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Thursday, Apr 27, 2006

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National

"We have kept our promises"

The former West Bengal Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, who presided over the State for more than 23 years, said at the launch of the Left Front's campaign for the Assembly elections that his desire to was to see it "break all records and be installed in government for the seventh successive term." Though retired from electoral politics, the nonagenarian political patriarch, despite his failing health, still attends important meetings of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and even addressed a few rallies in and around Kolkata. He spoke to Marcus Dam ahead of the third phase of polling in the State. Excerpts from the interview:

How do you explain the Left Front's uninterrupted run of victories since 1977?

Right from the beginning, since 1977, when we came to power, we have kept our promises. Prior to that there were 27 years of Congress rule; people saw what had happened then. Then they saw us in the United Front Government, and how we behaved. They saw us in our struggles, how we never surrendered to the Congress party. This has never happened before. With limited powers in the State — and all the powers with the Centre — we were elected by the people of West Bengal six consecutive times.

What were the `promises' you say were kept?

The main thing was land reforms. Then the formation of the three-tier panchayats, about which even Rajiv [Gandhi] when he was Prime Minister, said was the best panchayat system in the country. It must be remembered that 65 to 70 per cent of our people live in the villages. That helped a lot. Then we have been with the workers. Our trade union, the CITU, was the foremost in West Bengal; our peasant organisation too. Now we have 1.28 crore members.

We say it is not only the party that is important. We have kept strengthening our mass organisations — student, youth and women's organisations. When we came to power we restored democratic powers to the people which had earlier been taken away from them, including something that was not there in India: we gave the right of strike to government employees. This had never happened before.

But his has been a contentious point over the years?

Yes. Now, of course, some of the High Courts - in Tamil Nadu and Kerala as well as the Supreme Court have ruled against this right to strike of government employees. We plan to look into this later, maybe talk to them — the judges. We cannot give up the right to strike. But this must be the last weapon. We tell the workers that now that we are in the Government you don't surrender your right but use it only as a last weapon. If you can't deal with your managements, employers, then come to the Government. We have a labour department and a lot of settlements have been made. There have been strikes but more than that there has been the misleading propaganda, even outside India, that West Bengal is a place where workers are always going on strike.

How confident are you of the Left Front being returned to power for the seventh time? What would its priorities be if that happens?

When the Left Front was elected to power for the sixth time, we got almost 50 per cent of the votes. This is the seventh time we want to win and form a Left Front Government. In agriculture, we have become the first in India.

We did fall back as far as industry was concerned but lost it because of the Centre's licensing policies. But now the State is coming up again in industry ... foreigners are coming. We have given a written statement on the floor of the Assembly that we need the private sector; we need the joint sector much as we do the State sector. And we need foreigners [to invest] but there should be no conditionalities.

As for the coming elections, I am confident that this time too we shall win. But we want to win by more votes and with more seats.

How do you see your party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), fitting in with the changing times — political and economic?

We are now supporting the Congress at the Centre; it is a complicated situation we never thought would happen. They are dependent on us. With the number of MPs we have, we can bring down the Government in a day, but we don't want to do this. We want them to stay in power for the five years of their term and, meanwhile, increase our strength. We have told them to carry out the Common Minimum Programme. But I am sorry to say that at the moment we are critical of what they are doing.

Why is this?

They [the UPA Government] are not listening to us and even make statements that the situation has changed and we have to depend on the United States. But we are against all this. So we have now postponed the meeting of the two committees — the Left Front committee and the Congress-led UPA co-ordination committee — and have said that after the elections are over we will sit down together to find out what has happened and not happened.

I found recently that Manmohan Singh has given a statement saying that they are not acting as agents of the American Government; he also said that the Left is very important. That is a good thing to read in the papers.

You were Chief Minister for 23 years. How do you see your successor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, shaping up, having taken on the mantle?

I was Chief Minister for 23 and-a-half years till I got very ill. It took me six long months to convince the party that I should resign and not contest in any more elections.

We then created a post for Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee so that people realised that I would not be there for much longer and he will be the Chief Minister. He is part of a collective leadership. He is also in the party's Polit Bureau, State secretariat and State committee. We discuss with him what has to be done regarding the programmes we have set ourselves.

As for me last Sunday was my last meeting for this election [in north Kolkata], even though I did go to some districts earlier on and address huge meetings. As we Communists say, "till the last breath, keep serving the people as much as you can."

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