Congress and CPM - sparring, but partners

Kolkata calling: Shikha Mukerjee

As history will testify, it has always been acrimonious. It has always been rife with suspicion. But at some point, the Congress and the Communists, currently the dominant Communist Party of India (Marxists) have had to get along. Anti-Congressism is as much a part of Communist ideology as Marxism and therein lies the rub.

Debating comrades collectively find it difficult to reconcile themselves, in principle, to the possibility of working with the Congress. In reality, debating comrades know that if they are at all serious about keeping the Bharatiya Janata Party at bay, consolidating the position that opportunity thrust them into in 2004, broaching the idea of strengthening their footprints outside their particular enclaves, then partnering the Congress is politically necessary.

Debating comrades are also aware that partnering the Congress is not sufficient, as it would make them far too vulnerable to pressure and so unable to return the pressure with interest as they have been doing since 2004. In other words, flirting with the idea of the Third Front is as seriously necessary as leaving just that much political room in which to manoeuvre over a deal with the Congress, should circumstances require it.

As the 19th party Congress of the CPI(M) draws to a close, the verdict on partnerships will be ambivalent. On its part, the Congress seems to be making the sort of gestures that can be interpreted as heeding the warnings of the CPI(M). Within hours of the announcement of the deadline for taking concrete steps to bring down prices issued from Coimbatore, the Centre seems to have unveiled a plan to do so.

If the import duty cutbacks on all edible oils and maize, plus, the ban on exports of non-basmati rice is coincidence, or merely accidental, it is nevertheless fortuitous, for the CPI(M). The jump in wholesale prices of food grains pushing inflation up to almost seven per cent is as much politically as in terms of the economy destabilising. To provide relief, the Government has acted, but it also serves the CPI(M)'s purpose, of affirming its role as the conscience keeper of the Congress and vigilante, for the poor.

On the nuclear deal, the CPI(M) and the Congress seem to be locked into irreconcilable positions and that could be more difficult to sort out. While the Congress has bought some time after the visit of the External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee to Washington, it has not given up hopes of signing the deal before it calls the elections, due in 2009. How that particular knot can be cut is for the CPI(M) to decide, because it has staked its idealism on opposing the deal.

For West Bengal, the 19th party Congress has brought relief, as comrades have been informed of the imperative to race along the same route that the rest of India has taken to deliver a spectacular economic growth rate. The uneasiness within the CPI(M) over Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's enthusiasm for promoting capitalism may remain, but with the imprimatur of the 19th party Congress, comrades will no longer choke over it.

What remains for the comrades to do is to figure out how the party can grow bigger not merely stronger in its three enclaves. The mismatch between status and size, influence and numbers is embarrassing. In the States where the CPI(M) is entrenched, the comrades are far too preoccupied with sustaining the party. In the States where the CPI(M) is virtually a signboard, there are not enough comrades to organise and implement any plan of action.

If the CPI(M) ends up repeating a set of platitudes, as it has been doing since the 1980s, the party will go nowhere. If the CPI(M) has a strategy that it can pursue, the general secretary Prakash Karat, will have to accept its success or failure as a personal challenge.

Without the back up of Harkishen Singh Surjeet and Jyoti Basu can the CPI(M) adopt a definite target for growth? To do so would require guts, because it would mean taking initiatives in those states where the CPI(M) has wooed regional parties as partners.

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