A life of struggle

Dipankar Mukherjee (1943-2012), who died on June 18, was the quintessential communist.

Dipankar Mukherjee, outstanding trade union leader, diligent Member of Parliament and a keen student of the modern Indian working class, passed away on the morning of June 18, aged 69. Dipankarda, as all who knew him closely called him, was the quintessential communist, ever ready to fight for his cause but just as ready to learn in order to fight better. Despite his enormous contribution as a member of the Rajya Sabha for two terms, best exemplified by his work as a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Gas, he was self-effacing to a fault. When Frontline interviewed him in 2005 (July 29, 2005) and sought a few personal details that would be of interest to readers, his characteristic response was: Why do you want to write about me? Focus on the subject.

Son of a railway worker, Dipankarda was born in 1943. His excellence in academics took him to the Benaras Hindu University from where he graduated as an electrical engineer. His first job was with Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd., whose entry-level training programme is still the envy of young engineers. Later, he joined the Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation and worked at its Ramagundam plant in Andhra Pradesh. He then moved to Haldia Fertilizers from where he quit as Additional Chief Engineer to join the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) in 1991.

Such a move would have appeared strange to anybody from the middle class at that time, but Dipankardas eyes were clearly set on a different calling where he was to make a mark within a very short period of time. He went on to become the CITU national secretary, a position he held until his death. He also represented the CITU in the Central Board of Trustees of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation.

Dipankarda served two continuous terms in the Rajya Sabha (1994-2006), representing the Communist Party of India (Marxist), but his work in the relatively short tenure would have done any veteran proud. He took his parliamentary duties seriously, as was demonstrated by the deep imprint he left on the reports of two Parliamentary Standing Committees associated with the Ministries of Petroleum and Natural Gas and Transport and Tourism.

In hindsight, his first-hand experience of the dynamics of the Indian public sector appears to have given him the unique ability to cut through the mist of obfuscation that is characteristic of much of the Indian medias coverage of economic issues.

But what set him apart was the manner in which he coupled his deep understanding of the nuances of industrial economics with his steadfast commitment to stand on the side of Indian labour. The enormous respect that he earned from not only public sector workers but also senior officers enabled him to build further on what he had already learnt as a PSU employee.

This was reflected in the manner in which he deployed all his skills against the tide of unprecedented and aggressive privatisation that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government unleashed after assuming office in 1999. Referring to the string of controversial privatisation moves that began with the sale of the Bharat Aluminium Company (BALCO) in 2001, he told this correspondent: Any privatisation exercise is, by definition, scandalous. Getting the sale price of a PSU right is a logical impossibility because the very raison detre of privatisation is to sell public property cheap to private interests.

This class perspective, he said, explained the communists opposition to privatisation couched in whatever terms creeping, outright or even a strategic sale as in the case with the handover of BALCO to Sterlite or the Centaur hotels (owned by the public sector company Hotel Corporation of India, a subsidiary of Air India) to private companies in 2002.

No single individual from any side of the political spectrum has contributed as much as Dipankarda has to the popular understanding of the scandalous manner in which petroleum prices are set in India. Dipankarda left his deep imprint on a Parliamentary Committees thorough dissection of petroleum pricing policy in India.

Although somewhat dated today, the Sixth Report of Standing Committee on Petroleum and Natural Gas of the 14th Lok Sabha is a must read for those who belittle parliamentary institutions. For the first time, the 76-page report analysed the manner in which petroleum product prices were being set, far removed from their actual cost of production. In the process, it exposed the elaborate fiction that lay behind the so-called under recoveries of the oil companies. Although the financial media continued to use the term, which had no basis in economics or accounting principles, this comprehensive analysis of all aspects of the petroleum sector was the first strike at the ruling orthodoxy. The report also revealed how the government was treating the sector as a milch cow for mobilising tax revenues.

But Dipankarda went beyond these issues to demonstrate how the entire pricing process was geared to undermine the public sector oil companies, which had ensured that India was self-reliant in petroleum refining after Independence. He also argued that the oil PSUs were operating in an un-level playing field, which was loaded in favour of private companies, especially Reliance Industries Ltd. The apparently absurd notion of under-recoveries had a more sinister purpose, he would say. It was not only against the interests of the public sector oil companies as well as consumers, but existed in order to serve the interests of Reliance and other private interests waiting in the wings, he said.

Much before the Comptroller and Auditor Generals investigations revealed that RIL had exaggerated exploration costs in the Krishna-Godavari gas fields, Dipankarda had raised the issue. He pointed out that RIL had an incentive to gold plate costs because the revenue-sharing agreement with the government allowed it to deduct costs from the shareable portion of its revenues. He also repeatedly raised the issue of high gas prices that RIL was allowed to charge customers, especially public utility companies such as National Thermal Power Corporation Ltd. and public sector fertilizer companies.

As a source, Dipankarda was unimpeachable, simply because he had no axe to grind. But as a person not given to empty banter, he would insist that reporters come adequately prepared. Dipankarda would insist that reporters speak to other relevant sources, even those he knew were against his viewpoint.

It was obvious that his conviction in his own views was so strong that he was not afraid of facing views that were opposed to his.