Keeping the red flag up: How Left plans to stay relevant in electoral game

The unorganised Left is in protest mode and can be heard in pockets

Taking on the plausible

When someone says Indians should only support the Indian cricket team, you want to nail the argument but can’t. You hear about Kashmiri students who are the target of the rest of the hostel because of their perceived pro-Pak views. Bullshit Busters enables you to answer both. It tells you, for instance, about the famous cricketers who played for a country other than that of their birth. Or the several practising Muslims who’ve played for the Indian cricket team, Including from Kashmir. That apart, it takes on propaganda and other ways of buttressing rigidity and appropriating national symbols. Discussed in Bullshit Busters and other Propaganda Demolished, a beautifully minimalistic pamphlet. 

Produced by Indus Syndicate, describing itself as bringing progressive voices to a progressive India. Challenging some everyday arguments, it is designed for the thinking and questioning Indian. It questions and factually answers many distortions, half-truths and misrepresentations that are routinely passed off as “nationalist”. The pamphlet does not resort to Left dogma or rhetoric of the ‘Never Forget Class Struggle’ kind – it argues with fact and reason. A pamphlet to be read by everyone.

West Bengal: Ceding ground in its bastion

Even the Left’s critics will not dispute that it changed the rural landscape in Bengal after coming to power in 1977. 

Through land reform, its government redistributed more than a million acres to three million farmers in 34 years. Operation Barga, which registered sharecroppers and gave them legal rights to the land, benefited another 1.5 million. And, perhaps the bigger reform was decentralisation of power or panchayati raj, bringing social empowerment.

“But, after 1991, they didn’t know how to negotiate economic reforms and lost the plot,” says political analyst Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury. Also, agricultural productivity started falling. Between 1990 and 1995, it fell by 2.3 per cent.

By the time the Left realised industrialisation was the only alternative, towards the end of Chief Minister Jyoti Basu’s tenure, many industrialists had already left, after being subjected to militant trade unionism. And, even then, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was the lone advocate for industrialisation within the party. Bhattacharjee was for making big changes and he knew time was running out. “In his rush, he did not take his support base along,” says Basu Ray Chaudhury.

Soon, Bengal became the symbol of land agitation movements. In the assembly election of 2011, Bhattacharjee and his government were routed.

“Initially, it CPI (M) was flabbergasted. It just couldn’t reinvent itself, couldn’t come up with new faces. The same faces that were rejected by the people were leading the party,” says Basu Ray Chaudhury.

There was another problem. The Left's positioning in Bengal. Mamata Banerjee was more Left than the Left. So, what would the Left be fighting for? It would just have to wait for Banerjee's Singur moment. Who would lead the movement from the Left?

Kerala: Losing the caste struggle

The CPI(M)’s political stance in Kerala is sometimes inexplicable. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of Abdul Nasser Mahdani, with alleged links to terrorist outfits and still under judicial custody in connection with the 2008 Bengaluru serial blasts, has got the CPI(M) backing over the years. 

When former BJP state president K Raman Pillai formed the Janapaksham party, the CPI(M) was quick to woo him. 

“The attitude of soft-pedalling towards communal forces was the reason for the party’s downfall over the years in Bengal and they are now making the same mistake in Kerala. Despite being called a common man’s party, with a strong base among backward classes (OBC) and dalits, the majority of the Left leadership came from upper castes, except a few in recent times like V S Achuthanandan and Pinarayi Vijayan. This was its major drawback across the country,” believes B R P Bhaskar, a political analyst.  

Political observers believe this upper caste supremacy in the Left was the reason for its downfall in the other strongholds of Bihar, Telangana, Maharashtra and even Rajasthan. “When the Zamindari Abolition Bill was introduced in the Bihar assembly, the CPI opposed it, as its state leaders were upper caste landlords. Likewise, the party is now close to land grabbers and corporate houses in Kerala,” he adds.

Sunnykutty Abraham, a veteran journalist says the rise of groups within the CPI(M) and increasing political violence, coupled with poor governance, has reduced the Left’s acceptability over the years.  

Caste is the current issue. The rising influence of the BJP among OBCs and Dalits is a cause for concern in the state’s Left. For a long time, after the renaissance of backward classes led by Narayana Guru and Ayyankali, these groups had a soft spot for the CPI(M). Now, they have an alternative in the BJP.

Tripura: A breached fortress?

The Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front returned to power in Tripura for a fifth consecutive time in 2013.  It won 50 of the 60 legislative assembly seats in the February election, bettering its position after the 2008 polls by one seat. The CPI(M) alone won 49, three more than earlier; the Left’s vote percentage rose from 51 per cent in 2008 to 52 per cent.

The Congress won the remaining 10 seats. Its allies, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) and the National Conference of Tripura (NCT), drew a blank.

Chief Minister and CPI(M) politburo member Manik Sarkar said after the victory: “It is a verdict of the people in favour of peace, harmony and development. We will continue to humbly discharge our duties to live up to the expectations reposed in us by the people.” 

‘Peace and development’ was the Left’s main election slogan. The State was plagued by insurgency for decades, the two major extremist groups being the National Liberation Front of Tripura and the All Tripura Tiger Force. Sarkar’s government was successful in addressing this, becoming the only state to stop applying the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), saying it wasn't needed anymore. 

Now, however, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is snapping at the Left’s heels. In 2015,  it stood second in civic body elections, edging the Congress out. In rural Tripura, the BJP got 142 panchayat members and took as many as five panchayats. The BJP seems to be challenging tribal extremist groups and appealing to tribal loyalties.