The rival unions, whether belonging to Datta Samant or the Sena or someone else, made fantastic demands which they themselves knew could not be met by mill managements. Our demands were realistic, but the workers were swayed by the apparently promising but, in actual fact, misleading demands of our political opponents.
Where we went wrong was in taking a page from their playbook. As the workers were weaned away by our adversaries, we failed to create awareness among the workers on what was in their real interest. Instead, as we gradually started losing our ground and were pushed back by other parties and their unions, we started blaming people in the party for the failure. Fingers were pointed by leaders at one another, and intra-party conflictsstarted taking their toll. Once forward movement stops, there is a need for introspection. But what the Communists did was not self-introspection but mud-slinging. That made the Communists directionless.
During Dange's time, the party used to organise study circles where youths were given intellectual inputs about the socio-economic-political nature of the problems plaguing society. That helped youngsters understand issues in their totality. As youths became impetuous and very violent due to the widening influence of intolerant forces, the Communists failed to continue with this intellectual education. There was nobody to tell youngsters what actually lay at the bottom of their problems. The Communists' inability to explain thi
