Bleak outlook for the Left

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

 As the Communist Party of India-Marxist, the largest of India’s Left parties, prepares for its triennial national congress, the outlook for the future is bleak as there are no signs of recovery from the setbacks of recent years.

The Communist Party of India was the main opposition in Parliament in the early years of Independence. It stunned the world in 1957 by seizing power in Kerala state through the ballot box. A few years later the party split in the wake of the Sino-Soviet rift, and the breakaway CPI-M, outgrowing the parent body, became the major political force in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala.

In West Bengal and Tripura, it enjoyed a long run in power. In Kerala, a coalition led by it alternated in power with a rival front led by the Congress party.

As the Congress was reduced to a minority in Parliament, the CPI-M promoted the formation of non-Congress, non-Bharatiya Janata Party governments at the Centre but did not participate directly in them. It was the Left’s image as a progressive force that enabled the party’s general secretary, Harkishen Singh Surjeet, to bring together small national and regional parties to form coalition governments.

At one stage these parties wanted West Bengal’s charismatic CPI-M leader Jyoti Basu to be the Prime Minister. The party turned down the suggestion as it did not want to be part of a government in which it did not have a dominant position. Basu later termed the decision a Himalayan blunder.

In 2004, Surjeet’s successor, Prakash Karat, extended Left support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government from outside to keep the BJP out of power. He pulled the plug when the government concluded the civil nuclear agreement with the United States but could not bring the government down. The UPA won a second term in the 2009 elections.

In 2011, the regional Trinamool Congress brought the CPI-M’s unbroken 34-year rule in West Bengal to an end. The Left’s electoral rout was widely attributed to the pro-rich policies the government had adopted and the ruthless manner in which it attempted to seize farmers’ lands for industries.

Dr Ashok Mitra, a former CPI-M Finance Minister and well-known economist, said the party was defeated as its state leaders had deviated from communist policies and principles.

Last year’s Lok Sabha elections revealed shrinkage of the Left’s electoral base. The CPI-M’s vote share dwindled from 5.3% in 2009 to 3.2% and the CPI’s from 1.4% to 0.8%.

The results of two recent by-elections in West Bengal, one to the Lok Sabha and the other to the State Assembly, show that the party’s downward slide is continuing. The Trinamool Congress won both the seats. In the Assembly constituency, the BJP took the second spot pushing the CPI-M down to the third place.

In Kerala, the CPI-M has been debilitated by a feud between party veteran VS Achuthanandan and long-time state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan. A new act of the long-running tragi-comedy was played out at the state party conference which has just concluded at Alappuzha.

The small northeastern state of Tripura is the only place where the party is intact. Small pockets of influence which it had elsewhere in the country have been swept away by the rising tide of communal and regional parties.

The state of the Left in Delhi, where Prakash Karat served as the CPI-M’s state secretary before his elevation to the Central Committee in 1985, is illustrative of its sad plight at the national level. Five Left parties jointly put up 15 candidates in the Assembly elections there. Together they polled a paltry 5,405 votes. The state has an electorate of more than 13 million.

Prakash Karat, who became general secretary in 2005, is due to relinquish the post at the party congress scheduled to be held at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, from April 14 to 19. His poor stewardship of the party is generally attributed to his lack of experience in working class movements.

Sitaram Yechury, who is widely tipped to succeed him, shares Karat’s background. Both were student leaders catapulted into the top leadership without field experience.

The party’s West Bengal and Kerala units have powerful state level leaders but have not been able to throw up a single leader of national stature after Jyoti Basu and EMS Namboodiripad. Basu, who was West Bengal’s chief minister continuously from 1977 to 2000, died in 2010 and Namboodiripad, who was Kerala’s chief minister twice, died in 1998-- Gulf Today. Sharjah, February 24, 2015

Brave new subsidy scheme

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

 

India, saddled with an outdated administrative apparatus controlled largely by semi-feudal political leaders at the lower levels, is all set to experiment with a computer-driven scheme for direct delivery of subsidies in cash to entitled citizens.

The government says the scheme, which will come into operation in the New Year, is a game changer. However, many political parties, for their own reasons, do not want any change in the rules of the game.

With large sections of the population too poor to fend for themselves, the government has instituted various welfare measures for them and sanctioned subsidies on items such as food, fuel and fertilisers. The measures, conceived and funded mainly by the Centre, are implemented by the state governments.

Taking into account the burden the globalisation process has cast on the poor, many new schemes have been taken up in the past two decades, pushing up the cost of subsidies from about Rs80 billion in 1994 to an estimated Rs3,200 billion next year. All the money does not reach the intended beneficiaries.

In the absence of prompt scrutiny of accounts, there is no way to ascertain the extent of leakage. It is well known that in Kerala, now one of the richest states, few buy grains from the ration shops. The unsold grain is diverted to rice mills. The shopkeepers and the millers thus become the actual beneficiaries of the subsidy. A pilot study at Alwar in Rajasthan showed that more than half the subsidy on kerosene meant for the poor is appropriated by others. The new scheme envisages payment of subsidy direct to the beneficiaries through banks, eliminating intermediaries. They can open bank accounts with the unique identification numbers allotted to them under the Aadhar project, managed by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAD).

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last week asked Central officials to assist the states, which hold most of the information relating to beneficiaries of welfare measures, to digitise the databases and seed them with Aadhar numbers to ensure smooth flow of cash from January 1. He said direct transfers, made possible by innovative use of technology and spread of modern banking across the country, will eliminate wastage, reduce leakages and benefit the poor.

One reason why opposition parties dislike the scheme is that they suspect the United Progressive Alliance government has conceived it with a view to deriving an electoral dividend. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005, which assures employment for a minimum of 100 days in a year to at least one member of every rural family, is believed to have helped the UPA to earn a second five-year term in 2009. The opposition fears that direct cash transfers will do for it in 2014 what NREGA did in 2009.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has written to the Election Commission alleging the scheme violates the code of conduct which bars policy announcements while the poll process is on. The national elections are one-and-a-half years away but the BJP argues the scheme cannot be launched now as Assembly elections are under way in some states. The Commission has sought a response from the government.

The Communist Party of India and the CPI-Marxist view the scheme as part of a strategy to cut down subsidies. The CPI says it will hurt the poor, and the CPI-M fears the Centre will use it to lower subsidies and undermine the public distribution system.

A fall in government spending can certainly be expected — not because of cuts in the size of subsidies but because of the elimination of ineligible persons from the list of beneficiaries.

The Asian Development Bank has endorsed the scheme for direct payment of subsidy as a step that will plug leakages in welfare spending, which, it estimates, is about five per cent of India’s GDP. It says the Philippine government’s scheme of direct cash payments to mothers with school-going children, introduced three years ago, has proved cost-effective.

If successful, the cash transfer scheme will help the poor by freeing them from the clutches of intermediaries who wield political power at the state and district levels. If it fails, it will take the Congress and the UPA down with it. Aware of the risks, the Centre has decided to move cautiously. To begin with, it proposes to introduce the scheme in selected districts across the country and to bring under it only pension and scholarship payments, which can be easily managed. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 4, 2012.