In Citu

It has long been generally known that the CPM8217;s rhetoric at the Centre about the insidious effects of globalisation and the creeping capitalistic plot that is private sector-led industrialisation is quietly ignored by those members of the party attempting to drag West Bengal out of the morass in which it finds itself. However, till Monday, the state unit had not, in public, chosen to deviate from the party line on the subject. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee8217;s statement to a group of Kolkata corporate leaders that he 8220;did not support bandhs8221; is not, perhaps, different from anything that he has been saying in private or trying to implement in public; but it might well mark the first effort to close a few rhetorical gaps.

Such gaps should never have been allowed to develop: the CPM should long ago have undertaken some genuine soul-searching and accepted that, as a party competitive in three states and with aspirations to play king-maker in others, as well as nationally, it cannot permit itself the luxury of allowing the stale, outdated vocabulary of its ideology to constrain the actions of those who have to keep the party afloat. The CPM, and Bhattacharjee, are now suffering the consequences of decades of irresponsibility and avoidance of self-criticism.

The other rhetorical gap is the one that has opened between Bhattacharjee and some middle-level members of the CPM establishment, even in Bengal. However much the CM might declare that gheraos are 8220;immoral8221; 8212; though it appears that he also objected to the fact that of all the words it could borrow from Bengali, English chose that one 8212; his comrades in the trade union movement are unlikely to agree. Bhattacharjee has made tentative attempts to rein in CITU before; on one occasion, his attempt to exclude the IT industry from its ambit caused some pretty nasty infighting, and ended in an unqualified victory for the union. Bhattacharjee8217;s attempt to rationalise the CPM8217;s public statements is overdue; what is necessary is for him to take both the insiders that run his state party and the ideologues that run the politburo along with him in his journey to the Centre.