The entire country will come to a “grinding halt” on March 28 and 29 as all major trade unions (read CITU affiliated to the CPI(M), INTUC of the Indian National Congress, and the AITUC of the CPI) have declared a two-day general strike against the Narendra Modi Government’s policy of selling off the public sector units and anti-workers laws pursued by the administration.
Those who are employed with the State and Central Governments would get an extended weekend beginning March 26, Saturday. The next day is Sunday followed by the two-day shutdown. Hence those in the government, public sector units that come under the Centre are in for a bonanza, four days’ paid holidays. We, the people in Kerala, especially the liberal, secular, intellectual class owing allegiance to the CPI(M), CPI and other socialist outfits would stock the shelves with a dozen IMFL, chicken, beef (meat of calves!) and other “touchings” so that we need not come out of the houses till March 30 morning. This is the annual bundh festival, an essential ingredient of Kerala culture, which is getting wide acceptance among the intelligentsia in the rest of the country.
Now, let’s look back to the happenings in the four-day State Conference of the Kerala branch of the CPI(M) which was concluded on Friday at Kochi. The main attraction of the event was a road map or blueprint presented by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for the “comprehensive development of the State of Kerala”. Vijayan is the numero uno of the CPI(M) in the all-India context. Though the party has a flamboyant all-India general secretary by name of Sitaram Yechury who has scorn and disregard for all others, he becomes subservient the moment he lands at Thiruvananthapuram airport. Yechury waits for hours and hours to get a darshan with Vijayan, who gets a sadistic pleasure in keeping the “know all” general secretary waiting in AKG Centre (the CPI(M) State Head Quarters in the capital city).
Vijayan’s blueprint focuses on privatization. “We should go all out to attract maximum private investment and improve the ease of doing business in Kerala. Employees should work hard along with management and private-public partnership in all sectors should be encouraged,” says Vijayan’s anti-dote to revitalize and rejuvenate Kerala economy. It is a volte-face by the CPI(M) after all these years of the campaign against capitalism, imperialism, and “communalism practiced by the BJP”.
The creme de la crème of the proposal is the Party’s green signal, nay, rolling out the red carpet, to welcome private investment and universities to set up shop in Kerala. Not long ago, TP Srinivasan, a former diplomat, was physically assaulted in public by the goons of SFI and DYFI (both affiliated to the CPI(M)) for suggesting to the Kerala Government to allow private universities to function in the State.
This is the same CPI(M) that had declared war on the then Union Government’s move to go in for computerization in a big way. “This kind of computerization will lead to millions of people losing their livelihoods. We will not allow any kind of computerization in this State,” the CPI(M) leaders had declared from all available platforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Yechury, who addressed the State Conference, remained silent about Indian National Congress. He was vocal while accusing the BJP/Sangh Parivar of “corporate communalism”. (Only the party commissar could explain what does that mean). While the new initiatives by Pinarayi Vijayan and the CPI(M) are a refreshing change from the sterile and stagnant policies being pursued by the comrades, a big question has arisen about the raison d’être of the two-day all India General strike. Welcoming maximum private investment to the State means handing over the enterprises to the private entrepreneurs. Or why else do the investors come to Kerala where militant trade unions rule the roost?
While the union government has offloaded a portion of the equity of public sector units in the market, the controlling stakes remain with the Government and that would make it difficult for any investors to have their way in running the enterprises. Similarly, private universities have their own priorities in opening branches in Kerala. Will they be given academic freedom and functional autonomy? The recent face-off between Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan and the CPI(M)-controlled State administration has its roots in these issues. The pressure exerted by the Chief Minister and Minister for Higher Education to give extension to the Vice-Chancellor of the Kannur University, a sworn Marxist, despite him getting superannuated is a valid point. Though the Pinarayi Vijayan Government managed to have its way in getting the services of the Vice-Chancellor extended, it left a lot of bad blood in the cordial ties between the Raj Bhavan and CMO.
The campaign by the CPI(M) that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is favoring Adani and Ambani (heads of two business conglomerates in the country) is far from the truth. Both the Adani and Ambani Groups had established themselves as the country’s largest corporate groups by the 1990s itself. The truth is that the Adanis were given the license to operate Mundra Port by the then Congress Government led by Rajiv Gandhi. It was through sheer perseverance and hard work Gautam Ambani made Mundra Port the largest private sector port in Asia. A perusal of records proves that Adani Group got the exclusive right to import Polyvinyl Chloride in 1981 when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister. Mundra Port emerged as the largest private-sector port in India by 1995. The Group commenced power generation business in 2006 when Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister and UPA was ruling the country. The Adanis acquired Abbot Point Port and Carmichael coal mines from 2009 to 2012. These critical points and ignored by the Congress scion who travels around the country and abuses Narendra Modi. The opposition including the CPI(M) echoes the words of their master.
One need not explain much to make the people understand how the Reliance Group emerged as the industrial and business giant in the country. Though the Group was functioning as a textile manufacturing unit in the 1970s, their fortunes skyrocketed with the return of Indira Gandhi to power in the mid-term election to the Lok Sabha. When Gandhi was out of power between 1977 and 1980, it was Dhirubhai Ambani who helped her campaign all over India and fight the elections. Once Indira Gandhi assumed office in 1980, one of her first actions was to make the Ambanis the monopoly in importing polyester chips hitherto was allowed through State Trading Corporation. Since then there was no looking back for the Ambanis as the entire country saw a media blitzkrieg “Only Vimal”.
Ambani and Adani indeed accompany the Prime Minister in his foreign tours but they make their own traveling arrangements. The closeness could be attributed to the Gujarat connection, as all of them hail from the Western State and are known for their industrious nature. It is almost eight years since Modi came to power in New Delhi but our “investigative tigers” have become silent. There is no media gag in India. But when defamatory news is published against anyone in the ruling dispensation, they take recourse to law and this has scared the “media legends”. The links between the owner of a media house and Maoists in Chhattisgarh and Odisha are well known to all.
Coming back to the CPI(M), the State Conference just concluded in Kochi has given a new message: there is no Communism in CPI(M) and there is no Marxism in Communism.
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