By Nirmalya Mukherjee
The CPM is about to hold a run up to its twenty-first state conference from September 15. The conference will be held in February 2005 at Kamarhatty in North 24 Parganas. Prior to that conferences will be held at the branch, local, zonal and district levels as an all-India activity.
Since CPM is the strongest party in West Bengal, quite naturally the West Bengal state committee is likely to become the arbiter of shape of things to come for the party in future. The state conference will be followed by the 18th party congress at New Delhi in April 2005.
Meanwhile, bickerings are visible within the party, which the communists will obviously try to hide. I wish to focus on a critical curtain-raiser about CPM'sworking during the lower level conferences.
One thing to be noted is that Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections are round the corner (in 2005) and quite naturally, the CPM as hard-core Stalinists, would not like to purchase critical arguments from the rank and file of the party. Wresting of KMC from TMC clutches happens to be the party'ssole aim.
The party is already in a fix and has mostly failed to make its cadres realise the logic behind rendering support to the Congress at the Centre. Other than bickerings emanating out of desire to extract personal gains, the communists like in the past have always believed in the history of withdrawal.
Party cadres are already blurting out that the common enemy is the RSS-BJP combine and that the honeymoon with the Congress is only a marriage of convenience with no conviction in doing something for the nation.
The question that needs an answer is: How long can the CPM continue to compromise on all its ideologies with the Congress?
