StingRoy
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India's vanishing Communists
Red and buried - Two state elections bring Indias once-powerful Marxists to their knees
RED flags flutter. Hammers and sickles are daubed in lurid colours by the roadside. Placards of plump, bearded leadersMarxist answers to Father Christmasare propped near coconut palms. At an election tour in the southern state of Kerala, crowds of Communists are putting on a dutiful show of support. Yet few expect to see their party back in office next month.
The comrades are out to hear Prakash Karat, their grey-haired general secretary who counts, by the geriatric standards of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), as relatively youthful. He sets no hearts racing. At rally after rally desultory applause meets his comments on food inflation and graft, promises of subsidised rice and swipes at the bourgeois Congress party.
His message is dated. Indias economy is racing ahead and the bourgeoisie is thriving. A claim that only Indias 59 dollar-billionaires are prospering rings false: anyway, many in the audience are too busy fiddling with their mobile phones to pay it much heed. Keralites prosper from globalisation: one-in-four households has a relative toiling in the Gulf. We are a consumption state, cashing 20,000 crore rupees ($4.5 billion) each year from migrant relatives points out Gopa Kumar, a professor at the local university.
Voting took place on April 13th and the Communists are likely to be kicked out. Christians and Muslims, with nearly half Keralas population, have swung against them over a botched attempt to cap fees at privately run religious schools. Keralites, Indias best educated people, are famously crotchety and like to boot their incumbents out. The Reds have run the state for 28 of the past 54 years, mostly alternating with the Congress party since 1957, when Kerala became the worlds first parliamentary state (tiny San Marino aside) to vote communists into office.
More painful is their pending defeat in West Bengal, which, with 91m people, is bigger than Germany. The Communists have run it non-stop since 1977, with large majorities. That spell should end after a staggered series of polls that began on April 18th. Over 80% turnout that day and long queues of voters in the north suggest Bengali voters are hungry for change.
A high-ranking party leader concedes the odds are against us: people are fed up with the chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, better known as Buddhababu. The Marxists held West Bengal mostly thanks to farmers, who have long been grateful for land reforms in the late 1970s. But hostility to business, the collapse of textile factories, and labour and capital flight have all battered industry.
As Bengalis grew desperate for jobs beyond the paddies, so Buddhababu shifted, telling outsiders after 2006 how fond he was of trade and asking investors like Tata Motors to set up in the state, once the capital of Indias car industry. But his efforts got nowhere. Bungled attempts to grab land, and protests by farmers, scared Tata and others away.
His fate looks likely to be sealed by a pact between the Congress and Trinamul Congress parties who have united (just about) behind the national railways minister, Mamata Banerjee.
Tactically, too, they have erred. They could have joined the Congress-led national government in 2004, promoted young leaders and taken charge of welfare, argues Ramachandra Guha, author of a book on modern Indian history. Instead, invoking Leninwhose white marble bust still adorns the party headquarters in Delhithey sat outside, first backing, then trying to topple the government over a civil-nuclear deal with America. They could also have campaigned harder against corruption. They are probably the only politicians in India who dont have Swiss bank accounts, suggests Mr Guha. But social activists, judges and the BJP got there first.
Their influence has mattered. They urged hostility to America in the Cold War and statist policies that choked economic growth for decades. More helpfully, they pushed literacy and womens rights, and opposed untouchability and the caste system. A battering at the polls, when results are published on May 13th, will not quite finish them off: younger leaders with more flexible ideas may be back in office in a few years time. But a curtain, of sorts, is falling on Indian Communism.
Red and buried - Two state elections bring Indias once-powerful Marxists to their knees
RED flags flutter. Hammers and sickles are daubed in lurid colours by the roadside. Placards of plump, bearded leadersMarxist answers to Father Christmasare propped near coconut palms. At an election tour in the southern state of Kerala, crowds of Communists are putting on a dutiful show of support. Yet few expect to see their party back in office next month.
The comrades are out to hear Prakash Karat, their grey-haired general secretary who counts, by the geriatric standards of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), as relatively youthful. He sets no hearts racing. At rally after rally desultory applause meets his comments on food inflation and graft, promises of subsidised rice and swipes at the bourgeois Congress party.
His message is dated. Indias economy is racing ahead and the bourgeoisie is thriving. A claim that only Indias 59 dollar-billionaires are prospering rings false: anyway, many in the audience are too busy fiddling with their mobile phones to pay it much heed. Keralites prosper from globalisation: one-in-four households has a relative toiling in the Gulf. We are a consumption state, cashing 20,000 crore rupees ($4.5 billion) each year from migrant relatives points out Gopa Kumar, a professor at the local university.
Voting took place on April 13th and the Communists are likely to be kicked out. Christians and Muslims, with nearly half Keralas population, have swung against them over a botched attempt to cap fees at privately run religious schools. Keralites, Indias best educated people, are famously crotchety and like to boot their incumbents out. The Reds have run the state for 28 of the past 54 years, mostly alternating with the Congress party since 1957, when Kerala became the worlds first parliamentary state (tiny San Marino aside) to vote communists into office.
More painful is their pending defeat in West Bengal, which, with 91m people, is bigger than Germany. The Communists have run it non-stop since 1977, with large majorities. That spell should end after a staggered series of polls that began on April 18th. Over 80% turnout that day and long queues of voters in the north suggest Bengali voters are hungry for change.
A high-ranking party leader concedes the odds are against us: people are fed up with the chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, better known as Buddhababu. The Marxists held West Bengal mostly thanks to farmers, who have long been grateful for land reforms in the late 1970s. But hostility to business, the collapse of textile factories, and labour and capital flight have all battered industry.
As Bengalis grew desperate for jobs beyond the paddies, so Buddhababu shifted, telling outsiders after 2006 how fond he was of trade and asking investors like Tata Motors to set up in the state, once the capital of Indias car industry. But his efforts got nowhere. Bungled attempts to grab land, and protests by farmers, scared Tata and others away.
His fate looks likely to be sealed by a pact between the Congress and Trinamul Congress parties who have united (just about) behind the national railways minister, Mamata Banerjee.
Tactically, too, they have erred. They could have joined the Congress-led national government in 2004, promoted young leaders and taken charge of welfare, argues Ramachandra Guha, author of a book on modern Indian history. Instead, invoking Leninwhose white marble bust still adorns the party headquarters in Delhithey sat outside, first backing, then trying to topple the government over a civil-nuclear deal with America. They could also have campaigned harder against corruption. They are probably the only politicians in India who dont have Swiss bank accounts, suggests Mr Guha. But social activists, judges and the BJP got there first.
Their influence has mattered. They urged hostility to America in the Cold War and statist policies that choked economic growth for decades. More helpfully, they pushed literacy and womens rights, and opposed untouchability and the caste system. A battering at the polls, when results are published on May 13th, will not quite finish them off: younger leaders with more flexible ideas may be back in office in a few years time. But a curtain, of sorts, is falling on Indian Communism.
