바카라Kadry reshaiut vse,바카라 the Soviet Union바카라s one-time supreme leader Joseph Stalin바카라s famous 1935 slogan has been alternately translated into English as 바카라cadres decide everything바카라 on 바카라cadres are the key바카라. The difference is fine but noteworthy.
If the first is to be closer in essence to the original, one might question if it was meant more for lip-service than with real intent for practice. If the second translation is to be considered, there can perhaps be no argument over the fact that cadres are, indeed, the key to political parties. Communist parties worldwide have all been cadre-based parties.
Throughout the 77 years of his life, Gobinda Haldar, a retired industrial worker, had not given much thought to the ideological debates concerning the role of cadres in a communist party. But he has been an ideal cadre for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in practice바카라joining the party during a turbulent time in West Bengal in 1970, surviving the difficult years of the last Congress government between 1972 and 1977, and then after a phase of 34 years of his party바카라s uninterrupted rule, still standing his ground during a decade of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) regime, when his party바카라s vote share fallen from about 40 per cent to just above 4 per cent.
바카라My party is my life. It바카라s in my blood. I cannot imagine a life without the red flag. I can바카라t think of a day without being at the party office,바카라 Haldar says, his voice loaded with conviction.
바카라It바카라s the communist party that taught me to fight for the rights of the poor people and prioritise issues over individuals. The party taught me collective decision-making바카라바카라 The list becomes endless when he starts talking of the role of the party in his life.
In communist parties, a small section of the supporters actually become members of the party, while most others remain involved in different mass organisations바카라for students, farmers, workers, youth and women, among other sections. A member of the party usually has a greater degree of involvement and commitment than those involved in mass organisations.
The essential differences between cadre-based parties and mass-based parties are that the former are usually well-structured from the bottom to the top, survive on their ideological and structural basis rather than the charisma of individual leaders, and usually have internal elections at regular intervals to choose the leadership.
Haldar finds satisfaction in the fact he always accepted every responsibility that his leaders trusted him with. None of his three children became politically active, but he is happy that his wife stood by him when he spent more time for the party than his family. Even in the 2021 assembly election, he served as the party바카라s agent at a polling booth in Bandapara of Chandrahati area within Saptagram assembly constituency in Hooghly district. A polling agent is the party바카라s representative inside the polling booth to ensure no foul play is involved in the polling process. At times, polling agents become targets of rival parties.
Haldar was only two and a half years old when, in 1948, his family shifted from Pabna in what was then East Pakistan to Lalbag in Murshidabad district of West Bengal. By the time he was in his late teens, he found himself deeply involved in the refugee rehabilitation movement in Lalbag that was being spearheaded by the left-wing refugee organisation, United Central Refugee Council (UCRC). It marked the beginning of his association with the communist party, back then the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI), which itself was going through a lot of internal turmoil. By the time Haldar shifted to the Tribeni area in Hooghly district in search of work in 1965, the CPI had split and the CPI(Marxist), or the CPI(M), had been born.
Due to previous links with the communist party in the Tribeni-Bansberia area, he became involved in trade union activities, organising workers at the spun pipe industrial unit where he got a job as an industrial worker. By 1970, he had become a member of the CPI(M) 바카라a membership that he has been renewing every year since. He remembers having faced many threats from political opponents바카라the Congress during 1972-77 and the TMC after 2011. But since he is driven by the cause of fighting for the poor, which he believes only a communist party can, nothing succeeded in stopping him.
바카라In 2011, just a few days after the seventh Left Front government went out of power, some local rowdies associated with the new ruling party heckled and beat me up in public. I was 66-67 years old at that time. They thought I would go silent. But they did not know me. Despite threats, I served as a polling agent in the 2013 panchayat elections,바카라 says Haldar.
In the CPI(M), members have to take active part in the party바카라s routine functioning as well as special responsibilities바카라from organising agitations and overseeing activities of mass organisations to preparing and maintaining voter lists in their respective areas. In his youth, Haldar served the party in many ways바카라from organising workers under the trade union wing CITU, to building the party바카라s base in his own locality. During the 1980s and 1990s, he served two terms as a member of the Chandrahati II gram panchayat. At present, too, he makes himself available for every party programme, indoors or outdoors. 바카라He would die of shock and despair if someone asked him to give up his party membership,바카라 Rudra Chakraborty, another CPI(M) member from the area, says jokingly. 바카라A few years ago, he had a bypass surgery. Within two weeks of returning home, he was ready to take part in a street corner rally.바카라
For his part, Chakraborty, too, has been an ideal cadre. He became a party member in 2009, when the first signs of possible decline of the Left바카라s three decades바카라 old regime were becoming visible. For the first time since 1977, the Left had won less than half the Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal바카라only 15 of 42. Chakraborty, who was drawn to leftist politics during his college years in the late 1990s, believed the CPI(M)-led Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government was on the right track in pushing for an industrial drive. Two years after he became a member, the government fell. In a matter of just two-three years, the CPI(M) membership dwindled across the state. Many did not renew their membership; some were cancelled by the party as the members had become inactive. But for Chakraborty, a new battle had started in 2011.
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바카라Soon after the regime change, local TMC supporters hurled bombs in front of my house. They wanted to terrorise the local party members but we made it a point to keep our local party office open every day. Later, in 2019, miscreants dragged me out of my house and thrashed me. In 2021, on the day of polling for the assembly election, they locked my house from outside early in the morning so that I could not move out,바카라 Chakraborty went on listing what he had to endure in the past decade.
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Amidst such political pressure, the party바카라s support base among the masses was also in a downward spiral since the 2016 assembly election, as reflected by the party바카라s vote share. 바카라For a member of a community party, despair is the last thing that one can allow. The situation was going from bad to worse for us but I have always been hopeful that the tide will turn,바카라 says Chakraborty.
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In West Midnapore district of southwestern Bengal, Sk Ali Azam aka Bablu, has suffered for becoming a CPI(M) cadre. He inherited his love for the party from his father, Sk Abdul Hamid, who was a party member in the 1970s through the party바카라s farmers바카라 wing. However, after their home at Soroi area in Keshpur block came under attack from alleged TMC supporters in 2011, he had to leave his village along with his wife, Taslima, and three children and take shelter 25km away in the district headquarters, Midnapore town, where his party helped him find accommodation. He has been living here ever since, working in the party바카라s trade union wing. 바카라In the past 11 years, I have been implicated in 20 false cases by the district police,바카라 he said, adding that he has not been allowed to vote in any election since 2011.
Nothing could derail his commitment to the party, though. His regular involvement with the party has been in Midnapore town for the past decade but he keeps visiting Keshpur whenever the party has a rally or agitation programme there. A transport worker, Azam became a member of the party in 2012, perhaps among a handful of people in the state who became a new member of the party a year after it lost power. But it바카라s not power that mattered to him, it바카라s the party.
바카라Who else will fight for the oppressed?바카라 Azam asks. His allegiance, he said, is to the party바카라s flag and the electoral symbol. Nothing else matters.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Red Brigades")
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