This man- Kalaignar Karunanidhi has only 16 MPs in the parliament of India. He leads a government in Tamil Nadu, which depends on Congress for its survival. Still this man had the courage to issue the threat of withdrawing support to the central government when the later decided to disinvest Neyveli Lignite Corporation. The outcome of the threat – the central government decided to put off all the disinvestment proposals on hold.
Now see the Communist Party- they have about 40 MPs in Parliament.
They are in power in 2 states with brutal majority (remember Karunanidhi is leading a minority government). Yet when the Union Government hiked the diesel/ petrol prices they could do nothing. Their leaders made a lot of hue and cry about the whole issue threatening the central government with dire consequences (of course only in front of TV camera so that their foolish comrades will be satisfied) if the price was not rolled down. They conducted a one-day All India strike (at least that is what they call it - it turned out to be All Kerala harthal with life being normal in all other parts of the country).Even after conducting the strike they couldn’t even convince the Central Government to reduce the price. Karunanidhi just needed a statement to get what he needs. Karunanidhi could have easily called for a state level harthal/bandh and made it a great success. But he has the ability to understand that bandh/harthal won't do any good to his state unlike his partner in Kerala.
What does this mean? Should we believe that communist party with more than 40 MPs in parliament has no voice in running the Union Government compared to DMK with 16 MPs? Should we believe that communist leaders are not sincere (this itself should be a subject of another post) to the issues affecting common people and all their protest are just farce to make their cadres happy? It is up to you readers to make a judgment.
Now see the Communist Party- they have about 40 MPs in Parliament.
They are in power in 2 states with brutal majority (remember Karunanidhi is leading a minority government). Yet when the Union Government hiked the diesel/ petrol prices they could do nothing. Their leaders made a lot of hue and cry about the whole issue threatening the central government with dire consequences (of course only in front of TV camera so that their foolish comrades will be satisfied) if the price was not rolled down. They conducted a one-day All India strike (at least that is what they call it - it turned out to be All Kerala harthal with life being normal in all other parts of the country).Even after conducting the strike they couldn’t even convince the Central Government to reduce the price. Karunanidhi just needed a statement to get what he needs. Karunanidhi could have easily called for a state level harthal/bandh and made it a great success. But he has the ability to understand that bandh/harthal won't do any good to his state unlike his partner in Kerala.What does this mean? Should we believe that communist party with more than 40 MPs in parliament has no voice in running the Union Government compared to DMK with 16 MPs? Should we believe that communist leaders are not sincere (this itself should be a subject of another post) to the issues affecting common people and all their protest are just farce to make their cadres happy? It is up to you readers to make a judgment.
COMMUNIST PARTY-NO VOICE OUTSIDE KERALA AND BENGAL?
photo courtesy-The Hindu
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23 comments:
There is nothing like communist party is not sincere and DMK is very concerened about problems of common man. what it means is that the communist doesnt have strong opposition party like AIADMK or a strong leader like Jayalalitha who can make an issue such as NLC disinvestment a biggest embarassment for the state government. If the congress is the only main opposition party in Tamilnadu as it is in Kerala and West Bengal karunanidhi never dare to issue such a threat to central government as he did now. This is only happened because tamilnadu has largest number of opposition members in assembly since 1950. People should see the advantage of giving multipolar verdict than giving thumping majority for one single party.
It is quite clear that the commies dont have a voice outside bengal and kerala the states which they have held as a bastion and pushed down to the verge of total anarchy.Afterall that was why communism was created .I think the most likely reason why the commies kept quite is that the NLC disinvestment did not figure in their chinese paymaster's agenda.
cheers!!
george
What I hate about communist is they are not ready to be a part of the UPA govt and yet want to be part of each every decision made by the govt..They dont want the part of the blame and yet want a say!!
Brijesh,
Nice post, but I see some silly spelling mistakes creeping in. It should be threat & threatening, instead of thread & threading.
Hope you don't mind me pointing it out!
I like your blog. Yeah, in five years Kerala will go down the drain as the most backward state in India.
the left front is good only for nagging and really cannot do anything real good for the poor or any indian. they just pretend they are right and their ideology is based on projecting pro-poor and pro-socialistic images; but the truth is they are far from any of those.
Anon1- You may be correct- thread of Jayalalitha may be the reason for Karunanidhi to do like this. But the point I want to make is communist leaders always preach one thing and do exactly another thing.
Anon2- Even the Chinese communist party is changing. But the Marxist leaders in Kerala don’t want to change and that is the problem.
Mathew- Only thing communists people know well is criticizing others and they cant do it if they share power.
Shinu- Thanks for pointing out the mistakes. I have corrected it.
Mantra35- Hope it won’t happen.
MC- when will majority of the literate malayalis understand that?
Thought provoking post Brijesh and smart of you to spot it :)
Hi...first time visitor to this blog.Just a few things i dont quite feel the same about,the left parties play a different role at centre given the wide range of issues on which they try to influence the government,ranging from women's issues to international ones.Even now they cant afford to pressurise the government beyond a point on one single issue,they can bend the relationship but not break the govt and bring back the 'shining' parivar to power.its their historical inevitability (you can call it blunder).They have the verdict and they are doing a great job
and the number of MPs they have in the lower house is 59 ,youd mentioned it as 40.
brijesh...
There are some issues you have forgotten to mention or chose to ignore. Of Course DMK's arm-twisting tactics worked with poor Manmohan Singh. But did any of you guys, who thought that its a great work from Karunanidhi, tried to know the reason, which made him to pose threat to the government?
There was a considerable opposition from Labour Progressive Front, which is a DMK supported trade union and the largest in Neyveli Lignite Corp. Please noticce, when the cabinet committe decided to disinvest the stake in that PSU, DMK was very well aware of it. It threatened the government only when it's trade union opposed and threatened to move to AIADMK led union.
Stop hailing these people without knowing the facts.
Arm-twisting politics is cheap and that will take a nation no where.
I chose to keep off from commenting the communists!
silverine- thanks
bvn-The left front talk a lot against disinvestment and all that stuff outside the parliament. They have 59 MPs in parliament and they can vote against the disinvestment when it comes to parliament and thus defeat it. This way they can pressuize the government.
chayakada- I also agree with you that Karunanidhi did this for some political reasons. What I was pointing out was that eventhough left front have enough numbers to influence the government decision they are not utilizing it and going for activities like harthal.
Both arise from a root cause - populism..I'm not arguing whether the divestment of NLC was of any use or so...but if DMK hadnt done that, Kalaigner's Bete Noire would have latched on that opportunity. Now for comrades, it is a bit different..Like most of the educated people, the top brass of CPM understands that as long as international crude prices are up, they cannot bring the Indian prices down..But ultimately, populism for "common man" rules..
brijesh, good post! i've thought this over so many times. the only answer i cud get was ideology rules our comrades more than their prathibadhada to our people...i think they consider it some sort of wrong to be making demands for aid from a capitalist setup like the upa govt!
last week i asked a friend with left sympathies why the party collected funds for china in the 1962 war. his reply was india was behaving like an imperialist! i asked him what china did in tibet in the 50's was not imperialism and he went back to the 1917 revolution and began some long story!
they are still not ready to think beyond what lenin and marx said!
Very important observations Brijesh. I was also thinking about same subject for some time.
My theory is that a few political leaders like Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha, Karunakaran, even OC for some extend know how to play the system very well. They know how to make the right threat\incentive to the right people at the right time to get their way. Eventhough some of these people are very crooked and often act in their self interest, they can be very effective whenever they act on behalf of the people. There is no such leaders among marxists in kerala. They are just too comfirtable with calling strikes/hartals and gaining the political milage out of it, they don't even want to try other political strategies!
I guess the part of the problem is that our politicians are so used to practicing 'third rate politics' that they forgot what real politics is and how to use it effectively in a democracy.They only care to 'weaponize' politics rather than to regard it as a constructive 'tool'. Under the present political climate a 'strike/Hartal' is nothing but a political weapon against the party that the strike is meant to be aimed at. It is useless in terms of solving the issue at hand. At the same time, a threat to withdraw support (for CPM) is an effective political tool. Marxists in kerala, being the most selfish Hippocrates, would opt for the first option out of their pure political selfishness.
I don't want to just blame CPM, pretty much every political party in india is in the same category on this matter. But leftist in kerala are definitely leading the pack of hypocrite with their ultra selfish motives/agendas in the way they practise politics in kerala.
There was a golden opportunity for the MPs from kerala to do something positive for the state in the recent past.... When the Central Aviation minister adamantly refused to clear Air Kerala project.... If all the MPs from kerala took a strong stand against the aviation minister and played some 'real' politics/lobbying, Keralites would have been flying around a new cheaper airline now! Our MPs can still do it, if they want.
The big irony with the leftist MPs is that, if Indian govt were to act against the interest of 'Iran', they would be up in arms against center threatening to withdraw their crucial support, but they ( esp. MPs from Kerala) won't even move a finger in Delhi when it comes to push their own states' interests! Rather, as you said, they will call a strike, protesting the centers's 'negligence' against the state... only to hurt state's interest further.
btw, part of the blame for this behavior should be on the Indian political system/institutions itself. There is little flexibility for political dissidents in our system... I mean, Minority parties has no tool to positively effect governance for 5+ years... Why should they even go to NiyamaSaba??? Only reason the opposition MLA's attend NiyamaSaba is to walk out! over any random silly issue.
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PS: sorry abt the long dely in commenting here.. hopefully my long comment will compensate that:)
What a wonderful blog?I am a tamilian from pondicherry.
but i always admired malayalis for their adaptiveness.
Its painful to see highly educated malayalis has to move out of the state for jobs and education.
But i strongly beleive and sincerely hope that Kerala is not going to dogs as long as people keep creating awareness like this.
Regards-Indian
Disinvesting NLC is good decision that Govt. has taken ,but he wants to ruin state finance and also that of central Govt. He was the person who annouced a slew of populist schemes like 2Rs rice ( unedible ones),colour Tv ( for persons below poverty line ,Is it an important need in Maslow's hierachy of Human needs)
God bless India
I agree with the idea that elected politicians have no right to call bundhs in their constituencies for changing things in the parliament were they are a member. When will people realise this and burn these loud mouth politicians who never deliver any thing.Voting them down doesnt seem to help as the alternative is equally callous.The hypocrites -they have strong statements against Saddam trial and Iran deal but wont even get an additional daily train to Bangalore.
A sad fact about kerala s electorate - non resident keralites cannot vote. But can send money there.
U neednt complain much about communists. Enen when the congress was in power, they did very little for the state. Infact, i think the commies hav done much more than when congress was in power. That inspite of the fact that congress was in power at the centre too.
Mayb its a general laxness of Kerala politicians..
gone through the post.Mistake is ours these commies 15of them from kerala. if wanted could have negotitated influential positins in the ministry. instead they opted tostay out.nned to learn a lot from DMK MP's they grabbed the oppty and look where tamil nadu is where now. these commies with thier idiosyncrasies have time only to fight for IRAN/IRAQ and guatemala so sad when they could ahave actually contributed to kerla growth by participating in the ministry.. The problem is "WE". there is huge mass down in kerala and bengal who,still treat them has demi gods for their survival.Until the peple realises that, commies is not a cure to alleviation of poverty, but they are the disease itself.. thinks will not improve
I really appreciate this blog. Kerala such a beautiful place, the Keralites should be thankful to have a great place like this. But unfortunately the politicians have have changed "God's own country to Dogs own country".
In kerala People know too much of their right than responsibility to build a nation/state.
"God's own country with devil's own people"
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