Pakistan Finally Recognizes the Services of Communists

An item in the Nagpur local newspaper The Hitavada caught my eye as I had breakfast. “Surjeet, Bardhan to visit Pak next week” read the headline. Surjeet is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Bardhan holds the same post in the sister communist organization, CPI. The paper reported that they were to be felicitated and accorded the status of “state guests” by the Pakistani Government. Warmed the cockles of my heart, reading that piece. Here at last, I said to myself, is dedication being finally recognized and rewarded.

India has been forced to fight a bunch of wars with Pakistan and Pakistan fuels and funds an on-going proxy war mainly concentrated in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. These wars continue to bleed India and cause significant economic drain. But India is rather big relative to Pakistan and after all is said and done, Pakistan will prevail over India the same day as hell freezes over or democracy is seen in Pakistan (which is likely to be later than hell freezing over.)

The raison d’etre of Pakistan appears to be the destruction of India. It tries but cannot quite seem to manage it. Terrorism in various parts of India is a favored tactic. Bomb blasts in Mumbai, attempting to bomb the parliament building in New Delhi, routine terrorism in Kashmir… the list goes on. India limps along but refuses to die. The US helps Pakistan with lots of free weapons. Yet Pakistan loses wars decisively. So it is very grateful for any help that it can get, whether from sources outside India or inside.

India is a large country, as we have noted before. Just by the law of large numbers, there have to be some people who are disaffected enough that they will actively seek the destruction of India. They are a fringe and do not amount to much more than an irritation. They help the cause of Pakistan but not to any great extent that Pakistan has to felicitate them. Pakistan merely sends them some money but does not invite them over as state guests. They are a bunch of disorganized cretins that you would not want to associate yourself with however much they irritate your mortal enemy.

But there is another bunch in India which Pakistan dearly loves and which is not disorganized at all. They have been organized for a long time. Indeed, their organization existed before the present day political state of India came into existence. Not just that, if they had had their own way, independent India would not have come into existence at all. I am speaking of the communist parties of India. They advance the cause of Pakistan without any monetary help from Pakistan. But they work assiduously to drag India down economically. One statement by one of their leaders and the Mumbai stock market loses its nerves — the same stock market which does not even flinch when Pakistan promises to vaporize Indian cities with Islamic nuclear bombs.

Gurcharan Das writing in the Feb 12th The Times of India noted that the communists have been consistently wrong for the last fifty years and wrote:

It [the communist parties] opposed computers in our offices. It banned English from primary schools. It supported the Licence Raj, which created the present culture of corruption. It advocated a foreign policy that landed us on the losing side of the Cold War. It backed inefficient government monopolies in preference to competitive markets.

It protected 8% organised labour at the expense of the 92% unorganised workers, while feeding the myth that it stood for the poor. As for the Communists, why should we heed the party which sided with the British during the Quit India movement, which did not condemn the Chinese invasion in 1962, and which was silent during the Emergency when the entire opposition was in jail?

Das notes that the communists have blocked electricity sector reforms, hike in gas prices, opposed foreign investment. I am sitting in Nagpur writing this and I have to thank the communists in no small measure that the power I am using is coming out of a diesel generator and not the power grid. Besides power, the generator is also generating noise and pollution and I thank the communists (in part) for that. Das again:

… The Left foisted on us an Education Cess just when the Kremer/Murlidharan report brought scandalous but solid data proving that one out of four teachers across India are absent from government schools and half the teachers present are not teaching.

It is imposing a leaky, corrupt Employment Guarantee program, instead of allowing labour reform, which will create genuine, self-sustaining employment. Instead of finding better ways to improve delivery of services to the poor, it prefers to bankrupt the treasury and undermine the Fiscal Responsibility law. Finally, it will not allow NTPC to revive the orphaned Enron plant, which could solve Maharashtra’s severe power shortage.

The commies have been doing Pakistan a favor for many years. It is high time Pakistan recognized their contribution. Only a week of being a state guest? Hell, I say, have them as your guests for a few years. And only two? Heck, take the whole lot to Pakistan and host them there till we ask you to send them back. And that day will be the day after hell freezes over.