Even though the CPM, during its Study Congress, showed a lot of inclination to embrace development, its sincerity towards progress is clouded by suspicion, stemming from the party's past proclamations and actions.
It remains to be seen whether its past actions would further encourage voters to be wary about its most recent utterances on development.
The guideline or blueprint for progress presented at the Study Congress outlines many developmental aims of the party. However, those who read between the lines of the guidelines might want to remind themselves that the party was against progress in the past few years. Even when the party says that it would encourage private investment in IT parks, it has not come out with any supporting policies. The former Left government had done nothing to encourage IT when a national sentiment favoured IT investments a few years ago. Even when the party congress in Coimbatore approved it in principle, special economic zones were not allowed for the state. The same dichotomy is seen when the party speaks about its aims in electronics-manufacturing hardware initiatives.
The ninth directive of the congress says that facilities should be made to promote manufacturing facilities for IT hardware. In the middle of the nineties, A K Antony, as CM, had tried to bring Seagate to Kerala.
The initiative, however, was lost to opposition by a group in the CPM, which subsequently saw the largest manufacturer of hard disks setting shop in China. The same misfortune happened when a Taiwan-based semiconductor firm wanted to launch facilities in Kerala under the insistence of PM Manmohan Singh. A group in the CPM opposed the move and the launch never happened.
Other than these two, new suggestions related to IT are few and far in the new proposals. At the same time, the blueprint also hid the fact that Kerala is leading with respect to e-governance in the nation.
The references in the blueprint to agriculture and the coir industry are amusing. The policy expresses unhappiness that the agricultural sector has not seen rapid mechanisation. Similarly, promises have been made that the coir industry would be supplied with automatic spinning machines. The guidelines also confess that the cashew industry cannot avoid mechanisation for long. When all these are mentioned, the party has comfortably skipped mentioning or repenting its past mistakes, neither does it say that it is desirous to correct its current and ongoing mistakes.
How can we be sure that the party would not oppose driverless cars, which could make their appearance in India in the next 10 years, because drivers affiliated to its union could lose their jobs? Since the party opposes Uber now, such a possibility is very much real. It may be assumed that in all possibilities the party would continue to support anti-Uber taxi drivers who charge excess fares from the public.
While the guidelines of the party lay stress on the need to promote community vegetable farming, it has chosen to keep quite on the achievements made by the current government in that field. The party has decided to act blind to the advances achieved in hi-tech agriculture. Even though the production of milk and eggs has increased, the guidelines of the party have chosen to ignore it.
While giving general suggestions for sprucing up public healthcare and education, there are no concrete suggestions from the party on how it plans to achieve its objectives. It also turned a blind eye to social reforms and welfare measures achieved by the current government in the past five years.
One cannot help saying that the CPM's latest development guidelines have borrowed a lot from the UDF's Vision 20-30. In its efforts, the party has only pulled the covers on the similarities while exposing areas on which it differs from the UDF.
(The author was the first CEO of the Technopark and a member of the planning commission)
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