By T.G. Biju, IANS,
New Delhi : For a party ideologically opposed to a lavish lifestyle, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has declared an unprecedented war on comrades who have fallen in love with Mammon. Faced with make-or-break elections in its long-time citadel West Bengal next year, the CPI-M has admitted that corruption has seeped into its rank and file in a manner never seen before.
A meeting of the party’s Central Committee discussed this month the strict do’s and don’ts for its 1.01 million members.
Officially, the party has launched what it calls a “rectification campaign” against lavish lifestyles, self-centred behaviour, groupism and, above all, growing corruption.
CPI-M office bearers and senior leaders have been told to seek permission before buying a vehicle or house. It has also decided not to permit anyone contest elections to any parliamentary body more than three times.
While party faithful say the decision is overdue and welcome, critics say that the CPI-M — among the last of Stalinist parties in the world — will fail to overcome what has become a cancer.
“There are wrong tendencies like corruption and lavish lifestyle among party members and leaders,” a party leader admitted to IANS but not wishing to be identfied. “This is the contribution of globalisation.”
He said the party will discuss the issue in a free and frank manner across all its units.
Not everyone is as enthusiastic. One party leader in Kerala has already quit in disgust.
T.P. Mohammed Kutty, who was a district committee member in Kerala’s Muslim-majority region Malappuram, said it would be very difficult for the party to make a comeback to its proletarian moorings.
“The top and middle-level leaders are interested only in being connected with the affluent, people who were once seen as class enemies,” Kutty said when he left the party.
Although its influence is limited to a handful of states, the CPI-M has ruled West Bengal continuously since 1977. It has repeatedly taken power in Kerala and Tripura.
In 2004, the party headed a 60-MP bloc that propped up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress-led government, giving its members access to the corridors of power.
Party sources say all this has contributed to the rot within.
While appreciating the CPI-M’s crackdown, party member Sajoy George admits that it won’t be an easy affair.
“Rectification is not as easy as the Central Committee thinks since the CPI-M has become leader-centric rather than people-centric,” George told IANS.
Noted Left analyst N.P. Chekutty said the rectification campaign had already run into trouble.
“In Kerala, discussions have only shown how bad things are,” the founder news director of the CPI-M-controlled Kairali TV channel.
Chekutty said such campaigns were routine in Communist parties. “But here we see a divided party, the cadres and leaders pursuing different agendas.”
He has a solution. “The ony way out is for the party to abandon its Communist organisational structures and become a normal democratic party, with differing groups and mutual competition.”
V.P. Rajeev, a CPI-M rebel in Delhi, said the problem was “more deep-rooted than we know” because he felt the majority in the leadership had succumbed to temptations of the class enemy – ‘the capitalist class’.
“Party committees responsible for taking prompt action against corruption become mute spectators out of fear or out of expectations of favours from influential sections in the party,” he said.
The crisis has become more serious because the CPI-M, after the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, finds itself cornered politically. It faces a possible electoral defeat in West Bengal, where leaders admit they have lost the support of several thousands, mainly from the deprived classes.
Party sources said all this has affected its collective functioning, something that had helped it to grow and grow from the time it was born in 1964, even when Moscow and Beijing shunned it during the Cold War.
According to a party document, 70 percent of leaders are from the middle class and its electoral tie-ups with “bourgeois parties” were increasingly proving to be a source of negative influence.
But some believe the party will make a comeback if the rectification campaign does weed out the corrupt.
“The campaign is unique and appreciable and shows the party’s strength and commitment,” said George, who lives in Ernakulam.
But he too fears that some CPI-M leaders, “who are no longer role models”, may not allow the cleansing process to succeed.
(T.G. Biju can be contacted at [email protected])