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Journalism of Courage
Four years ago,when the CPM held its 19th party congress in Coimbatore,it was at its aggressive best. It exulted over the fact that it had forced the UPA government to put on hold the Indo-US nuclear deal and jubilantly spoke about building a third alternative to unseat the UPA and keep the BJP out of power.
Today,as the CPM top leadership heads for the 20th party congress this week in Kozhikode,the mood is of despondency and desperation. After the setback in the Lok Sabha elections and the whitewash in Bengal,there is no talk of a third alternative anymore. The CPM is looking inwards and the talk is about rebuilding and returning to what the party does best,street protests,to reconnect with the masses.
The six-day party congress will conduct a postmortem and decide on the future political-tactical line. Sources privy to the confidential political-organisational report said the leadership is set to accept a series of mistakes.
Among these mistakes are those made while implementing the partys decision to do whatever necessary to block the nuclear deal. These include allowing the UPA government to go to the IAEA for signing the safeguards agreement; underestimating the capacity of the Congress and overestimating the Lefts strength; and talking about an alternative secular government ahead of the Lok Sabha elections instead of sticking to the party congresss decision to call for strengthening a non-Congress,non-BJP alternative.
Party leaders expect a lot of criticism for the top leadership,though not necessarily a change at the top. Party leaders critical of general secretary Prakash Karats style of functioning point out that almost all state units,including even Bengal and Kerala,have re-elected the incumbent state secretaries,implying that a change of guard at the top is highly unlikely at a time when the party is trying to rebuild.
The tussle between Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and the mandarins of the A K G Bhawan is showing no signs of ending. Even Karat is unsure if Bhattacharjee will attend the meet.
There will be a couple of new faces in the politburo and many in the central committee. The big question is whether V S Achuthanandan,who was suspended from the politburo,will find a place there.
Apart from the electoral setbacks,what is worrying the CPM is an erosion in its membership. And the dip is stark in Bengal,the number of members coming down from 3.21 lakh five years ago to 3.14 lakh. Its youth wing there has lost 41 per cent of its members,from 97 lakh to 57 lakh.
Overall,the membership of the DYFI dipped to 1.34 crore from 1.71 crore,a clear indication that the party has not been able to attract the youth. In Jammu and Kashmir,the DYFI membership is down to 9,000 from 1.31 lakh,in Assam its numbers have halved,and in Delhi the youth wing has 12,000 members against the 33,324 of five years ago.
The students wing,SFI,too is losing members. It had 43.27 lakh in 2007-08 and now has 41.77 lakh members. In Bengal,the SFIs membership came down from 16.09 lakh to 13.02 lakh.
Aiming to arrest this trend,reclaim its bases in Bengal and Kerala,and expand in other states,the party is set to put in place some corrective measures and go back to its time-tested formula of agitations and street protests on issues which it feels are agitating the common man. Learning from the nuclear deal experience,the plan is to pick issues that can be explained to the people.
There is a proposal to amend the party constitution to limit the terms of the general secretary and the secretaries of state,district and intermediate committees for three terms to ensure that a new leadership emerges at state and national levels once every nine years.
