ON April 18, S Ramachandran Pillai, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member presented the Political-Organisational Report adopted by the Central Committee to the 21st Congress of the CPI(M)  held in Visakhapatnam from April 14-19. At the very outset he stated that since the Plenum on Organisation is going to discuss all aspects of the Party organisation and the functioning of the mass organisations, the Political-Organisational Report will be focusing on the state of the Party organisation today and it analyses some of the weaknesses prevalent. The Plenum on Organisation will be held within the coming six months.

Some of the prominent observations he made during the course of his presentation of the report are that the weaknesses in taking up local issues for sustained struggles are still continuing and still there is reluctance on the part of the leadership in many states to take up social issues.

S Ramachandran Pillai also mentioned that due to the difficult situation in which the Party is functioning in West Bengal, there is a slowdown in the increase of the Party membership. He however, also brought to the notice of the Congress, the increase in Party membership in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Tripura.

In the intervening period between the last two Congresses, he stated that membership in the trade union front, agricultural workers front and women’s front had seen an increase, while, there was a decline in the membership of the kisan front, youth front and student front.

Commenting on the class composition of the Party membership, he stated that working class, poor peasants and agricultural workers are in good numbers. He stressed that the Party needs to intensify its efforts to promote deserving candidates from these basic classes and also oppressed social sections like women, dalits and adivasis to the leadership levels in the Party. Similarly he also emphasised the need to attract larger numbers of youth into the Party.

The report noted the importance of intensifying our efforts and activities in the various special organisations that had been set up such as dalit front, adivasi front, work in urban areas, children’s organisations, disability sector, IT and free software and people’s science movements.

The report set out seven immediate organisational tasks for the strengthening of Party organisation, till the Party plenum considers all organisational aspects of the Party and mass fronts and arrives at appropriate conclusions.

These seven tasks are broadly:

·        To organise agitations and struggles on immediate  issues/local issues and realisable demands of the common people and be always among the people, intervening in the spontaneous struggles of the people on all genuine demands

·        Consolidating all the contacts made through the mass fronts and the work of the Party

·        Activising all the Party members, branches and intermediate committees and taking the Party into new sections and areas by drawing concrete and time-bound plans

·        Regular schooling to strengthen the political and ideological and organisational levels of the Party members

·        Strengthen the work on the student and youth fronts

·        Increase the circulation of our Central papers and state level dailies and weeklies and

·        Strengthen the Party Centre

Ramachandran Pillai also moved a resolution on Organisational Plenum, which was unanimously adopted by the Congress. This resolution directed the new Polit Bureau and the Central Committee to 'convene a Plenum to discuss the functioning of the Party organisation and the work among the people, expansion of the Party especially among the young generation and basic classes, orientation of the mass fronts, their activities including their independent functioning and their relations with the Party'. It was resolved to organise this Plenum before the end of 2015.

As part of the Political-Organisational Report, issues concerned with organising the rural and urban workers were also taken up for discussion. (It was decided that the reports of the three study groups on agrarian sector, working class and urban areas will be taken up for discussion by the newly elected PB and CC and subsequently in the Plenum on Organisation.)

The Report stressed the need to organise agricultural workers, given the fact that a large number of them are still not organised, also due to the fact that the agricultural workers' organisation is present only in 15 states. The need to build and expand the agricultural workers' organisation throughout the country was emphasised. Along with organising agricultural workers, it was also decided to organise various sections of rural manual workers and coordinate their activities. This should be done according to the concrete situation in the respective states, he noted.

The second issue addressed was the question of organising different types of workers in the urban areas, particularly in the background of the changes in the socio-economic conditions and the changed composition of the working class. The Report noted the overwhelming presence of unorganised workers employed in different sectors and the difficulties in organising these workers through the traditional method of unions at the work place. The Report called for finding ways to organise these vast section of the work force, along with the urban poor in their localities.

The discussion on the Report, which was self-critical and critical, took place for four hours, in which 37 comrades participated. After the reply to the discussions, the Congress had unanimously adopted the Report in the morning on April 19.