleness': Behind Violence in Rural Bengal, Economic & Political Weekly, April 21, 2001. http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2001&leaf=04&filename=2411&filetype=pdf

(5) P Sundarayya, Central Committee Resolution on Certain Agrarian Issues and An Explanatory Note, CPIM Publications, 1973.

(6) Ibid.

(7) All India Kisan Council, Resolution: Unite To Fight And Defeat All Moves To Stop The Industrialisation Of West Bengal, People's Democracy, January 14 2007. http://pd.cpim.org/2007/0114/01142007_aiks%20meeting.htm

(8) Prakash Karat, "Double-Speak" Charge: Maligning The CPI(M), People's Democracy, January 28 2007. http://pd.cpim.org/2007/0128/01282007_prakash.htm

(9) Slavoj Zizek, The Fragile Absolute, Verso, 2000, p.63.

(10) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Circular Letter to August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Wilhelm Bracke and Others, 1879. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1879/09/18.htm

(11) Benoy Konar, West Bengal: Rationale For Industrialisation, People's Democracy, November 06, 2005. http://pd.cpim.org/2005/1106/11062005_benoy%20kumar.htm

(12) The Hindu November 16, 2005. http://www.hindu.com/2005/11/16/stories/2005111605361100.htm

(13) See (8)

(14) V.I. Lenin, The Proletariat and the Peasantry, 1905. http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists//archive/lenin/works/1905/nov/12.htm

(15) See (1)

(16) Ibid.

(17) Prabhat Patnaik, An Aspect of Neoliberalism, People's Democracy, December 24, 2006. http://pd.cpim.org/2006/1224/12242006_eco.htm

(18) Frontline, Jan. 27-Feb. 09, 2007. http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2402/stories/20070209002911200.htm