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CPI-M decides to move with the times

After four years of a silent ideological revolution that swept through the party, the Communist Party of India-Marxist has decided to move with the times to ensure that it will never commit any more historical blunders.

In 1996, West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu termed the CPI-M abstinence from sharing power at the Centre "a historical blunder".

No longer will the octogenarian communist leader need to make a similar statement, for the party is radically changing its approach to power politics, economic reforms and foreign investment.

A special party conclave that began at Trivandrum on Friday is all set to be an ideological coup for the CPI-M that has resisted the allurement of power in coalition governments at the Centre.

For the first time, 401 party members, senior leaders and ideologues have got together to debate a gamut of revolutionary issues that have put the CPI-M in the melting pot for the past few years.

At the end of the special session, the CPI-M bosses are expected to thrash out pressing issues, iron out ideological differences and agree to reinvent a new party programme to suit to the new, globalised, modern India.

Ever since the communists abandoned the idea of participating in a government at the Centre after catapulting H D Deve Gowda to power in 1996, they have been hotly debating the issue.

When the 1996 general elections threw up a hung Parliament, the CPI-M politburo met for the first to debate the ethics behind sharing power. The politburo was a failure, as those opposed to the proposal stole the limelight at the meeting. The party then gave up the thought of sharing power, while its communist brethren, the Communist Party of India, joined the Gowda government.

Then again in 1998, the CPI-M politburo met at Calcutta and deliberated the crucial dilemma of whether to share power with secular parties at the Centre.

The second politburo attempt was also a failure as most members rejected the proposal. "But at this special conclave we are going to make it happen. Times have changed that we are convinced that sharing power with like-minded parties is no more an anathema," a senior leader told rediff.com.

"We are applying a corrective ideological strategy in tandem with the changing times," the leader argued, advocating that the party will be politically orphaned it does not change some policies.

But will the party shed its ideological and socialist thrust? Won't the CPI-M, the third largest party in Parliament, increasingly then look like the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party?

Basu answered these crucial questions during his address at the inaugural session of the special conference. He said that by updating party programmes, the CPI-M has no interest, "but the interest of the people at large."

"The Left and democratic forces are regrouping. An alternative to the BJP will emerge. The CPI-M will play a crucial role in this third alternative," Basu declared.

"What sets apart the party was our ideology and approach to politics. Our sense of commitment to the social approach to solve people problems will continue," he added.

But despite pleadings that revising the party programmes does not mean abandoning its socialist ideologies, the CPI-M leader reckoned that the special conclave that is on here is historical. Because in a marked departure from the revolutionary, socialist programmes that the party espoused for 36 years, the CPI-M has now decided to change its history.

Ever since coalition governments became the norm of the day at the Centre, there has been a silent revolution within the party and among its modernist thinkers on the need to revamp the party's political agenda.

But not many have any remorse that the revolutionary spirit of the party is increasingly becoming no more. Not even CPI-M general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet has any regrets for the party changing track, though he is the only living party veteran who wrote the first party programme in 1964. The united communist party had then entrusted Surjeet, M Basava Punnaiah and P Sundaraiah with drafting the programme.

Thirtysix years later, it is a coincidence that Surjeet is heading the party.

But the worry among the communist leaders is whether it will succeed like the Chinese communists to welcome globalisation, economic reforms and foreign investment.

The CPI-M conclave is unlikely to be peaceful for quite a number of dissidents opposed to the modern theme songs have sprang up. The dissidents argue that adjusting the party programmes to cater to the day-to-day power politics is the beginning of the death knell of the party's roots among the working class.

ALSO SEE:
Marxists plan special meet from Friday
Basu calls for alternative at Centre: PTI

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