Achutha‘lin’ & Buddha‘chev’!
Two CPM chief ministers are pursuing diametrically opposite policies
Joseph Stalin created the biggest communist empire in the world history and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev demolished it with a sleight of his perestroika. But, Communist Party of India has equivalents of the two leaders in V.S. Achuthanandan, the Kerala chief minister and Buddhadev Bhattacharya, the West Bengal chief minister. While V.S.’s iron hand forbids any multinational to enter Kerala, Buddha has been welcoming them with open arms. Their handling of pesticides-in-cola controversy enhanced their respective images. While Kerala packed off Coca-Cola and Pepsico lock, stock and barrel, West Bengal refused to take even a symbolical step of banning the two multinational brands in schools, the way some non-communist states have done. It was a decision of V.S. only and not the state cabinet. Says Elamaran Kareem, Kerala’s Industries Minister, “The cabinet recommended only a ban on the sales of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, but since the CM has now said that production, too, will be banned, maybe it will be.” Buddha’s reformist zeal is not new. Earlier, he called upon fellow communists to “Rreform or perish”. He has been wooing investors to kick start contract farming and boost hospitality industry and privatizing public sector industries apart from developing Kolkata airport to develop West Bengal. In comparison, comrade V.S. is yet to perfect the art of purging the state of bourgeois evils. Besides a complete ban on cold drinks, his administration has been cracking on international companies. When a BPO company asked its employees to report to work on Independence Day, the local administration stepped in and forced the company to mend its ways. If there can be a communist empire matching Stalinist zeal, V.S. is yet to create it. Buddha, however, is on his way to don Gorbochevs’s mask. But who is the real face of Communism?
For complete IIPM Editorial Article, please visit: www.iipm.edu/iipm-editorial-317.html
Editor: Arindam Chaudhuri, Source: IIPM Publication
|
