Sunday Interview - ‘There will be no front or alliance with the BJP or the Congress’

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is facing a crisis of keeping itself relevant today. What is going to be your tactical approach to remain politically relevant at the national stage?
First of all, we are not irrelevant. We continue to be the only relevant voice on all ruthless anti-people measures that this government is undertaking, be it the land bill or the proposed changes in labour laws. Secondly, as far as a tactical approach is concerned, we have taken the decision at the party congress that our primary agenda will be to strengthen ourselves first. Our parliamentary presence at this time is at a historical low, as is our presence in the Assemblies. In terms of party membership, the growth has not been as we had envisaged it to be.

So in this situation, we have decided that we must concentrate all our efforts on strengthening ourselves. This can only be done when we intervene on people’s issues at all levels. We will have to launch local struggles, taking up local issues; launch struggles at the national level against the burdens being imposed on the people. Take the hike in petrol and diesel prices, for instance. We anticipate that such burdens will continue to increase.

In which form do you intend to launch these struggles?
The popular interventions will take up all forms. One way is mobilising people on all these issues for rallies, dharnas, movements, and then to build them up into struggles… We will have to build pressure through people’s movement at the local, state and national level on these and other issues.

Under the former party general secretary Prakash Karat the focus was on expanding the base of the party in the cow belt, but it was a disaster. The presence of your party is confined to three states — West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. Why did that drive fail?
People in north India particularly are subjected to dual exploitation and oppression. That’s why in our party congress we once again but more emphatically stated that our struggle in the country stands on two feet: economic exploitation and social oppression. Caste oppression, khap panchayats and so on in the Indo-Gangetic Plains. These are also the reasons that are inhibiting people from joining the mainstream of the political struggle. So our task is to break through this.

As far as economic exploitation is concerned, there is a great degree of confidence that people will come and rally with us, face the police’s lathis. But we have not been able to evoke that sort of confidence as far as social oppression issues are concerned. So we will have to take them up in a big way. But for that we will have to first strengthen our party organisation. That’s why we have decided to have an organisational plenum.

Perhaps for the first time in recent history, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was able to cut through the caste-communal barrier in Uttar Pradesh.
He did so only in the parliamentary polls. The political battle that was being conducted then was for the government at the Centre. The incumbent government at that time had been discredited on all counts — burdening people with rising prices, declining growth, corruption... People were looking for an alternative and that’s where the Bharatiya Janata Party stepped in and created grand illusions about achche din, etc. Another important element in their success in breaking through these barriers was an aggressive pursuit at a subterranean level of the communal agenda.

But there has been no government, at least not in my memory, which in the first year itself has also seen growth of an anti-incumbency feeling. The Delhi Assembly elections were a clear reflection of that.

You are seen as a follower of Harkishan Singh Surjeet in many ways. How do you look at the “anti-BJP, anti-Congress” line? Will there be any truck with the Congress?
One thing is clear from this party congress. There will be no front or alliance with any of these parties. No front will be projected like we did in 2009, when we spoke of an alternative secular government, which we ourselves subsequently said was wrong. We are only calling for strengthening the left and secular forces. No call of forming an alternative government will be made by our party.

At the time of elections we will see if there are any adjustments required for the sake of advancing our struggles. But the primacy that we will accord in the future will be to strengthening our independent strength.

So are you saying that you will go for a friendly fight in states, like seat adjustments with like-minded, secular parties?
What we are saying is that if a situation in a particular state demands, there will be seat adjustments so that vote division does not help those we think should be defeated. But no front, no alliance and no projection of an alternative government through electoral realignments.

In 2016, West Bengal goes for Assembly polls. Do you see an alliance with the Congress?
The Congress with their economic policies and what they did in West Bengal, it is out of the question. In West Bengal there is a different sort of dynamic in operation. The call in our party congress was first to stop the decline in the party’s reach to the people, and then to restore the growth of the party. For the first time since 2009 we have been able to arrest the decline in our vote share. In fact it went up marginally, close to 2 per cent. This is a significant development. The process that we had envisaged is now beginning to take shape. How this will emerge by the time of state Assembly elections we will have to see.

What exactly do you mean when you talk of a left and democratic front?
What we mean is that today we have a set of economic policies aimed at maximising profit for both international and domestic capital but at the expense of the vast majority of people. The Modi government today has welded this trajectory of economic policies with its rabid communal agenda. That will be our primary target.

We have always said that the economic policies of the Congress are no different from those of the BJP. And it is now turning out to be more correct, that the Congress and the BJP are two sides of the same coin.

On the economic front the alternative we are offering to the people and our youth is that the resources in our country should be put to the best use in providing our youth with education, health and job opportunities. On communalism, the alternative is clear. The Constitution makes it clear that we are a secular, democratic republic. That is the alternative we are talking about.

There seems to be a leadership crisis in the CPM in West Bengal where there is no face of the party...
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is there. Surya Kant Mishra is handling the Opposition charge today.