Manas Chakravarty: When Left goes Right

WATCHWORD

In the middle of the twentieth century, ideology was a simple matter of picking the right colour. You had Mao, who was a deep red, the revisionist Soviets, who were a lighter shade of red, while socialists were pink.

There was a bit of confusion about the fascists, who were black, but then the anarchists too liked black. Reactionaries were white, at least in Russia, and conservatives were true blue. Liberals, in keeping with their wishy-washy nature, could best be described as colourless.

And then came Deng Xiao Ping. The man didn't give a damn whether a cat was black or white, as long as it caught mice. He took the first steps in sending China down the slippery slope to capitalism, which soon became a headlong rush, making the reds see red.

In India, however, for a long time our comrades fought the battle against capital so well that it was practically wiped out in West Bengal. Jobs fled that state, as the Marxists fought their jihad against wage slavery. Kolkata became, in Rajiv Gandhi's famous words, a dying city.

But then God created Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Under his benign rule, flyovers have been built, malls have sprung up, multiplexes have mushroomed, IT and BPO firms have set up shop, and the red carpet has been laid down for multinationals. Kentucky Fried Chicken, which doesn't have an outlet in Mumbai, has one in Kolkata.

Bhattacharjee has now carried the battle into the ideologues' camp, pointedly telling his comrades that the country needs FDI and FIIs, that privatisation is the only way forward, that globalisation is good, workers must be productive and that Communists must either reform or perish.

Yet the comrades in Delhi seem to be incapable of grasping these simple facts. Their mulishness has sparked intense speculation. Why can't they learn from what their brothers have done in China?

One outrageous story is that the Left's doublespeak is part of a grand design. According to this monster of a conspiracy theory, the Left has long ago dumped its ideological baggage, and has become adept in the Chinese art of promoting capitalism without appearing to do so.

One way to increase investment in their home state is to make it more attractive to businessmen. But lots of states are dressing themselves up these days, and the competition is intense.

The solution: give West Bengal a helping hand. Egg on workers to strike in factories in Haryana, so that they set up plants in peaceful West Bengal. Urge unionisation of BPO workers, so that the units move to Bengal, where strikes in the BPO industry are banned. Oppose airport privatisation in Delhi and Mumbai, so that investors flock to Dum Dum.

There is another joke doing the rounds about an even bigger game plan. Since only loss-making companies can be privatised, the Left is ensuring that the oil companies make losses so that the barriers to their privatisation come down. The CMP has nothing against privatising sick companies.

Jokes apart, however, the problem with the Left in Delhi may well be that outmoded concept "" ideology. After all, comrades Karat and Yechury don't have to worry about elections and, since their core competence lies in ideological purity, they have a vested interest in preserving it.

So while Bhattacharjee is undoubtedly doing a great job for Bengal, their dilemma was aptly summed up by a headline in this newspaper, "Is Buddha-ism Marxism?"

Perhaps the way out of the predicament would be to remove the Communist fig leaf. The CPI could transform itself into the Capitalist Party of India. The CPI(M), too, could keep both its doctrinal differences with the CPI as well as its acronym intact by renaming itself the Capitalist Party of India (McDonalds).