India This Week

The CPM Crisis; Shaken by 26/11, Industry Worries about Security; North-east Insurgency; and Hindi Lesson for Raj

The CPM, which is facing a severe crisis in its strongholds of West Bengal and Kerala, has also experienced a severe disappointment at the international communist conclave it organised last week together with the CPI. The 11th International Meeting of the Communist and Workers’ Parties (IMCWP) was held on 20–22 November in New Delhi. The gathering of international communist parties summarily rejected a CPM proposal which it was sure would sail through.  In the final declaration, the party wanted to exhort governments across the world to impose stricter regulations on inflows of foreign capital. “We are proposing 2 per cent service tax on foreign capital because foreign capital does not generate revenue for the host economy and is actually a way of exploitation,” CPM politburo member Sitaram Yechury had said on 21 November, a day before the finalisation of the Delhi Declaration.

Such a tax, Yechury said, would be in line with the measure adopted by Brazil’s Lula da Silva government and would help in keeping a check on speculative capital investment in stock markets.
However, sources say, the working group formed to give final shape to the Delhi Declaration shot down the proposal. Leading the group that scuttled the proposal were communist parties which are in power in their countries, and are busy  wooing foreign capital. These included parties from China, Vietnam and South Africa. 

With big brothers of the international communist movement putting their foot down, the Delhi Declaration confined itself primarily to polemical aspects of capitalism’s crisis and socialism’s inevitability. Not only the Delhi Declaration, even the press communiqué that was issued on the concluding day of the conclave stayed silent on the issue.

The CPM was so sure of pushing its proposal through that Yechury went public even before the Delhi Declaration was finalised, say sources in the party.

Again, it was this certainty that led the party to keep its reform evangelist Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee out of the meeting. And this is despite the fact that the CPM’s other two chief ministers—VS Achuthanandan of Kerala and Manik Sarkar of Tripura—were present at the conclave.

Shaken by the 26/11 attacks last year, which had invaded the private space of corporate India, Ficci members got together to discuss terror and figure out industry’s role in this fight. It’s recommendations are now part of a report. A year later, the momentum has been kept up, and a second report is also under preparation, which will “deal with non-traditional issues related to security like money laundering, immigration, smuggling, impact of migration and other related subjects”, Rajya Sabha MP and former BPL telecom honcho, Rajeev Chandrasekhar tells Open. Ficci is also establishing a think-tank in New Delhi to look at national security and geo-politics. “We want to work more closely with the Government as so far security issues were debated and discussed only by a part of the Government, experts and the media,’’  he adds.

Industry now also sees Maoists as an emerging threat that has the potential to destabilise the economy. And to combat these threats, apart from calling for better inter-state relations, the body stresses on injecting a strong dose of economics into states fighting red terror. For now, a shaken corporate India also seems to have realised that it has to contribute its intellect and technology to help the Government tackle terror.

There are reports that nine top Ulfa militants have sneaked into Assam from Myanmar, Bhutan and Nagaland  to target vital installations, including oil refineries. This comes at a time when the Centre has said it is willing to give safe passage to Ulfa’s supreme commander, Paresh Barua, and his deputy, Arabinda Rajkhowa, to facilitate negotiations with the insurgent group. Rajkhowa is currently in Bangladesh,  while Barua is believed to be in China’s Yunan province, negotiating an arms deal. But instead of taking the Centre’s offer, the Ulfa triggered off blasts in Assam, leading to the death of seven people.

The Northeast is the centre of one of India’s oldest insurgency problems. Yet, to date, in the absence of a clear-cut policy or vision on New Delhi’s part, people in most parts of the region are left at the mercy of the dozens of insurgent groups who call the shots in these states.

On 23 November,  five Assam Rifles personnel, including a lieutenant colonel and a captain, were killed in an ambush by militants of the United National Liberation front (UNLF) in Manipur’s Chandel district. A day later, on the 45th raising day of the outfit, a statement issued by the group said it was looking at the possibility of cooperating with Maoists. “The UNLF believes there is a common interest in the fight against the Indian State by the CPI(Maoist) and the liberation struggles of Manipur and the [North-eastern] region. The UNLF shall actively pursue a policy of mutual help and support with the Indian revolution through the CPI (Maoist),” said the statement.

Meanwhile, in Assam, several surrendered cadres of a faction of the insurgent group Dima Halam Daogah, have fled their designated camps with weapons, even as their leaders blamed the desertions on the cadres’ frustration over the slow progress of talks with the Government.

The situation in Nagaland, too, continues to be fraught with contradictions. Union Home Secretary GK Pillai accepted recently that Naga militants were getting arms from China. The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah group), which has been holding peace talks with the Centre for over ten years now, recently allegedly demanded Rs 1 crore from an Indian Oil depot in Manipur.

The Centre says it is serious about solving the Northeast fiasco. In fact, Home Minister P Chidambaram had termed insurgency in the Northeast one of the State’s three challenges, along with terrorism and Naxalism. Still, just as it has shown itself incapable of making any headway on the latter two, India is showcasing its inadequacy in responding to acts of terror in the Northeast. Pity.

Language has been an emotive issue in Tamil Nadu since 1937, when C Rajagopalachari’s Congress government in the then Madras presidency decided to make Hindi compulsory in administrative as well as educational fields. The state had then witnessed riots against what was described as an upper caste conspiracy to impose north Indian hegemony over the Dravidian land. This agitation, notably, also led to Periyar EV Ramasamy Naikar’s Dravida ideology taking political roots in the state.

Tamil Nadu saw language riots again in the 1960s, when another Congress government led by Bhakthavatsalam tried to introduce a three-language system, which made Hindi compulsory. Dravidian leaders like CN Annadurai and M Karunananidhi immediately made use of this issue to overthrow the  Congress.

However, a remarkable shift seems to be taking place now, at a time when Raj Thackeray’s MNS is treading a similar path to create a foothold in Maharashtra. The Dravida land is proving that language politics has a limited shelf life.

For one, ignoring language fanatics, Chief Minister M Karunanidhi erected a memorial for Bhakthavatsalam. Then, he used the occasion of Annadurai’s birth centenary to make it clear that anti-Hindi arrogance was no more part of the Dravidian agenda. The DMK was just against its imposition to suppress Tamil, he clarified. And let’s not forget the Hindi poem he recited to counter the BJP’s stand on Sethu Samudram. Fortunately for him, arch rival Jayalalithaa has already made her peace with Hindi, having delivered a number of speeches in UP in pure Hindi. There are lessons for Raj in this Southern experience.

26/11CPMNorth-eastsecurityTamil Nadu