In Citu

: It has long been generally known that the CPM’s rhetoric at the Centre about the insidious effects of globalisation and the creeping capitalistic plot that is private sector-led industrialisation is quietly ignored by those members of the party attempting to drag West Bengal out of the morass in which it finds itself. However, till Monday, the state unit had not, in public, chosen to deviate from the party line on the subject. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s statement to a group of Kolkata corporate leaders that he “did not support bandhs” is not, perhaps, different from anything that he has been saying in private or trying to implement in public; but it might well mark the first effort to close a few rhetorical gaps.

Such gaps should never have been allowed to develop: the CPM should long ago have undertaken some genuine soul-searching and accepted that, as a party competitive in three states and with aspirations to play king-maker in others, as well as nationally, it cannot permit itself the luxury of allowing the stale, outdated vocabulary of its ideology to constrain the actions of those who have to keep the party afloat. The CPM, and Bhattacharjee, are now suffering the consequences of decades of irresponsibility and avoidance of self-criticism.