The subsequent toppling of the EMS government may have helped in shattering the extreme forms of parliamentary illusions, but the basic framework regarding the role of Communists in transitional governments remained unchanged. The perspective of viewing such governments as sheer agencies of relief was only reinforced in the celebrated Para 112 of the CPI(M) programme. The programme called upon the party to utilise all the opportunities that present themselves of bringing into existence governments pledged to carry out a modest programme of giving immediate relief to the people “and thus strengthen the mass movement” (emphasis added).
The essential difference between the CPI and CPI(M) on the question of government formation boiled down to two points: (a) the CPI(M) would not make any categorical statement on parliamentary path maintaining a studied silence on the question of possibility of coming to power at the centre through elections, (b) the CPI(M) would not join any coalition government in states unless it has substantial strength to secure crucial ministerial portfolios while the CPI is prepared to accept the role of a junior partner in any kind of non-Congress government and even with Congress as the Kerala experience showed.
Following the 1967 general election, opportunity came the CPI(M)’s way to join coalition governments in West Bengal and Kerala. The April 1967 CC resolution New Situation and Party’s Tasks had a number of crucial observations regarding these governments. Apart from repeating the statutory constitutional caution that such governments will have to function within the four corners of the constitution and exercise whatever small share of power they possess within the constraints imposed by the overall central power, the report also pointed out that “The vole secured by the united front, by and large, reflected the deep mass discontent against Congress rule more than the endorsal of a radical programme with all the deeper implications such a programme entails”. While reiterating the relief orientation, the report also warned party members working as ministers in the two united front governments that “they should not entertain undue illusions about giving relief in a big way”. “In a word, the united front governments that we have now”, the report pointed out, “are to be treated and understood as instruments of struggle in the hand of our people, more than as governments that actually possess adequate power, that can materially and substantially give relief to the people. In clear class terms, our Party’s participation in such Governments is some specific form of struggle to win more and more allies for the proletariat and its allies in the struggle for the cause of People’s Democracy and at a later stage for Socialism”.
So, the governments are to be regarded as instruments of struggle, but the struggle is for winning more and more allies for the proletariat and its allies. And obviously these allies are such as cannot be easily won through the other forms and instruments of struggle wielded by the party. Thus we have a very crucial insight into the evolution of Left-led governments. Not confrontation with the centre and promotion of class struggle and radical reforms but Constitutional cooperation with the ruling party, social peace and stability and relief and reform measures designed to win and sustain the more difficult and delicate allies would be the three cornerstones of such governments.
It should also be noted that Para 112 does not specifically rule out the possibility of forming a transitional government at the centre. GPI(M) leaders, however, assert that “a careful reading of Para 112 would make it clear that the possibilities of ‘forming such governments of transitional character which give immediate relief to the people and thus strengthen the mass movement’ are visualised for the states” and that by implication, it also “rules out the permissibility of bringing into existence such a government of transitional character at the Union Centre … The concept of a transitional government at the centre comes to the mind when there is a possibility of sharing power and the revolutionary perspective is lost. How can one think that the Indian bourgeoisie can share power?”[1]
The CPI is taken to task for having advanced the slogan of a non-Congress democratic coalition government at the centre as the central rallying point in the 1967 general elections. “If the CPI concept of National Democracy is that of a transitional government, then what is the hesitation in accepting the fact that their path of revolution is a parliamentary one, irrespective of … whether they have mentioned it in the programme?”, asked HKS Surjeet in his polemics with Rajeshwara Rao in the early 1980s. During the 1991 general elections the same question could be put to Comrade Surjeet himself. The first phase of the CPI(M)’s poll propaganda in that elections revolved round their theme of a democratic coalition government at the centre with the CPI(M) leadership maintaining a suggestive silence on the question of their own participation in such a government with replies like “we will cross the bridge when we come to it”. Even otherwise, in the context of state governments, too, Para 112 has reached a point of saturation. When a state government continues in power for 17 years and far from introducing progressively higher reforms it begins to exhibit all signs of decay and degeneration characteristic of a bourgeois-landlord government, it can hardly qualify itself for the programmatic provision fora transitional government.
Before we conclude, a quick review of two recent critiques of our programme will be in order. I have in mind the critique of our Fourth Congress programme by Prakash Karat and more recently, the review of our Fifth Congress documents by Ajit Roy in EPW.
Note :
- 1. On CP1(M)-CP1 Differences, HKS Surjeet, pp 40-41.
