Clarify stand on economic and communal fronts, CPI(M) to AAP

Terming the success of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) against Congress and BJP "a positive development", CPI(M) today said its future trajectory would depend on how it shapes its policies on economic and communal fronts.
With AAP planning to become a national party and fight elections in other states, the major Left party said it becomes all the more important that it spells out its basic programmes and policies.
"Only then, will it be possible for the people to determine the nature of the party and the direction it will take," CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat said in an article in the forthcoming issue of party organ 'People's Democracy'.

Maintaining that AAP has been "riding on the plank of fighting the political establishment", he said this was a stance that "tars all political parties with the same brush", including the Left parties.
"The non-political and even anti-political origins of the AAP with its middle class/NGO antecedents seems to prevent it from discerning the ruling class politics and politicians from those like the communists who have always stood firmly in support of the working people and their cause," Karat said.
He said the Left agenda was "clear-cut" as its policies favoured the working class and the people and stood for social justice, democratisation and decentralisation of power.

While AAP proposed to tackle some critical problems like corruption faced by the people of Delhi, "it has so far been silent on the nature of the economic policies which have produced these problems," Karat said.

Giving the example of the "continuously rising" electricity rates, he said this was due to privatisation of power distribution in the city.
"The high-level institutionalised corruption is an outcome of the neo-liberal regime. So is the contractised work pattern."
Observing that AAP was yet to advocate policies which were an alternative to neo-liberalism, Karat said "there seems to be a tendency to gloss over these matters, perhaps due to the contradictions that exist in the social base which has rallied around in the (AAP) party.