West Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has left the Kerala comrade more confused than ever. While one section of the party in Kerala fully endorses his line on reforms and FDI, another believes the leadership is peddling ideological change by standing by the chief minister.CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, told The Indian Express today: ‘‘It is certainly the right course.’’CM-in-waiting, Vijayan, who is busy grappling with his hardline opponents in the party, has been leading the CPI(M)’s business forays into TV channels, hypermarkets, water theme parks and corporate hospitals among other ventures. Nor has he shied from mopping up investment from all corners for party businesses — he even had an NRI tycoon-turned-Muslim League MP on the board of the party’s TV channel.At the other end are the hardliners, already downsized, led by Politburo member V.S. Achuthanandan. The powerful CITU too stands embarrassed by some of Buddhadeb’s moves, and there is considerable confusion among the second and lower rungs of Vijayan’s faction.The party, understandably, has not had an official debate on the Buddhadeb issue. Its multi-edition mouthpiece, Deshabhimani, from which Vjayan ousted Achuthanandan as chief editor a month ago, has remained significantly mum on it. The CPI(M)’s TV channels too have steered clear of the issue.But that has not held back the critics, who scoff at last week’s pronouncement by Sitaram Yechury that FDI is welcome as long as it augments productive capacity, upgrades technology and expands employment opportunities.‘‘Do you think any foreign investor would want to invest his own money here, deliberately aiming to have a lower productive capacity, use obsolete or inefficient technology and refuse to hire employees? What kind of protective clauses are those? Where does our basic ideology come in?’’ said a senior CPI(M) leader close to Achuthanandan.Others, like V.B. Cherian, former national secretary of the CITU and part of the party thinktank before he was expelled some time back, are more succinct: ‘‘Why don’t they just do away with the Communist tag if they can’t maintain some ideological consistency?’’Bhattacharya has also gone away from the party’s stand on agriculture. In Kerala, Marxist hardliners have always sought to protect agriculture, even setting its cadre loose on unremunerative paddy farms converted to cash crops, hacking down acres of standing crops. Now, Buddhadeb is on record that those in agriculture could always move to industries, as he reportedly aims at Politburo approval for handing out 5,200 acres of land, including prime farm land, to an Indonesian investor in Bengal. Worse, back home, the CPI(M) has opposed CM Oommen Chandy’s handing over about 100 acres for the Dubai Government’s Internet City. Chandy also allowed a clause which leaves the project out of labour regulations. Now, Bhattacharya, by amending the 2002 labour law, banning strikes in the IT sector, has come close to that.The CPI(M) now finds itself slamming the Congress-led state government for trying to do some of what Buddhadeb had been doing in Bengal. And, while local body polls are this month-end, the Assembly polls are due next year. ‘‘We would need to oppose it here, even if the Politburo okays it. We also need to convince our own ranks too,’’ admits a district level CPI(M) functionary.
