What possible change in the leadership is expected as an outcome of the upcoming party Congress scheduled in Madurai? Will more younger leaders be accommodated?You see, we have a policy broadly in the party about our leading committees or leadership bodies, where we have a balance between continuity and change. So in all party conferences or congresses where now some older persons will step down and some newer people will come. But that will not mean all the old people will leave.As I said, the continuity and change, we try to have a combination of that. And that will be the broad principle we will follow for this party congress also in the election of the central committee, politburo etc. Of course, the new factor for us this time is we are going into a party congress without our general secretary who unexpectedly passed away in September last year.So, naturally there will be an election of a new general secretary also.Will the party get a woman general secretary in the near future?Well, it is neither, it is not going to be on the basis of gender or age or any of those criteria. And the party at the level of the central committee and politburo, we will look at who is the most equipped at this time to take on this responsibility.Last time there were 15 women in the 85-member CC. Will there be more women representation in the central committee this time around?Yes, we have already decided in our central committee that we will increase the percentage of women. It’s not just numbers. The size of the committee, the number of women, the percentage of women in the committee, we are going to increase.What will be the impact of this generational shift? More young leaders, more women representation.Are the parties expecting some impact or something? No, it is necessary to renew our party leadership. It’s a continuous process. So, every three years when we hold a party congress, the idea is that we must be able to renew the leadership.In the sense, that is why we fixed an age limit from the last congress. The central committee fixed the age limit as 75 for its own members. We are continuing with that age limit.So, as a result of that some older people will step down and we hope that younger and middle-aged people will come in.Will the party give exemption to any senior leaders like Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan?Well, last time there was an exemption given or exception given because Pinarayi Vijayan is the chief minister of Kerala. He has to undertake important responsibility in the government. So, he should be in the party top leadership. So, that was the consideration. So, this time we will look at it again afresh what is to be done.There are possibilities of, you know, giving exemption, exception to senior leaders? I mean, you see, exception means exception to the rule. He has a rule that is 75. If there is any exemption or exception to be given, we will decide that in Madurai when we hold our deliberations.The CPM’s 24th Party Congress is taking place at a time when the party occupies a shrinking political space. What will be the party’s primary focus in the upcoming Party Congress? The main focus will be on how to increase the independent strength of the party, expand its political influence and mass base. I think this is going to be the central feature of the discussions in the party congress.What is the political and ideological and organizational work that we have to do to increase the strength of the CPM. I think this is going to be the main focus. What are the plans to increase its electoral representation? No, electoral representation will come when our strength increases. Through elections we don’t increase our strength. In our party it has never happened. So how to increase the strength of the party, increase the political influence of the party among different sections of people, different classes and build the organization which can consolidate this influence. This is what we were going to discuss and decide. And for that we have a plan.In the organizational report we have set out certain plans for how to grow and it’s not just in a few states, all India, in every state we are going to make a long term plan of how to build our party and expand its influence.Would you like to share one or three major points?No, this is one of those. I mentioned specifically there is going to be a direction.I am saying the plans, some plans. This is one of the plans that is going to be a major work that for every state in India from the central level itself we will discuss with the state leadership of committees and draw up a plan for that state of how to develop the party, grow in that state, what are the sectors or fronts we have to concentrate on, what are the resources, how to deploy more cadres for this, etc. This will be concretely decided.This is one of the directions we are going to give from the party conference.In electoral politics what do you think is more essential rigidity or pragmatism?Neither. It’s not. For us and for our party we go by a political tactical line which is decided now. Now we will decide in our party congress. What should be the political line, tactical line.Our election tactics will be based on that. It won’t be free style anywhere. So it’s not going to be rigid nor pragmatic. It will be based on this understanding. How we apply it in each state. Of course the differences will come because of the different political situation in each state.But still pursuing the same line we will try to achieve that. So for example if we decide that the main task is to defeat and isolate and defeat the BJP that will apply to the whole country. But a concrete situation in each state.How do we apply this and achieve this? So that is how we work out our electoral line or tactics.Why was the term ‘neo-fascist’ being used for the Narendra Modi government withdrawn? Why has the stand of the CPM changed?No, we have not changed any stand, we have introduced a new definition, this is not something we had and we are changing it, for the first time we are calling the Modi regime and the push for Hindutva communalism and the aggressive pro-corporate policies, we say an authoritarian direction of this government, we are saying it is displaying neo-fascist characteristics, the word neo-fascism or neo-fascist we had not used earlier, so that is the change and we have explained it along with our political resolution to our party because it is discussed in the entire party, why we have brought in this term neo-fascism, that is neo-fascist means the word neo means new, so it is fascism of a new variety, a new variant, it does not mechanically apply in the old type of fascism, fascism in the mid 20th century was in a particular context, so fascism in a new avatar if you may put it, it has some elements of the old but it has also some new elements, we have explained that, so there is confusion because people generally don’t follow Marxist discussions on fascism, so neo-fascism we find is a better description because it is not only a phenomenon in India, neo-fascist forces and trends have developed globally, in Europe, in Latin America, even America under Trump, so it is a global far right which has grown, in that far right one variety or one strand is this neo-fascist.What is the status of the INDIA bloc? Will the party take the lead to reinitiate the discussion among the alliance members?There has been no clarity about how to go forward with the India blog after the Lok Sabha election, in the parliament the India blog parties, opposition parties are cooperating on all the issues and policy matters which have come up, but outside that there has been no discussion, that such a discussion is required, it is not for us to decide anything, we are not that such a major force but we would like all the parties to sit together and discuss and come to some common understanding on how to go ahead, how to proceed, that has not happened so far, that is why there is this general feeling that it has become direction less now, but that is because there has been no collective discussion.Will there be any regional level understanding in the Congress?You see that is in elections, now the Lok Sabha elections are not there for next more than four years, now state level elections are there and in each state according to the correlation of forces, anti-BJP or non-BJP parties should try to come together, that we all understand and that depends from state to state, now Bihar elections are coming, so there is already a Mahagatbandhan which even preceded the India block, so that will continue probably and may be strengthened with some other new force I don’t know, so in each state we will take it state by state, how to, when next year Tamil Nadu elections are there, there is already an alliance headed by the DMK, which was there in the last assembly election, parliament election, now that alliance again will continue, it is not dependent on what happens nationally, so state wise I am sure such understanding will be worked out.Opposition has been alleging irregularities in the electoral roll? How does CPM look at it?You see there are number of questions about the one electoral roll that is the voters list and second about in the actual conduct of the elections, the way polling percentages have been reported, so many votes are polled they say, by the time of counting there is some other figure, discrepancies in that and in Maharashtra elections we saw rather large spurt in the additional voters enlisted, abnormal, now all these questions have been raised, but we have not found any satisfactory answers from the election commission, the latest was about this duplicate names, same epic card numbers etc, so the election commission has recently informed all the political parties that they will discuss whatever matters of concern with us, so it is good if that happens, but I think that the election commission should after hearing all these issues, call a meeting of the political parties and give a detailed explanation about what their side they say no there’s nothing wrong, so then why is it not, if it is correct what are these you know, so that discussion has to take place, otherwise yes apprehensions are there and about it reflects badly also in the commission, in the light of the fact that you know already the controversy is there, how do you select or appoint election commissioners, the act that was passed, which itself is now in the court, the Supreme Court there is a challenge to that act, so all these questions are there.Elections are coming up in southern states including Kerala. Is the party confident of retaining the only Left bastion in the country and returning to power in West Bengal, where assembly elections are also due next year?This is already there in our party tactical line, in Kerala there is two, the fight is between LDF and the UDF, that is CPM led front and the Congress led front and that will remain, this is not going to change and in Bengal we are committed to fight both BJP and the TMC, so as far as the electoral tactics are concerned, they’re already set and I don’t think there’s going to be any change in that, okay, Q. are you confident of retaining power in Kerala? Our aim is that it will be unprecedented and a party or front, last time we also set a record by coming back for the second term, which is not usual in Kerala, so our next target is more ambitious to come back for the third term.Rising influence of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party (RSS-BJP) in Kerala is a matter of concern for the party?Yes, we have noted that in our Lok Sabha election review, first the South itself, they have made some advances in the South as a whole, in Kerala too that is reflected in terms of the percentage of votes that they got, National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that is BJP plus they’ve got some smaller parties, allies, they got 19 percent of the vote, the first time they got that vote, of course we have found always in Kerala, the Lok Sabha pattern does not come the same way in the SNP, so but we have taken note of this and we have already discussed steps how to counter this influence of the activities of the BJP and the RSS.Reasons for opening up the higher education sector for private universities in Kerala.There’s a bill which has just been passed in the Kerala Assembly to enable private universities to be set up in Kerala, the left-led government has been in the forefront in strengthening the public education system in Kerala, everybody recognizes, for example the school system, public school system is one of the best in the country and it has really, qualitative improvement is there in the school sector, in the last 8 years to 9 years, we have found flow from private sector students coming into public schools, government schools, lakhs of them, additional enrollment has taken place because we are able to upgrade the quality of the schools, we are trying to do that in higher education also but immediately the problem is that we are not in a position to cater to all the students who aspire for higher education and good quality higher education, many students from Kerala are going out to other parts of India and some have started going abroad also now for higher education, that’s because not now for the last more than nearly three decades now, private universities have been allowed all over the country, there are 471 private universities in India today and the neighboring states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka also have a substantial number of private universities, so what is happening is students from Kerala go there obviously, both for professional education and for other courses, so in such a situation immediately the Kerala government was of the opinion we must allow private universities in so that the students in Kerala don’t have to look outside, to go outside that’s one, second but we are a government which wants to have some control, social check or control over private universities, so we have laid out in the legislation itself, certain guidelines like 40% of the intake should be from within the state students, there should be reservation for SC and ST in the private universities and there should be students union, it’s in the act, you know private universities must provide for students union, elected student body, all this we have tried to provide so that conforms to the pattern in Kerala as far as the public education system is concerned, so this is what the reason is because of factors outside our control, we would have preferred to have a great expansion of the public funded universities or new universities but our resources do not permit that now.The nazism has become neo-nazism in Europe with new salient features likewise fascism has also changed its characteristics. In many European countries far right political parties holding neo-nazi ideology have come to power through election. In India, it is BJP– whose top leaders came from Hindutva ideological organisation RSS; sees the minorities and communists as nation’s internal enemies, is ruling the state through elections. How do you compare these two?As I said the term we are using neo-fascism covers what is globally happening and also domestically in our own country, we have our own variant according to us the RSS and Hindutva ideology has these characteristics, so you can’t mechanically compare them to all the other similar trends but there are common features and therefore all of these far-right parties and neo-fascist parties they always target the something what we call the other, othering something, it can be a religious minority, it can be an ethnic minority or a linguistic group they will target internally we have this enemy, so we have to fight this enemy and try to rally the majority of their community, that is the nature of neo-fascism, in Europe the easy target is immigrants are coming so the threat of foreigners, they are going to take over our society, our culture is going to be threatened etc, so the same pattern is here, so we have to understand what are the ideological and political forces or ideology behind it and accordingly work out tactics to counter them Can I check it out? Yeah Because long recording is a bit difficultDo you think sticking to a puritan theoretical discourse will help the Indian mainstream communist parties to broaden its acceptance when people from the minority communities are being targeted and a crackdown on opposition political leaders is taking place? Puritanical, our political understanding in life is clear that the agenda is not to bring in socialism in the country today immediately. We are for an alternative system which we call socialism. We are not fighting for that first.Our first task is to fight against the BJP RSS and the reactionary right wing force that they represent. For that we are talking about forging the broadest unity. We just talked about the INDIA bloc.Why are we in the India block? Because we feel the need for this wider unity. So there are different levels. We will have our independent identity and role.We have our Left identity and role. We will have our left alternative also over people. Along with that we will work for this broader platform in unity.So where is the question of being puritanical in this?Left unity is something the CPM has been pitching for some time now. Do you think the CPI and CPI-ML will stand in the way of left unity?No, not stand in the way. The thing is it is a fact that after we got weakened in Bengal and Tripura, the left’s clout or influence in the national politics got reduced.So therefore left unity which was there at that time, its impact is also lesser today. So our effort now is how to revive the left as a whole. It’s not just CPM.Therefore we need left unity and united efforts and united activities and united movements. We are working towards that also. The left parties have met.Just after the budget we gave a call for an All India protest and campaign on the provision of the budget. We have earlier come out on Israel’s attack on Gaza. On various issues the left parties are moving unitedly.But we want to broaden this and make it a more enduring effort. As far as we are concerned after our party congress we will take up this also with renewed vigour.A recent change in CPM’s social media handle in West Bengal invited some criticism. The red logo has been replaced with blue, inviting trolls. Was it a deliberate decision or just a technical flaw?I am not aware of the exact details of that. The hammer and sickle is there. The background has changed, I am told. I don’t think there is any political basis for that. It may be more aesthetic. I don’t know the real details.
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