Opinion Party’s to-do list

The challenge for the government is to ensure that the CPM cadres’ enthusiasm for civic work and public programmes does not result in the exclusion of non-partisan, non-CPM citizens from the state’s welfare net and outreach.

The CPM held its Kerala state conference last week at a time when the party faces a deep political crisis. Its national footprint is shrinking and the leadership seems divided on what ought to be its strategy ahead of the 2019 general election. In Kerala, the Left government’s performance has been lacklustre. The spate of political murders — the latest claiming Congress leader Shuhaib in Kannur as victim — has damaged the party’s public profile. Questions are being asked about CPM cadres’ willingness to abide by the law and the government’s commitment to enforce it. These issues were raised at the conference, but the leaders reportedly evaded them. The incapability to engage with these questions politically points to a crisis of leadership. The leaders recognise that the party and its government are drifting away from ordinary people. They have now skirted hard political solutions for a slew of initiatives that are normally the preserve of the voluntary sector.

On Sunday, state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan announced that the cadres will fan out to build houses for the homeless, become part of palliative care initiatives, do organic agriculture, clean rivers and ponds, work to raise the standards of government schools and the quality of public hospitals and so on. There is nothing wrong about these initiatives, many of which are already directed by the government. Voluntary agencies are already working in these areas and many CPM cadres, independent of the party, are associated with them. In the past, the communist movement benefited from involvement in the library movement, literacy programmes and the people’s planning; it helped the party to shed its image as merely an insurrectionist outfit. But reviving a political paradigm of the past in an entirely different historical context may not be the remedy for the problems of cadre violence and governance failure. The CPM’s current crisis — an internal report has indicated that the poor are alienated from the party — stems from a failure to understand and adjust to the changing demands of the democratic system.

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A contradiction is likely to emerge when CPM cadres get associated with government initiatives or when party programmes get institutionalised as state activity. Cadre-parties tend to capture public-funded initiatives for themselves when they involve themselves in them. The challenge for the government is to ensure that the CPM cadres’ enthusiasm for civic work and public programmes does not result in the exclusion of non-partisan, non-CPM citizens from the state’s welfare net and outreach.