Left parties yet to get it right

Mistake or not, withdrawal of support to the UPA was the beginning of the Left parties’ backslide that continues. Losing power in West Bengal and Kerala, they control only tiny Tripura. Decimated in the last Lok Sabha poll, followed by the policies of the Modi Government, they are struggling to find relevance at the ground level.

At the risk of sounding rhetorical, 51 years after the split, one can still ask whether Yechury and Sudhakar Reddy can bring their parties closer, if not merge. Can the CPI(M) win back the solidarity of the smaller Left parties in West Bengal? Can the two CPs work together to recover in Kerala? Can the two work to keep aloft the Left banner in Tripura, their last outpost?

Comrade A B Bardhan, or “Bardhan Da” as many of us knew the Communist Party of India (CPI) veteran, has passed away. “Kahan Rehte ho, bhai?” was his endearing way to enquire both, your whereabouts and ‘howabouts.’

Reporting Left parties is never easy unless one is familiar with their Marxist-Leninist jargon. It was made easier with the few windows that seniors like Bardhan provided. Handling media for a party where everything was not meant for public, they would talk to correspondents, even educate them in their language, with patience. With the party office telephone extension by their book-filled bedside, they were available for comments even at odd hours.

Left politicians do not assiduously engage in media PR as other parties do. A cup of tea with a pair of biscuits is the most they offer, along with the warmth and patience that comes with age and experience. They are also a bit difficult to publish, given the editor’s inbuilt prejudice against the Left.

Now, we have editors who have long buried their leftist past, if they had any, and remain firmly on the right side of the political spectrum. Bardhan Da was among the Opposition seniors who were surprised at the Congress winning the 2004 Lok Sabha elections – and admitted it.

They were more astonished when Sonia Gandhi did not take the prime ministership. They did not have much of an opinion for Dr Manmohan Singh. So when she invited them, they responded positively.The Left had performed well in that election and for the next couple of years, gave Sonia crucial support that, by hindsight, shackled the UPA-I and II with huge financial commitments.

It was first Jyoti Basu with whom Sonia cultivated close familial ties, thanks to mother-in law Indira.But it was Bardhan who provided inputs for the anti-poverty programmes pushed by the Sonia-led National Advisory Council.

In power only in three States, the Left came to influence the national policies as never before – even more than when the CPI had ministers in the Union Governments of H D Deve Gowda and I K Gujral.
The honeymoon had to end, sooner than later. The Left withdrew support to the UPA government to oppose the Indo-US Civil Nuclear Deal.

Stalinists within the Left leadership were blinded by anti-Americanism. Bardhan may not have agreed with them. He was the first to call the Left strategy a mistake. Mistake or not, it was the beginning of the Left parties’ backslide that continues. Losing power in West Bengal and Kerala, they control only tiny Tripura. Decimated in the last Lok Sabha poll, followed by the policies of the Modi Government, they are struggling to find relevance at the ground level.

CPI General Secretary for 12 years, Bardhan passed on the baton to the younger generation led by S Sudhakar Reddy. CPI (Marxist), the larger party, has also had a transformation, not generational though, with Sitaram Yechury becoming the general secretary.

Time was when national leaderships of many national parties came from Andhra Pradesh. The longest serving CPI General Secretary was Chandra Rajeswara Rao. Besides the Communist Party (Maoist) leadership, once again, Sudhakar Reddy and Yechury, leading lights of the “parliamentary left”, are from the Telugu States.

Whatever be their theoretical and ideological justification of policies and programmes, the only yardstick in a democratic set-up to judge a political party’s relevance is its electoral performance. It is a given that the Left as a whole has declined, even as their trade union, farm and other arms lose ground.

With successive governments pursuing free market policies (launched, incidentally, by another Telugu, P V Narasimha Rao) does the Left stand a chance to unleash mass movement and /or influence the state policy?

In “The Phoenix Moment” published posthumously, late Praful Bidwai quotes Prakash Karat, then CPI(M) General Secretary, as saying: “It is virtually squeezing us out now.” The “it” in Karat’s line stood for neoliberal politics, a Marxist catchphrase for politics awash in business-funded slush money and the nexus between globalised finance capital and governments.

The situation is definitely worrying for the Left and Bidwai’s last tome, analysts have said, could be a way to recover. But a treatise can at the best only be a treatise that needs to be put into practice imaginatively, diligently. Each of the Left parties must put its house in order, rejuvenate cadres and mobilise the masses.

If any movement or political party gets bureaucratic, it becomes corrupt and declines. This happened in West Bengal. After the Left rule for 33 years, it did not take as many months for their cadres to move away. Factional fights are common in Kerala and cadres are reportedly shifting to the BJP.

At the risk of sounding rhetorical, 51 years after the split, one can still ask whether Yechury and Sudhakar Reddy can bring their parties closer, if not merge. Can the CPI(M) win back the solidarity of the smaller Left parties in West Bengal? Can the two CPs work together to recover in Kerala? Can the two work to keep aloft the Left banner in Tripura, their last outpost?

After opposing industrialisation for decades, realising its inevitable need, the Left sought to implement it in West Bengal. It mishandled it at Singur and in Nandigram. It still gives the impression of being opposed to industry, much of it coming in the private sector.

An example is CPI(M)’s opposition to the Vizhingam port that could change Kerala’s face. Meanwhile, the farmer whom they thought they controlled in areas under their influence is being rapidly displaced. It has been a dual loss of the support base.

Fighting with its back to the wall, the CPI(M) held its plenum in Kolkata last week. It must face fresh elections five years after it lost badly to the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. The plenum did not show if the party had learnt lessons from its losses and is ready to put up a stiff resistance to Mamata Banerjee. Seen from a distance, she seems poised to retain her hold.

The Bengal cadres are desperate for an alliance with the Congress to be able to survive. There seems little chance of the national leadership being able to resist this, even if that annoys the Kerala unit where it is fighting the Congress-led front.

For the CPI (M), the dilemma is not just ideological: whatever the nature of its relations with the Congress in Bengal, it will have to necessarily fight the former in Kerala. Can it really alter its rhetoric and its programme as per the two conflicting needs? There is no time to lose since both States go to elections at the same time this year.

There is one area where the Left’s absence is felt even as they struggle to survive, and that is most crucial, nationally. That is the fight against communal forces. There was no strong Left intervention/participation in the recent months’ phase of what went by the name of intolerance.

If the Left supported the writers and intellectuals who returned their awards, its voice was feeble. If the Left protested against the killing of rationalists like Narendra Dabholkar and M M Kalboorgi and even the CPI veteran G M Pansere, it was not felt.

Yechury told his party’s Kolkata plenum: “The agenda of the communal forces is to replace Indian history, it’s rich, syncretic history with Hindu mythology and Indian philosophy with Hindu theology…
They are being able to do this because of state patronage.” Can he galvanise the party into action on this? It may help the nation, whatever the outcome of the two State elections.