BY PRAFUL BIDWAI

THAT the Communist Party of India (Marxist) dreaded the most in West Bengal, its bastion for 33 years, has happened. Trinamool Congress Party leader, Ms Mamata Banerjee held a well-attended rally at Lalgarh in the Jangalmahal region bordering Jharkhand, enlisted the support of the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA), and announced the end of Left "hegemony".

The CPM hoarsely attacked Ms Banerjee’s "unholy" alliance with "Maoists", who control a section of the PCPA. This didn’t quite square up with the PCPA’s publicly expressed ire with her for not articulating its demands.

Finally, the CPM was reduced to making a lame appeal to the Congress to distance itself from the TMC on the Maoist violence issue which, it termed, like Prime Minister Singh, India’s "greatest internal security threat". But Ms Banerjee had thrice appealed for non-violence at Lalgarh.

The CPM piously wishes that the Trinamool-Congress alliance, widely expected to win next year’s Assembly elections, would collapse. But wishes are one thing, strategy is another. The CPM lacks a strategy to revive itself.

This was confirmed by its recent Extended Central Committee in Vijayawada–the last plenum before the next party congress. Vijayawada didn’t change the line of opposing the United Progressive Alliance’s neo-liberal economic policies and foreign policy and combating the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Bleak Election Prospects

Less charitably, general secretary, Mr Prakash Karat manipulated the CPM into covering up apex-level failures which contributed to its rout in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

Critical here was withdrawal of support to the UPA in July 2008 over the US-India nuclear deal and the cobbling of a super-opportunist front with dubious leaders like Ms Mayawati, Ms Jayalalitha and Mr OP Chautala. The West Bengal CPM was unhappy with this: it pushed the TMC and Congress into an alliance.

Mr Karat conceded that the timing of withdrawal was controversial. But Vijayawada didn’t revise the official line blaming the defeat on "state-specific" factors including governance, "arrogance" and corruption.

Mr Karat shrewdly bought some insurance for himself for a post-2011 defeat. He can quote the Vijayawada resolutions in self-defence. But that won’t help the CPM.

The CPM faces a bleak election prospect. In Kerala, the Left Democratic Front is widely expected to lose the coming elections. Its Lok Sabha tally plummeted from 19 out of 21 in 2004 to only 4 seats last year. The LDF took no bold pro-people measures.

Kerala party secretary, Pinarayee Vijayan, named in a scandal related to a Canadian contract, is the first Communist party politburo member to have been charged for corruption.

The West Bengal outcome could be worse. If the Assembly vote follows the Lok Sabha pattern, the Left Front’s score will fall from 235 (of 294 seats) to 110-120. But it could sink even lower.

In 2009, the Front lost support in all Bengal regions, barring Jangalmahal, where it won 5 out of 6 Lok Sabha seats. Now, Trinamool leads the LF in 130 constituencies in Central and Southern Bengal. If it expands the recently made opening in Jangalmahal, it will score an emphatic victory

That’s why the CPM mortally fears Ms Banerjee’s foray into Lalgarh. Trinamool thugs can unleash even more violence against the Left than Maoists.

If Trinamool comes to power, there will be large-scale bloodshed–a prospect no public-spirited citizen can relish.

Only Itself to Blame

The CPM itself is largely responsible for this situation. Its policies of the 1980s eroded some of its early gains since 1977–including land reforms, panchayati raj, women’s empowerment and joint forest management.

By the early 1990s, the CPM became complacent as it repeatedly won elections without doing much for the people. Its local-level leaders developed a stake in the status quo and getting a cut in various contracts–whether for school buildings or construction labour supply.

The magnet of power drew into the party unscrupulous operators with no commitment to Left-wing ideas. More than two-thirds of the Bengal CPM’s membership was recruited after 1977.

Ms Monobina Gupta, a journalist and a former CPM cardholder, has lucidly documented the party’s alienation from its base in her just-published book ‘Left Politics in Bengal’. Party cadres got mired in corruption. The CPM turned against its own supporters.

Further degeneration came early this decade when the CPM promoted private capital-based rapid industrialisation through sweetheart deals and tax breaks.

The Singur and Nandigram crises over land acquisition for industry were direct effects of this misguided policy. The state and the party unleashed violence against the people to take their land, crush their resistance and "teach them a lesson".

Singur and Nandigram became household synonyms all over India for the loathsome betrayal of the people by a force which rose to power with their support.

The CPM’s base among Muslims also eroded thanks to Nandigram, and the growing realisation among West Bengal’s Muslims after the Sachar Committee report that they have had a raw deal. Although they form 25 per cent of the population, Muslims’ representation in government is only 2 per cent. They have the least exposure to modern secular education.

Impending election defeat should have shocked the CPM into sincere, deep introspection and self-criticism, impelling radical course correction. But the CPM leadership chose to behave like an ostrich. Worse, it came down heavily on inner-party critics.

When party members demanded free and open debate on policies, strategy and tactics, and criticised the organisational doctrine of Democratic Centralism–which concentrates excessive power at the apex and outlaws real debate except at party congresses–Mr Karat answered them by asserting that Democratic Centralism is essential to Leninism and indispensable for a revolutionary party.

This spells censorship and status quo–a recipe for decline, disaster, and eventually, demise. Unless the CPM leadership admits that its basic political strategy is in deep crisis, and that the rot isn’t limited to state-related factors, it will learn nothing and won’t change course.

The CPM could then go the same way as the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union, East Germany or Romania. And that would be a terrible tragedy for Indian politics.