Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar

A CPI-M-led coalition would have demonstrated the enduring and consensual nature of the reforms

The gravamen of my charge against Jyotibabu is that his shying away from the task he should have taken has inflicted all this on us - and worse is to follow. There are those who would protest that Jyoti Basu becoming prime minister would have ended the Manmohan reform process, sounded a call for revolt against India in bourses around the world, and rapidly engineered a return to the poverty-perpetuating syndromes of the past. I don't believe a word of it.

Jyotibabu's track record is one of pragmatic capitalism. In this, he is a mirror reflection of his mentor, Deng Xiaoping. West Bengal is no more Communist than the People's Republic is socialist. Communism has proved the first revolutionary movement to discard ideology like soiled underwear and grab opportunity wherever, and from whoever, available. This is not a post-poll perception on my part.

Two years ago, I suggested in the House that the CPI-M need not change its initials; Somnath Chatterjee had shown that the letters stood for Capitalist Party of India (Manmohanist)!

Whether it is the consequence of his somewhat meandering grasp of the language, or a case of the truth tumbling out of the mouths of babes, I find that Waheedul Haque of the Dhaka Daily Star, in his gushing welcome of Jyotibabu to Bangladesh, has come to the same conclusion. Jyoti Basu, he writes, 'is a promoter par excellence of the rise of the bourgeoisie so that an industrial proletariat can engage it'!

And only Jyotibabu could have pulled off the neat trick of getting the Bangladeshis to celebrate the very things about him which a patriotic Bangladeshi is supposed to revile: feudal Hindu landlordism and the bhadralok culture it spawned.

Instead of converting the Basu family's sprawling mansion at Barodi into a Muslim yateemkhana, every successive Bangladeshi government, whatever its sectarian colour, has preserved it as a heritage monument. And the present government of Bangladesh has not only spruced up the pile to make it fit for the eyes of a king, it has also built a 'huge' helipad in its vicinity so that Comrade Jyoti Basu can, in elegant comfort, relive his aristocratic origins in the manor to which he was born.

Contrast this treatment with Deve Gowda's industrialist friends being asked to foot the bill for his family's stay at Sun City -- and you can see why I started rooting for Jyotibabu as PM once we knew a Congress government was not on the cards last May.

I am persuaded that far from reversing the Manmohan process, a CPI-M-led coalition would have demonstrated the enduring and consensual nature of the reforms. That opportunity has been denied us by the refusal of Jyoti Basu to become prime minister -- and so we, and particularly the CPI-M, are still stranded on the shoals of barren debate.

Apart from native pusillanimity, there is one and only one reason the CPI-M passed up the opportunity of leading the country. And that is the Congress. Since the non-Congress secular forces were far short of a majority, the only way a Jyoti Basu government could have come into office -- and survived -- would have been with the blessings of the Congress.

The CPI-M decided that they had no spoon long enough to take to dine with the Congress devil. Also, of course, they knew that the smiling Congress of today could snarl and pull the rug from under them at any time of the Congress' choosing. On balance, therefore, they decided, let the little oysters of the UF run behind the Rao Walrus and the Kesri Carpenter, the prudent ones will stay home.