Photos: Ashok Kumar

Interview: Sitaram Yechury, general secretary, CPM

A stronger unity of Left

forces is needed today
The strikingly red CPM flag with
the sickle and hammer pasted on
the board behind Yechury is peeling
off despite the adhesive-tape pasted
around it, very symptomatic of the
partys situation in the country. As
the new party chief, he faces an uphill
task of galvanising the party and
strengthening its capacity to influence

36 GovernanceNow | May 16-31, 2015

Indian politics. In an interview

with Shubhendhu Parth, Yechury
talks about his new responsibility,
challenges, and the future of party.

How do you see your new role in the

party, an opportunity or a challenge?

It is a very big responsibility. [Currently] the party has the lowest

representation in parliament. We
have the lowest representation in
state assemblies. At least five states
where we had a good position around
10 years ago, we are not there anymore now. In terms of our mass organisation and party membership
there has not been as much increase
as we had hoped for. So the situation

is very challenging, even internally,

for the party. There is an external challenge too in terms of what Mr Modi is
trying to do and the dual agenda that
he is pursuing. On one level it is an illusion of development for the people.
In reality, the economic policies that
he is following are only an aggressive
version of what Dr Manmohan Singh
followed. So instead of achchhe din, as
far as people are concerned, its going
to be more economic burden on them.
The real agenda is that of the RSS
where they are pursuing the hardcore
hindutva agenda ghar wapsi, love jihad, changing of syllabus. We all know
what happened at the Indian Science
Congress this year in Mumbai. A very
systematic effort is being made to replace mythology as history, and theology as philosophy that is essentially
to undermine the secular democratic
foundation of the Indian republic. So
these are very big challenges before
the country that we have to deal with
and then we have challenges within
our party.

Can you please elaborate on these

internal challenges?

The internal challenges are to increase our influence in Indian politics

and to strengthen ourselves. We are
facing a declining trend and the biggest challenge for us today is how to
reverse this trend. We have also come
to the conclusion, at the recently held
Visakhapatnam Congress, that unless
we strengthen ourselves all the other
objectives cannot be fulfilled, including electoral alliances. Seat adjustments with others depend entirely
on our internal strength. So the basic
challenge that we are facing today is
to develop the party and its independence, and a stronger unity of the
Left forces. By Left forces, I do not
just mean the Left parties, but also a
large catchment of Left intellectuals
and Left well-wishers who are not
in any organised political party. The
challenge is to bring them all together
against the neoliberal economic policies of the communal forces. We also
need to strengthen the Left democratic forces.

And how does the party plan to deal

with these challenges?

To achieve this, we require revamping

[of] our party. The organisation has to

be stronger as it is our only weapon,
and that is our vehicle to reach the
people. A strong Left has always been
the fulcrum of growth in the country
and today, more than ever, there is a
definite need for an effective Left intervention in the agenda that is unfolding under the Modi government.

You mean that the communist parties

in India have weakened over the
years?

No, that is not the case. But in order

to meet the challenges we require a
stronger party structure. It has been
decided, at the Party Congress, that
we will have a special plenum before
the year-end to correct and strengthen the organisation which is the bulwark for our advance. The objective
is to work out a strategy to revamp
the party that can embark on this task
of strengthening itself and meeting
the challenges before the country. So
that is the big agenda.

And what will be your approach?

We need to galvanise the party as a

whole and enable it to meet the current challenges, which are quite

for youth. And that is working and

will continue to work. But the point
is to effectively take it to them so that
we are able to strengthen our organisation. The BJP membership drive
that we have been hearing about is
all but digital era gimmick. Even my
party members have got messages
from BJP stating that their membership request has been accepted and
asking them to call a toll-free number.
When they called that number, it got
disconnected after one or two rings
and they got another message saying
congratulations, your membership
is confirmed. Is this what an active
membership is all about?

So are you planning to launch a mass

contact programme to reach out to the
people with your alternative policies?

Yes, both our youth and student organisations have a large number of
programmes on the basis of the issues
confronting them. The issue of privatisation of education is a very big concern. Today, nearly two-thirds of the
youth have no option but to go to the
private institutions to pursue higher
studies where the entire democratic

There is an external challenge in terms of the dual agenda that

Modi is pursuing. On one level it is an illusion of development for
the people. In reality, the economic policies that he is following are
only an aggressive version of what Dr Manmohan Singh followed.
formidable.

You have been talking about

strengthening the party, but there is
a definite decline in the willingness
of people to join CPM. Why is the pull
factor missing?

No, I dont think it is missing. But I

agree that it has to be stronger. A large
section of the youth are still joining
us; those who believe in us and want
a radical change in the country. Increasingly the situation is leading up
to a point whereby the youth in our
country have started to understand
that they require an alternative set
of policies to realise their potential of
contributing to nation building. And
there is nobody with a clearer understanding of these alternative policies
than us in this country. That is our USP

structure of students union, student

protest are completely missing. So the
youth is becoming insulated and very
careerist without any actual knowledge of the society that they are living
in. Besides, their own ambitions are
also not getting fulfilled.

That is the situation everybody talks

about, but how do you plan to address
it?

Those are the exact things that we will

shortly discuss at special plenum and
chalk out the exact plans. But definitely there are ideas for programmes
and organised initiatives on various
issues to build up a popular peoples
movement soon. This will include the
students, the youth (the young workers), the urban and rural workers and
we will address all their issues.

www.GovernanceNow.com 37

But in this new-age digital economy,

the lever of driving change by
mobilising the workers the trade
unions has almost become nonexistent. This was kind of synonym
of the Left. Does the party revamp
include shedding the Left tag?

There is nothing like a tag. Whatever

the changed circumstances and situations may be, the basic fact remains
that if you want liberation from this
sort of bondage and exploitation,
there is no other option but the Left.
So Left is not a brand or a tag that
you have for the time being. It is not
an item to be sold that has a limited
shelf life. It is a vision for the future,
an ideology that promises liberation
from exploitation. It has a shelf life
as long as there is growth of exploitation. Today you have two Indias
in the making. Who will talk about
the economic inequality but the
Left? The new-age economy has not
changed the fact that the farmers are
committing suicide. Who is asking
these questions today, leave alone
giving the solutions, like we do? Who
but the Left is today talking about the
actual potential of the country and
why are we not able to achieve that?
There are 58 billionaires in India
whose net assets are almost half the
GDP of the country. And then there
are 120 crore Indians who are just
surviving on something or the other.

The situation has also changed with

over two-third students now going
to private institutes and colleges. The
route to access them has changed.
Only 7 percent of workers are organised workforce. The rest are contract
labourers or casual workers with almost no rights. Even the journalists
are on contract and it has been over
10 years since any journalist came to
me asking for a wage board. To organise the unorganised is an entirely
different ballgame. These are areas in
which we need to work and we have
already started the process. We need
to understand that today, majority of
Indians are tied up in a day-to-day
struggle to make both ends meet. And
they want this situation to continue
so that there is no other contribution
one can make. This is a vicious cycle
that needs to be broken.

Globally, China has moved away

from the fundamental tenets of
communism. With the changing
scenario as mentioned by you, will the
party revamp also lead to an Indian
communism matching to our country
needs?

That has always been our USP. The

CPI was talking about the Soviet style
of communism, while the Naxalites
talked about the Chinese style. When
we broke away to form the CPM it was
clear that in our country it will only
be the Indian style. This is how we

A very systematic effort is being made to replace mythology

as history, and theology as philosophy that is essentially to
undermine the secular democratic foundation of the Indian
republic.
Is there a shortage of resources in the
country? No. The government is giving more than `5 lakh crore tax concessions to the rich. That is peoples
money and no government has the
business to pass it on to the rich.

In that case the Left should have been

in a better situation. But the story
is different. How did you miss the
opportunity?

I told you the reasons. It is the organisations weakness. The question of

projecting ourselves and the method
of functioning need to be changed.

38 GovernanceNow | May 16-31, 2015

were born. Also, we need to understand that communism does not exist
only in India and China 11 out of 14
Latin American countries have Left
governments. There is a Left government in Greece. You have the Left and
the social democratic forces rising in
Europe as well as the Right. Each of
the governments is focusing on its respective needs and addressing its own
set of challenges. The issue is how effectively you are positioned in your
country using the domestic situation
to advance. That is where we have to

strengthen ourselves, and hence the

decision to have a plenum.

Does the strengthening exercise also

include alliances, particularly since
you recently said that the Third Front
was a mistake?

No, I never said it was a mistake. What

I said was that alliances and fronts
are not a priority now. No alliance or
front can succeed without us becoming stronger. Our first priority is to
strengthen ourselves and the movements led by us and on that basis, at
the time of elections, we will decide
what works well for us alliances or
no alliances. Merely forming fronts
does not mean any electoral benefits.
It has to be based on the various initiatives and the issues taken up by us.

So the Janata Parivar is not part of the

CPM agenda?

Remember that historically in India

there were two political streams
socialists and communists. The communists got divided because of the
ideological issues, but the socialists
got divided due to purely opportunist
decisions of who would share power
when [and] with whom. The fact that
the socialists are coming together is
a good sign. However, it is too early
to understand what will be their alternative vision and programme. We
will need to wait and see.

With three states Bihar, West Bengal

and Punjab slated for elections soon,
how is the CPM gearing up to gain
ground?

We will not have state-wide but a

state-wise agenda. Each of the three
states has its own set of problems.
The capacity of the party to intervene
in the specificities of each state and to
build up the unity of the working people is the objective. And that cannot
be done unless we address the main
issues of the state.

Bihar elections are just around the

corner. What about your numbers?

Let us see how we shape up. Remember that the Left used to be in a very
dominant position in the state. That
dominance of electorates was based
on the Lefts internal strength. That
got weakened and therefore we are
not as strong in the state as earlier.
With the elections close on the heels a
lot of churning is happening. Nothing

is clear yet. So let us wait.

What went wrong in West Bengal for

CPM and what has been the learning
in terms of the state elections due in
early 2016?

Various things. For 35 years, we won

seven elections, which is unprecedented in Indian democracy. In fact,
three-fourths of the electorate in the
state was born after Jyoti Basu became the chief minister. The natural
question to them was what kind of democracy was this with the same party,
same government and almost same
people at the helm. So the urge for a
change was very strong. Secondly, in
35 years of government formation a
lot of riffraff also got associated with
us. They did not join CPM because of
its ideology but because we were in
power. By the time we could realise
and take action to rectify the damage
was already done. Thirdly, in terms of
tactical mistake like Singur. It was not
the first land acquisition case in Bengal. Land was acquired earlier and it
has been acquired later. Why did Singur flare up the way it did? Since we
had got two-third majority in the 2006
election on an economic and industrial growth plank we assumed people
wanted industrialisation and went
ahead without doing proper homework. This lack of understanding of
peoples mood created some resentment which was effectively utilised
by the opposition.

You said people had the urge for

change. Do you think there will be an
urge for change this time in favour of
CPM?

The urge for a change for better is already there. Objectively it is now in
favour of us. However, it depends on
us how effectively we capitalise it.

How are you gearing up in Punjab?

The communist had a big role to

play in Punjab. In fact the Left was
the strongest in Punjab and Bengal.
However, during the fight against extremism in the state more than 200
comrades were killed by the fundamentalist forces. They were our strongest links with the people and their
loss has affected us badly in the state.
In the current situation of the liberalisation, a new mindset was created.
People were flush with money; the

A strong Left has always been the fulcrum of growth in the

country and today, more than ever, there is a definite need for an
effective Left intervention in the entire agenda that is unfolding
under the Modi government.
ill effects of which can now be seen
and one of the biggest impacts is the
widespread drug abuse in the state.
In such a situation the possibility of
the Left gaining ground in Punjab is
increasing. However, the patchwork
at the time of elections will not work.
We will have to build up and sustain
struggles of the people now. Remember that the trade union movement,
the farmers and peasants movement
were very strong in Punjab. The earlier years kisan sabha still has a very
good appeal among the people and
the party now needs to translate that
appeal into an organisation. But we
have to work urgently.

Is there a lesson to learn from the Aam

Aadmi Party (AAP)?

Yes, there are lessons to be learnt

both negative and positive. They are
doing exactly what we have always
believed in and have been doing:
to take up local issues troubling the
people, organising them and leading
their movement. It was not the election-based alliance or political patchwork that got them the mandate, but
peoples intervention that worked in
their favour. This is something that
we keep talking about but they did
it more effectively. However, that itself is not enough to sustain unless
you have a long-term vision. We need
to know where they are in terms of
economic policies, in dealing with the

communal forces. This is something

that they are yet to spell out. The AAP
reality show that has been unfolding on the TV is a reflection of this
contradiction with one faction of the
party talking in a different language
than the other. So unless they have
a clear vision of the road ahead they
cannot sustain the popular movement that brought them to power.
We have seen a similar government
born out of a movement in Assam losing steam. Where is Assam Gana Parishad today? Spontaneity is good but
you cannot sustain yourself on the
basis of just a movement. AAP can
change the course of politics temporarily but they have to sustain it.

How would you rate the first year of

the Modi government?

I will define this one-year time as the

period when Modis illusions are being ruptured. He had said that achchhe din aane wale hai but now
people are singing the old Kishore
Kumar song: koi lauta de mere beete
hue din.

Do you mean the UPA II was better

than Modi?

No. UPA II was bad and that is why

we now have Narenda Modi as the
prime minister. But the government
is now doing the exact opposite of
what he had promised. n
parth@governancenow.com

www.GovernanceNow.com 39