Are Prakash Karat and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya playing Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde?

This is the article which I sent to ET last week unsuccessfully. If ET has one million readers, my blog has potentially millions (forget the adjective)


Noted economist Paul Krugman says that capitalism triumphed and communism didn’t work because ‘For much of the past century and a half, men have dreamed of something better, of an economy that drew on man's better nature. But dreams, it turns out, can't keep a system going over the long term; selfishness can’. The apparent contradictions within CPI (M) over the reforms and FDI has thrown open the issue of relevance of communism today. The embarrassment caused by Mr.Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s pro-reform stance may have made him the evil Mr. Hyde among his comrades, but it has given an opportunity for the Left to make its policy clear towards reforms.

Since UPA assumed power, the reform initiatives of Manmohan-PC-Montek combine has been hitting roadblocks, thanks to the bellicose attitude of the Left. The recent Bhel divestment initiative, which was scuttled by Left citing violation of CMP as an excuse, does not hold water either, as CMP clearly states “Navaratna PSUs shall remain as public sector but can go to the market to raise capital”. Clearly, even a 10% divestment will leave Government with more than 51% stake. Mr.Bhattacharya on the other hand, has been going out of the way to woo foreign investors to his state. This hypocrisy does not bode well for a party that professes to be the conscience of the government.

Rigid labor laws and high exit barrier has been the single biggest deterrent to entry of FDI in the country, thanks to the political class in general and left in particular. Mr.Bhattacharya rightly points out that issues of productivity and quality are not the headaches of management alone, but must be shared by the workers. Left can play the role of facilitator so that the benefits of reforms reach everyone. For that, it must shed its old dogmas of no-foreign-investment-at-any-cost and worker protection even if it compromises efficiency. Communism in its pristine form has lost its relevance and should find a place in history text books (though that may spark a confrontation of different kind!).