DECLINE AND FALL OF INDIAN LEFTISTS

A good theoretician need not be a good organizer. A good organizer need not be good theoretician. A good organizer could be a good theoretician but nowadays such cases are very rare.
I here refer to leftists especially communists.
For a Communist party to grow into a giant tree, good organizers and good theoreticians are essential. For instance in India communist parties displayed high growth during the times of A.K.G, EMS, Basava Punnaiyah, P.Sundarayya, Harkishen Singh Surjit, Rajeswar Rao, P.K.V – the list is endless.
The scenario is entirely different now. Today also we have umpteen leaders in Communist parties but it is a sad reality that leaders exceed supporters. Yes you can take it with a pinch of salt, still the case is not much different. Leaders even at the national level as well as at the regional levels don’t have much grass-roots level connections. A Prakash Karat – he is party’s General Secretary. A Sitaram Yechury and for that matter many other leaders are least bothered about coming down to the masses and fight for their causes by leading them from the front. Instead they remain confined within the four walls of A.K.G Bhavan and pen statements and articles a dime a dozen on a daily basis and get them all published. These published articles mostly in English have in fact not much readers majority of Indian masses are not well-versed in English. Polit-Buro meetings and calling press meets never help the growth of a communist party. That was why the famous Marxist ideologue of England Eric Hobbswam called Indian Communist leaders ‘coffee house intellectuals’.
In the recent Assembly elections to four States and one Union Territory the leftists performance was dismal and they had to encounter a declining trend in comparative stronghold of Kerala and Bengal especially Bengal.
Kerala unit of Communist parties escaped from an abysmal state due to the organizing capacity of one leader. – V.S.Achuthanandan.
Now that leftists have to begin from the bottom level to reach a respectable position in Indian politics for that both organizers as well as theoreticians must have to gird up their loins and fight.
About other parties the less said the better. Even the ruling National Congress down the regional entities ideology is not at all a botheration. They are after power and to hold on to power the so-called UPA alliance is willing to go to any great lengths and at present we are witnessing such a scenario. In the place of ideologues the most prominent among Congressmen are a group of species called party spokesmen and spokeswomen. What all we want to hear from the party these species provide it in ample measure.
As eminent jurist V.R.Krishna Iyer said ManMohan Singh though straight-forward is inefficient. Once a good economist, today manager of dubious dealers. He has become a binami statesman under the thrall of dollar economy.
Krishna Iyer asks : ‘Where were you before coming to India? The world bank economy would have made you familiar with the US economy.’ Jusitce Krishna Iyer launches missiles of questions in the direction of Prime Minister who finds pleasure in keeping mum 24X7. No amount of criticism is going to move the heart of the gentleman Doctor? It is like hitting the wind.