Remembering Jyoti Basu

Arindam Sarkar  

The 21^st party congress of the CPI(M) at Vishakapatnam ended with the elevation of Sitaram Yechury as the General Secretary of the party. But the time is out of joint for him and the CPI(M).

After much deliberations at Vizag, the CPI(M) mandarins expressed in the central committee that the dwindling party membership, leadership crisis at all levels, lack of young leaders at the top, failure to reach out to the people and dilution of the Marxist ideology in the country demanded that the apparatchiks should undertake rectification steps to revive the party in India – and especially in Bengal and Kerala.

Sitaram Yechury himself said that the party would work towards correcting the mistakes. The Vizag party congress virtually echoed what Jyoti Basu had said a decade back. The late communist patriarch time and again insisted that the party was moving away from the people and that if the people’s aspirations were not fulfilled, the CPI(M) would suffer a jolt in the elections. Jyoti Basu was right.

In 2009 Lok Sabha elections, CPI(M) did not do well in Bengal and in 2011 Bengal Assembly polls, the CPI(M) lost to the Trinamool Congress. This marked the end of 34 years of Marxist regime in Bengal.

Jyoti Basu saw it coming. 

Attired in a neatly-pressed white punjabi and striped lungi, a couple of years before his death in January 2010, India’s most celebrated nonagenarian communist had briskly walked into his sitting room at Indira Bhavan in Salt Lake to say with command that unless certain areas were rectified by the Left Front administration, the communists in Bengal were in for trouble. 

The frail Jyoti Basu, who could slowly walk without assistance, had no expression in his eyes when he said unemployment, illiteracy and poor health system remained the main failures of the Left Front Government after 30 years in power.

Ninety three-year old Jyoti Basu said: “In my lifetime, I want to see the government excelling in these areas too.”  This was two days before the Left Front Government completed 30 years in power in Bengal.

Jyoti Basu emphatically said that at no cost the cohesion of the Left Front coalition should be disturbed. The disunity in the front, he said, would derail the coalition government that had set a world record in parliamentary politics for being the only nine-party government in power for over three decades. 

Looking back, the apprehensions and sayings of the Marxist Jyoti Basu – who held the record for being the longest-serving chief minister of the country – who was baptized under such British communists as Philip Spratt, Rajni Palme Dutt and Fabian Socialists between 1936 and 1941 proved to be prophetic. 

The Left took a drubbing in Lok Sabha polls 2009 and its industrial policy boomeranged because of forcible acquisition of lands for industries in Singur and Nandigram.

In Bengal, Basu felt that only industries could reduce unemployment and he lamented that more than 34 lakh educated-unemployed existed in the communist State. He lauded the seventh Left Front Government for is pro-industrial policy but expressed reservations over forcible acquisition of lands. Basu believed that communists should reach out to the people, mobilize support and create a consensus before acquiring lands to set up industries. 
 
A pragmatic, the nonagenarian politburo member had stressed that with Centre’s freight equalization policy and License Raj over, there was no reason why industries should not flourish in Bengal? “But industries alone will not do. Measures should be taken to bring down the staggering illiteracy that stood at 73 per cent, electrification of villages should be completed and percentage of people living Below the Poverty Line should be brought down,” said Basu. 

The health system, Basu pointed out, immediately needed attention. He said, though 70 per cent of the people received treatment in government hospitals, but there was scope for improvement. 

In national politics, Basu believed there were two occasions when the CPI(M) took wrong decisions. One, the CPI(M)’s non-participation in the Centre in 1996, which prevented him from becoming the prime minister and two, the CPI(M)’s decision to withdraw support from the UPA-I on the Indo-US Nuclear Deal issue to bring the government down in 2008. 

However, the forcible acquisition of lands for industries; withdrawal of support from the UPA-I; and CPI(M)’s voting with the BJP in the Parliament against the Congress irked Basu the most in his last days.

The communist, who had gone to 10 Janpath in 2001 to tell AICC president Sonia Gandhi that the Left would support her party to form the government at the Centre to keep the communal forces at bay, was helpless in his last days when the young politburo mandarins refused to pay heed to his advice.