Introduction: Why the Left should stop doublespeak and get real
What Bengal’s Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
does today, the rest of India’s Left might do tomorrow.
The Left Front, which has run Bengal
for 28 years, is wooing private capital with fervour. Meanwhile, the CPM’s
effete Delhi leadership, unencumbered by the responsibilities of office,
rail against disinvestment, foreign investment and economic reform. The
limousine Left, for example, bristles at the thought of overseas investment
in airports. Meanwhile, Buddha has told investors in Singapore that he
wants unrestricted foreign capital for airports in Bengal. One of the first
concessions extracted by the Left in return for support to the UPA government
last year was the closure of the ministry of disinvestment. By itself,
that was no loss: Arun Shourie’s regime had discredited the process of
privatisation and strategic sales of state-owned companies had stopped
long before the ministry was wound up. Trouble is, the Left opposed even
piecemeal sales of state-owned companies through equity markets. That’s
absurd, when you recall that Bengal’s Left regime is privatising or restructuring
29 state-owned units. CPM’s Nilotpal Basu tries to rationalise this doublespeak
by saying New Delhi can’t privatise because many central PSUs make profits,
but Bengal’s selloffs are OK because only loss-making outfits are being
sold. Someone should remind him that practically all Bengal PSUs run into
losses. So, it should be all right to sell the lot. But perhaps the biggest
drag imposed by the Left on this coalition has been the way it scuttled
pension reform. This could cost taxpayers thousands of crores in future.
So, we’re happy that Manmohan Singh
has taken our advice and asked Delhi’s Left to learn from their Bengali
chums. The Left is in a flap: The CPM’s bosses will meet in September to
discuss what Bengal’s reforms and Buddha’s East Asian roadshow imply for
ideological purity. They shouldn’t waste their time. The CPM has never
been a communist party but a social democratic one. They should also remind
themselves that the only way for India to grow and prosper is by running
an open economy where capital is free to flow in, lifting incomes all round.
Blocking capital means blocking jobs - and choking incomes. The message
from Bengal is clear: If today’s Left - tomorrow’s social democrats - want
to work for people, they should support economic reform. Anything else
will show them up as a bunch of whiners, hanging on to a threadbare ideology
that has spectacularly failed its followers all over the world.