The United Front's Common Minimum Programme, elusive in meaning, universal in appeal, useful to a spectrum of ideologies, is a semiotician's delight—the ultimate "fluid sign" that Derrida and Barthes would have died for. A.S. Panneerselvan investigates and admires.
ANTHROPOLOGISTS celebrate the infinite variety of Marxism, a variety that years of Stalinism has not blurred. Mainstream Indian Marxism is unique in the present context as this is possibly the only variety that is busy propelling in the market forces with enormous vigour. In the name of political reality and "keeping the fundamentalists at bay", the two major Left parties of the country—the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India—are sustaining a regime which is religiously pushing the liberalisation process to a point where it becomes truly irreversible.
The ruling United Front (UF) Government is guided by a steering committee in which both the communist parties are key members and the oldest Left party is also part of the Government. Vishwanath Pratap Singh, the patron saint of the ruling coalition, once said that politics is the art of managing contradictions. And the UF Government is doing it in style. The UF, in fact, is the literal and metaphorical realisation of that art.
What the world's greatest writers have failed to achieve, the UF politicians have managed with elan. The authors of the Common Approach to Major Policy Matters and a Minimum Programme (referred to as the CMP) of the UF Government must be appreciated for its stupendous effort in producing the ultimate 'fluid sign'. Fluid sign is a terminology taken from French Deconstructionist theory which offers a refreshing lack of certainty about virtually everything. This theory says that there is no meaning to be found in the actual text, but only in the various 'virtual texts' constructed by readers in their search for meaning, even if they are mutually irreconcilable.
To the post-modernist, the 13-party grand coalition that is running the country is not a motley crowd with contradicting ideologies and political fulcrums but a 'rainbow' structure that imitates the ground reality. The multi-layered social stratification and the diverse political aspirants have rendered governance a symbol of participation. The UF's agenda cannot be concrete, cohesive and directional. It has to be fluid, flexible and a constantly changing one. Its ideological text cannot be literal, but metaphorical. And importantly, the metaphor should be virile and polyphonous to emit many meanings to many people synchronically. The CMP is that wonder text which manages to do all these things, and seemingly effortlessly. This is a truly awe-inspiring achievement that would have made Derrida and Barthes, the gurus of deconstruction, weep with joy. The CMP needs, nay, demands, cries out for, a careful textual analysis.
The CMP declares: "The United Front Government will not be a replacement of one set of rulers by another. It will mark the beginning of an alternative model of governance based on federalism, decentralisation, accountability, equality and social justice, economic and political reforms, respect for human freedom and openness and transparency which will ensure the dignity of both the nation and the individual citizen". Behind such political correctness lies the desire to convert the competing forces into co-existing forces, when contradictions coalesce, and the vib-gyor disc, rotated fast, shows grey.
Let's look at the economic policies. The UF Government's economic ministries are run by a Tamil team that swears by the magic of the market forces. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Industries Minister Murasoli Maran, Surface Transport Minister T.G. Venkataraman, Petroleum Minister T.R. Balu and Labour Minister M. Arunachalam are convinced that Dr Manmohan Singh was bogged down by the political compulsions of the Congress party and could not pursue the liberalisa-tion process at the speed which which it should have been done. This aggressive push by the Tamils is justified by both the supporters and the opponents of the New Economic Policy by quoting extensively from the CMP.
The pro-reform lobby points out that the CMP even says that "controls and regulations that are in the way of increasing the incomes of farmers will be reviewed immediately and abolished wherever found unnecessary". It also declares that controls on the movement and processing of agricultural products will be abolished. In fact, the CMP's section on agriculture goes completely against the idea of land reform and agrarian polices of the proclaimed position of the Left.
But the Left points out that the CMP is committed to "growth oriented polices that lead to greater self-reliance" and "growth with social justice". So there.
The CMP should be read as an "open work" or tabula rasa. I borrow the idea from the great Italian semiotician—and novelist—Umberto Eco. Eco emphasises, in fact celebrates, the importance of ambiguity. Inadvertently, our politicians have come to terms with ambiguities and ambivalences. It is no longer enough to talk in terms of "forked-tongues" and "sheer opportunism of our leaders". The discursive course of our post-colonial self-rule has brought us to a stage where these dual standards are not wilful falsification but the inescapable product of the time.
Otherwise, how can we describe the CPI(M)'s criticism of IMF-doctored liberalisation, when the CMP proudly declares that "the nation needs and has the capacity to absorb at least $10 billion a year as foreign direct investment." The Left is following the Greek euphemism that has taught us the value—or should we say, the value-added—of silence, seen as an attempt to escape commitment, because any expression may be inauspicious. The most ambiguous statement in the CMP is: "Entry of multinational companies into low priority areas will be discouraged." While Industries Minister Maran considers even French Fries as a top priority sector, the Left has not been able to really put their finger on the low priority areas. The CMP states: "The key to faster economic growth is rapid, labour-intensive industrialisation." In the bygone modernist era of Rajiv Gandhi, this would have been dismissed as an oxymoron construction. Labour-intensive enterprises are known for their sluggish growth. Modern technology is inherently against intensive employment and the accent is on lean teams.
But, in the present era of post-modernity, it means the soliloquy of our rulers: "I keep my promises and you keep your promises and let us accept that none of us really know what the people want from us." The first part of the statement (rapid growth) is for Maran and Chidambaram, and the second part (labour-intensive) is for the Left. Thesection on the public sector is a wonderful fairy tale told in the dead language of the bureaucratic imagination. The CMP, for instance, discovers that "public sector enterprises which are essentially commercial enterprises should conduct their business on commercial lines.
They should not be allowed to dissave; they should show a healthy return on capital employed." Maran can proudly point at his effort to free Maruti Udyog from the clutches of the Government as a proof of his total adherence to the CMP, while the Left can happily refer to the growing sluggishness in the nationalised banks and insurance sector as clear evidence of their commitment to maintain the spirit of the CMP. And if the CMP becomes more intransigent sometimes, like in this paragraph— "The question of withdrawing the public sector from non-core and non-strategic areas will be carefully examined, subject, however, to assuring the workers and employees of job security or, in the alternative, opportunities for retraining and redeployment"—the best option for the rulers is to completely gloss over the issue. After all in the land of Karma, the divine hand (of course, of a non-BJP variety) will take care of those companies that are bleeding red. And the divine design is more complex than the manmade fluid signs of our time.
THE CMP also has a signless sign—the delight of semioticians—as its inherent component—the section on Industrial Sickness. "A new law will be made to deal with industrial sickness and the BIFR will be completely revamped." As there is no known mechanism of effecting this laudable idea, no one is talking about it. The section on labour is fascinatingly open-ended. It declares that "the UF Government will ensure that the labour laws are implemented in the spirit in which the laws were made". While the Left believes that the laws should favour the workers, the pro-reform lobby thinks that they are there to effect high productivity. While the CMP has given a silent go by to the much talked about exit policy (giving peaceful clear-conscienced sleep to the proletariat leaders), the CII and ASSOCHAM are happy that the Government is carrying out their long-term demand without much ado and undue publicity.
The CMP declares that "the UF will carry out further reforms of the financial sector... restructuring of the insurance industry... and strengthening public sector companies like LIC, GIC, etc". Another fluid sentence which makes perfect sense—a spectrum of equally valid senses—to all the constituents of the UF. The section on public investment talks about increased investment (the leftist position) as well as organisational and management changes (the right wing position). In a sense, the conjunction 'and' assumes the role of a bridge between two ideological poles and provides the necessary elasticity to the fluidity of the CMP. The terms which facilitate the porosity of the CMP are: 'besides', 'however', 'nonetheless', 'coexist', 'as well as', 'sensitive' and that lovely and useful word 'ethos'. As Donald F. Miller points out, we are daily engaged in euphemism. In the case of the CMP, rather than the exotic and the occasional, it has become the normal. Not the deliberate or the evil cunning, but the unavoidable, the innocent. A deceptive path towards self-rule in the absence of the single, hegemonising power invested in the first family that ruled us for four decades-and-a-half.