It's
right to welcome communist support
for the government of india
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
June 24, 2004
LONDON - It's long been said
that one needs a long spoon to sup with the devil, a
saying that in the twentieth century was used often in
the context of an alliance between democratic political
parties and communists. For decades the Italians debated
what they called a " historic compromise" and came very
close to it at times, but it was always undone by the
pressures from Washington and the Vatican. When Francois
Mitterand first came to power in France it was in
alliance with the communists but he convinced Washington
that giving them cabinet positions was the best way of
defanging them and indeed the communists rapidly lost
electoral strength from that moment on.
Perhaps this is why after much
internal debate the Indian communists, having scored
unexpectedly well in India's recent elections, decided to
support the government but not be part of it. They were
nervous about losing their political identity and feared
that at the next round of state elections they would then
lose votes.
While they prevaricated on which
course to take the Indian bourse nose-dived. The market's
initial reaction was to fear the communists' influence.
Second thoughts have been more sober and now that the
communists have made clear the last week that they will
not stand in the way of further economic liberalisation,
despite their reservations on labour reform and the
privatisation of profitable state owned companies,
sentiment is moving in their favour and rightly so. The
communists of India have much to be said for
them.
The communists have two main power
bases- the state of Kerala in the south and West Bengal
in the east. West Bengal, with a population the size of
Germany, is the more remarkable of the two. This is a
state that in 1943 suffered one of the worst famines in
world history. It has long been overcrowded, a situation
made decidedly worst by the massive inflows of refugees
following the civil war in Pakistan and the birth of
neighbouring Bangladesh. But it is also the cultural
powerhouse of India, producing great filmmakers, artists,
novelists and economists, not to mention its five Nobel
Prize winners.
The communists first came to power
here in 1967 in an alliance with centre parties. Their
reforming agenda was violently overtaken by the Maoist
Naxalites who tried to impose land reform by publicly
burning title deeds and debt bonds and beheading
landlords and moneylenders in front of the massed ranks
of villagers. It took the authorities- including the
communists- a decade to get on top of the problem. In
1977 the communists swept to power and have won every
election since.
Their land reform program- the most
thorough in India- met surprisingly little political
resistance. The Naxalites had sapped the will of the
landlords. Now it's hard to find anyone critical of what
the communists have done. India's new prime minister
Manmohan Singh, in conversation with me, held up West
Bengal's success in giving title to sharecroppers as
something he wanted to see emulated. Even the president
of the West Bengal Chamber of Commerce, Biswadeep Gupta,
a big time industrialist, says it has been beneficial:
"In rural India this state has the highest savings. This
is going to drive growth for investors."
Out in the villages the success is
more than evident. Down country roads past village houses
and shops with the red flag fluttering, emblazoned in
yellow with the hammer and sickle, on past the seemingly
incongruous rows of Hindu gods and shrines, past the
ubiquitous village ponds filled almost to the brim, the
visitor comes on long paddy fields where three crops a
year have replaced a single harvest. Bengal has the
highest rice production of any Indian state. Electricity
is in most of the villages, and many peasants have
television, fans and even refrigerators.
West Bengal's chief minister,
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, admits that while the state
progressed on the agricultural front, for most of the
years on the industrial front it was moribund. " We made
bad mistakes and we have paid for it," he says in an
interview in his Calcutta office. "There is a Bengali
word in the Oxford dictionary- gherao- which means the
workers forcibly entering the office of management.
That's what we used to do. Today we say labour
productivity is not just the responsibility of
management. The unions must cooperate too." For a decade
now private investment has been encouraged and the
militancy of the labour force gradually tamed. Questioned
on globalisation he observes, "We have been to Shanghai
and seen that it works". Foreign investment is now on an
upswing in West Bengal and the state has one of the
highest growth rates in India. Even in Calcutta poverty
has been much reduced.
The new government of India cannot
survive without communist support but the evidence
suggests that on this occasion the long spoon can be
safely shortened.
Note for editor 1) copyright
JONATHAN POWER 2) dateline Calcutta. 3) I can be reached
by e mail: JonatPower@aol.com
or by phone :+44 7785 351172
Copyright © 2004 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
Här kan
du läsa om - och köpa - Jonathan Powers bok
på svenska
"Som
Droppen Urholkar
Stenen"
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
 
|