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India's vanishing Communists

StingRoy

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India's vanishing Communists

Red and buried - Two state elections bring India’s once-powerful Marxists to their knees

RED flags flutter. Hammers and sickles are daubed in lurid colours by the roadside. Placards of plump, bearded leaders—Marxist answers to Father Christmas—are 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. India’s economy is racing ahead and the bourgeoisie is thriving. A claim that “only India’s 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 Kerala’s population, have swung against them over a botched attempt to cap fees at privately run religious schools. Keralites, India’s 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 world’s 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 India’s 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 Lenin—whose white marble bust still adorns the party headquarters in Delhi—they 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 don’t 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 women’s 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.
 
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The Indian and Chinese communist parties should cooperate to bring about true freedom in India. Some mistakes of the Communist Party of India seem to be very basic ones we also made 60 years ago. They could learn from our example.
 
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Good riddance, bloody stuck in the 1950s.
If only our commies were more like the Chinese commies, more Far sighted, looking at the future instead of keeping people in the paddies, building industries instead of statues of Karl Marx and Lenin. Communism failed. it doesn't create wealth, it has a wonderful byproduct, Socialism but the "greatest experiment" of the 20th century is just that, of the last century.
 
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The Indian and Chinese communist parties should cooperate to bring about true freedom in India. Some mistakes of the Communist Party of India seem to be very basic ones we also made 60 years ago. They could learn from our example.
The Indian communist parties are Marxist-Leninist... not Maoist. The Maoists are being hunted down at the moment in the naxal affected areas.
 
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The Indian and Chinese communist parties should cooperate to bring about true freedom in India. Some mistakes of the Communist Party of India seem to be very basic ones we also made 60 years ago. They could learn from our example.

Communists have their share of black marks on their image which include siding with the British during quit India movement and also espionage during 1962 war.of course they have their share of success,but not enough.
 
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The Indian and Chinese communist parties should cooperate to bring about true freedom in India. Some mistakes of the Communist Party of India seem to be very basic ones we also made 60 years ago. They could learn from our example.

I doubt that our system would work in India.

There are too many different ethnicities/religions/cultures etc.
 
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socialism when started in kerala did somes excellent work, poverty was nearly eliminated. The single most thing i like about socialism in kerala is that it reduced religious intolerance to a bare minimum. I have been to most of the states, and it is only in kerala, you can eat whatever you want, you can drink whatever you want, you can pretty much do everything. nobody will look at you with glasses of religion.( no disrespect to other states )

But socialism also got stuck in the License Raj era of India. It did not allow anybody to get rich so first thing to suffer was setting of new business and job oppertunities. this is the reason why Mallus are everywhere, after all we have to utilize all the education we got.

I will always be a Communist by Heart but By choice i will always vote for Congress.
 
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Sad part is West Bengal will be getting Mamta Banerjee, which is just as bad a news if not worse. :hitwall:

Ah well at least railways might get a better minister.

People may see her as a good minister, but the way she handled Railway ministry was a Disgrace, with her famous tantrums!!
 
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Sad part is West Bengal will be getting Mamta Banerjee, which is just as bad a news if not worse. :hitwall:

Ah well at least railways might get a better minister.
Situation in Bengal is such that people will vote for anything that moves, and preferably breathes, so long as it is not CPI(M) or CPI(M) groupie. :cheesy:

We, the hapless people of Bengal, are caught between the devil and the deep sea. :cry:

PS: Railway ministry will still remain with Trinomool.
 
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This might be a historical year. For the first time in god knows how long, India shall have no communist ruled states after they get defeated in both Kerela and WB.
 
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This might be a historical year. For the first time in god knows how long, India shall have no communist ruled states after they get defeated in both Kerela and WB.

Tripura is still CPI(M) ruled. So technically they will still have a presence, albeit at a much smaller regional scale.
 
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