Marxist tsunami V.S. Achuthanandan personally led the destruction of the Tata Tea plantations in Munnar, Kerala, with further threat that he would "stop at nothing" till he took back every part of the 50,000 acres the Tatas were occupying for their tea estate. In pouring rain the chief minister went about literally with an axe to bring down some of the construction on the estate as a prelude to the greater destruction ahead.

What heroism! He says he would parcel out the land to the landless labour. The great Marxist leader is so considerate of the poor that he is all set to throw out the Tatas from his state. Such cheap heroism, however, is bound to soon recoil on the state where not a single private enterprise has come in the last several decades despite the huge consumer boom fuelled by foreign remittances to the tune of $11 billion a year, or Rs 44,000 crores - enough to provide each one of the less than three-crore people about Rs 15,000 per annum, men, women and children included.

The result: When even a panchayat advertises for a job, over two lakh applications come. Sometime back, a similar advertisement was scrapped just because the panchayat would have had to spend several crores of rupees merely to sort out the lakhs of applications that had come for just a dozen vacancies.

While the Marxist Mahakal was targeting the Tatas, his counterpart in West Bengal, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was telling the Economic Times, "It was very difficult for me to convince Ratan (Tata)." Speaking on the effort he had to make to get Ratan Tata to locate the Tata Motors project for small cars in West Bengal, the chief minister said, "The alternatives that he (Ratan Tata) had in states like Uttarakhand were far more compelling. They were offering an incentive of Rs 18,000 per car. All that we could do to get this flagship project to the state was to give him the offer of land wherever he wanted…"

What a contrast: One Marxist chief minister threatens to expel the country's most prominent business house from his state merely to gain some passing popularity at tremendous cost to his state and to his government. The other Marxist chief minister begs the same Tatas to come to his state and establish their car project.

After leading for decades the Marxist destruction of industries and capitalists that resulted in an exodus of several leading industrial houses from West Bengal, Bhattacharjee confesses that he has learnt his lesson. For all the land reforms he and his party implemented, Bhattacharjee admits, "Private capital is the only way forward - socialistic alternatives look good on paper but are not practical alternatives." Marxist Bhattacharjee should read this Adam Smith subtext to the Das Capital of Marx to his party colleague Achuthanandan.

Bhattacharjee adds, "This project is critical for us to draw other industries to the state." Once he led the agitators who cursed the Tatas, the Birlas, the Bajorias, the Goenkas, ITC, HLL and others. His cadres gheraoed their managers, refused to allow them to make any technology-led adjustments in production processes, virtually lynched the industrial and business houses. These houses that were not even allowed to withdraw their staff and capital out of the state even as these remained idle, resorted to scaling down their activities in West Bengal and shifting to Mumbai, Pune, Delhi etc. The Bengali youth had no jobs as a result.

So Achuthanandan should beware. The applause he gets for the destructive Kalki avatar he has assumed, against the Tatas and others would die out as the shadow of unemployment lengthens further. How does it affect the Tatas who are the owners and managers of one of the finest tea gardens in Munnar? If they pack up and go, they might lose a few crores of rupees. But how will it affect the state of Kerala where over 30 tea gardens are already closed and several thousand workers are starving, and some have already died of "malnutrition"?

As Bhattacharjee has learnt, the Tatas have other alternatives, West Bengal has none. Bhattacharjee recently sent his industry minister to the United States to persuade the wretched capitalists to invest in his state. They are now the saviours, for West Bengal wants jobs. Was it not another great Marxist, Deng Xiaoping, who said that the colour of the cat did not matter as long as it caught mice? Marxist China is today the world's largest opportunity for profit for the "capitalists."

The entire Marxist line in Kerala is turning more and more anti-people. The state government is blocking all avenues from where capital could come and create jobs in the state. The most recent example is the Marxist ire against Reliance and Bharti. They and some others have opened giant retail stores and are willing to pay the farmers double the price the state is paying for their produce for its fair price shops. Achuthanandan has ordered Reliance and others to pack up and leave although they have a licence to trade.

At the same time, he is complaining that cash crop farmers of the state are not getting a good price for their crops. Farmer suicides are not uncommon; most farmers who on their own went for vanilla farming have come a cropper. Had they done so with the help of some business house, the latter would have guided them to get the right marketing method just as ITC has done for soybean farmers in Madhya Pradesh.

Achuthanandan's bravado is traced by political sources to his continuing fight with party secretary P. Vijayan. The former wants to gain some cheap popularity, and pulling down the Tatas and throwing out the Ambanis may boost his ego.

Mao's cultural goons did the same to their businessmen, as did Communist Pol Pot's men, apart from bludgeoning to death Cambodia's teachers, doctors, lawyers and businessmen. But who lost finally?

In the other southern states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, new industries are crowding in - autos, telecom, pharmaceuticals, speciality chemicals, components, etc. Most recently, over $3 billion (Rs 12,000 crores) investment for a silicon complex in Hyderabad has come from capital abroad; another six billion in the same sector is searching for location.

The Tatas have chosen Tamil Nadu for a huge titanium factory, even though Kerala too has the required raw material. Not one of these new industries is willing to touch Kerala with a bargepole, but Achuthanandan is manipulating his circus to hoodwink the jobless young people of his state. But for how long?

Courtesy: www.asianage.com, July 6, 2007