The 23rd Party Congress, from April 6 to 10 in Kerala's Kannur district, is expected to witness the transformation of the CPM from a working-class party to a party of the aspirational middle and 'upper middle' classes. This shift in class emphasis has been swift.
During the first Pinarayi Vijayan ministry, even while daring to be outrageously ambitious, there was an active attempt on the part of the LDF government to demonstrate that working-class welfare was at the heart of all big moves.
Take for instance the first Pinarayi ministry's boldest innovation, Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB).
The CPM could effectively sell the fiscal experiment as a mammoth million-limbed social welfare project. It was about upgrading schools, installing dialysis units in government hospitals, roads and irrigation canals and taking electricity and the internet to the poorest households (Transgrid 2.0 and Kerala Fibre Optic Network - K-FON).
Left's magical alternative
And this infrastructure backbone, which the LDF government said would mostly benefit the poor, would not put any strain on Kerala's finances. KIIFB, it was said, will be provided small pocket money (half of the annual motor vehicle tax and the whole of petrol cess) that would be more than enough to pay off its debts.
Since KIIFB did not depend on Kerala's finances for infra development, the LDF government argued quite compellingly that there was enough funds left in the state's coffers to increase social security pensions, widen the social safety net and provide all kinds of assistance, including free food, in times of need. Therefore, even while creating assets for the poor, KIIFB also spared more money for the poor.
KIIFB was projected as an undiluted boon for the poor in Kerala. It was the Left's “post-neoliberal pro-poor” alternative.
Besides KIIFB, the first Pinarayi ministry, in tune with its working-class underpinnings, made serious attempts to revive vanishing water bodies, strengthen primary health centres and dramatically improve the area under paddy cultivation.
Brand new class concerns
This overall pro-poor ecologically sensitive orientation also helped to mask to a great extent the first Pinarayi ministry's ideological deviations like the mining relaxations and the reclamation of paddy lands for highway and mall development.
But things changed dramatically after the LDF returned to power. The CPM's new policy formulations seem to pivot exclusively around supposed middle and upper-middle-class concerns.
The determination to push through the Rs. 64,000-cr SilverLine project, unmindful of the emotionally-charged public protests, is a case in point. Then there is the proposal to have private participation in the Higher Education sector and also the new liquor policy, both of which it is said would nourish middle-class desires but hurt the underprivileged.
Twin temptations: Speed and Money
In the case of SilverLine, the LDF government is employing the arguments of speed (four hours from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod) and real estate gains (attractive compensation) -- two middle-class concerns -- in the hope that these could persuade families to make way for the SilverLine project.
When it comes to project details -- alignment, buffer zone, ridership, fencing, project cost -- the government is confused; the Chief Minister, ministers and K-Rail officials contradict each other. Instead of facts, the government campaign is fuelled mostly by vague but rousing development rhetoric. Sample this from the Chief Minister's speech: “We are doing this not for us but the future of our children.”
Former Luddite's woes
A CPM source said the party wanted to erase the perception that it was anti-development. It is felt that the party is still unfairly defined by its earlier opposition to computers and tractors and airports. “There might be sneers that the party is turning pro-capital but this push for development, reflected mostly in the Chief Minister's unwavering commitment to the K-Rail project, should extinguish all thoughts of the CPM as a group of beedi-smoking ancient men in thick-rimmed glasses waiting to snatch and destroy anything remotely modern,” a Central Committee member said on the condition of anonymity.
The historic repeat victory has given the party the belief that its traditional working-class vote bank is intact. Now, it wants the aspirational class on its side. Interestingly, the CPM does not see the middle and 'upper middle' classes as merely the successors of a former feudal exploitative class.
There is an addition to the mix. “The younger generation of coastal workers and farm labourers are also moving up in life. They are the new middle class. This development is for them,” the CC member said.
The CC member said that Pinarayi's first term had already given the CPM a pro-development image. “Projects that were thought impossible like the widening of the national highway, the laying of the GAIL pipeline and the drawing of the power highway from the Kudankulam nuclear plant (in Tamil Nadu) were completed. Now, with K-Rail, we want to solidify that image,” he said.
Behind CPM's K-Rail hawkishness
The CC member also said that the CPM's SilverLine aggression should not be seen as blind support for a big project but as “a well thought out strategy”. “Even if the Centre eventually tells us to drop the project, we want the people to realise that the party gave its everything for a development project that would change the face of Kerala,” the CC member said. By people, he was referring to the aspirational class that the party believed deeply yearned for such a project.
The CPM has also considered the possibility that the project would not take off in the next five years. Therefore the CPM belief is that if it keeps up the fight, the complexities and sub-plots of the K-Rail struggle would be largely ignored and only the bare gist that the CPM was determined to implement the SilverLine, like the inadequate blurb of a large novel, will be remembered.
If this happens, the CPM believes the party could glide into the hearts of the aspirational class.
High-speed fantasies and a warning
But then, in this desperation to shed the primitive tag, some of the CPM leaders are turning brazenly capitalist in outlook. Take for instance how at a recent public event fisheries minister Saji Cherian marvelled at a high-speed train in some foreign country that stopped inside a big mall. “Don't our people too desire to see such things in Kerala,” he asked.
The country's foremost Left thinker and economist Prabhat Patnaik has a word of advice for comrades tempted by middle-class fantasies.
In an interview given to The Wire in 2017, Patnaik said: I think what happened in West Bengal is that to create jobs, they opted for industrialisation. Car factories don’t produce many jobs – they produce very few jobs. It was a middle-class demand. The middle-class demand was forcing them. The presumption was that the peasantry supports us anyway. Let us try getting the middle-class youth on our side by doing this industrialisation. But in the process, middle-class youth didn’t come and they lost the support of the peasantry. It is very important for the revival of the Left not to get hegemonised by neoliberalism.”
Liquor blurs ideology
More liquor outlets are again a middle-class demand. The Liquor Policy unveiled last week makes liquor outlets not only abundant in Kerala but also more tempting to be in (there are plans to design liquor outlets without queues, like top retail brand showrooms).
“The salaried class can absorb the high cost of liquor but what about the low-paid workers in the informal sector. The new liquor policy in fact tempts them to consume more, leading to more stress on their already weak household income,” said Roy Sebastian, a former economics teacher who was once a CPM branch secretary.
Sebastian says the liquor policy is proof that 'profit at any cost' is the new CPM mantra. A top CPM insider said that prohibition was a failed policy. “In a place like Bihar, where prohibition is in place, the number of hooch tragedies is on the rise,” he said.
In response, Sebastian said: “I am not talking about prohibition. Let them have liquor shops but why do they want to increase the number when Kerala already has enough. Also, why do they want to decorate these outlets and make drinking seem like a festival.” He added: “It is clear that they are just after the money that liquor drinking generates and are least bothered about the social consequences, especially the impact of the policy on the poor.”
Myth of social control
While welcoming private capital into the Higher Education sector, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's New Policy Document speaks of social control. How he plans to achieve 'social control' is still a mystery because there is no such control in any of the self-financing professional colleges or aided schools and colleges in Kerala.
Self-financing college fees have bloated incrementally over the years and aided institutions, though their salary burden is on the government, continue to appoint teachers and other staff of their choice after accepting prohibitive sums from the recruitees. With the entry of private players, it is also feared that reservation norms would also be thrown out of the classroom window.
In short, as the 23rd Party Congress begins, the CPM is concerned only about creating an image the aspirational upper and middle classes will identify with, and not the consequences.
