After defending “the scientific and revolutionary tenets of Marxism-leninism and its appropriate application in the concrete Indian conditions” (the objective cited in the CPI(M) website) for half a century, the Marxists in Kerala, presently out of power, are preparing for a new mission which has nothing to do with class war: Garbage disposal and waste management.
The justification the CPI(M) leadership offers for instructing party workers to clean the streets of plastics and other garbage, which critics say is appropriate for voluntary organisations and not for class-based political parties, is that it has to broaden its support base before the local administration bodies election to be held within one year.
As part of the new mission, the party leadership has called upon the activists and sympathizers to establish the organization’s influence over the residents’ associations in all villages, towns and cities. leftist critics are joking that this shows how the party of the working class has adopted middle class mores under the pressures of the new-age apolitical reality.
The official neo-liberalist leadership’s call to the party cadres and sympathisers is to implement across the State the decentralized waste management project the organisation claims to have implemented meticulously in Alappuzha town. The decision in this regard was taken after extensive discussions on the subject at a seminar held recently in Alappuzha.
“There should be a situation where the entire party participates in these activities. Particular care should be taken to ensure that all party workers and all those associated with the feeder outfits of the party in all areas should be made part of this programme,” according to State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan.
The plan is to implement the waste management scheme using Government machinery in the local bodies where the party is in power and through the intervention of party machinery in places where it is not in power. For this, the party will take active participation in residents’ associations, an area where it has not so far focused its attention.
The waste management programme has been devised as a citizen initiative to refurbish the image of the party which has suffered serious damages due to several factors including the brutal murders of rebel Marxist leader TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam, Kozhikode on May 4, 2012 and RSS leader Manoj of Elamthottathil at Kathiroor, Kannur on September 1.
The need for adopting more socially oriented programmes was felt by the party also because of the failures of it – and generally of the Opposition lDF it is leading in the State – to convert into victory the various agitations it has taken up against the Congress-led UDF Government since it assumed office in May, 2011.
However, the party is facing objections from within itself to such “middle class” schemes. A senior CPI(M) leader from Kochi, who is also a rival of the neo-liberalists, said that the move was indicative of the bankruptcy the leadership was facing in understanding social reality and channelizing the party’s energies in the right direction with true Marxist-leninist spirit.
A leftist intellectual, who is a former theorist of the CPI(M), said the waste disposal project, if it was true, showed the “middle-classisation” of the party which had lost its revolutionary direction. “But I am not surprised. It is not as bad as what the party’s youth outfit DYFI did. They had held fans’ processions during the FIFA World Cup finals,” he joked.