CPI(M) struggles with its plan to woo Hindi belt

CPI(M) PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE

For the last thirty years, the CPI(M) has been struggling to gain more than a foothold in the politically crucial Hindi belt. But that has not dampened its enthusiasm to adopt a refined strategy for the region in the 19th Party Congress at Coimbatore.

Just as it is opposed to any uniform land acquisition Act for the entire country, the CPI(M) is not eyeing the entire Hindi belt as a single social and political arena.

Instead, it prefers to segregate states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh into smaller parts on the basis of their unique characteristics and formulate strategy for them accordingly.

"The political road map applicable to parts of north Bihar cannot be replicated in western UP. The social and political atmosphere is entirely different there," a party leader said.

The party obsessed with "class struggle" can't take the line of the BSP or even its allies, like the RJD and SP, to woo specific castes. But it has realised that class issues have to be combined with social questions of different sections like the Dalits or the tribals.

The draft political resolution of the party says, "The party has to concretely take up the issues of livelihood and social oppression of the people from various backward classes and the Dalits."

This, according to insiders, is a more focused approach to increasing base in the Hindi-speaking areas. "In Bihar, we tried to unite the poor on the basis of their poverty. But when elections came, the Yadavs went with Lalu Prasad, Dalits treaded the path of Ramvilas Paswan and we were left with no one," said Hannan Mollah, central committee member in charge of Bihar.

But even so, in the recent past, CPI(M) leaders have rushed to spots wherever atrocities on Dalits were reported to have been committed.

The CPI(M) has also identified some states as "priority states" for its expansion programme. These are: Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Assam and Maharashtra.

According to Nilotpal Basu, a prominent Central Committee member, this identification has been done on the basis of "our potential in the immediate future and also areas crucial for future growth".

So, while in Uttar Pradesh the CPI(M) got no seat in the last Assembly elections, it cannot afford to ignore the state as it has 80 seats in the Lok Sabha.

The CPI(M) believes that historic limitations have prevented the party from growing in the Hindi belt. "In states like Kerala and West Bengal, the Left became inheritors of land struggle and land reforms. However, in northern India, land reforms and social reforms never took place and it became bastion of reactionary forces," observes Basu.

The party, in its 19th Congress, dreams that "by taking up a combination of class issues and social questions, the pernicious effects of caste fragmentation can be countered".

In its 1978 Plenum held at Salkia in West Bengal, the party first announced its intention of spreading the wisdom of Marxism in the Hindi belt.

Although the followers of Lenin and Marx are going to revisit their age-old plan, the lack of a charismatic leader to take on the likes of Mayawati or Mulayam Singh Yadav could be a damper to their plans. And the CPI(M), which hails organisation as supreme, will never acknowledge this shortcoming.