BIRLA ACKNOWLEDGES DEBT TO NAMBOODIRIPAD
Bombay
While inaugurating a new building of the Malabar Chamber of Commerce in Calicut, Kerala, on November 26, G.D.Birla, India's No. 1 industrialist, said that the "credit for bringing me to Kerala for business should rightly go to Shri E.M.S.Namboodiripad, the Left Communist leader."
Birla said that at the time, some of the prominent men in the central government had advised him not to set up a plant in Kerala. "But Shri Namboodiripad gave me good terms, which a Congress government would not have given."
Agreement was reached on the terms and conditions for setting up Birla's Walior
Rayons Factory near Calicut when Namboodiripad was the chief minister of Kerala. This might sound out of character to those who know Namboodiripad as a leader of the left Communist party of India. However, Namboodiripad has not changed his basic outlook since he was in the Kerala government in 1958-59. To him Birla is a leader of the "national bourgeoisie" with whom the CPI can seek a "bloc" in order to achieve an "anti-imperialist and antifeudal people's democratic revolution" in India. Unfortunately, this has meant placing political confidence in the bourgeoisie at the cost not only of the socialist revolution but any revolution whatsoever.