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It has now become abundantly clear that the Communist Party of
India (Marxist) is confused about why it is supporting the Deve
Gowda government. Soon after Finance Minister P Chidambaram
presented his budget, a veteran CPM parliamentarian told TV viewers
the budget was "pro-people". Given its contents - and the customary
meaning attached to the demotic appellation in the Indian political
lexicon - this was more than a little surprising. Mr Chidambaram
had, after all, cut taxes across the board, benefiting in
particular the wealthy and the corporate sector, carved out a role
for the private sector in insurance, promised to speed up
disinvestment and restricted expenditures on the social sector to a
minimum. The party's official spokespersons were a little more
critical but certainly less so than they had been during previous
liberalising budgetary exercises. The waters of the Hooghly were
further muddied by the CPM-led West Bengal government, which issued
a formal note welcoming the budget. The loud protests now being
made by party stalwarts like Mr Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Mr
Sitaram Yechury would, then, seem like an afterthought. Especially
since it is manifest that their criticism is such as not to cause
either Mr Chidambaram or Mr Deve Gowda to lose much sleep. Mr
Surjeet tells us that although cut motions might be introduced in
Parliament, there is no question of the CPM coming out against the
budget when the document is finally put to vote. This is
presumably just the sort of opposition the finance minister had in
mind when, during his budget speech, he asked: "What will we do
without our critics?".
In a recent newspaper article on the budget, Mr Yechury states that
the CPM does not want the UF government to be a "secular clone" of
the previous liberalising regime. But surely the comrade should
have realised by now that for its backers, the strength and allure
of the UF lies precisely in its ability to generate a wider
consensus about the reform process than the Congress or BJP could
ever have done. The 'secular front' was always a bit of a red
herring and Mr Yechury only need look at the lack of progress on
the Ayodhya or November 1984 cases to convince himself about this.
Most budgets in the past few years have been what the CPM would
call pro-rich but part of the reason for the euphoria of the
business classes this time around is that such a market-friendly
budget has been introduced by a government whose avowed cornerstone
is 'social justice'. Last year, the CPM's women's wing - usually
quite energetic in organising dharnas and bandhs - urged members to
send postcards in protest at the Deve Gowda government's economic
policies'. This year, even this mode of popular opposition might
prove difficult to sustain since Mr Chidambaram has raised postal
rates. Perhaps, then, it is time for the CPM to follow the lead of
its comrades in Calcutta and openly play along with the reforms.
Rather than making pro forma protests that do not go the whole hog,
the party should focus its attention on the specifics of Mr
Chidambaram's budgetary arithmetic. That way, the comrades could at
least ensure that his numbers do not get overwhelmed by inflation
and infrastructural bottlenecks, as many critics fear.
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